A ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ LIBRARY OF THE University of California. Class j0mfm*t EDUC PSYCH. LIBRARY PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION OTHER WORKS BY PROF. JAMES H. HYSLOP BORDERLAND OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH $1.50 net; by mail $1.62 ENIGMAS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH $1.50 net; by mail $1.62 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE $1.50 net; by mail $1.62 SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 15 BEACON ST., BOSTON PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION BY JAMES H. HYSLOP, Ph.D., LL.D FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF ETHICS AND LOGIC IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SMALL, MAYNARD AND COMPANY BOSTON - - - MCMVIII ■BFiom H . Copyright, 1908 gUC. Small, /IRasnarD S. Gompang UBfiAOT ( INCORPORATED ) Entered at Stationers' Hall titfttriAL Published, May, 1908 THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED TO /IDS Cbflfcren, WHO WILL SOME DAY SEE THE LIGHT PREFACE The present volume contains a number of essays relating to the subjects discussed in three previous volumes, Borderland of Psychical Research, Enigmas of Psychical Research, and Science and a Future Life. The matter is largely new. Two of the es- says — the first and the last — have not been pub- lished before. The others have been collected from various periodicals in which they first received publi- cation. The first-named of the volumes previously pub- lished deals with the phenomena of normal psychology and its problems and with some of the borderline facts of abnormal psychology. It includes chapters on sense perception, memory, illusions, hallucinations, subconscious action, pseudo-spiritistic phenomena, hypnotic therapeutics, and reincarnation. The sec- ond discusses crystal gazing, telepathy, clairvoyance, premonition and mediumistic phenomena. The third is a summary of the facts associated with the experi- ments of Dr. Hodgson and others in connection with the case of Mrs. Piper. The present volume covers more or less of the whole field and may be regarded as a supplement to Science and a Future Life, with conclusions quite the same. They all deal with a residual class of phenomena now demanding more and more attention and suggesting a wider range of ix meaning for human personality than the orthodox psychology has been disposed to admit. It is hoped that these essays may help to shed some light on the problems involved. There is no class of phenomena that have a greater interest for many persons at the present day than those which are attributed to " subliminal conscious- ness " or " secondary personality." These terms figure so prominently in all discussions of obscure problems in psychology, and especially in literature which objects to spiritistic theories, that it may be well to make clear what they mean. To make intelligible what we mean by " secondary personality " it may be necessary briefly to indicate what we mean by " personality " of any kind. By " personality," we mean a group of mental states which are continuous and coherent, so that they pres- ent a persistent unity and real or apparent identity of kind and meaning. In common parlance we might call it the mental characteristics of a person, this being the name for an individual organism and its functions as a whole. But the mental peculiarities which main- tain a continuous and persistent unity throughout the life of this person or individual, or at least for definite periods of time, are called its " personality," and in the normal man persist through his whole life. This is called the " primary personality." But in certain not altogether normal conditions the in- dividual may exhibit mental actions which simulate some other " personality," or " person " if we may so call it, and betray no memory connections with the primary consciousness. This we call a " secondary x personality." It begins in the ordinary subconscious action, which in the normal man accompanies the natural consciousness. Many of our actions are sub- conscious or carried on unconsciously and without set purpose. If these actions lose their relation to our ordinary control and become split off from the influence of the normal consciousness they become organized into a consistent imitation of another " per- son " and are called the " secondary " consciousness or " personality." In such cases there is no connec- tion by memory between secondary consciousness and the normal consciousness, any more than there is be- tween two different individuals. They may show that they belong to the same group of experiences by the fact that each " personality " may recall the same facts, indicating that the secondary conscious- ness has its own memory, but there is no memory by each of the other's facts. In all the phenomena of psychical research there is good reason to believe that subliminal or subcon- scious mental action is the medium through which these phenomena are produced, and it is the task of the investigator to determine when the phenomena are, and when they are not, the result of the individ- ual's normal experience or sense perception. The place that this has in the production of them has not yet been clearly indicated and it may take a long and tedious investigation to determine the point. At present there are no definitely assigned limits to sub- liminal action, except those facts which can not be explained by previous normal sense perception. There are types of phenomena which clearly indicate xi PREFACE this subconscious action, such as dreams, deliria, sleep-walking, and all cases of temporary loss of the sense of personal identity. But we seem to transcend this in mediumistic phenomena and telepathy where, whatever the functions of subliminal action, we ob- tain information in some ordinarily inexplicable way outside the subject in which it occurs, representing the personality or mental state of some one else. Secondary personality may be the condition of get- ting such " messages " and so serve as the matrix into which they are poured. But whether so or not, it is not the place in a preface to explain it. All that it is necessary to do here is to define the inter- mediate mental conditions affecting the supernormal and perhaps serving as the medium for its expres- sion. Many persons imagine that " secondary personal- ity " means some extraneous reality or double which is as independent as a real person. But this is not its meaning in scientific psychology. In no respect is it a competitor in the explanation of spiritistic phenomena having a supernormal character. It readily explains the simulations of spiritism, but since it is itself based upon the normal experience of the individual dissociated from the normal memory, it does not imply anything foreign to the organism and explains nothing but the appearances of exter- nal realities, if it can be said to explain anything at all. It represents phenomena as much within the sub- ject as does the primary personality. But it may nevertheless be the means by which foreign influences may be able to intromit " messages " into the phys- ical world, whether those influences be telepathic or spiritual. The first of the three books before-mentioned deals with these borderline phenomena; the second shows a large group of phenomena not amenable to sub- liminal explanations alone; and the third deals with information that consistently represents the person- alities of deceased persons. The present volume adds to the data which cover all three fields of inquiry. The chapters detailing the " communications " pur- porting to come from Dr. Hodgson represent, in some cases, a series of phenomena that we are in the habit of calling " cross references." This means " messages " that are repeated through different psychical subjects. They are a peculiarly effective evidence of the supernormal, whatever the explana- tion. The chapter on " Visions of the Dying " rep- resents another type of phenomena scarcely less significant, though not so easily determined by ex- periments as are mediumistic incidents. The province and limitations of telepathy are ex- plained in the chapter on that subject and I do not need to dwell upon it here. Suffice it to say that many persons have most extravagant conceptions of what it is supposed to be. But for science it is a very rare phenomenon and has far greater limita- tions than the public imagines. It is merely a name for a group of facts, not for any explanatory process regarding them. If the public exhibited any ra- tional ideas about this matter, science might be more willing to take it up for serious investigation. But nothing can be done with it until the subject is looked at reasonably. The phenomena still accumulate, and increase the duties of science to investigate and interpret them. There are growing signs that intelligent men see that a new world of facts promises to open to human vision and interest, and only self-complacent dog- matists any longer ridicule the subject. As these men die, their places will be taken by a younger gen- eration that has no prejudices to maintain. We have only to exercise patience until the victory has been won, though it is unfortunate that we are not al- lowed to discuss the issues which are involved while accumulating the facts which are to decide it. A bet- ter day will soon arrive for this discussion and the next generation will treat the intolerance of the pres- ent as we treat the attacks on Copernican astronomy and Darwinian evolution. We only await sufficient intelligence to endow the investigation when it may be made commensurate with the immensity of the task. James H. Hyslop. New York City, January 30th, 1908. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. HUMOROUS ASPECTS OF PSYCHICAL RE- SEARCH 1 II. PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND COINCI- DENCES 24 III. " FROM INDIA TO THE PLANET MARS " . 61 IV. VISIONS OF THE DYING 81, V. EXPERIMENTS WITH MRS. PIPER SINCE DR. RICHARD HODGSON'S DEATH . . .109 VI. FURTHER EXPERIMENTS RELATING TO DR. HODGSON SINCE HIS DEATH . . .127 VII. CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS REL- ATIVE TO DR. HODGSON ; THEORIES . . 159 VIII. THE SMEAD CASE 222 IX. SOME FEATURES IN MEDIUMISTIC PHE- NOMENA 268 X. TELEPATHY 305 XI. THE NATURE OF LIFE AFTER DEATH . . 332 XII. PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESUR- RECTION 352 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION CHAPTER I HUMOROUS ASPECTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH So many fools have been made wise and so many wise men made fools in the study of phenomena having an alleged significance for supernormal knowl- edge and transcendental forces that the subject has a great many humorous aspects for one who sees much of human nature. The whole history of the subject has connected it with promises that perhaps have more personal interest for the majority of the race than any other problem. Expectation in regard to it has not only defied prejudice and scientific dog- matism but has been enhanced by the marvellous achievements of discovery and invention. The prog- ress of the physical sciences with their speculations on the existence of invisible physical forces has broken down the old standards of belief and left the average man with imaginative possibilities that even the an- tagonism to the supernatural cannot wholly overcome. The consequence is that we are all in a situation which prevents us from denying the possibility of anything or everything and leaves us at the mercy of every one who asks for no other credentials for belief than the impossibility of denial. Between credulity and moral earnestness on the one hand and intelligence 1 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION and emasculated dogmatism on the other we have an opportunity for as much amusement as science. The cranks who have no sense of humor make good targets for ridicule while the scientists who love to dispense this contempt are reduced to the extremity of ignor- ing facts to save the reputation of their theories. Between them lies the every day practical man of the world who wants to be on the side of intelligence and to indulge his contempt for folly, but does not know how to distinguish intelligently the occasions for the display of a discreet knowledge from those which justify the use of sarcasm. The indiscriminate medley of people that is mixed in with all these classes make up a world that may well offer an inter- esting field for Puck- or Punch. In the study of psychical research the class which perhaps excites the most animosity and amusement is the spiritualist. To me the most interesting char- acteristic of the enthusiasts in this creed is their utter lack of the sense of humor when discussing their phe- nomena and theories. Their doctrine in this respect is too much like a religion to escape being serious. Whatever humor or fun has ever attached itself to religious matters has always to hide itself in secrecy and appears only when the priest is off parade. This is perhaps inevitable with all matters which must be taken so seriously. But Spiritualism is such an incongruous mixture of science and religion that a very rare and elastic mental temperament is required rightly to adjust the balance between seriousness and contempt in the estimation of it. One has only to witness a spiritualistic meeting to see and feel this. 2 HUMOROUS ASPECTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH An intelligent and well-balanced spectator of its per- formances must sacrifice his sense of humor if he tries to be serious and must possess a great deal of charity if he succeeds in suppressing his contempt. Take a performance in which some alleged " medium " makes wry faces, as if in a trance, and tells some naive person in the audience that a spirit standing by him predicts that he will succeed in the oyster business and see this followed by the announcement of a hymn sung with the most solemn gravity or ecstatic enthusiasm, and if a man of the world re- strains a smile he has more of divine pity than he is usually accredited with. To witness the conjunction of a prayer with the abnormal deliverances of some alleged spirit on the intellectual level of the ravings of Ludovick Muggleton and George Fox arouses strange emotions in the minds of men accustomed to the more sedate proprieties of religion and sober life. It is true that a healthy cynic can see much that is ridiculous in any of our solemn performances. It is use and custom that hide the absurd in much that passes for important and serious. The average spir- itualist is not the only person who fails to appreciate the funny side of things supposed to be serious. The same defect appears in almost every sanctity, so small is the distance from the sublime to the ridicu- lous. We would ridicule the habit of bowing when the name of the president is mentioned, but we expect to pacify an angry Deity by obeisance to the name of his son. We can solemnly go through the ritual and put on long faces as we listen to some sermon holding before us the menace of eternal damnation 3 PSYCHICAL, RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION for not believing that two and two make five and then, supposing that our reverent moods have atoned for our sins, forget all this at a dinner of roast turkey and a bottle of claret and a drive in Central Park. There is nothing like a fit of emotional in- temperance for clarifying the conscience. There is a curious situation for the scientist in the pathetic condition of those who are seeking con- solation in some escape from the stoical faith of scep- ticism. They have abandoned their belief in ortho- doxy, whether from choice or necessity, and yet are determined by hook or by crook to believe in a future life, and having professed a faith in science must seek some fact or alleged fact to simulate the method and credentials of that form of knowledge. If once they have secured some plausible or apparent fact to which to cling in their hopes, they abandon all sense of humor and assume an attitude of assurance, with its accompanying state of consolation, which it is impossible to move. To them it appears an act of cruelty to tell them the truth if it tends to suggest a doubt. Having once cherished doubt as their sal- vation they turn on it now as an arch enemy, and the scientist can only quote the maxim of Kant, that there are stories which human courtesy makes it impossible to investigate. There is no mental atti- tude so funny as that which disguises the search for hope and consolation by the pretensions of science. It is funny, not because it is illegitimate, but because it wants too frequently the attribute of courage, and tries to secure respectability under a garb whose genuineness it is not willing to test. The only sal- 4 HUMOROUS ASPECTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH vation of this class is the recovery of a sense of humor. This characteristic was the beginning of civilization. The monkey and the ape are cases of arrested development simply because they lacked this quality. If monkeys could smile when they play practical jokes on each other there might be some hope of their becoming intelligent and civilized. The average spiritualist who gets his faith and consola- tion in performances like those at Lily Dale and On- set reminds one of the Darwinian doctrine of the re- version to primitive types. I am not saying that there is nothing genuine in such places, as I have no scien- tific facts to justify dogmatism in this matter. But I am assured that even truth has its humorous aspects, and what strikes me as psychologically interesting in various missionary classes of the genus homo is the inability to appreciate the humorous aspects of the seriousness and gravity with which certain trivial and dubious facts are treated. Puns are sometimes very funny, but a scientific treatise on them would be still funnier. I understand the claims to seriousness in these trivial phenomena, but I cannot restrain a laugh when I measure their character against what custom has agreed to treat as really important and when I find myself cornered by scepticism. Of course spiritualism can be treated seriously, but so can prestidigitation. But when legerdemain, fraud and spiritualism show decided resemblances in their phe- nomena I must be pardoned not only for my doubts, but also for the retention of my sense of humor. The class which I have just considered are in search of hope and consolation. But there is a class which 5 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION claims to have them but which nevertheless betrays a curious mental condition regarding psychical re- search. When it is not afraid of disturbing its orthodoxy it is chiefly interested in the conditions of life in a future existence and shows no interest in the strictly scientific problem, but at once plies questions regarding the mode of life involved. A Calvinist who has to depend on grace for hope and is not sure that he is the favorite of that grace may well feel anxious about his future if he has Jonathan Edward's doctrine of eternal punishment to face. Any other sinner who is afraid that he is actually going to get his deserts may want some hope of escape as he generally tries to avoid the consequences of his crime in this life. Relief from fear and the hope of happiness, or escape from the just deserts of one's actions, is the usual incentive to curiosity on this point, and unfortunately the scientific man has to show Kant's (not scant) courtesy to this class because he hopes to get from it an endowment for his investigations. If only he could safely tell them that they deserved to be boiled in Milton's marl of burn- ing sulphur awhile and then be annihilated he might satisfy both his humor and his malice. But then in addition to the strange spectacle of asking for un- verifiable statements as a basis for hope and consola- tion or immunity from the consequences of folly, irony and truth-telling may tighten the purse strings of benevolence and scientific curiosity and we have to play the tactful part of Mephistopheles in order to secure any favors at all. Then there is the large class made up of the aver- 6 HUMOROUS ASPECTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH age religious person, the scientific Philistine, and a goodly portion of the so-called intelligent public, which thinks that spirits in their high estate would never interest themselves in such trivial matters as purport to come from them in our alleged " communi- cations." But it never occurs to this class to observe the conversation that goes on at a Columbia College tea, for instance. I had a colleague who stands high in the ranks of science and who thinks it absurd that a spirit would talk about a jack knife, but in a social reception of dignitaries his share in the bad- inage and small talk would hardly distinguish him from a bootblack or street gamin except that his dialect is not the same as Chimmie Fadden's. Puns, jokes, trivialities are all very nice if they are not the speech of spirits. Even scepticism cannot doubt the solemnity of a transcendental life. The fact is, however, that we are wont to adjudge that serious and important which is either of a religious char- acter or connected with the employments which give us our bread or fame. We are very sober and sol- emn when we read our papers on a scientific subject when all the incidencts are as trivial as anything ever attributed to an idiotic ghost, and when we are put at the end of a telegraph or telephone line to prove our identity we spontaneously select the trivial to identify ourselves and then wonder and laugh at the degeneracy of spirits! We should re- member, however, that we always estimate a thing by its relation to our pleasures, so that we look grave and call a fact important when we are talking science and philosophy and call it trivial when we 7 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION wish to laugh about it. We have to put conscience and gravity into some things when our bread and fame are concerned, but we relax our scientific spirit when we do not understand a subject sufficiently to distinguish between its serious and humorous inci- dents. We expect to prove our sanity by laughing where we are ignorant. When we do not wish to be bored we can laugh down the missionary who is resolved to save our souls at the expense of our sense of humor. The case resolves itself into this. When one party determines to be serious the other wants to be funny, and vice versa. It is a question of respectability on the one hand and indifference to the public on the other, and neither party can pool its issues without attempting an incongruous mix- ture of a smile and a tear. The trivial of one is the important of the other, and social respectability is the primary consideration of the one while Mr. Vanderbilt's opinion is the maxim of the other. The cynic can have his fun with both. Some personal incidents may have an interest for the reader. Soon after presenting a paper on the Piper case in which I defended the spiritistic hy- pothesis I received a letter from a lady in a neigh- boring state saying that she had recently lost a little son by death. The doctor had told her that his heart had stopped beating, and he was buried in a vault, and as she had heard from the newspapers that I could raise the dead she wished that I would be so kind as to restore her son to life. She was willing to do much for me if I did. But I was too busy at the time with the more important work of 8 HUMOROUS ASPECTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH talking to students to resuscitate anybody's heart- beat, and I suppose that boy is still dead. The inci- dent is, of course, more pathetic than it is funny, but I fear that the poor woman's impression as learned from the newspapers was quite pardonable. That craft seems never to get any nearer the truth than this poor woman. Anything could be believed if newspaper accounts were reliable. The amusing part of the editorial profession of the sensational kind is the assumption of its intelligence. Men whose only title to recognition is their financial success in pan- dering to the appetite for divorce scandals and political lying somehow suppose that they can de- scribe and discuss all manner of questions. One of them in reviewing his life is said to have remarked to a friend that in his earlier career he had tried morality (Brook Farm) and failed and then tried the part of Mephistopheles and found that he had succeeded. Here are two incidents associated with editors of a somewhat different type who could be expected to have an interest which the writer for the secular journals might not have. The editor of one of the widely circulated religious weeklies had apparently been interested in psychical research for years. He had accepted articles from me and others on the subject for ten or more years, and had boasted to me personally that his paper had stood up for our work. He has actually solicited papers from me and others on this question, and hence presuming that he would be willing to help along the project of securing financial aid for such 9 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION investigations I recently approached him to support the plan by some editorial suggestions without any committal to theories of any kind. The man looked at me in bewilderment as if to say, " Psychical re- search, psychical research, what is that? " Recover- ing his recollections he suddenly knit his eyebrows and exclaimed : " Oh, yes ! Wasn't it a Mrs. Piper who gave some silly stuff that was said to be com- munications from spirits some time ago ? " I replied, " Yes, and its silliness is the strongest part of our argument." He was somewhat abashed at this audac- ity, but the interesting part of it to me, besides my own plight, was the editor's real and complete indif- ference to the whole subject in spite of his years of apparent interest in it. His real concern when his day's duties are over is Babylonian antiquities ! Here is a man whom the public would suppose interested in all matters affecting the fundamentals of religion, but who in fact simply takes advantage of a popular appetite for articles on various topics of a religious, political, literary and scientific character to gain the facility for retiring to his library where he may spend his hours on cuneiform inscriptions and prob- lems bordering on the region of mythology! Prob- lems connected with the possible question of a future life were indeed worth a passing notice, especially if the public demanded an article on them, but they are nothing compared with those associated with the " higher criticism " which is taking the underpinning from the very interest which he was supposed to support and could only coddle for its remunerative advantages. Whatever there may be of the serious 10 HUMOROUS ASPECTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH in this it is certainly quite as amusing, and a psychical researcher with a sense of humor would have to laugh at the discomfiture which he meets at the hands of supposed friends, who in reality are merely interested in exploiting him for some concealed and collateral object. The editor of the rival religious weekly to which I have just referred was the pastor of a large met- ropolitan church and resigned from it to devote his whole time to editorial duties. He has been of the rationalistic temperament and has accepted the prin- ciples of the " higher criticism " which effectually undermines the whole popular system of Christianity and shows that there is not one iota of rational evidence for many of the most essential doctrines of religion. Apparently this editor felt this, for after I had delivered my address on the Piper case and the newspapers had given their wonderful version of the affair, he sent for me to lunch with him and talk the matter over. I did so and he was much interested apparently in the problem and the facts supposed to bear upon it. I was careful to tell him that he could form no intelligent opinion from what we had talked about over a lunch and that he should await a full report. He expressed his desire to see it when published. As soon as it was out, remember- ing my promise, I sent him a copy of my Report. Some months after I called upon him for the same purpose that moved me in the interview with the editor previously mentioned. I asked this purveyor of the world's weekly outlook who had been so anxious to see my Report if he had received it. He said that 11 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION he had not. I told him that I had sent it to him, and on scratching his head his memory vaguely recalled that something of the kind had come to him. After a little more scratching he felt quite certain that he had received it, but remarked that he had not looked at it ! ! I managed to face the embarrassing situation and to approach the subject for which I came to ask assistance, and to anticipate the first objection which most men raise in the consideration of our problem, I remarked that he would probably have to meet the question of triviality in his reading of the Report and that this was the strongest point in our theory instead of being an objection. His immediate reply was: " Do you think it is worth while continuing the inves- tigation when the communications are so trivial? " And this just after I had remarked that this fact was our strongest point! Of course there was probably a difference of opinion lurking behind this evasion of my issue, but what interested me most was the un- conscious assumption on his part that we ought to have some important revelation perhaps of the con- ditions of existence after death, as if he had some scruples about the future consequences of his aban- donment of the ministry. What visions of Dante's Inferno must pass through the minds of men who want to know whether spirits are happy or not. The more I see of them the more I think they deserve all they fear, and I am quite willing to endure all sorts of embarrassments and humilities if only I can secure a correct estimate of human nature and life. One thing is clear. When you find it necessary to give up orthodoxy it is very important in the struggle 12 HUMOROUS ASPECTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH" for existence and pursuit of the main chance that we should interest ourselves fanatically in the social problem, as a most convenient subterfuge under which we may protect our property against the avarice of the masses. When we cannot control them by the hope of a future life and the morality which has been associated with it we can counteract the influ- ence of the economical ideal which has taken its place by diversions of charity and Fabian tactics which simply postpone the day of judgment and keep us for awhile in the enjoyment of what we call our share of the hog's wash. A publisher who showed great interest in psychical research from the foundation of the Society and who has published some volumes of a popular sort on the subject quite lost his interest in it when a few mem- bers suspected that spiritism might actually explain some of the phenomena. He had seen table tipping himself and witnessed all sorts of miracles, provided one did not choose to believe it was spirits ! ! My Re- port had been on his table six months without his knowing what it was about, and even then I had to call his attention to its nature. The public will have to decide whether the joke was on him or myself. It will probably laugh at both of us. I went to the editor of one of our leading monthly magazines to propose an article on an interesting case of subconscious mental action. It was without any trace of the supernatural in it and I told him so. But in spite of this his knowledge of what I had said in three articles on psychical research in his magazine kept him from seeing the point and he could not im- 13 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION agine me as thinking of anything but spirits. He had himself once been a member of the Society for Psychical Research and told me that he had abandoned it because it became too scientific for his contribu- tions. In the process of time he had become convinced that his earlier expectations were not destined to im- mediate realization, and on this occasion of my visit to talk over an article he undertook to deliver himself of his newly acquired convictions as a dictum which gov- erned his editorial work in this field. With great gravity and dignity, using as slow and deliberate a manner as he could, he said : " I have studied this subject a great many years and I have finally come to the. conclusion that it is all psychological. All the wonder that is in it is the wonder of the human mind." Here is an editor looking for miracles as a condition of being interested in facts at all! The grave proclamation that psychical research was all " psychological " was not to be disputed, but the condition of impressing the man with any interest in facts was that I convince him that they were not " psychological " and that I be a vendor of the miraculous as the only title to consideration in his periodical. It is not the wonderful in this problem that gives it its claim to recognition, but it is the perfect explicability of its phenomena on a simple hypothesis that demands the respect of the sane human mind. Neither philosophy nor science is founded on the " wonderful," but only superstition has such a basis, and the wonder-monger in literature playing the role of a scientist to save his respecta- 14 HUMOROUS ASPECTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH bility hardly conceals an intellectual standard that is any better than that of the savage. Another instance has much interest. Soon after I burned my bridges behind me in my speech on psychic research and the spiritistic hypothesis in 1900 at a meeting in New York, I received a letter from a prominent clergyman, one of the leading men in the United States, expressing entire confidence in my attitude in regard to the investigation. Some years later, when endeavoring to secure an endow- ment for this research I wrote to him and explained my plans to him and he replied with a letter not only indicating his sympathy but also saying that he would try to obtain the fund and that, if I did not hear from him soon, I might infer that he had been unsuc- cessful. I wrote saying that my plan was a large one and that he had better not do anything until he saw me personally and talked over the scheme. When I returned to the city he asked me by letter to send him the names and indorsements of two or three good men of scientific standing. I obtained the names of fifteen leading scientific men in the coun- try as indorsers of the plan and sent their letters to this clergyman with a detailed explanation of the scheme. The clergyman's reply was that he was great- ly obliged for the opportunity to read the documents, but that he did not know any one to whom he could appeal for assistance ! His own wife was worth many millions, according to the general belief, and the clergyman himself was in contact with all the mil- lionaires of the eastern part of the country. His 15 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION interest in spiritual matters was manifested in the organization of model saloons. In the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britan- nica there is no article on the " Soul," and none on its Immortality. I can understand why these subjects should not be mentioned in the reports of the Stock Exchange or in railway time tables. But one would have thought the Britannica might mention a subject on which Plato and Christianity said so much. There are, however, seven pages on " Dogs," a thing that may not be surprising when we consider that our aristocratic classes are more interested in breeding dogs than children. Horse racing takes up seven pages. On Beer, Whiskey, Wine, and Gin together there are twenty-three pages, which is at least one recognition of the " spiritual " side of man. No wonder a head of the church tried model saloons. Whist has five pages, and Abracadabra, Anagrams, Astrology and similar things are not forgotten. An- atomy has one hundred and nine pages, but not a line on that which makes anatomy interesting or im- portant. Angling has twelve pages and Apes have twenty-one ! The study of our simian ancestry is respectable ; of our spiritual destiny it is a mark of in- sanity ! But I think it is the soi^disant scientist who offers as much for amusement as any other class. At a recent symposium on the subject of psychical re- search and its chief Pythoness one of the participants thought that the spiritist had to contend with the hypothesis that Mrs. Piper's " subliminal " might be the recipient telepathically of all the mental states 16 HUMOROUS ASPECTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH of any or all people during her lifetime, so that when any particular person died she had only in her trance state to pick out the proper names and incidents to represent any given case of identity. Another asserted that " the ether fairly teems with the vibrat- ing thoughts of the bygone ages and all that is necessary to become possessed of this store of univer- sal knowledge is to become sensitive to ether vibra- tions, and learn how to translate them into ordinary language." Far be it from me to deny these claims. I have no unscientific prejudice against miracles. I do not wish to put myself in a position which may require me later to " eat crow." I agree that, if there are any such impressions recorded in the ether, all wc have to do is to become sensitive to them and trans- late them into ordinary language, only I am waiting for it to be a fait accompli before I take up the duties of a missionary for that religion. But what strikes one as amusing is the gravity of the assertions thus made and the total absence of evidence for them. You would think that a man who wanted to be re- garded as scientific would give at least an iota of evidence for beliefs of this kind which are not even put on the plane of possible working hypotheses. These men too are always shouting from the house- tops while announcing such large creeds that they do not believe in the supernatural ! The " supernatural " is a Medusa head on which they cannot look and live. To them everything is " natural," except spir- its. You can believe anything with impunity and without evidence provided this something is not a 17 PSYCHICAL. RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION spirit! They may be perfectly right so far as I know, but it is certainly a humorous situation to have the most exacting demands for evidence made of you in the mere testing of hypotheses which you do not know whether to believe or not and thus to find yourself required to refute theories which do not pretend to have evidence in their support and which are about as large as anything Jules Verne ever imagined. So far as I can see, " science " in this procedure is simply any large unverified asser- tion which is not in any way associated with the pos- sibility of a discarnate human consciousness. Any myth, any tradition, any fancy can be accepted without a smile of incredulity, if we can succeed in escaping from responsibility for evidential obliga- tions, and apparently no one has duties of this kind but the believer in the possibility of the continuance of human consciousness. Faith is said to be the Nemesis of scepticism, and so it seems. But here it is not religion that has taken refuge in this last resource. Spiritism pretends to offer some little evi- dence for itself, even if it be very trivial. But " science " offers us no other credentials than a simple act of faith for Mrs. Piper's telepathic recipience of all contemporary states of consciousness, or for the infinite record of human thoughts on the ether. This may be true, of course, but the situation is one which is calculated to provoke one's risibilities, not so much for the magnitude of what we are asked to believe on either side, as for the gravity with which such questions are discussed apart from the presentation of evidence, and with an evident fear that we shall 18 HUMOROUS ASPECTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH be converted to some belief before our neighbor's respect will permit. It appears that our denial of a doctrine is directly proportioned to our wishes that it be true and to the demand for social respectability. One man who wants us to take him seriously says: " If telepathy, or thought transference, had even the slightest microscopic foundation in fact, it would be instantly commercialized as a rival of telegraphy, telephony, and even the postal service." One may be welcome to his opinion of the facts, but if he had only said that, if there were any " microscopic " evidence for the existence of ghosts, we would use them for our locomotives and messenger boys, he might have em- phasized the irrelevancy of his remark. Another of- fered $1,000 for an instance of telepathy and simply sat down in his laboratory to wait for some one to come along to convince him. He never thought of trying experiments for himself! He was a "scient- ist " of the chair ! The trouble is that science has taken on all the unction and seriousness of religion without the latter's ideals, and religion, for the lack of the necessary cre- dentials has to mourn, like Hecuba, for the loss of her children. But just where the situation seems most pathetic it becomes comical. Man is an animal that wishes to be taken very seriously. Except among the en- thusiasts of scientific evolution he systematically tries to conceal the humility of his origin while he endeavors to play the role of an aristocrat and a demigod. He cultivates the manners of a gentleman to purchase the respect of his neighbors and indulges the illusion 19 PSYCHICAL, RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION of self-respect to simulate the possession of virtue while he has various habits of intemperance which ally him to the lowliest of his ancestors. If he can fill his stomach and dress himself well without pushing others over a precipice, he calls his social order civili- zation, but he is vociferous in his maledictions against the cosmos if it is not moral enough to satisfy all his appetites. But he has a chief end, and he calls it an ideal and this is just various enough to conceal its meaning. He invents morality and religion either to disguise or to redeem his selfishness and hypocrisy. He loudly proclaims the importance of life and im- mortality and would have you believe that his exist- ence in this world has no value without the prospect of another, if only he can have it his own way. Even the philosopher Kant thought that a future life was demanded by the existence of an insatiable duty which the conditions of the present life made it impossible to realize or obey in full. Thus the center of aspira- tion and conduct is placed beyond the grave. But how are men in fact interested in it? One wants to know if he can continue his cherished pursuits in some form and would not be contented unless he could enjoy music or poetry: another hopes to escape the duties of work, and, like the Greeks who so hated " toil and pain," expects to ramble unrestrained in the flowery meads of Paradise. One wants to meet his wife, but neglects the possibility of meeting his neighbor whom he has cheated out of his property; another would appreciate it if he could avoid the survival of Turks and Chinamen. The Australian savage, admiring the Englishman's complexion and go HUMOROUS ASPECTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH the advantages of his pocketbook, hoped that in the resurrection he should wake up a white man and have plenty of sixpences. The old Northmen thought that the heroes of Valhalla were occupied in hewing down shadows which immediately started up again to renew their ceaseless and bloodless conflicts. The modern religious man, though passionately devoted to demo- cratic and republican institutions with their axiom of equality, still expresses his ideal in the expectation of living in a golden city and bowing and worship- ing before the great white throne. But all of these expect to treat the future life as a surplus to be gained over and above success of some sort in the struggle for existence. The rich man whose enjoy- ments have been intensified and expanded by his wealth, and who has no anxieties except those that are the consequences of his vices, hopes, perhaps more keenly than the pauper, for the continuance of his pleasures, but would not care for another life if it brought him duties toward his fellows. In fact I find very few people interested in a future life on moral or religious grounds. These are only terms that try to transfigure a personal interest as various as human nature. The primary object of men is success in some ambition, and this in most cases is material enjoyment and social standing. If a future life can come as an additional good to all that can be won by hook or crook in business it is welcome provided it imposes no duties of a moral or religious kind. The successful man wants it as a dividend on which his transactions did not count and the un- successful man wants it as a compensation for his 21 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION failure. Between them is a pessimistic class that is soured and disappointed by the present, always telling us that life is not worth living, but that has not the courage to commit suicide ! Then there is a scientific body of men who are simply dying to believe in the continuance of consciousness after death but spend their time in devising imaginary difficulties and objections to keep their neighbors from calling names and to insure their respectability. They invent innumerable phrases and shibboleths to evade the plainest and most intelligible possibilities. From fear of social ostracism they cannot even admit that the case looks like a future life and then doubt the proof of it, but must coin unintelligible terms and " might be's " to cover up an interest that they have not the courage to avow and to sustain the pretension that there is nothing to be said on any other side of the question than that of words whose meaning is still undetermined. This is the complex situation which the psychical researcher has to meet, and woe unto him if he has no sense of humor. If in the contemplation of all this he cannot judiciously mix laughter and tears he is not to be pitied for any discomfiture he experiences. He must take his fellows on the estimate which evolu- tion makes and this involves a measure of contempt quite equal to the pride and self -appreciation which they wish to cultivate. If he is sensitive to ridicule and wants the respect of his kind he must learn to keep silent, but if any terrible earnestness blinds him to the bigotry and dogmatism of established opin- ions, quite equal to the despised doctrines of the dark HUMOROUS ASPECTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH ages, or induces him to recognize a pathos in human existence which a deeper moral insight does not jus- tify, he must take the consequences of public med- dling in any mixture of science and religion. But some of us like to hear the lion roar and take a malicious delight in exhibiting human nature and opinion at their real value, whether found in the fool, the newspaper editor, the scientist, or the phi- losopher. There is no use in being a preacher when you can get a good deal of fun out of meddling with the self-complacency of those who think they possess universal knowledge. This class also has to earn its bread and if it lacks the perception of its own foibles and follies we must let it alone or get our pleasures out of judicious modes of tormenting it. The process of evolution would be pathetic enough if man were what he thinks himself. But what we call our ideals are euphemisms for our vices. Life is not a tragedy. I wish it were. We might then hope that man would get his deserts. It is merely a comedy in which idealism has no functions. When the psy- chical researcher realizes this he will temper his en- thusiasm, laugh at the humorous helplessness of his own situation, and seek an enjoyment in disturbing the complacent equanimity of science and philosophy by a discreet use of irony and satire. CHAPTER II PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND COINCIDENCES From time immemorial coincidences have been ob- jects of uncommon human interest and curiosity. The discovery of them still leads, as it always has led, to all sorts of superstitions. They survive to be re- marked even by those who laugh at them. If a knife falls on the floor a stranger may be expected. Hun- dreds of such ' signs,' originating from the observa- tion of chance coincidences, are at the constant com- mand of the average man or woman, whether believed or ridiculed. Another class of coincidences which are more striking appeals to the instinct for special prov- idences, mysterious meaning or supernatural explana- tion of some kind. They are often sufficiently strik- ing and respectably authenticated to puzzle wise heads for a means to dislodge the impression of their real or possible causal significance. The collection and preservation of them by the Society for Psychical Research, no matter what we may think of them, has done much to strengthen the interest and belief in the possible meaning of such phenomena, especially when they take a certain form. The scientific or even quasi-scientific investigation of such things in- vests them with an importance that would not belong to them naturally, and that would make little impres- sion upon the organized power of scientific opinion unless equally organized and sustained. But it is 24 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND COINCIDENCES not necessary to warn scientific men against treating coincidences seriously. They are proof enough against that temptation. There is, however, a complaint which I have to make against them. It is not for remissness in their allegiance to scientific method, but for an unnecessary failure to apply it as fully as it might be done in a field where the term * coincidence ' gives rise to very different illusions. There are 6 coincidences ' and ' coincidences.' Not that I shall here beg any ques- tions as to the important significance of any of them for the supernatural or for anything resembling it, but that some are undoubtedly more suggestive of the need of a causal explanation than others. Hence I shall make a distinction between two kinds of coincidences. The first I shall call formal or un- suggestive and the second material or suggestive coin- cidences. I intend no mysterious meaning or distinc- tion by the terms ' formal ' and ' material.' They represent only the difference between coincidences that are mere coincidences and coincidences that also have some identity of content more or less of a striking and suggestive character. The distinction is perhaps the same as that between what we call casual or chance coincidences and causal or significant coincidences. An illustration of the former kind is that of an un- expected meeting of two friends at a great distance from their usual habitat and without any previous knowledge of each other's movements. Of the second kind is perhaps the case of absolutely identical thoughts under circumstances which do not superfi- cially explain the identity, but which may be traced 25 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION to association awakened by some object having a common interest or connected with a common ex- perience. In the first class belong all those conjunc- tions of things that do not involve the concerted or purposive action of the subjects experiencing them and not involving any such identity of content or adaptive fitness of several events to a single end. In the latter class belong all those coincidences that involve either concerted action or common known and unknown causes. The average scientific man, how- ever, too often lumps all coincidences together indis- criminately, making the conception a hard-and-fast one and convertible with that of causeless connections. But there are traces of cowardice and equivocation in this attitude of mind or a priori method of treating phenomena that too often prevent the scientific man from recognizing in some coincidences a causal nexus of a very interesting kind, though not of the sort alleged by the supernaturalist and coincidence-mong- ers generally. Not to make the distinction, therefore, which I have made between the mere fact of coinci- dence and the coincidence of content, is an error that leads to an unscientific treatment of such problems and prevents a search for obscure causes that are quite within the reach of normal psychology or recognized agencies. In remarking this error to which the scientist often exposes himself I have in mind a defect of Parish's very able criticism of the Census of Hallucinations. I do not mean, however, to use this defect either as a defense of psychical research or as an impeachment of his method of criticism. On the contrary, no one PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND COINCIDENCES can read that book without being convinced of its cogency and importance, if he did not know it before. In addition to this concession, the defect which I wish to remark is the failure to observe facts directly counter to dissociation and illusions of memory, and which would immensely have strengthened his verdict of ' not proven ' against the supposition of super- normal agencies. The first obvious defect of Parish's work is that there is no evidence of any inside study of the phe- nomena the conclusions from which he criticises. The second objection is that he risks the whole force of his criticism upon the suspicion of dissociation and illusions of memory, in which the responsibility for the defective nature of the cases reported falls upon the subject of the narrative, and not upon the re- ceiver of it. But I wish here to contend that not only may there be cases in which the difficulty is not what Parish supposes, but that the really serious difficulties can often be found only by a careful study of the individual case. I mean here, of course, the study of the mental habits, beliefs and laws of asso- ciation in the individual reporting a remarkable ex- perience. Consequently I desire to show in this chap- ter that there is a more important source of miscon- ception than the subject's illusions of memory, and that it can be discovered often only on the condition that we accept the deliverances of this faculty. Illu- sions of memory are of course a vantage ground for objection, but are neither the only ones nor the best ones. I shall show this after stating the facts upon which the conviction rests, and which have been gath- 27 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION ered from a personal study of an individual case of some interest. The facts represent an extraordinary combination of apparitions and apparent premonition in which a purely objective and superficial view would suggest a supernormal and perhaps spiritistic inter- pretation. Before making any comments or expla- nations I shall narrate the incidents in the order in which they occurred, and in which I obtained them. The subject of the experiences is one who has no prejudices in favor of such phenomena. On the contrary, the antipathy to anything like a spiritistic view of them is unyielding and marked by what the sceptic would regard as a very healthy disgust. The intelligence is sufficient to make the facts entirely acceptable, and, though some of them will not strike a scientific observer as of any serious interest, es- pecially when thought of as isolated, yet the at least amusingly cumulative character of them and their distinct semblance to those experiences which so many people feel may be significant are striking enough to justify analysis and explanation, especially when this explanation exhibits a neglected source of miscon- ception. The facts, then, are as follows: The experiences to be here narrated are those of a lady whom I shall call Mrs. D. She is the same subject of whom I have reported a number of other interesting incidents in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. This fact will be useful to know if the reader wishes to study the whole group of phenomena coming from the same source. But the present group is wholly independent of the earlier cases. 28 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND COINCIDENCES Some time in July, 1897, Mrs. D. had a strong im- pression that some unusual ' burden ' was going to fall upon the family. She could describe the feeling in no other way, and it will be noticed that the expres- sion is a common one with religious minds, which often employ the term to denote a providential afflic- tion. This meaning Mrs. D. gave to the term her- self. But the feeling was too vague to identify with any past cause or any incident to be forecasted in the future. In stating the fact also it must be re- membered that Mrs. D. was in good health, in fact, better than usual, as the phrase goes, though at no time does she have to complain of more than the in- disposition of people who have the personal care of their children and the domestic work. Hence there was nothing in her physical condition that would sug- gest a clear physical cause of such a feeling, nor any meaning that might deserve attention. I am not implying that there were no such causes, for there may have been conditions that a skilled physi- cian would detect. But to the consciousness of the subject there was no indication of indisposition of any kind. In fact, she has answered all my inquiries on this point to the effect that her peculiar experi- ences occur most frequently when her health is at its best, so far as her own judgment can determine. Throughout the whole period over which the present narrative extends her health was good. In the month of August this premonitory feeling repeated itself very frequently, and became so annoying that Mrs. D. mentioned it to her husband, who confirms her statement in regard to both facts, and hence supports PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION the supposition that the location of the experience previous to its real or supposed fulfilment is not due to an illusion of memory. Finally, the feeling became so intense and persistent that Mrs. D., as is often the case with religious minds as deeply imbued with piety as is her own, sought relief in prayer. But though this resource had in her estimation been effective in other cases where it had been instigated, as might well be in a mind so sensitive to automatisms as is her own, yet the feeling could not be dismissed, and with a conviction that the affliction was not to be evaded she sought to cultivate the frame of mind suited to the endurance of the inevitable. To make the matter clearer it is necessary to antic- ipate the sequel of the story, to which the incidents of the narrative are supposed to refer. This is that the little daughter, whom I shall call Lettie, and who was just one year and nine months old, died on De- cember 2, 1897, from the burning of her cradle. At odd times between August and December Mrs. D., in her thoughts about the child's future and while planning some little thing for her, would hear a voice saying, " She'll never need it." One of these occa- sions was the following: The family live in a house with few accommodations for a clergyman who re- quires a study, and Mrs. D. planned to give Lettie a certain room for a bedroom when she grew older, and was running over how she would furnish it, and this voice came as described. It was not exactly what one could describe as an external voice, nor again a mere thought impression or product of the memory and imagination, as we usually characterize such 30 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND COINCIDENCES things, but one of those internal voices with which psychical researches have become familiar and which Mrs. D. herself distinguishes as neither a real voice nor a memory reproduction, but an impression with all the characters of a real voice except the sense of external reality. Psychiatrists will recognize without remark the nature of such an experience, and as I am only narrating facts I do not need to make any comments. There were many repetitions of this voice in about the same language. One of them occurred about two weeks before the child's death. Mrs. D. had resolved to write a little diary which she could give to the child when it became older. She wrote down two separate accounts on different days of certain events having an interest to the little girl, the day of the month, unfortunately for the psychical researches, not being mentioned in them, though this would have been of no importance for the contents of the diary, as there is nothing evidential in them regarding the incidents at hand. But while writing them, this voice came as before : " She'll never need them." The day before the child died the same voice appeared, and on the morning of her death she was running about the house in a rather dilapidated pair of shoes, when Mrs. D. remarked to the child that her feet must be cold and thought she must have a new pair of shoes. In the midst of her thoughts came the voice again, " She'll never need them." It must be added also that, previous to the impression of a com- ing * burden ' above described, this voice had been heard several times. 31 PSYCHICAL, RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION About a week before the child's death Mrs. D. thought she smelled fire at night, and feeling afraid of it went to the cellar to look after the matches and to see that there was no danger. She found no traces of fire and nothing to explain her impression. But from that time she began to be careful about matches, seeing that they were in safe places and out of reach. She even went so far as to look over the house for the matches, and felt a strong impulse to burn all parlor matches which were of that kind that is easily lighted. Once the impulse to do this was attended with something like a voice warning her to the same end, and about the danger of fire. Nothing definite enough having been suggested by the voice to guide her actions directly, Mrs. D. could only im- agine the necessary precautions, and finally thought to hang a dripping pan in front of the range fire, a thing she had never done before, to prevent coals from falling out during the night. Nor had any apprehensions of this kind ever been felt before, within her recollection, and there were no special reasons to suppose that any danger of fire in this way existed. But as there was no other fire in the house than that in this range and one in the heater, a sort of closed stove or furnace like the Baltimore heater, no other definite course was left open to the imagination for preventive measures except the un- usual one mentioned. On the morning of the child's death, and during family worship, another incident of some interest occurred. In the midst of the petition for individual members of the family, when she came to the phrase 32 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND COINCIDENCES with which she besought divine care for each one, and attempted to apply it in behalf of Lettie, though no difficulty was encountered in the case of the other children, in this case something seemed to stop Mrs. D.'s voice, and she could not repeat the usual lan- guage. She recalls no similar previous experience. On the same morning, about an hour before the fatal disaster, the propulsion to destroy the matches that were dangerous became stronger and stronger, until Mrs. D. turned and reached for the box to de- stroy it. But as she picked it up she thought, No ; L. (the elder boy) is gone, and she thought that she might need the matches to light the gas stove. She then said aloud to herself, " I'll destroy it as soon as he comes back." She then went on with her work in the kitchen. When the time came, about ten o'clock, Lettie was taken up to her crib for the morning sleep, and as Mrs. D. was putting her into the cradle a voice, such as has been described above, said : " Turn the mattress." This Mrs. D. was ac- customed to do, though she had never experienced any voice before in connection with it. But, being in a great hurry, she simply said in a motherly way to the child that she would turn the mattress after the child had taken her nap. She then went down stairs to her work. After a while she heard the child cry, and hurrying up to the room, found the crib and its bedding on fire, and the child so badly burned that it died in three hours. The only possible way to account for the accident was to suppose that the child had found a match, possibly in the crib or on the mantel piece, which she 33 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION could reach, and lighting it, had set its bedclothes on fire. The other two children were not present. L. had gone down town on an errand and E., the younger boy, was at school. No fire was on this floor of the house, but in the kitchen and the dining room, both below. Now, another incident of much interest had oc- curred many times during the two or three years' residence of the family in this house. Mrs. D. had often had a visual apparition of this very crib on fire, but as her apparitions or visual automatisms are very frequent, she had not thought to assign it any meaning or possible coincidental value until after the accident. These were the experiences of Mrs. D. previous to the event, but there were two other incidents by other persons than Mrs. D., that lend themselves to a construction of coincidence in connection with the accident. The first is exactly like the one narrated as occurring at family devotions. Mrs. D. has a sister living in Connecticut, some seventy-five miles from B., the home of Mrs. D. No correspondence had passed recently between them, and the sister was not given to as devotional a life as Mrs. D. It must also be remembered that the sister had ridiculed Mrs. D.'s stories of her experiences, and even went so far as to criticise Mrs. D. half jestingly for her extrav- agant piety. She discouraged Mrs. D.'s tolerance of possible significance in many of the coincidences which I have recorded in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research (Vol. 12, p. 259 seq.), when they were the subject of conversation. But on hearing of 34 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND COINCIDENCES the child's death she came to B. and narrated an experience of her own. It was to the effect that about a week before the death of the child she had had such an experience as she had never had before. An over- whelming impression of some great calamity to occur in the 'family' (the incidents show that the term included the whole family connections), and the im- pulse arose in her to pray for each one, which she did, feeling, as she expressed it in her narrative, that this was an unusual procedure for her. She went over each person among parents and relatives, until she came to the child, Lettie, when her voice suddenly stopped and she could not pray for her as for the others. She finally managed, however, to utter with struggling voice a petition for ' our little blossom,' the name which she was accustomed to apply to Lettie when speaking of her. The second incident was an experience of the next door neighbor to the D.'s. I shall call the lady who had it Mrs. G. On the afternoon of the child's death Mrs. G. came in about three o'clock and apropos of the accident remarked that on the night before, I believe it was, she had been wakened by the fear of fire and had gone down to the cellar to search for it, and exclaimed while making the search : " Oh ! if our little baby should burn up ! " Her own child was about the age of Lettie. The relation of this incident to the case will be noticed later. There was also another experience of Mrs. D.'s which psychical researchers would classify as ' sym- bolical.' Whether it be so or not is a matter of no concern to us at present, but is recorded for the sake 35 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION of the interpretation which the mind is capable of putting on it either as an afterthought or as a con- firmatory coincidence of the others. But a night or two before the accident Mrs. D. had a dream with the following incidents in it. She had gone with Mr. D. and the three children to the railway station at M. to take the train for a visit to a friend. As they came up to the station the train was coming in. Mr. D. with the oldest child, L., ran across the track ahead of the train and reached the platform. Mrs. D. and the other two children were too late to get across the track and waited until it stopped. They then climbed upon the car platform to cross over and join Mr. D. and L. But, just as they reached the platform, the train began to back upon a switch, which was the custom at this place to let a train pass. Mrs. D. paid no attention to it, but started through the car expecting to find her husband and other child. She noticed that the train was empty, but, leaving the two children in a seat, went on in the search for Mr. D. and L. Presently she found that the train kept backing and backing until she noticed that it was near Toledo, some forty miles from her start- ing point, when she came upon the conductor, who told her that the children, E. and Lettie, had been switched off some time before. Mr. D. and L. reached their destination safely and were joined later by Mrs. D. Such was the dream. Now, since the death of Lettie and during the funeral Mrs. D. has frequently heard a voice say, " The end is not yet." Mrs. D. also narrates that she often has a feeling that E., the child here associated with Lettie in the 36 PSYCHICAL. RESEARCH AND COINCIDENCES dream, may get killed by the trolley cars, accidents of this kind being frequent in the city where the fam- ily lives. These experiences took place before the death of the child. There are two others, however, that oc- curred after it and that may throw some light upon all the phenomena purporting to suggest coincidence. The night after the burial of the child Mrs. D., as perhaps is true of most persons passing through a shock of this kind, could picture to herself nothing but the little coffin and the grave. It was not a vision or an hallucination, but only a memory picture, such as any one can recall. The remembered picture was exceedingly unpleasant, and, evidently, in spite of her faith, a little tinge of scepticism came to dis- turb her mind, because she said that she did not like to think that her little child was not a spirit, but a corpse with a vanished soul. To remove the unpleas- ant feeling Mrs. D. prayed to have a realizing sense and the power to know that the child was a spirit and did not lie in the grave. At this time she was at the home of her sister, whither the family had gone to seek a burial place. One morning, soon after this prayer, she awakened and lay for an hour think- ing over family affairs. The sun was shining brightly in the room, and while thinking about the clothes she would put on the two boys to prevent their best ones from being soiled at their play when they got up, suddenly she saw a form by the bedside, and turning, saw an apparition of little Lettie with her hands on the bedside and smiling at Mrs. D. By her side was the form of a woman, holding her hands 37 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION about the child, as if to assist it. Mrs. D. sprang up in bed and unconsciously exclaimed, " Good morning, Lettie," and both figures immediately vanished. The forms were transparent and objects could be seen through them. The grown form was not recogniz- able as any one that Mrs. D. knew, but it had no distinct resemblance to the representation of an angel, such as pictures might suggest. It seemed, there- fore, not to be an automatism from the memory of angelic pictures. The dress fitted rather closely, and the hair was of a decidedly golden hue and the face one of great beauty. No suggestion of friends was apparent in it. The experience displaced the ugly feeling created by the memory of the coffin and the grave, and though not believing that she had seen the spirit of her child, or that spiritualism is a rational doctrine, Mrs. D. retained a strong sense of satisfaction from the vision. She is disposed to interpret it as a providential comfort for her sorrow. At the end of December another incident took place that will have some interest. This time it was the experience of the little boy E. It was first told me by Mr. D., who had called on a business matter. It seems that the child had climbed up on a couch beside his mother who lay down for a rest, and in a few moments asked his mother if his sister Lettie was smoke. The following letter from Mrs. D. in re- sponse to my inquiry narrates the details of the occurrence. B , January 5th, 1898. Dr. Hyslop : You requested a note of E's recent experience. It occurred on Thursday eve, Dec. 30th (1897). PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND COINCIDENCES I lay down on the sofa to rest in the evening, and, as he often does, he climbed back of me to rest with me. I do not remember what my thoughts were, but feel quite confident I was not thinking of my ex- perience at S ', Conn., when E. said : " Mamma, is little Lettie air now? Is she like smoke? " Why, darling? " 'Cause I just saw her and put my arms around her and she was like air." I will endeavor to keep account of anything further. Yours respectfully, E D . On inquiry about the incident I could find no trace of any story to the child that might lead to a belief on its part in such a reality as its experience might be taken to describe. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. D. could recall any narrative that might suggest it. No imme- diate thought or statement of Mrs. D., who was intent on rest, could be recalled that might have in- spired the child's idea. Moreover, the child was only four years old. The incident impressed both parents as very striking, and they were evidently puzzled by it, having a strong aversion to the apparent mean- ing of such occurrences. Such are the facts, or at least alleged facts, in a case of real or apparent coincidences. I must warn the reader, however, that I have not narrated them either for the purpose of proving any hypothesis or with the demand that any one shall consider them genuine or significant. I am content if I have pro- duced an average story of this kind which can at least pretend to authenticity. I am willing to concede any amount of scepticism in regard to the importance 39 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION of the alleged experiences, since it is not a part of my task either to vindicate their authenticity beyond question or to urge their extraordinary interest. Any man may have what theory he pleases about these matters. The plan here is to produce facts in the same individual experience which science will have either to question equally with the above in order to save its consistency or to accept the whole with their defense of psychological interest for even suspicious phenomena. Nevertheless, since it is the intention to show more fruitful sources of difficulty to the super- normal than illusions of memory, it will be necessary to recognize the question of authenticity and allied problems. But the main purpose is to study the individual case and to find in it the explanation of what one side may regard as supernormal and what the other ignores simply for the lack of courage to study the facts. I think that every one would frankly admit that the narrative presents, at least to the ordinary mind, an extraordinary set of coincidences in favor of premonition and spiritism. That is the interpreta- tion which the temperament of many persons would put upon the incidents, and their apparent relevance for this purpose is all that I care to sustain. The impression that such experiences make on the average man or woman is all that it is necessary to recognize in order to demand for them the same consideration which mesmerism and reports about meteors were finally able to exact, much to the shame of those who at first insisted upon laughing at them. For myself I do not wonder that untrained psychologists 40 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND COINCIDENCES feel greatly puzzled at such incidents, when I come to consider the marvelous fertility and complexity of mental processes. After all, science is founded on coincidences of some kind, and it cannot afford to dismiss them hastily, when a little tolerance and pa- tience will reveal a rich field of explanation, without discrediting facts on the one hand, or rushing into the arms of the supernatural on the other. In the present case some of the facts certainly simulate the view of premonition and others equally simulate a spiritistic interpretation. I think few persons would question this assertion. But refusing to treat them conscientiously will neither dispel the illusions so freely imputed to others nor discover the causes of their apparent significance. The first criticism which I imagine the average psychologist would direct against the supposed value of the alleged coincidences narrated would be the vague indefiniteness of the feelings spoken of as pre- monitory. This I have mentioned for the sake of conceding it as fatal if the question concerned their evidential character in behalf of the supernormal. But, inasmuch as I am less anxious either to prove or to disprove the extraordinary nature of the phenomena than I am to discover in this individual case the pos- sible influence of other agencies quite independent of both vagueness and distinctness, I may assume that the case is free from that objection. Besides the accusation of indefiniteness cannot so easily be brought against the incidents of the apparition of the burn- ing cradle and the automatism or voice " She'll never need them." Nor is there any vagueness about the 41 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION apparition of the child after death. But I shall grant, for the sake of the argument, that the facts are too inconsequential to seduce severe scientific method from its attitude of scepticism, in so far as the super- normal is concerned. It will not be so easy, however, to explain the coincidences as it will be to doubt their evidential value for occult theories. But, as the more definite experiences yield to easy normal explanation, when the mental habits of the subject are known, we may easily dispose of the less definite incidents. The spiritistic interpretation, I have said, is a nat- ural one for these incidents. But the difficulties with which that hypothesis has to contend are much greater than the narrative would suggest, and they can be dis- covered only by a direct investigation of the mind that had the experiences. To make this evident, I have to remark many more facts than are even likely to find their way spontaneously into such a story. They are all included, however, under the general head of automatisms. This term I use to denote any resurg- ence into consciousness of either an apparent reality or an idea wholly foreign to the contents of the pres- ent stream of thought and in no way impressible into it. They may be called by any other name that is de- sirable. If the reader prefers the term hallucination I shall not object. But I choose 'automatism' as less invidious in its implications. I have found these experiences very frequent with Mrs. D. Many of them have been closely connected with her religious life, the automatism taking a form that associated it at once with an intense devotional piety. For in- stance, the habit of devotion in moods of religious 42 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND COINCIDENCES want was intimately associated with promptings to pray at the most unlikely times and in the most un- likely places. Religious reflection seems to have in- stigated certain tendencies to a strong and persistent emotional life that had an associative influence upon the stream independent of the ideas immediately in the field of attention. The consequence was a large num- ber of automatisms, often capricious, but traceable to the subliminal trend of her emotional life. Pierre Janet's conception of the ' disintegration of person- ality ' affords a good representation of what went on in her mind, though not at all so marked as in his cases. Her religious emotions were either persistent with all the incidents of everyday life or were sub- liminally active when they had no natural connection with the main stream of mental action. As an illus- tration of this I may mention an instance of crystal vision which I have already put on record from the same subject. (' Proceedings of Society for Psychic- al Research,' Vol. 12, p. 261.) This experience rep- resented a vision of a room with sunbeams pouring into it through a recessional window, and into the stream of sunlight flew a dove. Remembering that many religious books and pictures have associated sunlight and the dove, I inquired to know whether Mrs. D. was familiar with such representations and found that she was, just such a picture being in one of the family Bibles. She herself did not recall any such until her husband first responded to my question in the affirmative, showing that the associa- tion was wholly subliminal. Another beautiful in- stance of purely subliminal association will be found 43 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION in the case of Miss X. (' Proceedings of Society for Psychical Research,' Vol. 8, p. 484.) It quite resembles the one by Mrs. D. Now the room into which Mrs. D. saw the sunbeams pouring exactly resembles a corner in a medieval church. This would naturally appeal to the religious emotions and asso- ciations. The tendency of the mind under such con- ditions requires no further comment for the psychol- ogist. Nor is it necessary for the subject to be able to detect the trend of consciousness in the case. The influences are too subtle to be traced easily. But they are there, and have to be reckoned with in the explanation of all data not properly fusible with the main stream. Another beautiful series of automa- tisms with Mrs. D. are connected with the playing of the piano. She has had no special training for this, and has picked up mostly what little she knows by herself. About two years ago, and all at once, without any practice, a piano having been provided only a short time before and no regular playing hav- ing been indulged for a long time, Mrs. D. noticed herself playing pieces automatically and sent for me to know what it was. She was wholly unconscious of intending the movements of the fingers or the pieces of music played. Some of the pieces played were wholly unknown to her. Some were familiar hymns and some were a combination of various familiar pieces of church music. In listening to the instances of unknown pieces I noticed that they were of the same type as the familiar hymns : They were all of the religious class. I found on inquiry that music has a strong influence on her religious emotions. This 44 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND COINCIDENCES effect would react on the piano playing, so that any emotional phase of her mental life in the field of at- tention or out of it, that is, supraliminal or subliminal, might either recall the past into consciousness or automatically reproduce music that she might or might not recognize. That she might not recognize some pieces is easily rendered probable by the experi- ence which she narrated to me about the sky, garden fence, chain pump, etc. (see ' Proceedings of Society for Psychical Research,' Vol. 12, p. 262, 263), and which illustrates very clearly both the fact of autom- atism and recall without recognition. In the musi- cal instances we find the influence of the main trend of religious emotion. Not that this is the only emo- tion that is likely to produce them, but that there is a unity between this fact in her life and the musical automatisms observed. That circumstance suffices to establish a principle to be used here as a basis of explanation. We have now a fulcrum to apply in the case of the incidents connected with the present narrative. Take first the apparition a few hours after the funeral. This is one of the decidedly spiritistic incidents of the case. But if the reader will return to it, he will find that the state of mind that preceded it was precisely one that might lead to just such an automatism as the experience records, if it be an automatism. I hardly know a better fact to suggest automatism originated by latent influences in the system than this very in- cident. There was confessedly a strong wish to re- move what was in reality, though not perceived as such, a sceptical feeling about spiritual survival from 45 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION the grave. There was a desire and a struggle to get rid of an unpleasant fear, impression or memory, and the act of pTayer would tend to restore the old faith and its influence upon the mind. The physical ex- hilaration of the sunlight and fresh morning air in the country might produce a favorable condition, sublim- inal or supraliminal, for the resurgence into conscious- ness of a suitable object of consolation. What more likely then than that the mind should succeed in push- ing forward some experience which would take the place of the unpleasant sensation that had instigated the prayer? Having had many experiences of visions, aural automatisms and impressions, evidently deter- mined by those conditions of mind not immediately oc- cupied with the object of apperception and closely associated with religious wants and emotions, we can here trace a possible influence from the latent expec- tation of consolation to relieve the disagreeable feel- ing connected with a half sceptical tone of mind wholly foreign to her regular life. The psychical researcher may think this explana- tion rather far-fetched. This may be true, and I do not care to urge it as determinately true beyond all doubt. I am satisfied if it can appear as an alterna- tive possibility to the spiritistic theory, for that fact will put limitations upon the theory that claims at least superficial recognition. Another interesting incident in the narrative points in the same direction. This is the case of the appa- rition of the burning cradle. It is one of the most striking coincidental features of the whole narrative. I have mentioned the experience without any of the 46 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND COINCIDENCES circumstances that personal inquiry produced, in or- der to keep the incident in the shape that such facts usually take where the antecedent circumstances are not investigated. But now if we inquire into these we shall find a possible explanation, certainly pref- erable to anything like premonition until that hypothesis obtains satisfactory credentials elsewhere. The fact is that the crib stood within a few feet of a fire grate. But as there had been no fire in this grate for a year or more the accident could not have been caused by this, a circumstance mentioned to sustain the theory above advanced to account for the acci- dent. In the first place, Mrs. D. herself had all along explained the vision of the burning crib by this very proximity to the fire grate. In the second place, al- most every one would have such a possibility suggested to the mind by this situation of the crib. But not every one is subject to automatisms, and such thoughts are easily referred to their proper source in associa- tion. Mrs. D., however, as we have found, is liable to these occurrences. Besides the associations of others, whether supraliminal or subliminal, these influences are liable to provoke an automatism independently of the main stream of consciousness. Now it is the un- usual occurrence and character of automatisms that call special attention to them. They are easily re- membered as interesting and significant if any coin- cidence with them is remarked. If the accident of the child's death had occurred only in connection with an association of a burning crib, every one would have dismissed it as a coincidence not worth taking seri- ously, and no significance would be given it. But 47 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION when an accident of this sort occurs in coincidence with an apparition apparently premonitory in char- acter, we forget association and are tempted by the unusual nature of the phenomenon to ascribe to it a value that it may not deserve. We may concede that such an experience might have some significance if not connected with automatisms as frequent or habit- ual occurrences. But here we have in this very sub- ject the existence of automatisms which can be traced directly to emotional influences of various sorts. There is a frequent connection between past thoughts and associations and certain sensory automatisms, and we have only to suppose this case one of them in order to explain it in a natural way. Mere asso- ciation in this case would not have suggested signifi- cance. Hence, as there is a probable connection be- tween a frequent association and an interesting coinci- dental automatism, there will be no more reason to give the latter a significance than the former, which is never inclined to receive such importance. If the content of the automatism and its complications are independent both of habit and hallucinatory sugges- tion, there might be an excuse for suspecting an im- portance for it. But there is no more a priori reason for giving evidential value to an automatism than to a suggestion from association. Consequently, when we find an experience in all probability only a more developed product of association, which does not ob- tain any transcendental significance, a product in which central activities effect the work of peripheral stimuli, the central action being nothing more than association or suggestion, as in dreams and hypnotic 48 PSYCHICAL, RESEARCH AND COINCIDENCES hallucinations, we must not be in haste to attribute to it other than the normal psychological value, although it has other than the normal psychological cause. Another incident is amenable to the same explana- tion. It is the case of the automatism occurring at the time the child was put to bed. The aural auto- matism, " Turn the mattress," can easily be accounted for by supposing that the natural resistance of mem- ory and association to the resolution not to turn the mattress at the time might readily produce the result. Of course, we should not expect any such occurrence in the average person, but we have here a case con- stantly exposed to it, and also the two known facts that she was accustomed to do the very thing indicated by the voice and that this very thought was con- sciously urgent on the mind until the resolution not to turn the mattress was formed. The automatism, " Turn the mattress," was then probably nothing more than an hallucinatory resurgence of the thought that preceded that resolution, the impact of habit and association against the new course adopted. The two incidents just considered were of the pre- monitory type, and could be brought under one gen- eral explanation. The next is not so easy to explain in the same way. But it may be made to yield to a more complicated analysis. The incident is the little brother's apparition of his sister a month after her death. This is certainly very interesting, whatever we may think of its value as evidence for transcenden- tal existence. It has a more decidedly spiritistic ap- pearance than the other incidents. Nevertheless, its cogency is subject to limitations which, though com- 49 PSYCHICAL EESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION plicated, ought to be carefully considered both pro and con. The first objection to its evidential character for the spiritistic theory is the doubt about the source of the child's idea of his sister after her death. But as my object is not to risk the case on the impeachment of testimony, I wish to deal with the case as if it were not subject to scepticism at all. Assuming then that the apparition was in no way a direct suggestion of the parents, I have to look for an explanation outside of spiritism. Now, on inquiry I have found incidents that may lead the way out of this supposition. I find that Mrs. D. has noticed a great many times since the occurrence that, while she happened to be think- ing of the child or even other matters, E. would speak up and mention her or the subject of his mother's thoughts. This has occurred so often and in such circumstances of a peculiar and unexpected sort that Mrs. D. herself remarked the possibility of account- ing for the original phenomenon by telepathy. Un- fortunately, however, she kept no record of these ob- servations, the contents or circumstances of the alleged coincidences, and hence there is nothing to go upon except her own unsupported judgment in regard to the cases thus mentioned by her, and they can pass for little worth. But an interesting incident occurred somewhat later which is more important in favor of a telepathic explanation, though this hypothesis depends upon prior proof of its truth for its application here. The incident suggesting this view of the occurrence I obtained the next day after its occurrence and with- out its bearing being anticipated by Mrs. D. 50 PSYCHICAL, RESEARCH AND COINCIDENCES Mrs. D. had retired early, and, awakening early, had got up to go to the kitchen about S o'clock. After she had reached the kitchen, and without any reason from previous habits or thoughts or from any known circumstances about the house, she suddenly felt a fear come over her that there might be a burg- lar in the house. She thought at once that such a feeling was nonsense, but it clung to her, and she looked at the window to see that it was secure, and turned to come back to the bedroom, when she saw a door open several inches and by which a man could easily have entered. Just as she started to close it, E., whom she had left sleeping in the next room and in no position to know anything about the door, awak- ened and called to her. Mrs. D. simply went on to close the door before responding to his call, and he again called out, impatiently, " Mamma, I was dream- ing that burglars were in the house." Now, if we treat this coincidence seriously at all, dismissing the possibility that the dream was a suggestion from her own movements in the room, at least for the sake of considering the other view, we might suppose it due to telepathy. If then we were to tolerate this hypothesis to explain the coincidence in this instance, we may ex- tend it to the case of the apparition, remembering that advocates of it do not maintain the necessity of present active thoughts to the result, inasmuch as the process may be wholly subliminal, as well as supralim- inal. It will be remembered that Mrs. D. was not thinking of the deceased child when the little boy's apparition of his sister took place. But at any rate, if we consider telepathy in the case that has no sug- 51 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION gestion of spiritism in it, the same hypothesis should be applied to the other coincidence if it permits of the application, as I think it does. But there is another resort that may commend it- self more favorably to the average scientific mind, if he does not admit the existence of telepathy. This supposition is effective against the spiritistic theory to those who accept telepathy, and hence I have the advantage of using it for that purpose where there is any disposition to treat the coincidences seriously at all. But dismissing the coincidence about the burg- lars either as a chance case or as a suggested dream, I was able at the time that the experience of the appa- rition was told me to ascertain some interesting facts that suggest a possible explanation for it independ- ently of both spiritism and telepathy. A careful in- quiry into a number of facts which I shall not take the space to describe in detail, but which were very suggestive, led me to believe that both the remaining children have some hereditary susceptibilities like the mother. Assuming this as probable at all events, and remembering that inquiry into the habit of the child E. showed he had been accustomed to lie on this very sofa with his little sister before her death with her in his arms, just as he described her in the apparition, we have only to suppose that suggestion might give rise to the apparition itself. This will, no doubt, appear a complicated and round-about explanation, but with the indications of hereditary peculiarities in the child and the wide range of automatism in Mrs. D. we may well halt before going farther for an ex- planation. 52 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND COINCIDENCES There is also an interesting feature about Mrs. D.'s impression in regard to a burglar in the house. She knew no reason for its occurrence, as she had not been troubled with such feelings before. This also yielded to inquiry. I asked her whether in going to the kitchen she had to pass near enough to the open door to have a current of air come in contact with her, and the answer was decidedly in the affirmative. It was dark and she did not see the open door, nor did she consciously feel any draught of air, but the door opened into a hall from which a current of air could easily come, and this is a common fact in apart- ments of the kind in which the family live. Assum- ing such a draught of air, and with it, first, Mrs. D.'s liability to automatisms and, second, the pos- sibility of subliminal reasoning, such as Professor Newbold reported ( 4 Proceedings of Society for Psychical Research,' Vol. 12, pp. 11-21), we get an explanation of the automatism itself without resort- ing to the supernormal, even if we disregard the possibility that it was a chance suggestion of what may be and is a common thought in the large cities at that time of night. We have now disposed of some of the most striking incidents of the report, and there remains one very definite case not so easily explained away ; namely, the automatism of the voice, " She'll never need them," and the precautions about matches. The considera- tion of the latter incident opens up another aspect of the problem. It loses its significance at once when we ascertain, as I did, that Mrs. D. all her life has been very careful about matches and has often re- 53 PSYCHICAL. RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION proached her husband for carelessness in this matter. But there is an aspect in the incident that brings up the problem of memory, and the method which I have to criticise in the work of Parish. From what I have remarked about Mrs. D.'s life- long habit of care in regard to matches we can easily see that the coincidence between her similar action just previous to the child's death and that event itself, or rather the supposed significance of it, is an after- thought, due to the very strength of the subject's memory rather than its weakness. We may say that there is dissociation of the habit previous to the time of the other automatisms, and thus recognize a meas- ure of defense for the contention of Parish, but with the ordinary memory not commanding so many of the smaller details of life the connection between the caution about matches and the accident to the child would hardly occur. It was probably the very keen- ness of Mrs. D.'s memory that enabled her to recall the circumstance which creates the coincidence. The illusion I cannot regard as one of memory, but rather as one of apperception or judgment, which is likely to occur with persons not accustomed to scientific ob- servation. Had the subject been antecedently aware that events and experiences preceding those constitut- ing the coincidences recorded determined their value for or against any hypothesis, it is probable that the apperception would have been different. But in the absence of any knowledge of such necessary precau- tions the common mind very naturally seizes upon the events contiguous in time and apparently relevant to the one which they seem to portend, and the defect, 54 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND COINCIDENCES even if complicated with some dissociation, is mainly one of apperception occasioned by the very keenness of the memory for the incidents of the past which can be made to appear significant. Moreover, it is prob- able that the more striking coincidental automatisms and the memory of them had much influence upon the recall of the feelings about fire and apperceptively distorted their significance, so that much more than illusions of memory, in fact, phenomena much more important than they, have to be reckoned with in the treatment of such reports as the coincidences in my narrative represent. To reinforce the view that the defects in such a narrative are likely to be something else than illusions of memory, I was careful to keep a watch for such errors. I have watched for them during the several years of my observations in this particular case, and have not been able to discover a single one. I have found cases of obliviscence, and they have been quite interesting as enabling me to discover, by cross- questioning the subject, that the source of some of the automatisms was an associative resurgence into consciousness of a past experience, taking the form of an hallucination without recognition. But when recognition was made I have found no reason to be- lieve that an illusion of memory had occurred. But at the same time this pious opinion of mine can go for very little value to the outside reader. Hence I have presented nothing here which I did not seek to cor- roborate by another witness, which in this case is Mr. D. I had also an indirect opportunity to confirm this conclusion. The story by Mrs. G., a neighbor of 55 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION the D.'s, was the occasion of it. I ascertained the facts of Mrs. G.'s experiences, as above narrated, from her own statements, and found that they were exactly as told me by Mrs. D. This instance afforded me a good chance to test Mrs. D.'s value as a wit- ness and the confirmation of my impression about her in this respect, and serves, at least negatively, as an injunction to look far more deeply into such narra- tives of striking experiences than the possibility of mnemonic illusions suggests. In the investigation of the neighbor's, Mrs. G.'s, experience which was told as if it might be taken as premonitory, I came across an interesting fact that confirms the whole position here taken. I inquired, as usual, to know whether similar fears about fire had been common, and besides a number of instances of such fear, I was told of one which Mrs. G. described as quite a remarkable ' presentiment.' To make a long story short, she described the discovery of smoke in the hall and the suspicion of danger from fire, and after warning her neighbor of her fear she had finally to call in an officer of the law to interfere, and found that her conjecture was correct. Here is a case where the only difference between the psychologist and the common mind is the choice of language. ' Presentiment ' is the term chosen to express an in- ference, a fact that reveals the frequent need for in- vestigation into the mental habits of the individual in order to discover the real explanation of phenomena that often appear remarkable. This conclusion, how- ever, is not a new one, but perhaps very trite. Never- theless, when psychical research presents such an 56 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND COINCIDENCES enormous mass of facts as its reports represent, it is incumbent on the critic to subject some equally good cases to the analysis of a personal investigation, and not to rely exclusively upon general principles in- ductively obtained from incidents that make his argu- ment seem a priori. The criticism should be based upon strictly analogous incidents. The automatism, " The end is not yet," gets its in- terpretation from the apparently symbolic dream in which E. was included with the sister, who died, as separated from the mother. That it should have any meaning at all is an afterthought or apperception created by the coincidental character of instances more suggestive than it and taken with the remem- bered fact that Mrs. D. has often felt that E. might be taken by the trolley cars. There is an aspect to this incident that makes it like those which I have ex- plained by suggested automatism, though it should be remarked that the narrative does not make it any- thing more than an association which is very common in the city where the family lives. The only feature about the impression that seems to give it possible meaning is the fact that the same feeling of fear did not and does not occur in reference to the older boy, L. Hence taking the automatism, " The end is not yet," and the symbolic dream with this impression it might be natural for the untrained psychologist, especially in connection with a large number of coin- cidental experiences not mentioned in the present nar- rative, to wonder whether the circumstance might not have an extraordinary interest. On inquiry again, however, I found that Mrs. D. had more confidence in 57 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION the ability of L. to take care of himself than in E. The older, L., is more independent and self-reliant than E. and has thus been better able to take care of himself. E. has always shown a disposition to de- pend on his mother, and she a solicitude for him that she has not felt for L. Now, if we put together the anxiety which every mother in this particular city feels for her children who are exposed to the dangers of the trolley cars, Mrs. D.'s special concern for E., and more particularly her liability to automatisms, we have mental conditions that strongly favor the occurrence of impressions which might be taken for warnings of a premonitory kind with those who have felt the touch of sorrow in connection with such a collection of coincidences as I have here recorded. It must be remembered, however, that Mrs. D. has never believed in premonitions or presentiments, so that the discovery of the coincidences was not wholly a product of apperception due to a tendency to seek for them in the afterthoughts. On the contrary, for the first time in her life, she and Mr. D. were amazed at the extraordinary character of the incidents in this narra- tive, in spite of some coincidences of another kind and interest which I have put on record elsewhere, and came to me to ascertain whether I had any ordinary explanation for them. Afterthought and appercep- tion being shut out as inadequate to the result, even after allowance is made for their participation in it, we find, I think, evidence of an extraordinary combi- nation of emotional interests and a predisposition to automatisms to simulate supernormal phenomena. Reference to the narrative, which shows such a cu- 58 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND COINCIDENCES mulative mass of incidents at least apparently in fa- vor of premonition and spiritistic theories, will show that I have suggested a normal explanation for the majority of them, and only a few have been omitted from review. The incident of the sister of Mrs. D. hardly requires notice, as I have not been able to apply the method of studying her mental habits, and it may be too vague to deserve consideration. It was mentioned because it at least simulated the collective character of incidents in the psychical research rec- ords, and in order to give the case all the superficial cogency of which it was capable. But it must run the gauntlet of the method applied to the other inci- dents before any interest of an extraordinary kind is attached to it. On the other hand, I confess that I have not found any satisfactory explanation of the repeated automatism, " She'll never need them." But if I have broken the cumulative force of the whole by presenting a possible explanation of the majority of the most strikingly spiritistic cases, we may well suspend judgment upon this one unexplained incident. The main point has been gained if I have shown that no extraordinary amount of illusion and hallucination is required to explain such phenomena, but that they may be made to yield to a critical analysis of the in- dividual experience and the usual processes of mind. Consequently, while we may both admit and urge the importance of the position taken by Parish, we may reserve to scepticism and scientific method a resource much more far-reaching and effective than his, and, when his either breaks down or proves too much by casting doubts upon the accepted authenticity, 59 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION methods and results of previous science. If the lia- bility to mnemonic illusion and hallucination be half so great in such phenomena as Parish criticises, and they certainly are great, we should have to revise the results of previous psychology more than the critics of psychical research are inclined to do. Moreover, I am disposed to think that mnemonic illusion is much less frequent in extraordinary experiences than in the ordinary, while Parish proceeds upon the assumption that it is more likely in the former. But we must remember that illusion and hallucination are a two- edged sword and cut both ways. They will discredit the claims of the ordinary at least as much as the extraordinary, and I think more. Hence, while ad- mitting their extreme importance in all judgments of experience, I am inclined to believe that a far pro- founder source of difficulty to psychical research can be obtained in the field which I have here endeavored to explore, and certainly one left open after the other fails. It is a resource, also, that can be employed only by abandoning all arrogant pretensions to a priori knowledge about such phenomena, and by con- descending to study the individual case at first hand. 60 CHAPTER III " FROM INDIA TO THE PLANET MAES " The fairies could not have pleased Alice in Won- derland more than M. Flournoy's book on the medium- ship of Mile. Smith will please two classes of readers. Those who are looking for romances dealing with the interest in another world can read this book with unabated fascination, if they can manage to shake off all scientific encumbrances, and if they can escape the author's explanation of his phenomena. On the other hand, the sceptic and scientific devotee can read it with the malicious delight of an iconoclast bent on demolishing the gods of the spiritualist. " From India to the Planet Mars " is a book that has appeared just at the psychological moment. The public has been prepared by the work of the Society for Psychical Research, and more especially by the Piper phenomena and Dr. Richard Hodgson's report on them, to expect some sort of a scientific revelation re- garding another life, and hence to find a work appear immediately on a voyage of discovery in a portion of interstellar space, with the accompaniment of sur- vival after death, is an incident well calculated to stimulate the imagination beyond all bounds. In- deed, the situation in the psychological world, of the unscientific sort, as met by this book, may be com- pared in some respects to the age of Columbus, and M. Flournoy's book to that of Defoe on the adven- 61 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION tures of Robinson Crusoe, except that Flournoy care- fully dispels the illusions which he conjures up in the name of spiritualism. Both the title and the subject matter suggest this comparison. It is always the unknown, accompanied by the con- viction that there is a reality in it to be reduced to the known, that offers the most attractive field of in- terest and exploration to the human mind, and it mat- ters not whether it is inspected by the philosopher, the scientist, the religious devotee, the litterateur, or the common man. All can revel in it with equal im- punity and delight. The discovery of Columbus found the human mind in this condition. The ex- istence of a new world was itself a romance, and truth could easily compete with fiction in the supplies which new knowledge and hope offered to an insatiable curiosity. Homer and his creations were disappearing in the limbo of mythology, and men were fast becom- ing accustomed to the prosaic life of facts, made all the more uninteresting by the increased struggle for existence due to an increased population. Hence, a new world dawned upon hope and imagination as a refuge from the problems of civilization and a stimu- lus to the unwearied flight which the human mind is wont to take on the wings of poetry and fiction. Now, psychical research, even though it may not have accomplished as much in the way of discovery as Columbus, certainly holds out definite hopes and promises to human interest. It has kept the religious mind on the qui v'we for evidence of its most precious belief, while it has offered to some sceptical convic- tions a refuge from despair. M. Flournoy has taken 62 FROM INDIA TO THE PLANET MARS advantage of this psychological situation, even though he expects to disenchant it, and has couched his work in terms that must tempt the wary and unwary alike into the labyrinths of a new world. The ordinary spiritualist, however, is walking into a spider's parlor when he accepts this invitation. The book is a thor- ough piece of scientific work in most of its aspects, especially in its exposure of the spiritistic claims ad- vanced for his medium. It leaves little to be desired for the sceptic. The title simply invites you into a fairy land, while the discussion reduces you relent- lessly to the commonplaces of ordinary life and illu- sion. Nothing can rival the painstaking care with which the author has run down every clue upon which spiritism might rely for its support. The case is this. M. Flournoy, Professor of Psychology in Geneva, Switzerland, heard of one of the usual marvels in the circles of spiritism ; and, not having any foolish dignities to respect, was not long in obtaining an introduction to the little coterie which was " investigating " the mediumship of a lady whom he denominates by the pseudonym " Mile. Smith." She was found to be a lady of considerable intelli- gence, of irreproachable character, honest and sin- cere, and ready to submit her phenomena to investiga- tion. M. Flournoy even says that she is beautiful, and that she accepts no payment for her experiments. Both of these qualities ought to attract the attention of the scientific mind. Mile. Smith goes into a trance and purports to be controlled by a spirit who calls himself Leopold, and claims to have been Joseph Bal- samo, the hero of a book by Alexandre Dumas, but 63 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION who is better known in history as the famous Caglios- tro. Besides him, there appear the unfortunate Queen, Marie Antoinette, a Hindu princess of the fif- teenth century, and a young man who claims to be reincarnated on the planet Mars. The last-named individual gives the language which, he claims, is spoken on that planet, detailing both the alphabet from which it is constructed and its interpretation in French. He describes the manners of life there, and draws representations of the houses in which its peo- ple live and specimens of the animal and vegetable or- ganisms there prevalent. All of this has a most de- lightful flavor of romance, and it is given in a detail which cannot be expected here. The reader must go to the original or to the translation for a satisfactory account of the facts. The latter is fortunately acces- sible, and, I must say, has been unusually well done. The only exception that can be taken to it regards the abbreviation of the original, which is a misfortune for the scientific mind that is either unable or has not the time to examine the fuller account in French. To the one or the other, however, I must refer the reader for one of the most extraordinary books of the day, so well calculated is it to exact attention for the obscure phenomena of psychical research from those who have hitherto been content to play the part of scientific Philistines. In all its external features, at least, the case is like the many instances of alleged spirit control. Mile. Smith is wholly unconscious of what she does and illus- trates in a remarkable degree what subconscious men- tation can do to imitate the requirements of reality. 64 " FKOM INDIA TO THE PLANET MARS " The impersonations take the form of alleged reincar- nations. It seems that spiritualism expresses itself in France in terms of that doctrine. The author dis- cusses three types of it, the Martian, the Royal, and the Hindu cycles. Each represents a very plausible appearance ; but only one of them, the Hindu instance, offers any serious difficulty to explanation by the author along the lines of normal psychology and psychiatry. The alleged reincarnation on the planet Mars is a remarkable production; that of Marie An- toinette is much less interesting. The Hindu rein- carnation appears the most real, as it contains some features calculated to satisfy the demands of personal identity, though explicable by stretching the hypoth- esis of resurrected memories. In other words, ex- amination showed that there was not the slightest evi- dence that spirits had anything to do with the produc- tion of the phenomena, but that they were the uncon- scious production of Mile. Smith's own mind in the trance condition, playing on the obscure recollections of her own experience and receiving its impulse to do this from her normal conviction that her case was spiritistic. The alleged inhabitant of Mars shows few, if any, resources in Mile. Smith's memory except the most general outlines, but the impersonation is exceedingly rich in the material of spontaneous fabrication. In fact, this particular case is nothing but " the baseless fabric of a dream." The language, alphabet, repre- sentations of houses, animals and plants are shown to be unquestionably nothing but the production of Mile. Smith's imagination in this unconscious state, worked 65 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION out with marvelous originality and consistency. The products find their exact analogy in ordinary dreams. The language betrays its spurious character in its constructive resemblance to the French which is Mile. Smith's native tongue. Besides, there is not a vestige of anything leading to the identity of the person who claims this reincarnation on the planet Mars, and nothing otherwise that is plausible or probable. It is simply a pretty creation of the subliminal imagina- tion, bent on producing something sufficiently unlike terrestrial realities to deceive the unwary ; and it is one of the most appalling things in nature for the psychologist and moralist to be thus confronted with the devilish tendencies of unconscious mental action. We can hold the normal consciousness responsible, but the subconsciousness never. It seems constrained to fool us, but is not astute enough to accomplish its aim. It has, in this instance, however, played a wonderful game, whose trickery it is the merit of M. Flournoy to have exposed. The impersonation of Marie Antoinette is less re- markable in all its superficial characteristics. It has no features which are not easily explicable by the resurrection of Mile. Smith's own knowledge of that unfortunate queen's history, and the influence of idea- tion upon the histrionic representation of that queen's manners and character. M. Flournoy confesses to some inexplicable phe- nomena in the Hindu impersonation. There are traces of the Hindu language and some remote his- torical incidents of a very early period that cannot be ascribed to the " medium's " fabricating imagina- 66 FROM INDIA TO THE PLANET MAES tion. The supposition that Mile. Smith had at some time heard or seen enough of the facts, now wholly forgotten and unrecognizable when produced, and cropping up unconsciously as spirit messages, seems so improbable or difficult of proof that M. Flournoy admits being puzzled. But the entire success with which he discredits the alleged Martian phenomena, lends its support to the probability that the Hindu impersonation is precisely like it. For me it is not specially puzzling at all. I think that his theory of secondary personality is more easily applied to the Hindu case than the author supposes. Apparently, it is the improbability that Mile. Smith had seen or read the book in which the facts are found that ex- cites M. Flournoy's wonder. But, as the amount of the Hindu language delivered is very small, and the historical incidents mentioned in that princess' life are very few, it is easy to imagine the reading enough of it in some catalogue, newspaper, or article to account for their appearance in this pseudo-spiritistic form. But what is so delightful in M. Flournoy's work is his scientific appreciation of the psychological prob- lem before him, and the thorough way in which he has proceeded to deal with it, at least in all respects that concern the claims of spiritism. Nothing can equal the patience and perseverance with which he has pursued every clue to an explanation of the phenomena in terms of what we know in normal psychology. The incidents that would strike the or- dinary mind as mysterious, or even miraculous, are easily reduced to simple and well-known phenomena of mind. Every nook and corner of the case is in- 67 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION vestigated, and no stone is left unturned for vestiges of subconscious mental action on the part of Mile. Smith to account for the facts, and the success is as great as the effort. In so far as the evidence is con- cerned, the spiritist is left without any support for his theory. All this is accompanied with a most de- lightful sense of humor and a keen irony that might be called malicious, if it were not so just and the victims of it so deserving of this polite form of ridi- cule. There is apparent in some of it a suppressed feeling of ridicule that may be due to the necessity of being respectful toward the people whose kindness was instrumental in securing an opportunity to in- vestigate the case. The style of presentation is most charming. In fact, the work is an excellent novel in all but the facts, and, in these, it is science of the best kind, wherever it applies psychological analysis to the refutation of spiritism. In this respect, it is be- yond praise, and should be read by every man who is tempted to dabble in that subject. Its chief interest, however, lies in the influence that it must exert upon the general course of psychical research. That subject has been so ignored and mis- understood by the scientific Philistine that he could not be persuaded by any important fact to touch it. He passed it by on the other side, holding his nose, or sneering at its alleged phenomena. But M. Flournoy has taught this supercilious class a lesson. He has shown that there are phenomena which have all the external characteristics of discarnate spirits, and yet are amenable to explanation without such a resource, though only on the condition that the most amazing 68 "■ FBOM INDIA TO THE PLANET MAES " subconscious mental activity be admitted, and ad- mitted in a form that shows no trace of an automatic character. The outcome it will be interesting to watch. I shall expect the scientific Philistine to ac- cept the book with great applause, as it affords such a fine text with which to lecture spiritualism. Psychical research will become at once a very important de- partment of investigation. Scepticism, of course, is most welcome in this sub- ject which leads so close to the madhouse, but what a comment on the pretended scientific spirit, that it will give no quarter to a subject until its own precon- ceived opinions have been substantiated by some one who has not stood on his dignity in regard to the facts. But, in spite of M. Flournoy's emphatic rejection of spiritism, he believes in telepathy, or thought trans- ference, telekinesis, or the movement of physical ob- jects without contact, and lucidity, or clairvoyance! It is apparent, however, that he does not rely wholly upon the phenomena of Mile. Smith for his convictions on these subjects. He seems to indorse telepathy on the collective evidence published by the Society for Psychical Research, and telekinesis upon personal ex- periments with Eusapia Palladino. Clairvoyance he seems to adopt without any evidence that I can dis- cover, and he combines telepathy and clairvoyance to explain some of his own facts, which he fears might otherwise be amenable to the spiritistic theory. But there is something very strange in this acceptance of these supernormal phenomena, though M. Flournoy does not regard them as supernormal at all ! He puts 69 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION a very peculiar meaning on this term. He speaks as if it were convertible with the supernatural. He con- siders these processes as perfectly natural, and in the case of telepathy speaks of it as something rather to be expected than doubted! You would suppose that the " supernormal " sustained the same relation to the " normal " that hyperesthesia sustains to aesthesia ; but no, it is made equivalent to the supernatural, and this assumption simply annihilates all rational per- spective in the case. Let us examine his position in regard to these several remarkable powers, which he attributes so easily to the human mind without sup- posing them to be anything more than normal and natural. It must be conceded, at the outset, that M. Flour- noy has investigated and analyzed the facts bearing upon these hypotheses with something like the same method and care that he did those claiming to be spir- itistic; but he is, nevertheless, distinctively less cau- tious in his convictions. He appears to be so ready to accept these theories as natural and normal, that he finds no such reason to be sceptical as he supposes is obligatory in regard to spiritism. Take, for in- stance, his indorsement of Eusapia Palladino. He does not state a single fact in proof of her genuine- ness. We have only the author's ipse dixit. This is all the more amazing after Dr. Richard Hodgson's exposure of that clever fraud. No case of that kind should be admitted without letting us into the knowl- edge of the facts. Of course, it can be said that it is no part of the present work to discuss her phenomena. But this, taken in connection with her exposure, is all 70 " FROM INDIA TO THE PLANET MARS the more reason for silence unless good evidence be- yond an ipse dixit be produced. A theory based upon experiments with Eusapia Palladino, and designed to explain some of the phenomena observed in the case of Mile. Smith, should come with far better creden- tials than are here offered. The author's illusion about the " natural " betrays him, in this instance, into a disposition to credit phenomena that are far more revolutionary in physical science than spirits can possibly be either in physics or psychology. The reason for this judgment I shall give again. Let us examine M. Flournoy's example of telekin- esis in the case of Mile. Smith. Two oranges were found removed from their places, under circumstances involving either the dishonesty or the mal-observation of the witnesses, as alternatives to explanation by telekinesis. M. Flournoy offers the choice between these hypotheses and the subconscious action of Mile. Smith; though it is evident that he inclines to tele- kinesis. This is fair enough ; but I am amazed to find that no such care is taken to examine the facts and their conditions as was shown when exposing the claims of Leopold, Marie Antoinette and the myste- rious Martian. There are two ineradicable defects in the author's treatment of the case here. First, he is apparently ready to attach weight to mere testimony, and that of the parties interested in their theory. Secondly, he has not applied carefully to the phenom- ena his own hypothesis of secondary personality, while that supposition seems to me entirely adequate to its explanation. M. Flournoy does not give us the full details, as they should be given in so important a 71 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION matter. We should know the exact amount of time involved in the occurrence of the phenomena, the occu- pation of the witnesses, their position in the room and in relation to Mile. Smith, their capacities for observ- ing facts of this sort, and every little incident bear- ing upon a complete record of the observed facts. But there is not a word of this, and apparently no conception of the necessity for such details. It is all the more remarkable, after the author's scepticism of his witnesses' testimony for spiritism, that he should be less stringent in his methods when it is only a mat- ter of telekinesis ! Evidently, this is so natural and normal a process that it does not need careful verifica- tion. Moreover, after observing, in other connec- tions, the readiness with which Mile. Smith passes into and out of a trance without retaining any memory of it, why does not M. Flournoy refer to this fact as probably affording a clue to the explication of the case? Let me mention the instance of his walk with Mile. Smith, in which she went into a trance, sug- gested visiting the house of a friend, and awakened to know nothing of it and feeling very much embarrassed at her action. A better instance of this is that of writing a letter. She sat down to write a note to M. Flournoy, and in the midst of it passed off into a trance, and finished the letter in the language and in- cidents of one of the subconscious personalities. She mailed it, and never knew anything regarding this latter part of the letter until the fact was called to her attention by M. Flournoy. Now, it would be easy to apply the same causes and conditions to the explanation of the throwing of 72 " FROM INDIA TO THE PLANET MARS " the oranges, especially in the absence of all adequate accounts of the circumstances, and it is surprising that a man of M. Flournoy's usual scientific acuteness has not seen this. What is to hinder us from suppos- ing that Mile. Smith suddenly passed into the trance (a fact which M. Flournoy records over and over again), and threw the oranges without being noticed by the other persons in the room, and then awoke without any knowledge of her actions? M. Flour- noy makes a few general observations in the direction of such an hypothesis, but he does not urge it with the enthusiasm displayed in applying the same theory against spiritism. He seems to think that telekinesis does not exact any serious objection from belief. As for myself, I must say that I do not think there is one iota of rational evidence for any such phenomena, and I should regard it as much more exposed to scientific objections than spiritism, which he is at so much pains to disprove. The same can be said of clairvoyance. I have never seen any adequate evidence of such a power, and I think M. Flournoy is persuaded to ac- cept it much more because he thinks it a weapon with which to combat spiritism than on the grounds of scientific evidence. I come next to his consideration of telepathy. He recognizes that this doctrine is not accepted by the scientific world in any form whatever, but he does not flinch under this. His attitude, however, toward scepticism regarding it is very curious. He expresses surprise that any one should have difficulties regard- ing it. This process which the scientific world scouts as absurd, as revolutionary in both physics and 73 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION psychology, and as supernormal in every sense of the word, M. Flournoy regards as very probable a priori. Psychical research ought to be very easy after such a verdict as this. It seems not even necessary to strain at camels. At any rate, the psychical re- searcher can stand and look on with a malicious smile, while the sceptic proclaims without evidence that telep- athy is a very probable thing and one of the most natural things in the world. The plight of M. Flour- noy's admirers here will be amusing, if they have laughed at the claims of telepathy. They are called on to be very sceptical if the phenomena claim to be spiritistic, but very credulous if they are only tele- pathic, telekinetic, or clairvoyant! I must say, however, that I do not share M. Flour- noy's tractable disposition regarding telepathy. I do not think it intrinsically probable, nor easy to be- lieve on any evidence but that afforded by the most careful experiments. At its very best, it is nothing more than a name for coincidences, whose cause and explanation are yet to be determined. The popular mind makes it a most extraordinary power. It is endowed with unlimited access to the person's memory whose mind is read. But there is no adequate evi- dence for such a process : in fact, there is not one iota of respectable evidence for it. The only telepathy that can lay the slightest claim to recognition on scientific grounds, is the transmission of present active states of consciousness; and, in fact, it is probably the psychical researchers alone who admit this much. But such a thing as the selective telepathy necessary to reproduce personal identity is without any experi- 74 " FROM INDIA TO THE PLANET MARS mental support. Consequently, when a man uses the term, he must show that he is able to meet its respon- sibilities. M. Flournoy does nothing of this kind. He says enough to discredit telepathy of all kinds in his treatment of the only facts in his case that could possibly lay any claim to that explanation, and yet considers it something that may be taken for granted apparently without evidence. But that a man can sit down and gravely assume, without experimental proof, a sort of infinite access by some subliminal pro- cess to the memories of any living mind that the tele- pathic subject chooses to select, and yet claim to be scientific, is something that transcends my idea of science. I do not see why a man should take offense at spiritism after such a leap as that. It all comes from the baseless assumption that spirits are supernatural and telepathy natural. I can conceive the very reverse of this, namely, that telepathy should be considered supernatural and spirits natural. M. Flournoy ought to know that modern idealism makes all talk about the natural as useless as the supernatural. When everything is natural, the term has no explanatory value whatever. In Greek thought, when the term was convertible with the physical and opposed to the immaterial, it had some importance ; but, the moment that it became con- vertible with the uniform or invariably constant, it lost its value as an instrument for supporting a ma- terialistic and mechanical view of the cosmos. But to me telepathy, even in the only form that has any scientific, or alleged scientific, credentials, so far from being natural in any accepted use of that term as a 75 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION name for the constant and uniform, is so exceptional as simply to throw the reins loose to the maddest sort of philosophic speculation. But let us concede with M. Flournoy that telepathy is " natural " and spirits " supernatural." How can he oppose telepathy to spiritism, unless he qualifies it w r ith the power to effect all that might most rationally be attributed to spirits? I make bold to say that there are conditions under which a spiritistic theory is easier to believe than the telepathic. These condi- tions are that the contents of what purport to be dis- carnate communications be appropriate to the proof of personal identity. We should, of course, prefer to know something of the process by which the limita- tions of our access to a transcendental world can be overcome. But, as we must inductively form our hypothesis in any case, all suppositions to bridge this chasm must stand on the same footing ; and, if the unity of the phenomena is best represented by infer- ring the continuance of an individual consciousness after death, we may consider the process of communi- cation to be what we please. Besides, even as a con- ceded process telepathy is not anything that is known in the usual sense of that term. It is only a name for certain facts which require a causal explanation. It is convenient for limiting evidential claims, but it is not explanatory. But now, if telepathy be once granted as a fact, no matter what conception we take of it as a process, we have a phenomenon of the trans- mission of thought independently of the ordinary im- pressions of sense, and we should be violating no sci- entific principles if we supposed that, under favorable 76 " FROM INDIA TO THE PLANET MAES " conditions, a transcendental consciousness might be able to intromit a message into a living mind. After telepathy is admitted, it is but a question of evidence to settle whether we are probably in communication with a discarnate spirit. If the phenomena alleged to be spirit messages represent what the proof of per- sonal identity demands, a discarnate consciousness is the most natural supposition in the case. This con- ception of the matter is strongly reinforced by the fact that telepathy between the living, so far as we have any right to assume it at all, is limited to the present active states of consciousness, and shows no tendency to select its data with reference to the repro- duction of personal identity, with its synthetic char- acter and command of memory. With that limita- tion, we should have to suppose the continuance of consciousness after death to explain the facts. With- out that limitation, we have a theory infinitely larger than the spiritistic, and wholly without any analogies in either physics or psychology. Hence, on a priori grounds, I see no reason for assuming any antagon- ism between the telepathic and the spiritistic theories. Once assumed, unless its limits are defined, telepathy becomes an evidential difficulty against the spiritistic doctrine; but, when it begins to take on the propor- tions of infinitude, it plays into the hands of its com- petitor, which conforms to the demand that a process shall be finite if it expects scientific recognition. But it is precisely because his data do not represent any evidence of personal identity that M. Flournoy is justified in rejecting the spiritistic theory in his special case. It is not because telepathy is either 77 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION a normal process or a function incompatible with the operation of discarnate souls. Leopold, Marie Antoinette, and the Martian inhabitant ought to have given us some evidence of personal identity, as in the " communicators " of the Piper case, if Mile. Smith expects us to believe in spirits, and it is their abso- lute failure to satisfy this demand that justifies M. Flournoy's sceptical position. Had he treated telep- athy, telekinesis and clairvoyance in the same spirit, no criticism whatever could have been directed against his conclusions. But his tolerance of these theories and the possible amenability of what may be called the Dandiran, the Vignier, and the Burnier incidents to a supernormal explanation, as the author appar- ently squints toward that possibility owing to the conjectural character of the evidence against it, might suggest to the spiritist the following hypoth- esis. Taking what we know of secondary person- ality and its various forms, we might assume it to be, as ordinarily known, only a transitional state to the conditions which might bring the subject into communication with a transcendental world. But it would in all cases be most naturally accompanied, on this supposition, by all sorts of difficulties and con- fusions in the communications from that world, be- traying various abilities and inabilities to communi- cate, and there might be conditions in which the whole impulse to represent the facts as " communications " from that source should come from a transcendental stimulus, while the representations of the facts should come wholly from the subject's own mental action, and be distorted, as secondary personality must in- 78 " FROM INDIA TO THE PLANET MARS evitably distort its data. The whole of the modern theory of hallucination supports this view. Hallu- cinations are found to be due to what are called secondary stimuli — that is, stimuli that are not co- ordinated with the sense in which the hallucination appears, and so are not representative of the world that causes them. In such a process, vestiges of spirit messages might slip through, and the conditions affecting the possibility of communication present so many difficulties that the attempt to deliver anything genuine might have to be given up. To illustrate from his own case ; if Mile. Smith's secondary person- ality can secure its stimulus, but not its representa- tions, from her normal memory and experience, or con- victions, it is quite conceivable that the same state should receive its stimulus, but not its representation of the facts, from the transcendental world, while a few veridical, though fragmentary, messages of the genuine sort might slip through in the fluctuation of the conditions embodied in the secondary state. The incidents that appear to be supernormal acquisitions of knowledge, in the absence of satisfactory proof that they are resurrected memories of Mile. Smith's childhood, might be instances of this success, obtain- able only on opportune occasions, while the conditions remain generally impervious to such communications. In this way, we might unify the supernormal aspects of M. Flournoy's case with those that show such re- markable characteristics of secondary personality. I am, of course, very far from accepting any such view of the case. On the contrary, I think it wholly an instance of secondary personality, and that telep- 79 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION athy, telekinesis, and clairvoyance should have re- ceived no tolerance in this book where the evidence for them is wholly wanting. But, if M. Flournoy thus accepts them, he must expect to meet trouble in his disposal of the Dandiran, Vignier, and Burnier inci- dents, with which he is evidently impressed, in spite of his reference of them to possible memories of his medium. So far as his evidence is concerned, these theories should have received less tolerance at his hands. It is his illusion about their being normal and natural that leads him into this course. Moreover, for a man who so heartily rejects the supernatural, his invocation of sympathy from the orthodox by a confession of faith, when he refuses to accept that criterion in spiritism and applies the most rigid criteria of scientific proof, is a contradiction as well as an exhibition of pious cant unworthy of a man who claims to respect science. The only hope of the re- ligious consciousness, if it is to reconcile itself with science, is to be tolerant of spiritism rather than telep- athy, telekinesis, and clairvoyance, and to abandon the criterion of mere faith for that of scientific proof. Hence, having accepted the jurisdiction of a scientific court, the author should have bowed to its canons. Not to press this criticism, however, the chief im- portance of the work lies in its tendency to stimulate investigation of a subject that has been too long neg- lected. Psychical research has a grim Nemesis and scepticism a Medusa head in the author's admission of telepathy, telekinesis, and clairvoyance, but this sin will not destroy the scientific merits of a work that offers our Philistines their only hope of minimizing the significance of the Piper phenomena. 80 CHAPTER IV VISIONS OF THE DYING There is a group of psychic phenomena which are well worthy of a most searching investigation. I refer to the alleged visions which many dying persons are said to have had of friends who have passed away before them. In some cases they seem to have a co- incidental importance that may give them some scien- tific value, if well enough attested as facts. It would be natural to suppose that the crisis of death would often be attended by all sorts of halluci- nations. We know how disease and accident lead to deliria in which all sorts of hallucinatory experiences occur; and narcotics and anaesthetics evoke similar phenomena in various degrees. They are but illus- trations of influences which disturb the normal activ- ity and functions of the organism, so that the non- coordination of central functions results in the simula- tion of realities by all sorts of phantasmal forms. Death is a particularly disintegrating process and we should expect similar mental disturbances in its progress. Usually the motor functions are so paralyzed by it that we should expect little evidences of sensory phantasms. One way of indicating what dying experiences are in any clear manner, seems pos- sible and that is by speech. When this occurs the subject must retain enough of his normal motor ac- tivity to give expression to his mental experiences. 81 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION Indistinct indications may be given by motor action in the eyes. But what we should discover from ocular movements of a dying person would be doubtful and possibly capable of various interpretations. It would be the same with hearing. But when speech is re- tained enough may be uttered for us to ascertain the nature of the experience of the dying person, and occasionally dying persons utter intelligible sentences which convey unusual information. It is such that ought to be the subject of a very careful investiga- tion. I propose here to suggest that a census of them might easily be collected and made the subject of statistical study and psychological analysis. The interest which such phenomena may have for science will depend upon a variety of considerations. The first is that we shall be able to attest their exist- ence and their nature. The second is that we shall have some reason to believe that they have a selective character pertinent to their apparent significance. The third is that we shall have some means of dis- tinguishing them from those capricious and kaleido- scope phenomena that are classifiable as ordinary hal- lucinations. The fourth is that their characteristics shall suggest some coincidental incidents not refer- able to chance and at the same time distinguishable from others possibly due to subjective causes. It will not be an easy task to conduct such an investigation, but it is possible by long efforts and perseverance to accumulate facts enough for some sort of study and analysis. The method of effecting this object will be the subject of discussion later in this article. We 82 VISIONS OF THE DYING must first describe the phenomena to which attention needs to be called. The phenomena which I have in mind are a type of apparition. Whatever their explanation they have one characteristic which distinguishes them from ordi- nary deliria. They represent the appearance of de- ceased persons to the vision, imagination, or other source of sensory representation, of the dying per- son. If we should find that they bear evidences in any case of supernormal information they would become especially significant. But one of the most important things to study in them would be their rela- tion to instances of hallucination under the same cir- cumstances that had no coincidental value. That is, we need to study their statistical aspects which would require a comparison of the really or apparently coin- cidental cases with those which are unmistakably hal- lucinatory and subjective in their origin. For this a large collection is necessary and this can be made with- out any presumptions regarding their explanation. I shall illustrate the kind which are particularly inter- esting and suggestive. They are as described above, instances in which dying persons seem to see previously deceased friends, claiming in cases to be present for the purpose of aiding in the passage of death. When this claim of assistance in the crisis of death is made it is through mediums and it is sometimes or generally made when there has been no evidence at the death scene that such a presence was remarked. I shall give a few illustrations of both kinds. The following instance I received from a corres- PSYCHICAL. RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION pondent whose testimony I have no reason to ques- tion: " I called this afternoon (May 14th, 1906) upon a lady who buried a nine-year-old boy two weeks ago. The child had been operated upon for appendicitis some two or three years ago, and had had peritonitis at the same time. He recovered, and was apparently quite well for a time. Again he was taken sick, and from the first the doctor thinks he did not expect to get well. He was taken to the hospital, and operated upon. He was perfectly rational, recognizing his parents, the doctor, and the nurse, after coming out from under the influence of the anaesthetic. Feel- ing that he was going, he asked his mother to hold his hands, until he should be gone. He had, I forgot to say, been given strong stimulants after the operation, which, I suppose, made his mind very active. Soon he looked up and said, " Mother, dear, don't you see little sister over there? " " No, where is she ? " " Right over there. She is looking at me." Then the mother, to pacify him, said she saw the child. In a few minutes, his face lighted up full of smiles, and he said : — " There comes Mrs. C (a lady of whom he was very fond who had died nearly two years before), and she is smiling just as she used to. She is smiling and wants me to come." In a few moments : — " There is Roy ! I'm going to them. I don't want to leave you, but you'll come to me soon, won't you? Open the door and let them in. They are waiting for me outside," and he was gone. " No, I forgot to tell about his grandmother. I 84 VISIONS OF THE DYING gathered the impression that he did not know his maternal grandmother, but may be wrong. " As his mother held his hands, he said : " How small you are growing. Are you still holding my hands? Grandma is larger than you, isn't she? There she is. She is larger, isn't she? Her hand is larger than yours. She is holding one hand and her hand is larger than yours. " Remember that the boy was but nine years old. Did he really see spirits and recognize them? Or was it the result of the highly sensitive condition of the brain caused by the medicine? " The mother confirms this narrative and inquiry brings out the following facts. The boy had never known his grandmother who had died twenty years ago. His sister had died four years before his own birth. Roy is the name of a friend of the child and he had died about a year previous. It will be apparent that the instance is not in any respect an evidential one. There is no way to displace the assumption that the phenomena were hallucina- tions until better indications of their real nature can be obtained by further investigations, if that can ever be done. It is natural to suppose that the critical condition of the mind and body would give rise to these and similar phantasms, especially in certain kinds of natures. The natural assumption may not be the right one, but it is the only one that science can tol- erate until its credentials are better satisfied by evi- dences of the supernormal. There is nothing in this instance that can be verified as not a natural and 85 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION subjective effect of the conditions associated with dissolution, unless it be the systematic group of de- ceased persons involved. For the physiologist and the psychologist this goes without saying, and the men- tion of it here is only to emphasize for the general reader the confident opinion which science would en- tertain regarding such incidents. Science might not have better evidence that this special case is hallucina- tion than the believer in its reality has for this character, but the mass of facts in human experience connected with abnormal mental and physical condi- tions associated with disease and death would predis- pose any cautious person in favor of the scientific interpretation, as either more probable or more safe an assumption than that in favor of the other. Many other cases of a similar nature have come to my attention, but I have not yet been able to have a first-hand account made for me. I remember that my step-mother told me that her mother, while dying, saw an apparition of her husband who had died many years before. Such incidents are probably relatively numerous, but as they are not recorded or examined carefully they can only be subjects of sceptical con- sideration. But I have a group of incidents which are much more suggestive of something unusual and possibly quite significant. Some of them involve a record and confirmatory support that gives them importance. The first of this group is one dictated to me and taken down verbatim by the two persons who knew the facts. They are both intelligent and trustworthy witnesses, not more liable to errors in such things than all of us. 86 VISIONS OF THE DYING It involved circumstances which give peculiar value to the incident, as the story will vouch for itself. I quote the narrative as I took it down. " Four or five weeks before my son's death Mrs. S was with me — she was my friend and a psychic ■ — and a message was given me that little Bright Eyes (control) would be with my son who was then ill with cancer. The night before his death he complained that there was a little girl about his bed and asked who it was. This was at Muskoka, 160 miles north of Toronto. He had not known what Mrs. S had told me. About five minutes before his death, he roused, called his nurse for a drink of water, and said clearly : " I think they are taking me." Afterward seeing the possible signifi- cance of this I wrote to Miss A and asked her to see Mrs. S and try to find why the word " they " was used, underscoring it in the letter, as I al- ways supposed the boy's father would be with him at death. Miss A went to see Mrs. S , and did not mention the letter. When I saw Mrs. S more than a week later we were having a sit- ting and Guthrie, my son, came and told me how he died. He said he was lying on the bed and felt he was being lifted out of his body and at that point all pain left. His first impulse was to get back into his body, but he was being drawn away. He was taken up into a cloud and he seemed to be a part of it. His feeling was that he was being taken by invisible hands into rarified air that was so delightful. He spoke of his freedom from pain and said that he saw his father beyond." 87 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION The intimate friendship of Mrs. S with Mrs. G , the mother of the boy, makes it possible to suppose that hints or suggestions may have been un- consciously conveyed to the boy before his death, or that something was said at the experiment which might deprive the incidents of that importance which they superficially seem to have. I have, however, observed that the two ladies are as careful in their ac- count as we should expect, and while I cannot give the narrative as much scientific weight as may be desirable, I think there is reason to believe that the main incidents are correct. The boy's experience of a strange girl at his bedside, and the allusion to the plural of the pronoun are quite possibly correct ac- counts of the facts. A record of the later sitting would be necessary to be assured that the allusion to the father was not in response to a suggestion. But in any case the incident is at least apparently su- perior evidentially to the first one quoted, and it indi- cates what may be done to assure ourselves of signifi- cance in such phenomena. I quote next a well authenticated instance on the authority of Dr. Minot J. Savage. He records it in his Psychic Facts and Theories. He also told me per- sonally of the facts and gave me the names and ad- dresses of the persons on whose authority he tells the incidents. I am not permitted to mention them. But the story is as follows : " In a neighboring city were two little girls, Jen- nie and Edith, one about eight years of age, and the other but a little older. They were schoolmates and intimate friends. In June, 1889, both were taken ill 88 VISIONS OF THE DYING of diphtheria. At noon on Wednesday, Jennie died. Then the parents of Edith, and her physician as well, took particular pains to keep from her the fact that her little playmate was gone. They feared the effect of the knowledge on her own condition. 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 unconscious of all that was passing about her, she selected two of her photo- graphs to be sent to Jennie, and also told her attend- ants to bid her goodbye. " She died at half -past six o'clock on the evening of Saturday, June 8th. She had roused and bidden her friends goodbye, 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 suddenly, and with every appearance of 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 Jen- nie was here ! ' And immediately she reached out her arms as if in welcome, and said, ' O, Jennie, I'm so glad you are here.' " As Dr. Savage remarks in connection with the story, it is not so easy to account for this incident by the ordinary theory of hallucination. We have to suppose a casual coincidence at the same time, and while we might suppose this for any isolated case like the present one, the multiplication of them, with proper credentials, would suggest some other expla- nation, whatever it might be. I shall turn next to two instances which are asso- 89 PSYCHICAL, RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION dated with the experiments and records of Mrs. Piper. They both represent the allegation of death- bed apparitions, and statements through Mrs. Piper purporting to represent communications from the de- ceased showing a coincidence with what was otherwise known or alleged to have taken place at the crisis of death. The records in these cases are unusually good, having been made by Dr. Richard Hodgson. I quote his reports. The first instance is the experience of a man who gives only initials for his name, but was well known to Dr. Hodgson. It occurred at a sitting with Mrs. Piper. "About the end of March of last year (1888) I made her (Mrs. Piper) a visit — having been in the habit of so doing since early in February, about once a fortnight. She told me that the death of a near relative of mine would occur in about six weeks, from which I should realize some pecuniary advan- tages. I naturally thought of my father, who was in advanced years, and whose description Mrs. Piper had given me very accurately a week or two pre- viously. She had not spoken of him as my father, but merely as a person nearly connected with me. I asked her at this sitting whether this person was the one who would die, but she declined to state any- thing more clearly to me. My wife, to whom I was then engaged, went to see Mrs. Piper a few days afterward, and she told her (my wife) that my father would die in a few weeks. About the middle of May my father died very sud- denly in London from heart failure, when he was re- covering from a very slight attack of bronchitis, and on the very day that his doctor had pronounced him 90 VISIONS OF THE DYING out of danger. Previous to this Mrs. Piper (as Dr. Phinuit) had told me that she would endeavor to in- fluence my father about certain matters connected with his will before he died. Two days after I re- ceived the cable announcing his death my wife and I went to see Mrs. Piper, and she (Dr. Phinuit) spoke of his presence, and his sudden arrival in the spirit world, and said that he (Dr. Phinuit) had endeav- ored to persuade him in these 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 executor) would make a certain disposition in my favor, subject to the consent of the other two executors when I got to London, England. Three weeks afterward I arrived in London and found the principal executor to be the man Dr. Phinuit had de- scribed. The will went materially as he (Dr. Phinuit) had 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 of an old man at the foot of his bed, who annoyed him by discussing his private affairs." The reader will remark that the incident is asso- ciated with a prediction, but it is not the subject of important observation at present. The chief point of interest is that the prediction is connected with a reference to a will affecting private business matters, that the sister reported a number of visions or ap- paritions on the man's death-bed, and that subsequent to his death, not known apparently to Mrs. Piper, the statement was made by Dr. Phinuit that he had in- fluenced or tried to persuade the man in reference to 91 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION these matters. The coincidence is unmistakable and the cause is suggested by the very nature of the phe- nomena and the conditions under which they occurred. But we should have a large mass of such incidents to give the hypothesis something like scientific proof. The next case is a most important one. It is con- nected with an experiment by Dr. Hodgson with Mrs. Piper, as was the previous one, and came out as an accidental feature of the sitting. The account is associated in his report with incidents quoted by him in explanation of the difficulty and confusion accom- panying real or alleged communications from the dead. It will be useful to quote the Report on that point before narrating the incident itself, as the cir- cumstances associated with the facts are important in the understanding of the case, while they also sug- gest a view of the phenomena which may explain the rarity of them. " That persons l just deceased,' " says Dr. Hodg- son, " should be extremely confused and unable to communicate directly, or even at all, seems perfectly natural after the shock and wrench of death. Thus in the case of Hart, he was unable to write the second day after death. In another case a friend of mine, whom I may call D., wrote, with what appeared to be much difficulty, his name and the words, ' I am all right now. Adieu,' within two or three days of his death. In another case, F., a near relative of Mad- ame Elisa, was unable to write on the morning after his death. On the second day after, when a stranger was present with me for a sitting, he wrote two or three sentences, saying, ' I am too weak to artic- 92 VISIONS OP THE DYING ulate clearly,' and not many days later he wrote fairly well and clearly, and dictated to Madame Elisa (de- ceased), as amanuensis, an account of his feelings at finding himself in his new surroundings." In a footnote Dr. Hodgson adds an account of what this Madame Elisa communicated regarding the man. I quote this in full. Referring to this F. and Madame Elisa, he says : — " The notice of his death was in a Boston paper, and I happened to see it on my way to the sitting. The first writing of the sitting came from Madame Elisa, without my expecting it. She wrote clearly and strongly, explaining that F. was there with her, but unable to speak directly, that she wished to give me an account of how she had helped F. to reach her. She said that she had been present at his death- bed, and had spoken to him, and she repeated what she had said, an unusual form of expression, and indi- cated that he had heard and recognized her. This was confirmed in detail in the only way possible at the time, by a very intimate friend of Madame Elisa and myself, and also of the nearest surviving relative of F. I showed my friend the account of the sitting, and to this friend a day or two later, the relative, who was present at the death-bed, stated spon- taneously that F., when dying said that he saw Mad- ame Elisa, who was speaking to him, and he repeated what she was saying. The expression so repeated, which the relative quoted to my friend, was that which I had received from Madame Elisa through Mrs. Piper's trance, when the death-bed incident was of course entirely unknown to me." The apparent significance of such a coincidence is 93 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION evident, and though the entire number which I have quoted are not sufficient to afford alone the proof of survival after death they are indicative of events which demand a most careful investigation. If there be such a thing as a transcendental spiritual world and if we actually survive in our personality after death we might naturally expect some connection between the two sets of cosmic conditions, at least occasionally, supposing, of course, that the chasm between them is not too great to be spanned. The existence of a large mass of facts alleging such a connection, though these facts are relatively few in comparison with the cases of silence regarding the beyond, is a circumstance which would suggest searching for inci- dents during the passage of death that might repre- sent a rare connection between the two worlds in this critical period. We could not expect them to be fre- quent a priori, but we should not expect two worlds, closely enough related for the individual to retain his identity, to wholly exclude communications in articulo mortis. If anything like it actually appeared to occur we should endeavor to ascertain how much evi- dence exists for the credibility of the occurrence in sufficiently numerous cases to establish the truth of the actual connection, or to confirm other types of incident pointing toward the same conclusion. The phenomena are too suggestive in many ways to leave their occurrence unnoticed and uninvestigated. Professor Bozzano, in the Annals of Psychical Sci- ence, gives twenty-two cases in all, three of which are found in this discussion. I quote a few of them to add to the collective force of the evidence in such 94 VISIONS OF THE DYING cases of supernormal experiences. It would be an injudicious appropriation of material to reproduce the entire essay, but its merit and interest offer a great temptation to do so for readers who may not be able to see the publication which presents them. I must content myself, however, with a choice of the best cases in illustration of a more frequent phenom- enon than the few instances that I have quoted might indicate. The most forcible ones are those which may be called collective instances, that is, ap- paritions seen by more than one person. The first instance is taken from the life of the Rev. Dwight L. Moody, the celebrated evangelical preacher of the United States, written by his son. In it his last moments are described as follows : — " Suddenly he murmured : ' Earth recedes, heaven opens up before me. I have been beyond the gates. God is calling. Don't call me back. It is beautiful. It is like a trance. If this is death it is sweet.' Then his face lit up and he said in a voice of joy- ful rapture : ' Dwight ! Irene ! I see the chil- dren's faces ' (referring to two little grandchildren, gone before). Turning to his wife he said, ' Mamma, you have been a good wife to me,' and with that he became unconscious." Mr. Alfred Smedley, on pp. 50 and 51 of his book, Some Reminiscences, gives the following description of the last moments of his own wife : — " A short time before her decease, her eyes being fixed on something that seemed to fill her with pleas- ant surprise, she exclaimed : ' Why ! there is sister 95 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION Charlotte here; and mother and father and brother John and sister Mary ! And now they have brought Bessie Heap ! ! They are all here. Oh ! how beauti- ful! Cannot you see them?' she asked. ' No, my dear ; I very much wish I could,' I answered. ' Can- not you see them ? ' she again asked in surprise : ' why they are all here, and they are come to bear me away with them. Part of our family have crossed the flood, and soon the other part will be gathered home, and then we shall be a family complete in heaven.' " I may explain here that Bessie Heap had been the trusted family nurse, and my wife had always been a favorite with her. " After the above ecstatic experience she lingered for some time. Then fixing her gaze steadily upward again, and lifting up her hands, she joined the con- voy of angel friends who had come to usher her into that brighter spiritual world of which we had learned so little." Dr. Paul Edwards wrote as follows in April, 1900, to the Editor of Light: — " While living in a country town in California ( U. S. A.) about the year 1887, I was called upon to visit a very dear lady friend who was very low and weak from consumption. Everyone knew that this pure and noble wife and mother was doomed to die, and at last she herself became convinced that immediate death was inevitable, and accordingly she prepared for the event. Calling her children to her bedside she kissed each in turn, sending them away as soon as goodbye was said. Then came the husband's turn to step up and bid farewell to a most loving wife, who was per- fectly clear in her mind. She began by saying: 96 VISIONS OF THE DYING * Newton ' (for that was his Christian name) . . . ' do not weep over me, for I am without pain and am wholly serene. I love you upon earth, and shall love you after I have gone. I am fully resolved to come to you if such a thing is possible, and if it is not possible I will watch you and the children from Heaven, where I will be waiting when you all come. My first desire now is to go. . . . I see people moving — all in white. The music is strangely en- chanting — Oh ! here is Sadie ; she is with me — and — she knows who I am.' Sadie was a little girl she had lost about ten years before. ' Sissy ! ' said the husband, ' you are out of your mind.' ' Oh, dear ! why did you call me here again ? ' said the wife ; ' now it will be hard for me to go away again ; I was so pleased while there — • it was so delightful — so soothing.' In about three minutes the dying woman added : ' I am going away again and will not come back to you even if you call me.' " This scene lasted for about eight minutes, and it was very plain that the dying wife was in full view of the two worlds at the same time, for she described how the moving figures looked in the world beyond, as she directed her words to mortals in this world. — , I think that of all my death scenes this was the most impressive — the most solemn." Dr. Wilson, of New York, who chanced to be pres- ent at the last moments of James Moore, the tenor, gives the following narrative : — " It was about four o'clock, and the dawn for which he had been watching was creeping in through the shutters, when, as I bent over the bed, I noticed that his face was quite calm and his eyes clear. The poor 97 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION fellow looked up into my face, and, taking my hand in both of his, he said : * You've been a good friend to me, doctor. You've stood by me.' Then some- thing which I shall never forget to my dying day happened ; something which is utterly indescribable. While he appeared perfectly rational and as sane as any man I have ever seen, the only way that I can express it is that he was transported into another world and although I cannot satisfactorily explain the matter to myself, I am fully convinced that he had entered the Golden City — for he said in a stronger voice than he had used since I had attended him: ' There is mother ! Why, mother, have you come here to see me? No, no, I'm coming to see you. Just wait, mother, I am almost over. I can jump it. Wait, mother.' On his face there was a look of inex- pressible happiness, and the way in which he said the words impressed me as I have never been before, and I am as firmly convinced that he saw and talked with his mother as I am that I am sitting here. " In order to preserve what I believed to be his conversation with his mother, and also to have a rec- ord of the strangest happening of my life, I imme- diately wrote down every word he had said. . . . His was one of the most beautiful deaths I have ever To the cases above referred to, I will add the fol- lowing case reported by F. W. H. Myers, which, al- though substantially different from the preceding ones, resembles the last one in that a death was an- nounced by an apparition of a deceased person : — " Mr. Lloyd Ellis had symptoms of lung disease at the time (of his father's death), but not to a degree 98 VISIONS OF THE DYING to lead his friends to expect a fatal termination soon. But his health declined rapidly towards the end of the year, and in the month of January, 1870, he was in a dying state. " Lying in an apparent sleep one night (one Mon- day night, I believe) he woke up suddenly and asked his mother: 'Where is my father?' She answered him tearfully : ' Lloyd dear, you know your dear father is dead. He has been dead for more than a year now.' 'Is he?' — he asked, incredulously — ' why! he was in the room just now, and I have an appointment with him, three o'clock next Wednesday.' And Lloyd Ellis died at three o'clock on the follow- ing Wednesday morning." The following case was reported by the Rev. C. J. Taylor, a member of the Society for Psychic Re- search. " November 2nd, 1885. — On November 2nd and 3rd, 1870, I lost my two eldest boys, David Edward and Harry, in scarlet fever, they being then three and four years old, respectively. " Harry died at Abbot's Langley on November 2nd, fourteen miles from my vicarage at Aspley ; David the following day at Aspley. About an hour before the death of this latter child he sat up in bed, and pointing to the bottom of the bed, said distinctly : ' There is little Harry calling to me.' It has been said that the child said : ' He has a crown on his head,' but I do not remember this myself; but I was so overcome with grief and weariness from long watching, that I may have let it escape me. But of the truth of this first fact I am sure, and it was heard also by the nurse." {Signed: X. Z., Vicar of H.) 99 PSYCHICAL. RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION In letters and conversations with Mr. Podmore, Mr. Taylor adds the following details : " Mr. Z. tells me that care was taken to keep David from knowing that Harry was dead and that he feels sure that David did not know it. Mr. Z. was himself present, and heard what the boy said. The boy was not delirious at the time." The next case was communicated to the Society for Psychical Research by the Rev. J. A. Macdonald, who had it at first hand from Miss Ogle, sister of the percipient. " Manchester, November 9th, 1884- — My brother, John Alkin Ogle, died at Leeds, July 17th, 1879. About an hour before he expired he saw his brother, who had died about sixteen years before, and looking up with fixed interest, said : ' Joe ! Joe ! ' and immediately after exclaimed with ardent surprise : ' George Hanley ! ' My mother, who had come from Melbourne, a distance of about forty miles, where George Hanley resided, was astonished at this, and turning to my sister-in-law, asked if anybody had told John of George Hanley's death. She said, * No one,' and my mother was the only person present who was aware of the fact. I was present and witnessed this." (Signed: Harriet H. Ogle.) In answer to inquiries, Miss Ogle states : " J. A. Ogle was neither delirious nor unconscious when he uttered the words recorded. George Hanley was an acquaintance of John A. Ogle, not a particularly familiar friend. The death of Hanley was not mentioned in his hear- ing." 100 VISIONS OF THE DYING 101 The following three cases are reported in the Pro- ceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. " In November, 1864, I was summoned to Brigh- ton. My aunt Harriet Pearson was then very ill there. . . . She slept in a large, three-windowed bedroom over the drawing-room. The room behind was occupied by Mrs. Coppinger and myself, though one of us was generally in the patient's room at night. On the night of December 22nd, 1864, Mrs. John Pearson was in the room, Mrs. Coppinger and myself in the back room; the house was lighted up on the landings and staircases ; our door wide open. About one or two on the morning of December 23rd, both Mrs. Coppinger and myself started up in bed; we were neither of us sleeping, as we were watching every sound from the next room. We saw someone pass the door, short, wrapped up in an old shawl, a wig with three curls on each side and an old black cap. Mrs. Coppinger called out : ' Emma, get up, it is old Aunt Ann ' (a deceased sister of the sick woman). I said: * So it is, then Aunt Harriet will die to-day.' We jumped up, and Mrs. John Pearson came rushing out of the room and said : * That was old Aunt Ann. Where is she gone to? ' I said to soothe her: ' Per- haps it was Eliza come down to see how her mistress is.' Mrs. Coppinger ran upstairs and found Eliza sleeping in the servants' room. She was very awe- struck but calm, and dressed and came down. Every room was searched, no one was there. . . . Miss Harriet died in the evening of that day, but before that told all of us that she had seen her sister and knew it was she, and she had come to call her." — Emma M. Pearson ; confirmed by Eliza Quinton. " Mrs. Caroline Rogers, 72 years old, a widow who 101 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION had been twice married, and whose first husband, a Mr. Tisdale, died about thirty-five years ago, has lived on Ashland Street, in Roslindale, Mass., for the last twenty-five years; and since the death of her last child, some years ago, she has lived quite alone. Early in March of this year she was stricken with paralysis, and after an illness of nearly six weeks died on the afternoon of Tuesday, April 15th. " Mrs. Mary Wilson, a professional nurse, 45 years old, attended Mrs. Rogers during her illness, remain- ing with her almost constantly until she died. She had never seen Mrs. Rogers before the tatter's illness, and knew nothing of her family or history. Mrs. Rogers spoke frequently to Mrs. Wilson, and also to others, as has long been her custom, of her second husband, Mr. Rogers, and of her children, expressing a desire to see them again, etc. " On the afternoon of April 14th, Mrs. Rogers be- came unconscious, and remained so all the time until her death twenty-four hours later. Mrs. Wilson sat up with her the whole night, and . . . was pretty well worn out with her long vigil ; believing that Mrs. Rogers was dying, she was naturally very nervous and timid; and having heard Mrs. R. speak fre- quently of seeing her departed friends, etc., she had a feeling of expectancy and dread with regard to supernatural visitations. Between 2 and 3 a. m., while her daughter was asleep, and while she was resting on the settee, but wide awake, she happened to look toward the door into the adjoining chamber and saw a man standing exactly in the door-way, the door being kept open all the time. He was middle-sized, broad-shouldered, with shoulders thrown back, had a florid complexion, reddish-brown hair (bareheaded) and beard, and wore a brown sack overcoat, which was 102 VISIONS OF THE DYING unbuttoned. His expression was grave, neither stern nor pleasant, and he seemed to look straight at Mrs. Wilson, and then at Mrs. Rogers without moving. Mrs. Wilson supposed, of course, that it was a real man, and tried to think how he could have got into the house. Then, as he remained quite motionless, she began to realize that it was something uncanny, and becoming frightened, turned her head away and called her daughter, who was still asleep on the couch, awakening her. On looking back at the door after an interval of a minute or two, the apparition had dis- appeared; both its coming and going were noiseless, and Mrs. Rogers remained perefectly quiet, and, so far as could be known, entirely unconscious during this time. The chamber into which this door leads being dark, there was no opportunity to observe whether or not the apparition was transparent. Mrs. Wilson shortly afterwards went into this chamber and the living room, but did not examine the lower part of the house until morning, when the doors were found properly locked and everything all right. " In the morning, Mrs. Rogers' niece, Mrs. Hil- dreth, who lived in the neighborhood, and had known Mrs. R. and her family life many years, called at the house. Mrs. Wilson related her experience to her and asked if the apparition resembled Mr. Rogers and Mrs. Hildreth replied emphatically that it did not. (All who knew Mr. Rogers are agreed on this point.) Their conversation was interrupted then, but when re- sumed later in the day, Mrs. Hildreth said that Mrs. Wilson's description agreed exactly with Mr. Tisdale, Mrs. Rogers' first husband. Mrs. Rogers came to Roslindale after marrying Mr. Rogers and Mrs. Hil- dreth is the only person in that vicinity who ever saw Mr. Tisdale; and in Mrs. Rogers' house there is no 103 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION portrait of him nor anything suggestive of his per- sonal appearance. Mrs. Wilson is also very positive that the apparition was unlike anyone she ever knew." — Mary Wilson. The following incidents are taken from the same source as the previous ones. It was communicated by a Mrs. B., who was known to Mr. Podmore. In re- lation to the death of her own mother, Mrs. B. nar- rates the following, among other particulars. " My youngest sister, since dead, was called to my mother, and left Devonshire, where she was staying with friends, to come home. When she arrived at home she entered the drawing room, but rushed out terrified, exclaiming that she had seen god-mamma, who was seated by the fire in my mother's chair. God- mamma had been dead since 1852. She had been my mother's governess — almost foster-mother ; had lived with her during her married life, being god-mother to her eldest girl, and when my father died had ac- cepted the duty of taking his place as far as possible in the family, to shield her from trouble and protect her — ■ a duty which she fulfilled nobly. " My other sister went into the drawing-room to see what had scared K., and saw the figure of god- mamma just as K. had. Later in the day, the same figure stood by, then sat on the edge of my mother's bed, and was seen by both my sisters and the old serv- ant, looking just as she had when alive, except that she wore a gray dress, and, as far as we could remem- ber, she had always worn black. My mother saw her, for she turned towards her and said : ' Mary ' — her 104 VISIONS OF THE DYING The next case is reported by Dr. Richard Hodgson and published in the Proceedings of the same Society. " January £8th, 1891. About eleven years ago I was much distressed owing to the illness of my wife, who suffered from cancer in the stomach. I heard about a medium, Miss Susie Nickerson White, who was said to have given some remarkable tests, and I called on her as a stranger and requested a sit- ting. My wife's sister purported to ' control,' giv- ing her name, Maria, and mentioning facts about my family which were correct. She also called my wife by her name, Eliza Anne, described her sickness, and said that she would pass over, but not for some months. I said : * What do you call this ? Is it psychology, or mesmerism, or what ? ' Maria said, ' I knew you were going to ask that ; I saw it in your mind.' I said : ' Do you get all things out of my mind ? ' She replied : ' No. I'll tell you some things that are not in your mind. Within three days Eliza Anne will say that she has seen me and mother, too, if I can get mother to come along.' (My wife's mother had died about forty-five years previously, and my wife's sister had been dead from six to eight years. ) " I kept these circumstances to myself, but within three days the nurse who was in attendance upon my wife came running to me and said that my wife was worse, and was going out of her mind ; that she had called upon Maria and mother, and had sprung out of bed and run towards the door, crying: * Stop, Maria ! Stop, mother ! Don't go yet ! ' " I soon consulted Miss White again, and Maria again purported to control. My wife had been un- able for some days to retain any food in her stomach, 105 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION could not even keep water or milk, and was very weak and also unable to sleep. Maria told me to give her some hot, very strong coffee, with plenty of cream and sugar, and some cream toast. This prescription amazed me, but it was prepared. My wife ate and drank with relish, and slept soundly afterwards. She lived upon this food for some days, but gradually be- came unable to take even this. I consulted Miss White again, and Maria told me to get some limes, and to give my wife some pure juice of the lime sev- eral times a day ; she said that this would give her an appetite and enable her to retain food. The prescrip- tion was a success ; but gradually my wife failed, and I consulted Miss White again and asked Maria how long my wife would continue to suffer. She said she could not tell exactly when she would pass away, but would give me a warning : * The next time she says she has seen me, don't leave her afterwards.' " Some days after, as I was relieving the nurse about three or four in the morning, the nurse said: ' Mammie ' (meaning my wife) 'says she has seen Maria again.' In a few minutes my wife said : ' I must go.' And she expired." — E. Paige ; Mary A. Paige, formerly Mary Dockerty, the nurse. The object, therefore, in calling attention to the incidents which I think impressive is to urge an or- ganized effort to certify a larger number of them, if this be possible. What is urged is that efforts be made to report for record all the death-bed visions and utterances that may possibly bear upon the issue suggested in such as we have quoted. I would pro- pose that all persons interested in the work of the Society for Psychical Research report all such 106 VISIONS OF THE DYING experiences as have come under their notice. In this way a census of them can at least be initiated. To this method I hope to add some means of inducing physicians in their private practice to be on the watch for them and to report them to the proper per- sons. We may ultimately induce physicians in the hospitals to instruct nurses and officers to make ob- servations and to record all experiences of an hallu- cinatory character or otherwise. In any case they will be rare, but on one side or the other of the issue there is no other way to give our convictions a scien- tific character. The cases which I have mentioned show interesting coincidences and are too suggestive to disregard the opportunity to collect similar instances with a view to their study in detail. We must expect the largest number of them to be non-evidential, that is, to repre- sent facts which are not verifiable in respect to the other side. But if they can be obtained in sufficient numbers to exclude chance in respect of the persons said to appear in such apparitions we may have a sci- entific product. To exclude chance we need to com- pare them with visions that do not represent the dis- carnate as thus appearing, but that may be treated as casual hallucinations. Hence we shall want to take account of all types of dying experiences as ob- served by the living. It will be especially important to have records from those who were thought to be very ill or dying and recovered, who may describe pe- culiar experiences in conditions bordering on death. It is therefore hoped that my readers will call atten- tion to any such cases that may have come within 107 PSYCHICAL EESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION their knowledge and to aid in securing a record of them. The extension of the inquiry to hospitals and asylums will require time and such interest as physi- cians may be induced to take in collecting data for study. But a good beginning can be made inde- pendently of the more organized effort to obtain rec- ords. The present article is simply an appeal for assistance in an important investigation. The inter- esting incidents quoted seem to be inexplicable by chance and a large number of similar cases would more certainly exclude it from consideration. 108 CHAPTER V experiments with mrs. piper since dr. richard Hodgson's death I summarize here some results of experiments since the death of Dr. Richard Hodgson. They of course implicate Mrs. Piper, but I do not mean to confine the phenomena to what has occurred through her. The reason for this is apparent. The scientific scep- tic would not easily be convinced by any alleged mes- sages from Dr. Hodgson through that source. He wishes to be assured that Mrs. Piper had no means of knowing the facts which illustrate the personal iden- tity of real or alleged communicators before accept- ing even telepathy as an explanation. I must there- fore respect this attitude in quoting any facts which show intelligence of a kind not referable to guessing or chance coincidence. It is not that any suspicion of Mrs. Piper's honesty is to be entertained at this late day, as the past elimination of even the possibility of fraud as well as the assurance that she has not been disposed to commit it are sufficient to justify ignoring it. But our troubles have not been wholly removed when we have merely eliminated the right to accuse her of fraud. A far more complicated objec- tion arises and this is the unconscious reproduction of knowledge acquired in a perfectly legitimate way. Dr. Hodgson had been so long associated with Mrs. Piper that we cannot know, without having his own 109 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION ante-mortem statement, what he may casually have told her about himself and his life. It is easy to ex- clude previous knowledge of total strangers, but a man who had worked for eighteen years in experiment with Mrs. Piper is exposed to the suspicion that he may have told many things to her in a casual man- ner which may turn up in unconscious simulation of his personality. I do not here concern myself with that hypothesis of many unscientific people who think that Mrs. Piper's mind has drawn telepathically into it the personality and memories of Dr. Hodgson pre- vious to his death and can at pleasure afterwards reproduce them and palm them off as spirits. Any one who can believe such a thing without an iota of evidence for it can believe anything. I shall not treat seriously such an hypothesis until it conde- scends to produce at least some evidence for itself commensurate with the magnitude of its claims. I am not attracted by miracles as long as a perfectly simple theory will explain the facts, and hence I should be much more impressed by either fraud or secondary personality than by any such credulous acceptance of the supernatural, for supernatural of a most astonishing kind it would be. Under the known circumstances it is far easier to suppose that Mrs. Piper might have casually acquired information from her conversations with Dr. Hodgson and that the trance state produces it in spiritistic forms. That is the real difficulty which the scientific man has to face. For this reason I shall have to exercise great cau- tion in selecting the facts which are probably free 110 EXPERIMENTS WITH MRS. PIPER from this suspicion. In doing so I shall assume that the reader knows what has been done to protect Mrs. Piper's seances from the accusation of conscious fraud on her part. All this will be taken for granted in the present narrative, and such facts selected as are most likely to be representative of supernormal infor- mation. In the instances implicating other psychics besides Mrs. Piper we shall have facts which may help to protect those coming from her. Upon these spe- cial stress may be laid, but some of those " communi- cated " through Mrs. Piper are so forceful in illus- tration of personal identity and so difficult to have been in any way ascertained by Mrs. Piper, when we know how cautious and reticent Dr. Hodgson actually was about his affairs to her, that they will serve to allay a natural curiosity of the public which demands such communications, if the theory which Dr. Hodg- son held before his death is to be considered as true. I believe that this interest has its rights and that an organization like the Society for Psychical Research, receiving the funds of its members, owes something to them in return, and while it must maintain a cer- tain reserve in the publication of its facts it is easy to postpone this duty beyond all rational limits. I will not attempt to publish the detailed record of experiments, for we may well abbreviate results to merely illustrate the type of facts which we have in our possession. I repeat that the reader must assume that I have allowed for the usual and simple objections to the phenomena which I mean here to summarize. I should admit frankly that, if I were dealing with 111 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION ordinary professional mediums the facts which I ex- pect to narrate would have no evidential or scientific importance. It is because they follow a long history of accredited facts that they derive at least a sugges- tive value. The reader may entertain the account as one of hypothetical importance and await the investi- gation of cases where the same reservations will not have to be maintained. Again before starting on the facts which are to serve as evidence of something supernormal in the communications purporting to come from Dr. Hodg- son, I must remind the reader that we can give only the most trivial incidents. We are not engaged in the recording and parading about of great revela- tions. This must not be expected. We are employed in a scientific problem which is one of evidence and only the most trivial circumstances will serve as proof of the hypothesis which seems to be illustrated in the phenomena of Mrs. Piper. If we are to believe in the spiritistic theory to account for her case, or to explain any other phenomena supposed to be pro- duced by the discarnate, we cannot forget that the primary problem is the proof of personal identity. If a spirit claims to communicate or produce phenom- ena not easily explicable by ordinary methods it must prove its identity and must communicate little trivial incidents in its past earthly life which cannot be guessed and which are not common to the lives of other people. In other words we must have supernormal in- formation and such a quantity as well as quality of it as will make the spiritistic theory more probable 112 EXPERIMENTS WITH MRS. PIPER than any other. Ethical or other revelations are worthless for this problem and have to be discarded, whatever other interest psychological or philosophical they may have. Hence readers must not be disap- pointed if we insist on concentrating their attention upon the incidents that prove personal identity and the supernormal character of the information con- veyed through Mrs. Piper. When we have reason to accept the supernormal and to believe that its selective reference to the personality of deceased persons makes survival after death probable, we may take up the other problems, but we cannot do more than one thing at a time. One of the early incidents in the communications through Mrs. Piper purporting to come from Dr. Hodgson implicates another psychic to a slight extent. Dr. Hodgson and I had made an experiment with a certain young lady, who had mediumistic powers and who was not a professional psychic, nearly a year before his death. A short time after his decease a friend was having a sitting with Mrs. Piper and in the course of the communications — to be called this on any theory of them — the friend asked if he would communicate with her through any other " light," the term used by the trance personalities to denote a medium. The reply substantially was: " No, I will not, except through the young light. She is all right." Later in the sitting one of the trance personalities or controls, referring to this told the sitter that I (Hyslop) understood to whom this referred, giving my name. Dr. Hodgson added to 113 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION his statement that, as soon as he recovered from the shock of death he had examined the case and found it all right. Now Dr. Hodgson and I, with the parents and one or two relatives, were all that knew anything about this case. The sitter and others associated with the experiment in Boston did not know the meaning of the incident and reference. When I was informed of it, the matter was made perfectly clear. It is true that Dr. Hodgson, while living and after our ex- periment with the young lady, had mentioned the case without names to the trance personalities so that at least Mrs. Piper's subliminal can be supposed to have been aware of the facts sufficiently to deprive the inci- dent of the evidential value which we would like it to have. But the most striking incident is one that in- volves a cross reference with this young lady. The father carefully kept the knowledge of Dr. Hodg- son's death from his daughter and very soon after his death and about the time of the incident just men- tioned wrote me that they had had a sitting with the daughter and that the control had said he had seen Dr. Hodgson. This coincides with his statement through Mrs. Piper that he had examined the case and found it all right. Another incident of some interest is the following. We had been working together in behalf of the plan which we are now putting into execution since his death, namely, the formation of an independent Amer- ican Society. We had met the second summer before at Putnam's Camp in the Adirondacks to talk it over and did so, agreeing there upon the main outlines of 114 EXPERIMENTS WITH MRS. PIPER the scheme. It was our intention to talk the matter over again last summer (1905) at the same place, more especially with reference to points not touched on in our first interview which was occupied with the main outlines. But he was not at the camp when I called and I missed him. He then wrote me that he would either return to Boston by way of New York or make a special trip to New York after his return to settle matters. He was prevented doing this as soon as he had expected and at last decided that he would come after the holidays. Less than two weeks before this he was in his grave. Hence the reader will appreciate the following communications. After alluding to the pleasure of seeing the new world beyond death, a circumstance wholly worthless for any rational purposes in this discussion, he changed the subject. I quote the record, putting what I said in parentheses and what was written auto- matically by Mrs. Piper without enclosure of any kind. " I will now refer to the meeting I proposed having before I came over. (When was the meeting to be?) " I suggested having a meeting in New York, at the — (Yes, that is right.) " No one could know about these plans better than yourself. (That is right.) " Do you remember my desire to publish my report next season. Yes, extracts. (About whom were the extracts?) 115 PSYCHICAL. RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION " I wish to publish extracts about our telepathic experiments. (All right. That was not what I was thinking about. But go ahead.) " I also wished to publish extracts about the spirit side of test experiments and my theory in answer to some criticism I recall from Mrs. Sidgwick." Now it was a part of Dr. Hodgson's plan to have his reply to Mrs. Sidgwick's strictures on his report in 1899 ready for the first publication of the new movement. We had agreed upon this. We may suppose that Mrs. Piper knew of his desire to reply to Mrs. Sidgwick, but hardly of his plan to meet me and talk over the matter in New York which had been quietly arranged. The allusion to " telepathic ex- periments " is intelligible only in the light of the fact that Mrs. Sidgwick in her criticism admitted the prob- ability that in Dr. Hodgson's Report he had a rec- ord of frequent telepathic or other form of com- munication from the dead, though through the sub- liminal mental action of Mrs. Piper. But Mrs. Sidg- wick could not accept what Dr. Hodgson had called the " possession " theory of the process. His probable intention in his reply to her was to quote the record of telepathic experiments in the Society's Pro- ceedings to show that the analogies between them and the Piper phenomena could not be sustained. How- ever that may be it is a relevant point in the prob- lem, and his special conversation with me turned upon the selection of extracts from the records to show that his theory of the matter was defensible. He had no occasion to reply to her attitude of the spirit 116 EXPERIMENTS WITH MRS. PIPER hypothesis, as she had tacitly conceded this and only disputed his view of the process. He and I had fre- quently talked over his reply and I had called his at- tention to an important point he could make in it from the failure of one of the Piper Reports to quote the record in full, actually leaving out a sentence which was the clue to the whole difficulty in the com- munication. On the occasion when we visited the " young light " we also had some sittings with a case of alleged in- dependent voices. I had reached the city a few days previous to Dr. Hodgson and in order to test the genuineness of the claims, in accordance with a request of my host, I used a liquid to put in the psychic's mouth, as the experiments had to be conducted in pitch darkness. In the communications through Mrs. Piper, Dr. Hodgson interrupted some allusions to the effect of death upon the memory and continued. " I shall never forget our experiments with a so- called light when you took a bottle of red liquid. (Very good. You know what a noise that man has made.) " I do. I know all about it. (I have had some controversy with a friend of his.) "Recently? (Yes, recently. Now can you answer a question? Tell me who it was or all you can recall about it.) " Yes, which ? I remember our meeting there. I can remember the liquid experiment which was capital. I also recall an experiment when you tied the handker- chief. (I do not recall it at this moment.) 117 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION " What's the matter with you? (I have tied a handkerchief so often.) " Remember the voice experiment? (Yes, I remember that well. That was when the liquid was used.) " I am referring to it now. I know it perfectly well, but no one else does. (Yes, that's right.) " I remember how she tried to fool us. (Yes, it was my first trial at that.) " I remember it well. Remember one thing and keep this on your mind. I shall avoid referring to things of which you are thinking at the time as much as possible and refer to my own memories. I have seen too much not to understand my business. I re- member what our conversation was. She was an arrant humbug. (Yes, I remember well.) " I wish to recall an incident. Do you remember writing me from the west about an experiment you tried to make while there? (Yes, go on please.) " It was on the whole good. (Yes, I think it was on the whole good.) " After there is some definite arrangement made here about some one to fill my place, I hope you will take this up again when I shall help you." The liquid that I used in the experiment was not red but purple. A part of the controversy that arose regarding the case occurred before Dr. Hodgson's death, but not the part that I had in mind. There was no handkerchief tied on the occasion, but on the 118 EXPERIMENTS WITH MKS. PIPEK, train coming home Dr. Hodgson told me of a most interesting experiment with himself in which the handkerchief had been used to bandage his own eyes and he showed me how almost impossible it is to wholly exclude vision on the part of a shrewd person by bandaging the eyes. This, of course, is not indi- cated in the statements of the communicator, but it is near enough to remind me of what he had said and as any allusion to a handkerchief in this connection is pertinent one must imagine that the incident which I have mentioned was actually intended, and that either his own amnesic condition or the misapprehen- sion of the trance personality in control is responsible for the mistake. The opinion expressed of the medium on the occa- sion is the opinion that he held about the case when living and so is a point in identity though it cannot be used to reflect on her character in any respect, as one may hold that the evidence for fraud was not satisfactory. But Dr. Hodgson was very fully con- vinced that there was no reason to believe it genuine. It is interesting to remark the allusion to not tell- ing me what I was thinking of at the time. I doubt if any other communicator than Dr. Hodgson would think of this point. He was so familiar with the objection to the spiritistic hypothesis from telepathy that he was always on the lookout for the facts that told against this objection and here it turns up as a habit of thought which few would manifest. The last incident is quite as important as any of the others. Nearly two years before I had had an experiment with a psychic out west, a non-professional 119 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION case — I would not quote a professional type — and I not only obtained some important names, but I re- ceived the Christian name of George Pelham in re- sponse to the request that my father bring the man there who had helped him communicate in the Piper case, and this was not known by the woman. After- ward George Pelham stated through Mrs. Piper that he had got his Christian name through in this case. This is the reason that Dr. Hodgson thought it a good one on the whole. The communications quoted were followed by an al- lusion to the newspaper stories about his " return- ing." No mention was made of the papers, but only of the stories to that effect. I then asked him if he had been anywhere and he replied that he had tried though not very successfully, and then said he had tried with the " young girl." The pertinence of this will be apparent to the reader after noting the inci- dent narrated earlier in this chapter. I then asked if he had tried at the case in which I had been inter- ested so long. I referred to the Smead case not then published.* The reply was as follows: " I will tell a message I tried to give. I said I had found things better than I thought I had. I also spoke of your father. Do you remember this. I am Hodgson. I have found things better than I hoped." He then made an allusion to my hypnotic experiment with a student, but as this had been published in my Report on the Piper case the mention of it has no value. There were a number of allusions to Dr. Hodgsou * See Chapter VIII. 120 EXPERIMENTS WITH MRS. PIPER in the automatic writing of Mrs. Smead before she knew of his death which had been carefully concealed from her by Mr. Smead, and one or two apparitions of him associated with a frequent apparition of my- self. At one sitting the name of my father was asso- ciated with that of Dr. Hodgson, but there was no statement that he had found things better than he had hoped. There were many pertinent statements which have no place in this account further than to men- tion the fact, and later the very language here stated as having been given through this case was found in my record of it, save the reference to the way in which he found things. I come now to a set of incidents which are perhaps as important as any one could wish. I had an ar- rangement for three sittings beginning March 19th (1906). Previous to this I arranged to have a sit- ting with a lady whom I knew well in New York City., She was not a professional psychic, but a lady occu- pying an important position in one of the large cor- porations in this city. This sitting was on the night of March 16th, Friday. At this sitting Dr. Hodg- son purported to be present. His name was written and some pertinent things said with reference to my- self, though they were not in any respect evidential. Nor could I attach evidential value to the giving of his name as the lady knew well that he had died. I put away my record of the facts and said nothing about the result to any one. I went on to Boston to have my sittings with Mrs. Piper. Soon after the beginning of the sitting Rector, the trance personality usually controlling, wrote that he 121 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION had seen me " at another light," that he had brought Hodgson there, but that they could not make them- selves clear, and asked me if I had understood them. I asked when it was and received the reply that it was two days before Sabbath. The reader will see that this coincides with the time of the sitting in New York. Some statements were then made by Rector about the difficulty of communicating there, owing to the " intervention of the mind of the light," a fact coinciding with my knowledge of the case, and stated that they had tried to send through a certain word, which in fact I did not get. When Dr. Hodgson came a few minutes afterward to communicate he at once asked me, after the usual form of his greeting, if I had received his message, and on my reply that I was not certain he asked me to try the lady some day again. As soon as the sitting was over I wrote to the lady without saying a word of what had happened and arranged for another sitting with her for Saturday evening the 24th. At this sitting one of the trance personalities of the Piper case, one who does not often appear there, appeared, with Miss X. as I shall call her, and wrote his name. Miss X. had heard of this personality, but knew that Rector was the usual amanuensis in the Piper case. Immediately following the trance per- sonality whose name was written Dr. Hodgson pur- ported to communicate and used almost the identical phrases with which he begins his communications in the Piper case — in fact, several words were identical, and they are not the usual introduction of other com- municators. After receiving this message I wrote to 122 EXPERIMENTS WITH MRS. PIPER Mr. Henry James, Jr., without saying what I had got and asked him to interrogate Dr. Hodgson when he got a sitting to know if he had recently been communicating with me and if he answered in the affirmative, to ask Dr. Hodgson what he had told me. About three weeks after Mr. James had his sitting and carried out my request. Dr. Hodgson re- plied that he had been trying to communicate with me several Sabbaths previously and stated with some ap- proximation to it the message which I had received on the evening of the 24th. The reader will perceive that these incidents involve cross references with another psychic than Mrs. Piper, and though I am familiar with the methods by which professional mediums communicate with each other about certain persons who can be made victims of their craft it must be remembered that we are not dealing with a professional medium in Miss X. and that we can not call Mrs. Piper this in the ordinary use of the term. I can vouch for the trustworthiness of Miss X. and think that the ordinary explanation of the coincidences will not apply in this instance. The next day after the sitting just mentioned when Dr. Hodgson came to communicate he asked me if I remembered anything about the cheese we had at a lunch in his room. At first I thought of an incident not connected with a lunch, but with an attempt at intercommunication between two mediums in which a reference to cheese coming from Dr. Hodgson was made, but as soon as the mention of a lunch was made, which had no relevance to what I was thinking of, I recalled the interesting circumstance that once, and 123 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION only once, I had had a midnight lunch with Dr. Hodgson at the Tavern Club when he made a welsh rarebit and we had a delightful time. Another incident is still more important as repre- senting a fact which I did not know and which was relevant to a mutual friend who was named and who knew the fact. At this same sitting Dr. Hodgson sent his love to Prof. Newbold, of the University of Pennsylvania, and told me to ask him if he remem- bered being with him near the ocean on the beach. I inquired of Prof. Newbold if this had any pertinence to him and he replied that the last time he saw Dr. Hodgson was in the previous July at the ocean beach. At the next sitting I had the " young light " pres- ent for certain experimental purposes. After the communications relevant to her and after she had left the room Dr. Hodgson asked me if I remembered the meeting we had had with her and what he had said about her hysteria, saying that he explained it as a partial case of hysteria. The facts were that, after our meeting with the young lady and while we were walking to a friend's for dinner, Dr. Hodgson re- marked to me that he thought there was some hysteria in the case and that she was a very clever girl, the last remark being repeated here on this occasion through Mrs. Piper. At a sitting on April 25th after an allusion to telep- athy in which he said there was none of this in the process except in what came from his mind to me through Mrs. Piper, Dr. Hodgson took up another important message whose truth and importance I 124 EXPERIMENTS WITH MRS. PIPER learned accidentally some time afterward. He said, in the automatic writing of Mrs. Piper : " Do you remember a man we heard of in — No, in Washington, and what I said about trying to see him? (What man was that?) " A light. (A real light?) " Yes, I heard of him just before I came over. Perhaps I did not write you about this." Now Dr. Hodgson had not written me about any such discovery and the statements had no meaning to me. In June I had some business in Washington and on the 13th I accidentally met a gentleman in charge of a department in one of the largest business houses there and in the course of our conversation he casually mentioned that he had written to Dr. Hodgson a short time before his death about a man there who showed signs of mediumistic powers. It happened that I knew the man and had received from him some years previously an interesting experience. I had not heard from him for several years. He is em- ployed in a very important office. In my conversa- tion with the first mentioned gentleman I learned that recently this other man referred to had clearly shown indications of mediumistic powers. Here then was the possible explanation of the allusion at this sitting on April 25th. I had known absolutely nothing of the facts until thus mentioned at the sitting and after- ward verified in the way described. I am not going to enter into any elaborate theo- 125 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION retical explanation of these incidents. As I have al- ready said, the scientific man will attach less value to what purports to come from Dr. Hodgson through Mrs. Piper than if it came from some one else. Be- sides I am not anxious to insist upon explanations at present. The most important point is to have the facts, and if there were space I would be glad to give the detailed records, since these are the data which a really scientific man wishes. But this is obviously out of the question at the present time. I desire only to excuse the demand for the investigation of such phenomena. It will be apparent, I think, to every man that these statements through Mrs. Piper are not due to chance, and that, if we have reason to believe that Mrs. Piper had not previously acquired by normal means the information conveyed, we have facts which do not have an ordinary explanation. What the true explanation is we need not insist upon. Every one knows what hypothesis I would suggest in the case, but I wish less to keep in the front any supernormal explanation of the phenomena than to present the facts. It is easier to quarrel with theories than it is with facts and if we have any reason to trust the phenomena as supernormal I am quite willing to leave their ultimate cause to the scientific psychologist. I should do no more than hold him responsible for the evidence that any other theory than the superficial one actually applies. But there need be no haste in the adoption of any special theory ; it is the collec- tion of similar phenomena that is now the most im- portant task before us. 126 CHAPTER VI FURTHER EXPERIMENTS RELATING TO DR. HODGSON SINCE HIS DEATH In the previous chapter I mentioned the most strik- ing incidents affecting the personal identity of Dr. Richard Hodgson, which were hardly explicable by the most obstinate sceptic on any ordinary grounds. There were many incidents which those who are familiar with the Piper phenomena and Dr. Hodgson's policy in life could very well believe were supernormal, but it is hardly advisable to press them into too confident a service in favor of undoubted supernormal knowledge, especially when we may call into use much more striking incidents than such as made up the previous chapter. The present chapter will extend the important incidents so as to exclude more effectively the appeal to ordinary explanations of all kinds and to implicate other persons than Mrs. Piper in the results. One of the first set of incidents in the previous chapter was of the type to which special reference will be made in the present collection. I mean inci- dents which we call cases of " cross reference." These are incidents and statements obtained through two or more mediums who do not know the facts so obtained. Thus, for example, suppose I obtain a " message " through the mediumship of A and then have an ex- periment with B who does not know that I have had 127 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION a sitting with A, and suppose I received the same "message" through B, I am entitled to conjecture the same source for both " messages." This will be true on any theory of them. The importance to be attached to such results is this: the possibility of es- tablishing a certain kind of personal identity inde- pendently of the communication of past memories, which are the first step in proof of a theory of spirit- istic sources. What we must demand, as already ex- plained, is the obtaining of incidents which any living and surviving consciousness would naturally report in proof of personal identity when that is questioned. When this is once done — and it can be done only through memory of the person " communicating " — we may resort to all sorts of watch-words given us by a specific person and communicated through other mediumistic sources in proof of identity where we can exclude all other human knowledge of the facts. It would very naturally require a larger number of inci- dents to prove the personal identity of a deceased person through one source than to prove its identity in a second case after it has been established in the first. The reasons for this we need not emphasize, and they may be apparent to all who have paid any attention to the difficulties encountered in the study of an individual case. The primary reason, however, is that we can most assuredly isolate the medium's possi- ble knowledge in such cases and render it less probable that the explanation is due solely to individual idiosyn- cracies of the person through whom the " message " comes in the first place. It is these circumstances which make " cross refer- 128 EXPERIMENTS WITH MRS. PIPER ence " Incidents especially cogent and important. I gave but few of them in the previous chapter and propose to give more of them here, as they have been obtained since the experiments which were quoted be- fore. I shall also include some incidents which are not cases of " cross reference." I shall summarize those of cross reference first as they are the stronger type. I first give some incidents which I obtained through a psychic who is not in any respect professional. I have already explained the value of such cases. It is that of one whose name and identity I am required ab- solutely to conceal, as the lady has such social stand- ing as would be affected by the intolerant and un- charitable attitude of the public. I am sorry, of course, that I am not able to mention names, but I recognize the duty of secrecy in this case and for more reasons than the one which I have indicated. Pri- marily I must say no one is safe from the modern curse of newspaper reporters and editors, who have no respect for any of the courtesies and humanities of life. I repeat that this lady is not only not a pro- fessional psychic, but does not privately experiment outside the innermost circle of her intimate relatives and friends. I shall not give any clue to the part of the country in which she lives with her husband and children. I shall call the lady Mrs. Quentin. I received last spring some samples of her work which was with the Ouija board and was so pleased with it that I was permitted to be present at an ex- periment on the date of October 4th, 1906. There were five persons present in all; except myself, none 129 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION but intimate relatives, of the same social rank as Mrs. Quentin. The manner of " communicating " is as follows. Mrs. Quentin holds her finger tips on a piece of glass like the bottom of a tumbler. There is no spe- cial reason why it should be glass. Under some " in- fluence " the fingers move the glass to the letters of the alphabet which are arranged about a central square. After indicating a letter in the process of spelling out " messages " the hand returns to this central square, and then, often after a pause, goes to another letter of the word which is in the process of spelling. Usually a word or sentence is spelled out before a pause takes place. Various causes of ap- parent embarrassment occur to determine a pause, but it is not necessary to remark this fact. The im- portant circumstance is that the hand moves about over the Ouija board pointing out letters which spell out intelligent " messages " purporting to come from deceased persons. With this conception of what goes on the reader will be prepared to understand the in- terest that attaches to some of the incidents of the process duplicated through Mrs. Piper. At this experiment the " communicator " purported to be George Pelham. This is the published name of a friend of Dr. Hodgson's who succeeded in establish- ing his personal identity to Dr. Hodgson through Mrs. Piper and was the main subject of the Report on that case by Dr. Hodgson in 1898. George Pelham gave the same initials through Mrs. Quentin that he had given through Mrs. Piper, though no value can be attached to that fact since Mrs. Quentin knew it, 130 EXPERIMENTS WITH MRS. PIPER as she had read this Report. He had been " com- municator " some time previous to my experiment. On this occasion of October 4th he gave some evi- dence of his own identity in matters pertaining to " communications " at my first sitting with Mrs. Piper in 1898. Mrs. Quentin had not read my Report on these sittings and so had no knowledge of the facts. After some incidents had been given that were not relevant to the matter of " cross references " associated with Dr. Hodgson, the following colloquy took place in the manner described. I put in parentheses what was said by myself and the rest is what was spelled out on the Ouija board. " (Well, George, have you seen any of my friends recently?) No, only Richard H. (How is H?) Progressive as ever. (Is he clear?) Not very. (Do you mean when he communicates or in his nor- mal state?) Oh, all right normally. Only when he comes into that wretched atmosphere he goes to pieces. Won- der how long it will take to overcome this. (Do you see Hodgson often?) Yes, our lives run in parallels." On the 10th of October I had an experiment with Mrs. Piper, and of course kept absolutely secret both that I had had this sitting of October 4th and the contents of it. The following is what occurred in reference to the sitting of October 4th, as the inci- 131 PSYCHICAL, RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION dents will suggest. I shall have to quote the record at considerable length. I adopt the same form as be- fore. The square brackets indicate that the matter enclosed consists of explanatory notes or comments added after the experiment or at the time and do not indicate anything that was said on the occasion. After the preliminaries by the " control," who claimed to have the assumed name of Rector, the fol- lowing took place on the appearance of what claimed to be Dr. Hodgson. " I am Hodgson. (Good, Hodgson, how are you?) Capital. How are you, Hyslop, old chap ? (Fine.) Good, glad to hear it. Did you receive my last message? (When and where?) [I of course had in mind the incidents from which the previous quotation is taken.] I told George to give it to you. (Was that recently?) Yes, very. (I got something about you from George. May be he can tell. ) [I was here thinking of George Pelham.] Oh, yes, well I told him to tell you. I mean George D [name written in full at the time.] (No, he did not write to me.) Too bad. Ask him about it, or better still I will tell you myself. I said I tried to reach you and an- other man whom I thought to be Funk. (No.) 132 EXPERIMENTS WITH MRS. PIPBR I heard you say Van. (I do not recall that word, but I think I know what place it was.) You called out Van. I heard it and tried to give a message through him. (I was not experimenting with a man, but you might have seen a ' light ' in him.) [The man pres- ent on the occasion was in mind.] Yes, I did, and I thought I could speak but I found it too difficult. He did not seem to under- stand. (DidG. P. try?) Yes, George did and said I was with him. Get it? (I did not get any message of that kind, but he said some things.) He said he would help and he did so. You must bear in mind that I am constantly watching out [for] an opportunity to speak or get at you. Did I under- stand the name right? I heard him say something about light. (Yes, that's correct.) [Reference had been made by G. P. at that experiment to the Smead case.] Do not think I am asleep, Hyslop. Not much. I may not understand all that goes on, but I hear more than I explain here. (Yes, I understand.) Therefore you must get what I can give here and try to understand why it seems so fragmentary. I do not feel your lack of interest, but I do feel great difficulties in expressing [myself] through lights [mediums]. (Yes, what ' light ' was it that George spoke 133 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION about?) [I thought of the Smead case, expecting something would be said about it.] He spoke about this [Mrs. Piper] and the woman you experimented with." [G. P. did spontaneously speak of the Piper case at that sitting from which I quoted above, and also made some pertinent and true statements about the Smead case agreeing with what he had said about it through Mrs. Piper some years ago, the facts not having been published and hence not known by Mrs. Quentin.] The thread of the communications was interrupted at this point by a change of subject not relevant to the " cross reference " incidents which concern us at present. Some minutes later the matter was spon- taneously resumed as follows. " Did you hear me say George ? (When?) At the lady's. (No.) I said it when I heard you say Van. (Was that the last time I had an experiment?) Yes, we do not want to make any mistake or con- fusion in this, Hyslop. (Did G. P. communicate with me there?) He certainly did. Wasn't that FUNK? (No, Funk was not there.) Was it his son? (No, it was not his son.) It resembled him I thought. I may be mistaken as I have seen him with a light recently. (Do you know anything that George said to me?) 134 EXPERIMENTS WITH MRS. PIPER I cannot repeat his exact words, but the idea was that we were trying to reach you and communicate there. (Do you know the method by which the messages came to us?) We saw [Mrs. Piper's hand ceased writing and began to move about the sheet of paper exactly as did the hand of Mrs. Quentin when she spelled out the words by the Ouija board. The most striking feature of this identity was the tendency of Mrs. Piper's hand to move back to the center of the sheet as Mrs. Quentin's always did after indicating a let- ter.] (That's right.) You asked the board questions and they came out in letters. (That's right.) I saw the modus operandi well. I was pleased that George spelled his name. It gave me great delight. I heard you ask who was with him and he answered R. H. (I asked him how you were.) He said first rate or very well. I am not sure of the exact words. Do you mind telling me just how the words were understood. Was it very well or all right ? (The words were ' progressive as ever.') Oh yes! I do not exactly recall those words, but I heard your question distinctly, Hyslop. I leave no stone unturned to reach you and prove my identity. Was it not near water? (Yes.) 135 P8YCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESUERECTION And in a light room? (Yes, that's correct.) I saw you sitting at a table or near it. (Yes, right.) Another man present and the light [medium] was near you. (Yes.) I saw the surroundings very clearly when George was speaking. I was taking it all in, so to speak." At this point the subject was spontaneously dropped and the communicator did not recur to it again. The reader will easily observe the features of identity in the two cases. In the case of Mrs. Quen- tin, G. P. did mention Mrs. Piper and made some pointed remarks about Mrs. Smead, " the woman that I experimented with," and mentioned Dr. Hodgson. The description here of the method of communicating through Mrs. Quentin is perfectly accurate, though wholly unknown to Mrs. Piper. Mrs. Quentin was opposite me at the table on which the Ouija board rested, and at my immediate right was a gentleman aiding in the reading of the messages. He had no resemblance to Dr. Funk. Two other men, however, were present sitting farther off. One of them might be mistaken by obscure perception for Dr. Funk, as his iron gray beard and hair might suggest the man named, but only to a mind which did not have clear perceptions and was prepossessed with the idea of the person he thought he saw. It will be as apparent to the reader also that there is much confusion in the communications and that the communicator, on any theory of the phenomena, can- 136 EXPERIMENTS WITH MRS. PIPER not make the " messages " as definite as we desire them. The recognition of this fact by the com- municator himself is an interesting circumstance, and it is noticeable that he says that he knows more than he can explain. Students of this problem and the fragmentary nature of many messages will discover the truth of the statement, as it is evident that far more is in the mind of communicators than is regis- tered through the writing and communications gen- erally, a fact which would be much more natural on the spiritistic theory than any other, assuming that there are both mental and other difficulties on the other side when communicating. But this aspect of the problem is not the primary one in this paper. In connection with the passages which I have just quoted I saw my chance to test another " cross refer- ence." I had previously made arrangements to have an experiment with another psychic in Boston, and as soon as I got the chance I indicated it, and the follow- ing is the record. I was at the sitting with Mrs. Piper. "(Now, Hodgson, I expect to try another case this afternoon.) SMITH. [Pseudonym.] (Yes, that's right.) I shall be there, and I will refer to Books and give my initials R. H. only as a test. (Good.) And I will say books." I was alone at the sitting with Mrs. Piper. She was in a trance from which she recovers without any memory of what happens or has been said during it. 137 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION Three hours afterward I went to Mrs. Smith, who did not know that I had been experimenting that day with Mrs. Piper. After some general " communica- tions " by the control and a reference to some one who was said to be interested in Dr. Hodgson, came the following. In this case it was not by automatic writ- ing as with Mrs. Piper, but by ordinary speech dur- ing what is apparently a light trance. " Beside him is Dr. Hodgson. It is part of a promise to come to you to-day as he had just been to say to you he was trying not to be intense, but he is intense. I said I would come here. I am. I thought I might be able to tell different things I already told. Perhaps I can call up some past interviews and make things more clear. Several things were scattered around at different places. [I have several purported communications from him through four other cases.] He says he is glad you came and to make the trial soon after the other. [I put a pair of Dr. Hodgson's gloves which I had with me in Mrs. Smith's hands.] You know I don't think he wanted them to help him so much as he wanted to know that you had them. You have got something of his. It looks like a book, like a note book, with a little writing in it. That is only to let you know it." At this point the subject was spontaneously changed and I permitted things to take their own course. A little later he returned to the matter and the following occurred. " There is something he said he would do. He said : * I would like to say a word.' I said I would 138 EXPERIMENTS WITH MRS. PIPER say — I know it's a word [last evidently the psychic's mind.] Your name isn't it? [apparently said by psychic to the communicator.] I said I would say: — Each time the word slips. [Pause.] I am afraid I can't get it. It sounds Looks as if it had about seven or eight letters. It is all shaky and wriggly, so that I can't see it yet. Can't you write it down for him so I can see? [apparently said to the communicator.] C. [psy- chic shakes her head.] [Pause.] [Psychic's fin- gers then write on the table.] Would it mean any- thing like ' Comrade ' ? ( No. ) He goes away again. (All right. Don't worry.) [Pause.] Let me take your other hand. [Said to me. I placed my left hand in the psychic's.] No good. [Pause.] I'm trying to do it. I know that he has just come from the other place, and kept his promise to say a word." The reader will notice that I got the reference to books, the promise to say a word, and an apparent at- tempt to give the other promised message which was not successful. It is noticeable that the word " in- itials " has seven letters in it. The message is not so clear as the most exacting critic might demand, but we must remember that we are not dealing with well established methods of com- munication involving perfect command over the men- tal and cosmic machinery for this purpose. The main point is that there is a coincidence of personality and message in the case where it was not previously known that any such reference to books would be rele- vant. For those of us who are familiar with this type of phenomena it is perfectly intelligible to find 139 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION a rambling and incoherent manner in referring to the subject. We assume as a fundamental part of the hypothesis an abnormal mental condition of the me- dium through which the communications come and also of the agent that is instrumental in sending them. That, if true, may well account for the confused way in which the message is obtained and its setting of delirious and irrelevant matter. The reference to a promise, to its having been made that very day, to my having been at the other " light," to the correct name of the party, all but this name being absolutely unknown to the medium, when associated with the reference to books, makes a striking coincidence which hardly seems due to chance or guessing. I should add in this connection another important incident which will strengthen the coincidence involved in the facts just told. I had another experiment the same evening with another young lady who is not a professional and with whose mother I had been in correspondence for some time. I had arranged some time before to have a sitting for that evening. I did not give the slightest hint that I was to be in Boston for any other business and no one of the family was informed of my arrival two days previously or of my intentions of having sittings with Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Smith. When I arranged to go out to the house with the mother I made it appear that I had arrived from New York only a half hour before. Hence it was not known to the mother or to the young lady that I had had any other experiments that day. At the experiment with Mrs. Piper I had used a pair of old gloves which Dr. Hodgson had worn, — 140 EXPERIMENTS WITH MRS. PIPER the same being used for purposes which experimenters in this field understand — and I had placed the same articles in the hands of Mrs. Smith when I got the reference to books. When I had my experiment with the young lady mentioned later in the evening of the same day it was some time before I placed the same gloves in her hands. When I did she paused a few minutes, made a general remark, and then said: " I get books in connection with these." The coincidence again is apparent and whether it is to have any causal significance will depend upon the judgment of each reader who is capable of estimating the character of such phenomena. There was another coincidence which involved a " cross reference." At the experiment with Mrs. Piper that day, Dr. Hodgson referred to a " stylo- graphic pen " which he said he wished me to have. The probable object of this reference was to a circum- stance connected with similar experiments elsewhere, as it seems to be an important part of these experi- ments that we should have some article of the com- municator's to " hold " him, whatever that means. But this aside, the fact is that Dr. Hodgson had a special stylographic pen which was necessary when- ever a certain one of the trance personalities controlled the writing of Mrs. Piper's hand. He had several fountain pens which he used for his own purposes, but his stylographic pen was necessary when Imper- sonator, the chief of the trance personalities, influ- enced the automatic writing. But whatever his ob- ject in alluding to this pen and saying that he wanted me to have it, at this later sitting on the same 141 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION day an allusion was made to " a pen which he car- ried in his pocket " and the statement was made that " it had a little ring around it." I do not know whether the stylographic pen had a ring around it or not, as I was not able to obtain the pen, all of these little trinkets having been given to his friends as mementos. But there was the coincidence of this ap- parent reference to the same thing at both sittings. Allusion was also made at both sittings to the Institute and characteristic references with statements about our co-operation in it which was not known by either medium. One was to a letter which Dr. Hodg- son wrote to me a few weeks before his death about an intended meeting in New York to consider the plans of the Institute. Similar allusions were also made to the organization of an independent Society and its re- lations to the English body. But a more important instance occurred. If the reader will turn to the February number of the Jour- nal (p. 106) he will find there an important allusion to a man in Washington who was said to be a medium and to a letter which the communicator, Dr. Hodg- son, said he may not have written to me about the case. The facts represented by this incident, the reader will recall, were not known by me and were only accidentally learned afterward. This allusion was made in the spring, but it was locked up in my record and the lady with whom I was now holding a sitting knew nothing of this incident. But, after an allusion to a lady who was closely connected with Dr. Hodgson in the experiments with Mrs. Piper, there apparently came from him the following: 142 EXPERIMENTS WITH MRS. PIPER " Have you been to Washington lately ? " (Not specially.) " Is there any psychological work there? I see people who are interested and who will help you in your work. May not be able all at once, but will do it in time." There is no absolute assurance that the incidents are identical in their import, but they are close enough to suggest their probable meaning. The very men- tion of Washington in both sets of experiments and associating it with my experimental work is at least a suggestion in the same direction, though we should desire clearer indications of identity. While referring to this experiment in which the " cross references " occur I might allude to other inci- dents which apparently represent supernormal knowl- edge and purport to come from Dr. Hodgson. Their value lies in the fact that they are incidents ob- tained independently of Mrs. Piper. There was a fair description given of George Pel- ham, the deceased friend of Dr. Hodgson and who had, after his death, convinced Dr. Hodgson of his survival. It was not evidential, but certain state- ments about his being around at experiments was made which is confirmed by evidence of his presence at various other experiments which I have had and which are not known to any one but myself. It may be worth remarking also that an allusion was made to " a little boy four or five years old " and it was said also: " He is grown up. He wears a little blouse and little pants like knickerbockers," fol- lowed by a reference to the family circle. I had a 143 PSYCHICAL, RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION brother who died in 1864 at four and a half years of age. The clothes that he wore are correctly described here and we have always kept a picture of him in this suit. His name and death are mentioned in my Report published in 1901, but no allusion was made to his dress there. It was later, in sittings with Mrs. Piper, that practically the same reference was made to this dress, and the records of that allusion have not been published. Another instance possibly involves a " cross refer- ence " and certainly suggests supernormal knowledge of an interesting kind. Mr. Frederic W. H. Myers purported to communicate with me at this same meet- ing. Having in mind his alleged communication with me through another medium, Mrs. Smead, mentioned on page 222, I asked a question when he purported to be present at this sitting held the same day as the one with Mrs. Piper. The following is what oc- curred with Mrs. Smith: "Mr. Myers. (Yes.) You . . . [incom- plete notes] Myers. He smiles. We are brothers." (Are you there, Mr. Myers?) " Yes, right here." (All right. Have you tried to communicate with me?) " Yes, not here. Another place where there is a younger guide, a man, not Piper, another place in a city. Don't get name through. What we all want is unity of expression through different mediums [un] swayed by their personality, if it helps us to do this well through two or three. We should do it many times." 144 EXPERIMENTS WITH MRS. PIPER (Good, you have done that through one case.) " Yes I know, but we must do it several times. We don't have any question but that it can be done. We must have the key to shut out the personality of the medium. He says he will do that." The kind of experiment here alluded to was a favor- ite one in the plans of Mr. Myers when living and some experiments were performed by himself and Dr. Hodgson in this direction, though the facts were never made public. The characteristic may have been gen- erally known and hence I do not refer to it as evi- dential, but only as suggestive of his identity. The important points, however, are the correct statements that he had communicated with me elsewhere and neither at this case nor at Mrs. Piper's. He never communicated with me at Mrs. Piper's, a fact which was not known by any one but myself. He did pur- port to communicate with me through Mrs. Smead, where the control was a young man. I come now to a complicated series of " cross ref- erences " of which I cannot give the exact details, as the matter is private and personal, though not so to myself. At the last sitting with Mrs. Piper, Dr. Hodgson spontaneously alluded to it and stated that it was private and advised me against the project. The facts were known to but three other persons then living. Dr. Hodgson had not known it when living. I kept the facts so communicated absolutely secret, not reporting them to those who keep the Piper records, but filing the matter in my own iron box. A few weeks later my wife, who passed away some years ago, purported to communicate through Mrs. 145 PSYCHICAL, RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION Smead and spontaneously alluded to the same project, approving of it. Mrs. Smead knew nothing of the facts and nothing of allusions to them through Mrs. Piper. Through another private medium, not a profes- sional in any respect, in another city, whose psychic powers suddenly came to her knowledge all unwit- tingly last spring, my father purported to communi- cate, and alluding to the same facts approved of the project in the identical language which he used in life regarding such matters. As a test of the case, and thinking of what Dr. Hodgson had communicated through Mrs. Piper, I asked him what Dr. Hodgson thought about it. His immediate reply was that he was opposed to it and that he had frequently spoken to him about it. In giving what was alleged to be Dr. Hodgson's opinion on the matter he used an expression which was exactly the sentiment that Dr. Hodgson had expressed to me some years before his death when we were returning on a boat from Nan- tasket Beach. Presently Dr. Hodgson purported to take the place of my father as communicator and showed an attitude of disapproval, but was argued by myself at the time into a half-hearted acceptance of the facts, as a test of the mental attitude of com- municators. In the process of our communications he showed exactly the mental attitude which he had always taken on these matters. Another instance which is not so complicated and hence not so strong, is interesting. On November 22nd, 1906, I had an experiment with Mrs. Quentin again and the first communicator purported to be Dr. 146 EXPERIMENTS WITH MRS. PIPER Hodgson. He did not succeed in getting anything evidential through. He was followed by my father who was quite successful in several incidents, and he by my wife who succeeded in one suggestive message. The method employed was the Ouija board. On November 27th I had a sitting with the lady men- tioned above who resides in another city five hundred miles distant from the place in which Mrs. Quentin lives and who, as said, is a private person. Dr. Hodg- son purported to communicate and the following col- loquy occurred, my father purporting to be the con- trol: "(Is any one with you?)" Yes, Hodgson [written ' Hodgkins,' though the lady knew well how to spell the name]." (Good, will he try?) I will talk for him at first. (How are you Hodgson?) I am still a little shaky, but have hopes that soon I will be as strong as anybody. (Did you try a few days ago at another place? How did they try to communicate?) Yes, but could not work there. By talking with the planchette. (Good, who else tried there?) Your wife. Your father succeeded." As remarked above the Ouija board was the means emplo} r ed on November 22nd, and as this is closely allied to the planchette the mistake is not an important one. In all cases except Mrs. Piper, Dr. Hodgson apparently is very " shaky " and finds it exceedingly difficult if not impossible to communicate. He shows 147 PSYCHICAL, RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION much agitation in the Piper case, and that seems the only instance but one in which he seems to get good messages through. The interest attaching to the way in which he here speaks of my father's suc- cess can be determined by the reader. As the lady through whom these messages came was not in a trance we may assume, from her knowledge of the sittings of the three previous days, that she might guess that my father and my wife had tried, so that I cannot give as much weight to that fact as would otherwise be the case. The coincidences taken to- gether, however, have their value, and each reader may estimate that according to his knowledge of the subject. Another brief incident may be worth mentioning. I went to St. Louis to try a private case, and though the lady was not a good psychic I got some evidence of Dr. Hodgson's presence. This was not good enough to attach any special weight to it, save that the peculiarly shaky style of writing and the form of expression were characteristic of what was done in the Piper case when he purported to communicate. His name was written in a characteristic manner, and when I asked how he was I got the reply : " Fine." This was the word that he had used occasionally in the Piper sittings some months before. This, of course, could not have any special weight by itself, but as a concomitant of manner and phrase that were characteristic it should have a place in the record of attempts to get messages from him. The chief value of this and similar incidents is the light which they throw upon the difficulties of getting evidential 148 EXPERIMENTS WITH MRS. PIPER matter in support of the theory which the phenomena seem to favor. To give the fact more weight than it would have by itself I should call the reader's attention to a cir- cumstance that occurred in the fall a short time after my return from this experiment in the west. This experiment was near the end of September. On October 10th, at Mrs. Piper's, Dr. Hodgson, pur- porting to communicate, and after an allusion to an experiment in the summer, out west, said : " I saw you experimenting with another lady. I tried to say Hodgson. Did you get it ? " It was his full name that I got with the word " fine " in answer to my greeting. The lady, of course, knew that he had passed away and that I would be experimenting for him. But this allusion to another lady than the one in the summer, and the name, tends to suggest that the incident may be one of " cross reference." Its value, if it be what it seems, consists in the multi- plication of the references that tend to add strength to the evidence of the supernormal whose explanation is obvious when we have excluded fraud and secondary personality.* * I have a still better and much more complicated instance of " cross reference " incidents. But as it does not affect Dr. Hodgson or his personality I cannot detail its features here. It involves the prediction through two different and private mediums of the death of a specific person indicated with perfect clearness, relationship to me and another person being stated. I did not myself know that the person was dangerously ill at the time. Also, through both mediums I was told that a certain deceased person was watching over him and would meet him. Through three mediums who did not know of his death and only a few weeks after it, two of them private cases and the other a respectable public medium, this person was mentioned with the most of his name, and the 149 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION I shall pass now from incidents involving " cross reference " to those which do not, and confine myself to what came through Mrs. Piper on October 10th. They may be more specific than the type which I have just illustrated, and must be adjudged by the reader according to his tastes. Immediately after the description of the incidents connected with the Ouija board experiment, Dr. Hodgson, through the automatic writing of Mrs. Piper, said: " I saw you recently writing up all I have said to you. (That's right, Hodgson.) And it pleased me very much. ( I am going to print it in the Journal. ) Amen. You have my consent. I wish the world to know that I was not an idiot. (All right. That's good.) Do you remember a joke we had about George's putting his feet on the chair and how absurd we thought it. (George who?) Pelham, in his description of his life here. (No, you must have told that to some one else.) fact that he met the person who, I was told, would meet him as he crossed the border. The value of the incidents depends mainly upon the reli- ability of the sources through which they came, and I shall urge that less here than I shall its evidential value, if the trustworthiness of the facts can be accepted. I cannot ex- plain here why they can be trusted, but shall do so when the detailed record is published. But their hypothetical im- portance can be considered from the standpoint of " cross reference" while we await the guarantees that normal knowl- edge of the facts was not possible. 150 EXPERIMENTS WITH MRS. PIPER Oh, perhaps it was Billy. Ask him." This, as I said, was on October 10th. During the summer, some time in August, I had been writing out the first and the third papers which are being published in the Journal on Dr. Hodgson's purported communications. The fact was known only to myself and one or two other persons. The attitude of Dr. Hodgson in approval of it was entirely characteristic. He was anxious, when living, to have his judgment in the case vindicated, and while he might not have used the exact language employed in this connection he would have expressed himself plainly in the matter. The use of " idiot " is quite characteristic of George Pelham's ways, and he may have been an intermediary. The other incident I knew nothing about. But I knew what " Billy " referred to. This was the name by which he had always called Prof. Newbold, and so I made inquiry of him regarding the pertinence of the incident. He replied that he and Dr. Hodgson had laughed heartily at some statements of George Pelham, when he was trying to communicate after his death, about the way he did when he was commu- nicating. He claimed that he was in the medium's head and his feet on the table while he was trying to communicate through her hand. The description is ludicrous enough, but the incident, perhaps, is good enough to prove identity, and the best part of its value is that I did not know the facts. Perhaps a more interesting incident is a frag- mentary and confused message whose meaning at the moment I did not detect, but it became apparent soon afterward when I had investigated the matter 151 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION further. The following was communicated in the same manner as previous quotations: " Do you recall the man I referred to now ? (You did not . . . .) [My sentence not finished as writing continued.] The clergyman whom we saw at Pa. San, whose wife was anxious about his trances. (No, you did not mention him.) I did some time ago. Do you remember him? (What was his name?) It was San. . San. . Oh what was it. He was a young man and had not been married long." The facts are these: The Rev. Stanley L. Krebs invited me to take part in some experiments in a certain town in Pennsylvania (Pa.) in which he was to have present a certain clergyman, whose name I must not reveal at present, and who had come thither to test certain incidents that had been mentioned through him in a previous trance. He was a young man and had not been long married. His wife was opposed to his going into trances. We tried some experiments at table tipping and one with this clergy- man's trance. I reported the facts to Dr. Hodgson and Mr. Krebs had some correspondence with Dr. Hodgson regarding the case. There was every reason to believe the phenomena were genuine. But the man's name has no resemblance to " San," and Dr. Hodg- son was not present with me at the experiments and I suspect never saw the clergyman. But he knew all about the case and its phenomena. Apparently " San " is a confused and fragmentary attempt to give the name " Stanley," a part of Mr. Kreb's name, 152 EXPERIMENTS WITH MRS. PIPER this latter part of it having failed to be recalled by the communicator. It can be safely assumed that Mrs. Piper never heard of the case, and if she had, the incidents would never have taken the form which they did. The confusion and fragmentary character of the allusions make them interesting and important. Another brief incident has much interest, as re- flecting the natural action of an independent mind rather than that of a telepathic agent. It is a re- quest that I remember him to a friend whom I did not know, and most probably never saw. He said to me near the close of this same sitting : " Do you remem- ber a friend of mine, George Goddard, at the camp? Give him my love and tell him I live to send it." I have learned from Prof. James that Mr. Goddard had been a member of Putman's Camp in the Adiron- dacks where Dr. Hodgson usually spent a part of his summer vacations. I called twice on Dr. Hodg- son while he was there, spending a couple of hours there with him each time. But I do not recall meet- ing Mr. Goddard there, and it is improbable that Mrs. Piper ever knew anything of the man or his relation to Dr. Hodgson at this camp. The main point of the incident, assuming that it is supernormal, is that it is too much like the action of a real living friend to be attributed to a mechanical agency like telepathy, which, in fact, does not seem to me to be deserving of serious consideration in such incidents. A simple and more natural interpretation, if we are going to be sceptical about the most obvious explana- tion, is Mrs. Piper's previous knowledge of the fact, a supposition which it is hardly necessary to make 153 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION in the light of the proved supernormal character of most of her work. The explanation of these facts takes us beyond the case of Mrs. Piper as every intelligent reader must observe. That has been the purpose of group- ing together the instances of " cross reference " in this article. Members of the Society for Psychical Re- search have constantly reproached us for having no other oracle than Mrs. Piper and for making our case depend upon her phenomena alone. That re- proach cannot be cast against the contents of this chapter. We have involved here five other cases of similar phenomena. Moreover it should be noticed in this connection that the reproach made against the limitation of the case to Mrs. Piper was based upon an entire misunderstanding of the problem and of the reason for talking so much about her. It was not the nature of the phenomena that was the reason for laying so much weight upon it, but the conditions under which they were obtained. Genuine phenomena may be plentiful enough, but scientific credentials may be very scarce. What the Society has been searching for so strenuously was scientific proof and this requires such conditions as exclude the possibility of certain well known objections which the sceptic has the right to have answered, though he too fre- quently entertains them without making himself re- sponsible for the evidence that they are in fact ap- plicable. But we shall never secure our case until it is made impossible rationally to suggest the common objections to the genuineness of mediumistic phe- nomena. 154 EXPERIMENTS WITH MES. PIPEE Now it is the scientific security of the Piper case against all possible objections of fraud that has oc- casioned the perpetual appeal to it as evidence that the ordinary objections to the nature of the facts do not apply. Nevertheless it is important, both for the further exclusion of the right to suspect fraud and for the complication of the phenomena, that we should not only secure other and similar cases, but also a complex system of " cross references," both of which this book supplies. Whatever explanation be proposed it must reckon with these facts. Besides, I have quoted cases of a private nature only, save one, Mrs. Smith, who was protected against suspicion by the small interval of time between the sitting with her and that of Mrs. Piper, as well as the reservation of facts which I made in the matter and the limitation to myself of the knowledge which it was necessary for her to have in order to simulate the supernormal. In all other cases I was dealing with private psychics, and private also in the sense that they are not prac- ticing their art even for their friends in any general way, as well as not receiving any pay for their exper- iments. The one case which is not private has no suspicions raised against her, and even if they were they could not apply to the experiment from which I quote, for the reasons mentioned. Consequently we must at least suppose that we are dealing with facts less exposed than is usually the case to sceptical crit- icism. There are just three hypotheses which are capable of discussion in connection with such facts. They are (1) Fraud, (2) Telepathy, and (3) Spirits. 155 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION Secondary personality would not be presented as an alternative by any one who knows what that phe- nomenon is. Secondary personality, in respect of the contents of its mental action, claims to be limited to the normal action of the senses, and is distinguished from fraud in that its whole character is unconscious, while fraud is properly conscious deception by the normal subject. If fraud in this case be excluded from view there can be no doubt that such facts as have been enumerated are supernormal, whatever the specific explanation. But secondary personality never assumes the supernormal acquisition of knowledge. It is limited to what has been obtained in a normal manner by the subject. Hence it is excluded from view by virtue of that fact. As to fraud, that has been excluded from considera- tion in the Piper case for fifteen or twenty years, and only unintelligent men would talk about it any longer. It has come to a pass where any one who insinuates it must be held responsible for the evidence of his hypothesis. As far as possible I endeavored to con- duct the experiments in most cases in a manner that would require the critic to implicate myself in any fraud suspected, and in any case of that possibility I am hardly competent to investigate myself. But some of the facts make it necessary to implicate me in any theory of fraud. In so far as the mediums are concerned, I think it cannot even be suspected without evidence, unless the one case which is pro- fessional be conceded to the sceptic. For that reason I think it can be dismissed from the account, especially as the one case which certain types of minds would 156 EXPERIMENTS WITH MRS. PIPER desire to except does not figure in any incidents where criticism of any kind is possible. I do not think that telepathy as an explanation will fare any better. In fact I should be ashamed, as one who has tried to be scientific, to advance telepathy as an explanation of any such facts. Any man who knows what he means by the use of this term would not venture to suppose it an explanation. As I ex- pect to discuss the nature of telepathy in a later chapter I shall not give any special reasons for reject- ing it in such facts as have been collected here. I merely say that really scientific men who know what they are talking about, would not, in the light of the evidence, have the temerity to propose it as an ade- quate theory of phenomena involving such a system of " cross references " illustrative of the personal identity of deceased persons and nothing else. I do not think the hypothesis worthy of serious defense. It is an hypothesis worthy only of intellectual prudes. I should much prefer fraud as an explanation ; for we have analogies and experiences enough to make that intelligible, but for the kind of telepathy nec- essary to cover such facts we have no adequate sci- entific evidence whatever. It cannot be tolerated as an hypothesis in such cases until its claims have been established for such selective work. As to the third hypothesis, namely, that of spirits, I shall not undertake any dogmatic defense. It is obvious to me that it is the most rational hypothesis after eliminating fraud from such matters, and my own stand in various publications would indicate what position I would preferably assume. But it is not 157 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION my desire in this article to argue for this conclusion. My main purpose has been to present the facts and to leave the reader to form his own conclusion, but to do this without concealing the preference which everyone perhaps knows I would make. I am quite willing to concede to many who have not spent a long time in the investigation of this complex subject the right still to be sceptical, and especially to doubt the conclusiveness of the facts making for the theory which seems to me the most plausible. I can only say to them that I have not made up my mind upon these facts alone, but upon the whole mass of pub- lished and unpublished records of psychical research. What I here publish is but an illustration of some of the most interesting and perhaps most cogent facts. But I shall not insist that they should be conclusive for the sceptic. The utmost that I shall urge upon him is that they make adequate investigation im- perative, and seeing that the phenomena illustrate the selective reference to the personal identity of deceased persons I think almost any one will admit that, assuming fraud to have been excluded, they make out a forcible case for the further investigation of spiritistic theories. 158 CHAPTER VII CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS RELATIVE TO DR. HODG- SON ; THEORIES. I have hitherto presented matter which may be sup- posed to have claims for evidential character, that is, something supernormal whatever the theory intended for their explanation. It may be interesting to take up some of the non-evidential matter in illustration of features which we have to ignore when dealing with scientific scepticism and which yet represent important psychological material in the record. The reader must remember two things in such a record as that of Mrs. Piper. (1.) There is much material that no scientific man would suspect to have a spiritistic source on its superficial appearance. (2.) The communications also exhibit usually a certain kind of confusion and fragmentary nature that per- plexes scientific men and the public generally. In dealing with the supernormal phenomena we have often to ignore these facts and this may as often give a false impression of the real character of the com- munications for which we are asking credence as coming from a transcendental world. It is, therefore, only fair to all persons and important to science that we should understand what the matter is upon which no stress can be laid in the argument for the super- normal. The facts which impress us as evidence of the transcendental are scattered about in a matrix 159 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION of alleged communications which we cannot treat evi- dentially as such at all. But, although many com- munications are of such a type as not to be conclu- sive evidence of the supernormal, there are many which are confirmatory and have great value as il- lustrating what we should most naturally expect on some hypothesis of their explanation. For this rea- son they will have an interest scarcely less important to science than the actually evidential incidents. I shall, therefore, devote some space to a brief account of some of these data in the records just quoted. I shall only repeat to the reader that I am not quoting this matter in any respect as evidence of either spirits or the supernormal. If we have any reasons for be- lieving it to have the same source as the actually supernormal facts this conviction must have other grounds than their superficial claims. After the evi- dential demands of the supernormal have been satis- fied, the unity of all the phenomena with this conclu- sion may be sufficient to make a respectable claim for that source in the non-evidential statements, but I shall not urge this view of the communications which I expect to quote now. Readers may entertain what- ever view they please. I shall insist only that the statements are a part of the record making a claim for the existence of spirits. One of the first things that the trance personalities wished to do at the sittings referred to was to talk to me about my plans. They assumed the role of superior guides and advisers and undertook to smooth down my temper which had been considerably ruffled by the ruthless disregarding of plans which had been 160 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS ; THEORIES formulating for several years to put the work upon a better basis than it had ever been. There can be no question of the patience and tact with which these personalities handled the matter, though I do not know how much it had been discussed by other sitters prior to my experiments. It is probable that the whole mass of advice is attributable to the suggestions of other sitters. But I am less concerned with this or any other explanation than with the bare fact of psychological fitness and reality about it. I will say, however, that only one or two persons knew my state of mind and one of these was far distant from Bos- ton. It was therefore interesting to see how clearly the trance personalities knew my mental condition. They wanted to know what I was worrying about, and the answer on my part to this query led to a thorough threshing out of the matter in a perfectly intelligible manner representing all the play of reality not less interesting to the psychologist than the phenomena having better claims to a supernormal source. When Dr. Hodgson took his turn to communicate, I badgered him a little for going before I did when he had expected to have the pleasure of hearing from me first. I had broken down in health some years before and did not expect to recover. After a little chivalry on his part, as if aware of the mood in which I was at the time, namely, that of a resolution to abandon the work forever, he said : " Stick to it, Hyslop. I hope you will not give up the ghost." He then broke out with the statement : " I shall not stop to talk rubbish, but let us get down to facts," 161 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION thus characteristically recognizing that it was evi- dence, not mere communication which we wanted. At once, therefore, he asked me if I remembered the difficulties which we had in reference to my Report, the fact being that we had many long discussions about it. I asked him presently if he remembered the word which he said he would have expected me to communicate in proof of identity. It was a word that I had used oftener than he liked, though he ad- mitted that it described exactly what the facts needed. He had said he would never believe it was I if I did not communicate that word. It was quite to the point, therefore, when his reply was : "I do not at the moment, but I will recall and repeat it for you. I remember how we joked about it." In fact, we had joked about it considerably. I have never mentioned the circumstance or the word to any other living person, and I shall not mention the word to any one. In reply I told him to take his time and then came the following : — " Surely I am not going to make a botch of any- thing if I can help it. It is so suffocating here. I can appreciate their difficulties better than ever before. Get my card ? " alluding in the question to the fact that he had prepared his usual Christmas cards for his friends, but they were not sent out until after his death. The mention of the difficulties in communication was quite characteristic, as repre- senting the problem which we had often discussed together and which we wished to have presented more thoroughly before the public. After some further references to experiments which 162 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS ; THEORIES we had wished to carry out while living he interrupted the communications with an allusion to an unverifiable experience after death. He said : " It is delightful to go up through the cool ethereal atmosphere into this life and shake off the mortal body." He had himself believed that the spiritual world was ethereal and we have in this passage one of the many interpola- tions of communicators which represent possibilities but not evidence of what these phenomena purport to be. I come now to a passage which shows a number of interesting and important characteristics. The one to which I wish to call special attention is the abrupt change of subject that so often occurs in these phenomena. It is one that serves more or less as evidence of the theory that the mental condition necessary for communication, at least in the " pos- session " type of mediumship, is like a delirious dream or a wandering and dreaming secondary personality. Besides this abrupt change of topic the reader will notice also interpolations of various sorts which indi- cate the same conception of the process. A more important observation, however, to be made is one that no reader will realize who did not know Dr. Hodgson personally and intimately. It is the expression of thoughts which he would not have expressed while living in the way they are done here. There is an emotional color in the communications at times that would have been inhibited in his natural conversation. The presence of this in them points to the existence of a trance condition on the " other side " as neces- sary for communication with this. I do not say that 163 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION it proves this, but that it consists with the hypothesis made on other grounds, though it does not explain all the perplexities which accompany phenomena of this kind. The passage which I wish to quote began with a more or less evidential reference to an incident connected with my brother in my Report published in 1901. My brother had taken serious objection to what I had said there and hence I put on record with Dr. Hodgson the facts confirmed by the testimony of three other persons as a check against any possible criticism of them. Let me note also for the reader that I never " told " him about it, but I wrote out the facts and sent the documents to him by mail. This feature of the communications is one of those mistakes which are so common and so natural to a dream-like mental state that the form of the mes- sages when evidential at all makes them especially cogent against the unscientific objection of telepathy in the case. To come then to the passage. " Do you remember telling me about some objec- tions your brother made because these good friends told about him? (Yes, I remember that well indeed.) I cannot forget anything if you give me time to recall. You must have great patience with me as I am not what I hope to be later. (All right, Hodgson. Do you find that we con- jectured the difficulties fairly well?) We did surprisingly well. I was surprised enough. Is my writing more difficult than it used to be? (It is about the same.) Do you remember anything about it? 164 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS ; THEORIES (Yes, I do.) I remember your comments about it, and much was left me to explain. (Yes, that is true.) Of course it's true. Think I am less intelligent because I am in the witness box? (No, I understand the difficulties.) I hope you do, but this is the happiest moment of coming over here. I mean in meeting you again. (All right, Hodgson. I feel that it would have been better for you to lead on this side.) Perhaps, but I am satisfied. Do you remember how I said to you I sometimes longed to get over here. (Yes, I expect that was true and I have heard persons say you said it.) I did often. I longed to see this beautiful country if I may so express it." Then followed the incident of our meeting in New York mentioned above. Now the reader should know that Dr. Hodgson never once expressed to me the desire to pass to the other side. But as my statement implies I have heard others say that he had this wish. It was an intense wish of Frederic W. H. Myers, and from the pri- vations which Dr. Hodgson had to suffer in his work I can well imagine that he may often have wished to be where " the wicked ceased from troubling and the weary are at rest." But in asking me if I remem- bered his saying it, his memory lapsed, as would be natural in the " suffocating " condition of which com- plaint is made by more than one communicator. The reader will remark that he admits the hypothe- sis which we had applied to the communicator's condi- 165 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION tion while communicating. Then he suddenly changes to the question of his own handwriting which has some relation to the point or issue which I had raised about the difficulties of communicating. But the form of his question points to a recollection, which, though explicable by Mrs. Piper's knowledge of the same, suggests on any theory a wandering consciousness. His handwriting was a very difficult one for me to read and others of his friends recognized that it was very scrawly. The allusion to my comments on it is perfectly true. As we wrote to each other on important matters, and as I could not read his writing at times, I had on several occasions to return his let- ters and ask for his interpretation of his own writing, and I indulged in some humorous observations about it referring to what a time I would have with it when he came to be a communicator, if our hypothesis about the difficulties of communication were true. Then as if under the excitement of recognition he becomes perfectly clear and breaks out into a natural tone of banter for supposing that what he says may not be true, though the very clearness of his intelligence at the time indicates a marginal conviction that he is not always so in the attempt to communicate. Then that lucid moment runs into an emotional outburst about his happiness at meeting me, a mood which might be natural enough for the time and place and perhaps reflecting in the message the impossibility of hindering the passage of mental states from beyond into the automatic consciousness or sub-consciousness of Mrs. Piper, but certainly also indicating what his 166 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS; THEORIES friends would recognize as an interest which he would not express in words while living. At the next sitting when he turned up to commu- nicate he began to reproach me for losing my grit in this work, as it was known in some way that I meant to abandon it unless some reasonable spirit of co- operation was shown by those managing affairs. In the process of our interview on this matter he became greatly excited and confused and the hand wrote so heavily and rapidly that it tore the paper and when we managed to have it calm down the following came and was most likely the interpolation of the control or trance personality. " In leaving the body the shock to the spirit knocks everything out of one's thoughts for awhile, but if he has any desire at all to prove his identity he can in time collect enough evidence to prove his identity convincingly." Then Dr. Hodgson began with his reference to our experiment with the voice case. (See above p. 100.) In connection with this passage explaining the effect of death, a view quite consistent with what we know of physical shocks to the living consciousness, it might be well to quote what the trance personalit} 7 said to me at a sitting nearly a month later. To try a question which was designed to test the possi- bility of our getting marginal thoughts of the com- municator instead of the main ones intended, I asked at this later sitting if some of the thoughts came through that he did not intend to send. The answer and colloquy was as follows : 167 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION " At times they do and then again his thoughts are somewhat changed. They are not exactly what they were when in the body. (Very good, I understand.) The change called Death which is really only tran- sition is very different from what one thinks before he experiences it. That in part explains why Myers never took a more active part after he came over here. He had much on his mind before he came which he vowed he would give out after he came over, but the shock [was such] that many of his determinations were scattered from his living memory. This is a petty excuse but a living reality — a fact. It is unmistakably so with every one who crosses the border line. (Yes, I can understand how this would take place from similar shocks among the living.) Amen. Well then we need give no further explana- tions on this point if it is understood by you. How- ever when expecting the best results the poorest may be given, unless this is fully understood by those liv- ing in the mortal life. It is only by simple recollec- tions that real proof of identity can be given." If I could take any special incident and compare it with the exact facts as known to the living there would be much in them to confirm such an explanation of the difficulty and confusion connected with the process of communication, assuming the spiritistic hypothesis to be a legitimate one. The explanation here given by the trance personality is certainly plaus- ible though we have no direct means of verifying it. But when we find from internal evidence of the super- 168 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS ; THEORIES normal incidents that confusion of some kind is pres- ent we may well entertain the possibility of a semi- trance on the other side, as a means of studying the phenomena as a whole, and hence I quote the above passages as a sample of statement which must engage the attention and respect of the psychologist, if for no other purpose than to show its tenability in case that can be done. A passage from Dr. Hodgson points in the same direction as that which I have quoted from the trance personalities. He says : — " It is, I find, most difficult to use the mechanism and register clearly one's recollections. I have much sympathy for George whom we badgered to death, poor fellow. He gave me all I had to hope for in spite of my treatment of him. Now just keep your patience with me and you will have all you could ask for. Understand ? " " George " refers to the man whom Dr. Hodgson called " George Pelham " in his Report on the Piper case and who was instrumental after his death in prov- ing to Dr. Hodgson the truth of the spiritistic hy- pothesis. " George " was his Christian name, but " Pelham " was not his surname. It was after Dr. Hodgson tried the hypothesis of a dream-like state as necessary to communicate, that he began to understand the difficulties in the theory. He then came to the conclusion that the best course to take in the experi- ments was to let the communicator have his own way and not to " badger him to death." He often re- marked to me that we could not get what we wanted if we kept nagging at the communicator. Here is 169 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION the repetition of this conception at a moment which the detailed record shows to have been one of confu- sion and excitement. As further illustration of the rapid movement of the memory from incident to incident, occasioned pos- sibly partly by the uninhibited process of thinking on the other side and by the slow mechanical process of the writing compared with this rapid thought in their world, we may continue the passage which I have just quoted. When he asked me to have patience with him and I would get all I could ask for, I went on: — " (Yes, I am quite willing to let you have your own way fully.) I shall take it in spite of you. I am determined to do what I think best. Do you remember the tussle I had with you about getting that book in order ? (Yes, we had many tussles.) Indeed we did. I am wondering if you recall some lines I wrote you once a year or two before I came when you were in the mountains for your health? (I do not now recall them, but it is likely that I can find out because I have absolutely all your letters. Can you mention a few words of the line?) You remember the lines I used to quote often, run- ning like this : ' patience is a blessing,' and your an- swer, and the subject of the rest. You were pleased and replied they were apropos of your condition." Now just as I had said I had kept absolutely every line Dr. Hodgson ever wrote me from the time I arranged for my sittings with Mrs. Piper in 1898 until his death at the end of 1905. There was there- 170 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS ; THEORIES fore a fine chance to verify what was said here. Con- sequently I examined every letter written me after I broke down in June in 1901 until I left the mountains in April, 1902, and not a trace of any such lines appear in the correspondence. In fact not a word of counsel, consolation and spiritual reflection occurs in it. Nor do I recall any mental attitude of the kind in any other part of the correspondence. Dr. Hodgson's habit of indulging in sentiment of this kind, so far as I knew him, was in his Christmas cards which he regularly sent out to his friends each year at the holidays. We have then a promise to prove his identity as George Pelham had done, and in fulfillment of it an incident that is wholly false in re- lation to me, though possibly true in relation to some one else, as in the instance of the " nigger talk " first referred to Myers and then corrected to Prof. James (p. 97). We can well understand why the trance personality should indicate the shock which death may occasion to the memory in the attempt to come back and communicate. The incident here quoted has the same characteristics which a delirium would have, reproducing a mosaic of one's past experiences, telling enough to show that the facts are at least partly correct, as in the allusion to my being in the mountains for my health — a fact most probably known to Mrs. Piper — and another which repre- sented a probable trait in his character but not ex- hibited toward me in the manner stated. I have myself witnessed just such phenomena in the deliria of the living. Another passage has a striking interest as showing 171 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION an appreciation of the problem. I have said pre- viously that he was always on the alert for the type of fact that could not be explained by telepathy and that the message with reference to Prof. Newbold (p. 105) was not explicable by that hypothesis as applied to my mind. At my last sitting after I had ascertained from Prof. Newbold that the allusion was correct, I had also had some correspondence with a Dr. B , who had had a sitting and to whom Dr. Hodgson had made a similar statement with other incidents of what had happened in the conversation between Dr. Hodgson and Prof. Newbold on the ocean beach. At this last sitting Dr. Hodgson brought up the subject spontaneously and soon showed what re- lation it had to the telepathic hypothesis by the way he spoke of it, as the reader will perceive in my quo- tation. " Did Dr. B. prove my message? (Dr. B found that your message to Billy about some conversation that you and he had the last time you saw him was exactly correct and he was delighted with it.) Amen. (Yes, Hodgson, and you told me the same thing twice.) What thing? Before I came over? Do you — ■ — [remember it?] (Yes, Hodgson.) Oh yes, I remember it well. (Good.) There is no telepathy in this except as it comes from my mind to yours. (Good. Then telepathy is at least a part of the process by which you communicate with me.) 172 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS ; THEORIES Most assuredly it is and I had a vague idea before I came over. (Yes, you did.) You remember our talks about the telepathic theory of our friends' thoughts reaching us from this side telepathieally." We did have several conversations on this point and the reader may interpret for himself the psychological interest and importance of the allusion to telepathy in this connection, especially when it is related to an incident not known to myself at the time it was first mentioned. As I have already remarked I cannot produce this as proof of the existence of spirits, though I think many readers will think it of the type of evidence that would constitute good proof if it were not complicated with the personal acquaintance of the communicator with the medium before his death. I have been care- ful to quote the incidents which certainly border on the evidential while they as certainly appear charac- teristic of the alleged communicator, with such modifi- cations as might naturally occur both from the un- natural conditions under which the communications must be made and from the amnesic and disturbed mental state of the communicator, as that is supposed for the sake of explaining the peculiar character of the phenomena. But leaving this hypothesis aside for the moment, the incidents are a part of a large record which contains here and there an incident so specific and clear in its evidence of intelligence that, when fraud is eliminated from its explanation, we have to face an important theory to account for the 173 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION sporadic facts while we endeavor in some way to make the non-evidential incidents intelligible at all. What these partially correct facts show above all else is the complications under which anything supernormal can be acquired, and that once admitted there is the chance to make the whole intelligible and rational. That is the chief task of the future. I suspect many are sufficiently puzzled for methods of explaining away the meaning of the most evidential facts to halt only at the difficulties of comprehending the circumstance that, if messages can come through at all from the transcendental world, they might be more satisfying. The removal of the scepticism which bases itself on this conception of the matter is the problem of larger experiments and the scientific world must undertake the solution of the problem in a spirit of patience and not make demands which would not be made in any other complicated inquiry. I appreciate the feel- ing that, if messages come at all, they should be clearer. But the proper attitude to take is that which frankly recognizes that the collective meaning of the evidential facts must determine the theory adopted and we must seek subsidiary explanations for the associated matter. What people often think an ob- jection to the spiritistic hypothesis is not this at all, but a perplexity in it, a subsidiary question which has to be answered by further inquiry. This may as well be understood at first as at last, and faced in the spirit of true scientific investigation. We must remember, too, that the same perplexity arises in any theory whatsoever that we may take in the case. Even the hypothesis of fraud cannot escape 174 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS ; THEORIES the duty to account for the peculiarities illustrated, and much more must telepathy. It is amusing to see the objector to the spiritistic theory accept telepathy without raising the question as to how it can account for the psychological peculiarities of the phenomena imitative of deliria and dream-like states on the other side, and yet press this limitation against the only theory that can give a rational explanation of them. If the advocate of telepathy really knew anything about that process or hypothesis at all he would be ashamed to urge it with so much confidence. He would find a most imperative duty to investigate it more carefully to see if, in the real or alleged com- munications between the living there were traces of imperfect memories and delirious mental states on the part of agents. I shall not deny the possibility of this, but until it is shown to be a scientific fact, which the present record of alleged telepathic phe- nomena does not suggest, we are not privileged scien- tifically to urge such a process in explanation of the record under discussion. The spiritistic theory may not be the right one. With that I am not at present concerned. But it is entitled to such possibilities as commend it against the inferior claims of other hy- potheses. That is all that I am urging for the mo- ment. Hence it is, I think, that the really scientific man prefers the simple theory of fraud as the more difficult one of the three to displace. Secondary per- sonality he sees does not account for the supernormal part of the phenomena, however it might appear to account for the non-evidential matter. It would be a curious theory which limited the explanatory functions 175 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION of its process to what was relevant to spirits and wholly excluded this from matter which, though not evidential, is characteristic of the conjectured source supposed in this case. Hence I think we may pre- sent, at least provisionally, the hypothesis of discar- nate agency while we press for an investigation equally thorough with that of the past, and perhaps even more prolonged and extended in order to under- stand the limitations of the communications. I have here merely hinted at the explanations of the confusion and limitations of the incidents purporting to be messages from a spirit world. I have been try- ing to confine the subject and the evidence to what purports to come from Dr. Richard Hodgson, but the issue at tins point is so important and the mis- understanding so great that I think it proper in this last article to diverge somewhat from the material affecting the personality of Dr. Hodgson and to dis- cuss what is apparently the most important difficulty in the problem and in doing so to introduce general evidence from other communicators and other psy- chics. I shall begin this part of the discussion by an allu- sion to the difficulty which it seems both laymen and scientific men encounter when asked to believe that we are communicating with spirits. This difficulty, which is usually stated as an objection, is due to the triviality and confusion of the communications. It occasionally takes the form of complaint that we have nothing to show regarding the conditions of life in a spiritual world. I wish to take up these matters 176 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS ; THEORIES and to deal with them as thoroughly as limited space will permit. I think I may best take as illustrative of this dif- ficulty some remarks of the editor of an intelligent newspaper which were published in reference to my article in the February Journal. They put into definite shape a number of points such as I constantly meet when discussing the question, and as the editorial treatment of the matter, though critical and sceptical, was entirely friendly to the investigation, it may conduce to a better understanding of the whole prob- lem to make it the subject of a careful and friendly reply. After alluding to some statements of my own ex- planatory of what is necessary in proof of personal identity, which is the primary issue for the scientific man, namely, trivial incidents of a past earthly life that are verifiable, the editor of the Providence Jour- nal went on with the following remarks : — " It is perhaps best to judge the evidence presented by Professor Hyslop upon this ground, although to many persons it will seem that this is fundamentally an error. To such persons the obvious possibility of the absorption of such ' trivial incidents ' by telepathic communication with the ' spirit ' before his or her de- parture from the flesh, however impossible might be any theory of acquaintance with the facts by the ordinary means of intercourse, will serve as a serious if not a definite deterrent to the acceptation of the relation as a proof of anything. But even casting aside this basic objection and admitting the concep- 177 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION tion of Professor Hyslop to be correct, it is still im- possible to see wherein this narrative of experiments — interesting as it is — establishes the slightest link in the chain, which, in all sincerity, the investigators headed by him are endeavoring to forge. Every por- tion of it relates solely, in a more or less confused manner, to the interests of Dr. Hodgson on earth. There is not the faintest indication of ' supernormal information.' It must be said frankly that neither in quantity nor quality does the information presented lead even to the suggestion of a ' spiritistic theory.' If spirits, who in life possessed the intelligence of Dr. Hodgson, talk such muddle-headed nonsense the mo- ment they discard the flesh, then Heaven help the fool- ish ones of this earth." I shall first discuss the entire misunderstanding of the problem which this writer exhibits ; a misunder- standing, however, which is shared by many others. In the first place the telepathy which this writer assumes and refers to " absorption " by the living of the thoughts of others has absolutely no scientific evidence whatever for its existence. You cannot quote the facts purporting to be from spirits in proof of it, because they bear so definitely on the personal iden- tity of deceased persons. You will have to get evi- dence not so related and there is absolutely none such of a scientific character. The thing you have to explain, is not the remarkable nature of the facts, but their uniform relation to deceased persons. Telep- athy which can acquire incidents about dead people but cannot acquire any about the living is a curious capacity and perilously near being devilish. It may be so, of course, but face that issue when you pro- 178 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS; THEORIES pose the assumption. Apropos of this I may ask also how you are going to account for the trivialities and confusion on such a remarkable faculty? A power infinite in everything but access to important facts is a worse anomaly in human knowledge than spirits can possibly be. In fact you cannot rationally account for the limitation to triviality at all on the telepathic hypothesis, while this is perfectly simple on the spiritistic. But no scientific man believes in the kind of telep- athy here supposed. He will only ask for inde- pendent evidence that it is a fact before using it as a substitute for a spiritistic interpretation of facts related only to the personal identity of deceased per- sons. We shall simply throw upon the adherent of it the responsibility for the evidence of his assumption and if that is forthcoming we shall consider it dis- passionately. In the second place, the writer's conception of the " supernormal " is wholly different from that of the scientific man and he strangely demands as proof of a future life communications which are absolutely unverifiable in the present stage of the inquiry. He complains that the evidence is confined solely to Dr. Hodgson's earthly life. This is precisely where the cogency of the facts and argument lies. We could not at present verify scientifically any statement whatever about the conditions in a transcendental world. " Supernormal " does not mean knowledge of things in a spiritual world; nor does it necessarily imply anything spiritual whatever. Many confuse it with the " supernatural," but psychic researchers 179 (■ PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION adopted it to eliminate all the associations of that term and to mean something not acquired in a normal way. It is a purely negative term, implying nothing definite about either the " supernatural " or anything in a transcendental world. In other words, " super- normal " means and only means beyond or transcend- ing normal sense perception. It does not mean any special view of what is beyond and it does not in any respect imply the spiritual, even though this happen to be included in it after the investigation has gone far enough to justify that belief. It means nothing more than the fact that we have gotten something which cannot be explained as having a sensory origin, that is, an origin in normal sense perception. All that is verifiable must either have been acquired by the sense perception of the subject or must exist in the memory of living persons. The nature and con- ditions of a spiritual world and its life are not so verifiable, and no intelligent man would expect or demand, as evidence, communications of this kind in proof of a spiritual world, to say nothing of the im- possibility of making it intelligible if communication about it were tried. It is the last objection which always seems the most cogent to the sceptic. The writer thinks that intel- ligent persons like Dr. Hodgson would not or ought not to talk such " muddle-headed nonsense." I shall confidently reply at this point that the best part of our evidence for the spiritistic hypothesis is just this nonsense. What the critic thinks is a fatal objection is our best proof. That is a contention which may surprise many an objector, but it is one that I ad- 180 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS ; THEORIES vance and I am certain that it will put the sceptic to his wits to sustain his assumption that intelligent men would do much better than the evidence seems to indicate. I shall boldly challenge any successful defense of the writer's position. Now if Dr. Hodgson was so intelligent a person how would the critic account for the " absorption by telepathy while in the flesh " of exclusively trivial incidents? On the critic's assumption we ought to have had very intelligent messages, intelligent after the type of his conception. But instead of that we have what are alleged to be exclusively trivial facts. On the other hand, if the alleged communicator had not been an intelligent man, according to the critic's point of view we might explain the limitations of the messages. But he concedes that Dr. Hodgson's earthly life was intelligent and admits the exclusive limitation of the incidents to that life. But I shall not dwell on dialectics of this kind as they are not important. What we have to realize is two or three fundamental things in this problem, which I shall have to reiterate again and again in order to have the point made in the spiritistic hypoth- esis that is here defended. I recur again to the conception of the supernormal. I said and I repeat that it denotes the acquisition of information by some other means than normal sense perception. With this view in mind I shall again define the problem which is before the advocate of the spiritistic theory. There are three fundamental conditions of a spirit- istic hypothesis. ( 1 ) The information acquired must 181 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION be supernormal, that is, not explicable by normal per- ception. (2) The incidents must be verifiable mem- ories of the deceased persons and so representative of their personal identity. (3) The incidents must be trivial and specific — not easily, if at all, dupli- cated in the common experience of others. Any other kind of facts will be exposed to sceptical objections which may be unanswerable. The point of view which the psychic researcher has to take is that of the materialist. That is, he must assume that the materialistic theory has the first claim to consideration and that the facts must at least be inconsistent with its claims in order to obtain any fulcrum for the spiritistic view. Now the material- istic theory maintains that consciousness is a function of the brain and so perishable with it. This view is universally conceded for the various functions of the bodily organism, such as digestion, circulation, secre- tion, etc. All these are admittedly organic functions and so perishable with the body. If consciousness is a similar function it has the same fate. Now since we have no evidence, apart from the alleged phenom- ena on record by psychic researchers, that conscious- ness can exist without a bodily organism, we have to ascertain, if possible, if the phenomena so alleged point to its survival. If they do, the materialistic theory cannot be sustained and the case is proved. Men may differ as to the nature of the facts, but, their supernormal character once admitted, the issue is clearly defined and open to discussion. Any facts, no matter what their character and no matter what the logical consequences, that supply the three char- 182 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS ; THEORIES acteristics mentioned, supernormality, relevance to personal identity of deceased persons, and specific triviality, will be relevant to the conclusion which the spiritist draws and must be entitled to fair considera- tion. But we cannot assume that alleged communica- tions should be anything more than proof of identity, and we are entitled to assume that they must be this because it is a primary and essential condition of be- lieving in the existence of spirits. The messages may be insane, if you like, but they must be super- normal, specific and relevant to the identity of de- ceased persons. What we shall make of such a life is not our business as scientific men at the outset of our problem. What use it may be does not enter into any conception of the matter at first except that of intellectual snobs and aesthetes. We have to ex- plain the facts and accept the consequences. We shall show the use of the conclusion later in the work. At present the question is, not whether we are beings of superior intelligence after death, but whether con- sciousness survives death at all, and once convinced of that we can take up the problem of the nature of that survival, its limitations, if any, the perplexities attending the kind of messages, their confusion and triviality, and the rarity of the phenomena. But these characteristics are not objections to the hypoth- esis; they are only additional issues within it. They are questions only after admitting it, not facts op- posed to it. This I think can be made clear in the sequel. Now admitting that fraud has been excluded from consideration of such facts as this series of articles 183 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION records I think every intelligent reader will admit that they conform to the three conditions of a spirit- istic hypothesis. I shall not here urge that they prove it. I simply say that these three conditions have been satisfied. We may have to satisfy other con- ditions. I leave that matter to those who do not start with the assumed truth or possibility of the material- istic theory of things. I am here testing only the theory of materialism. I think, therefore, that the satisfaction of these three conditions at least throws a doubt upon materialism as an explanation of con- sciousness, and the next question is to account for the peculiar character of the facts which seem to refute that theory. I think every one who reflects a moment will admit that only trivial facts will prove personal identity, whether of the living or of the dead. If it be doubted the experiment has only to be tried, and in a large system of them some years ago with Columbia Uni- versity students and professors I showed that rational men would select incidents quite as trivial, or even more trivial, to prove their identity over a telegraph wire. This circumstance, I think, removes all force of the alleged objection to spirit messages on the ground of mere triviality. But I am going frankly to concede that it is not the bare fact of triviality that gives the trouble. It is the two facts of (1) persistent triviality, and (2) confusion in the incidents, presumably suggesting a degenerated personality very different from the living person we knew in his best estate. This is the per- plexity which we have to face and which is implied 184 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS ; THEORIES in the article which I have quoted from the Providence Journal. It is here that I propose to urge the fundamental feature of a spiritistic theory, one that is an essential part of that hypothesis for certain types of mediums. I shall call them the " possession " type as distin- guished from the subliminal type. The term is tentative, though it represents a distinction between the phenomena which I have neither time nor space here to discuss, and I make it in order not to be taken as asserting or supposing that the view which I shall present assumes a universal condition of the phenom- ena. But I want to emphasize the adjunctive hypoth- esis which I mean to elaborate somewhat as one which explains away all the objections and difficulties that the sceptic has been in the habit of presenting against the spiritistic theory. Hitherto there has been no opportunity to present and discuss this aspect of the problem in a public way. The popular periodicals want sensational matter, and care little for important truths. The scientific journals have lived in such contempt of the whole subject that they would not permit the discussion of it, and so we have had to remain silent for lack of means to discuss this funda- mental feature of the theory before intelligent readers. Fortunately we have now an opportunity to present it and to ask consideration of it. What I refer to is the explanation of the persistent triviality and confusion of the communications which purport to come from the discarnate. I shall premise, however, that this accusation that the communications are always so trivial and confused is in fact not 185 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION true. No doubt it appears so from the examples which we publish and discuss. On this account I can respect the difficulty on the part of all who have not made a special study of the phenomena. But the fact is that the communications are not always trivial as is supposed. There are two decided limita- tions to this accusation. The first is that the ques- tion of triviality depends wholly upon the point of view assumed in the problem. If the communicator realizes that he has his identity to prove he will nec- essarily limit himself to trivial recollections, assum- ing that he can control his state of consciousness at the time of his communications. Those who read the Piper case carefully will discover that the phenomena have all the appearance at least of being organized efforts on the " other side " to prove the identity of those who have passed away. The triviality thus becomes so important as to lose all the imputations implied by that term and so show a rational effort to solve the problem, an effort adjusted to the very needs of the issue. This is particularly noticeable in the communications of Dr. Hodgson. If the reader will simply study the facts in this series of articles in a careful and patient way he will find that there is a characteristic consciousness of this view of the matter which has not so clearly characterized any other communicator, unless we except George Pel- ham. The second limitation to the accusation is the fact that the statements which are not trivial and confused, very often, if not generally, lack evidential character. All communications about the other life, about the first experiences after death, about the laws 186 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS ; THEORIES of life and action on the " other side " are worthless as evidence of the supernormal, and the student of abnormal psychology would consign us to bedlam if we put this sort of thing forward as evidence of spir- its. Consequently we have to select the incidents which have a supernormal character and which cannot be explained by abnormal psychology in order to present any support whatever for the existence of spirits. The argument is that, having been acquired from some external source, the information, owing to its relation to the personality of deceased individ- uals, can best be attributed to that source. The non- evidential matter has to be ignored until we are obliged to recognize its unity with the supernormal incidents. This non-evidential matter exists in large quantities in the Piper and similar records, but cannot be used in discussions affecting the integrity of spiritistic theories. The assertion, therefore, that the matter is always trivial is not exactly true, and the circum- stance gives us a vantage ground when the time comes to discuss other than evidential problems. I agree, nevertheless, that it is natural to complain of the triviality and confusion in the evidential mat- ter. The want of a satisfactory explanation of them keeps back the acceptance of the spiritistic hypothe- sis from many a scientific man, and hence I shall here state a view of the phenomena which I think com- pletely removes the perplexity. Whether it is true or not remains to be shown in the future, but it can be put forward as a working hypothesis and tested by the extent of its fitness thereto. The general supposition which, to the mind of Dr. 187 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION Hodgson and myself, explains the persistent triviality and confusion of the messages is that the communi^- cating spirit at the time of communicating (not neces- sarily in his normal state in the spirit "world), is in a sort of abnormal mental state, perhaps resembling our dream life or somnambulic conditions. We can- not determine exactly what this mental condition is at present and may never be able to do so, but it can be variously compared to dream life, somnambulism, hypnosis of certain kinds, trance, secondary person- ality, subliminal mental action, or any of those men- tal conditions in which there is more or less of disin- tegration of the normal memory. Ordinary delirium has some analogies with it, but the incidents are too purposive and too systematic in many cases to press this analogy to any general extent. But the various disturbances of the normal consciousness or person- ality in the living offer clear illustrations of the psychological phenomena which we produce as evi- dence of spirits when these phenomena are supernor- mally produced. But this hypothesis does not explain all the confu- sion involved. There is the more or less unusual con- dition of the medium, mental and physical. The me- dium through which the messages purport to come is in a trance condition, and when not a trance the con- dition is one which is not usual, and perhaps in the broad sense may be called abnormal, though not tech- nically this in any important sense. This condition offers many obstacles to perfect transmission of mes- sages. It is illustrated in many cases of somnam- bulism in which the stream of consciousness goes on 188 CONCLUSION OP EXPERIMENTS ; THEORIES uninhibited, and when this is suppressed, as it is in deep trances, the difficulty is to get systematic com- munications through it. Add to this the frequently similar condition of the communicator, according to the hypothesis, and we can well imagine what causes triviality and confusion. The student of abnormal psychology will recognize the applicability of this view at once, even though he is not prepared to admit that it is a true theory. There are two aspects of such an hypothesis which have to be considered. They are its fitness or explan- atory character, and its evidential features. They are quite distinct from each other. The hypothesis might fit and yet have no evidence that it was a fact. I think, however, that all who are familiar with ab- normal mental phenomena will admit without special contention that the hypothesis will explain the trivial- ity and confusion of the alleged messages, but they will want to know what evidence exists for such a view. It is to this aspect of the theory that we must turn. Dr. Hodgson had discussed this supposition in his Report on the Piper case in 1898. It is therefore not new, and some incidents in his communications seem to point to the influence of this view on his mes- sages. I shall quote one passage from his Report in illustration of the hypothesis and of some of his evi- dence for it. " That persons ' just deceased,' " says this Report, (p. 377), " should be extremely confused and unable to communicate directly, or even at all, seems per- fectly natural after the shock and wrench of death. 189 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION Thus in the case of Hart, he was unable to write the second day after Ins death. In another case a friend of mine, whom I may call D., wrote, with what ap- peared to be much difficulty, his name and the words, ' I am all right now. Adieu,' within two or three days after his death. In another case, F., a near relative of Madame Elisa, was unable to write on the morn- ing after his death. On the second day after, when a stranger was present with me for a sitting, he wrote two or three sentences, saying, ' I am too weak to articulate clearly,' and not many days later he wrote fairly well and clearly, and dictated also to Madame Elisa, as Amanuensis, an account of his feelings at finding himself in his new surroundings. Both D. and F. became very clear in a short time. D. communicated later on frequently, both by writing and speech, chiefly the latter, and showed always an impressively marked and characteristic personality. Hart, on the other hand, did not become so clear till many months later. I learned long afterwards that his illness had been much longer and more fundamen- tal than I had supposed. The continued confusion in his case seemed explicable if taken in relation with the circumstances of his prolonged illness, including fever, but there was no assignable relation between his confusion and the state of my own mind." The allusion in this passage to the effect of the shock of death recalls the passage quoted above (p. 189) and representing Rector, the control, as remark- ing this effect to me as an apology for the confused and fragmentary communications from Dr. Hodgson 190 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS J THEORIES himself. But as Mrs. Piper at least had the oppor- tunity to read, and perhaps actually did read the whole of Dr. Hodgson's Report, we cannot speak of the incident as evidential. It is merely consistent with an hypothesis based on other grounds. But the allu- sion to Mr. Myers in this connection, as the reader will see by referring to the passage quoted, has some pertinence. It is true that Mr. Myers never accom- plished by way of communication what was expected of him and what he himself expected before his death to do. The explanation of his failure is perfectly ra- tional, though not evidential. But the proper evidence for this dream life or semi- trance and somnambulic condition will be found in in- cidents which also contain supernormal facts. I quote one of remarkable interest. A man who had had sit- tings with Mrs. Piper before his death, some time after his decease, which took place in Paris, turned up as a communicator without Mrs. Piper having known of his death. He had always been perplexed by the confusion and fragmentary nature of the messages of his deceased friend George Pelham. When he him- self became a communicator it was some time before he was able to communicate clearly. When he could communicate he delivered the following message to Dr. Hodgson: " What in the world is the reason you never call for me? I am not sleeping. I wish to help you in iden- tifying myself. I am a good deal better now. (You were confused at first.) Very, but I did not really understand how confused 191 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION I was. I am more so when I try to speak to you. I understand now why George spelled his words to me." The allusion to George Pelham's spelling out his words is an evidential incident, as it was verifiable and recognizes after death the explanation of confusions which he could not understand while living. A sim- ilar though not evidential passage came from this George Pelham himself. It represents the point of view which I am advancing to account for the curious nature of the messages, and was perhaps the commu- nication which suggested the theory to Dr. Hodgson. I quote it from the latter's Report. " Remember we have and always shall have our friends in the dream life, i. e., your life so to speak, which will attract us for ever 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 con- fused and muddled, so to put it H." At this point Dr. Hodgson read over the automatic writing to indicate that he had gotten the message and how he understood it. The communications then went on. " Your thoughts do grasp mine. Well now you have just what I have been wanting to come and make clear to you, H., old fellow. (It is quite clear.) Yes, you see I am more awake than asleep, yet I 192 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS ; THEORIES cannot come just as I am in reality, independently of the medium's light. (You come much better than the others.) Yes, be- cause I am a little nearer and not less intelligent than some others here." At one of Dr. Hodgson's later sittings the same communicator, George Pelham, used the word " pris- oned " in a passage in which " prisoning " was in Dr. Hodgson's view the more correct term, and he suggested the correction. George Pelham broke out with the reply : — " See here, H., * Don't view me with a critic's eye, but pass my imperfections by.' Of course I know all that as well as anybody on your sphere. I tell you, old fellow, it don't do to pick [out] all these little errors too much when they amount to nothing in one way. You have light enough and brain enough I know to understand my explanations of being shut up in this body [that of the medium] dreaming as it were and trying to help on science." The possibility of all this every reader must ad- mit, when he has once felt the force of the supernor- mal matter in favor of the spiritistic theory, though he will rightly hold that it is not evidence of any con- clusive kind. But it hangs together well with the character of the messages in all cases, and when we recall our own power to tell something of the mental status of a man who is talking to us or whose book we are reading we may well admit that the confused and fragmentary nature of the messages suggest and confirm the view taken in these communications. A certain gentleman was a member of the Board 193 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION of Trustees of the American Institute for Scientific Research and Dr. Hodgson knew both the man and this fact of his membership. This gentleman re- signed from the Board some months after the death of Dr. Hodgson, a fact which was most probably not known to Mrs. Piper. In one of my sittings the fol- lowing occurred: " Is X. with you? (No, he resigned.) What for? I thought so. (Well, Hodgson, it is best not to say publicly.) I am not public, am I? (Well, it would stand in my record, Hodgson.) Oh, of course. I understand." Now the interest of this incident lies in this simple fact. Dr. Hodgson was familiar for eighteen years with the record of Mrs. Piper's sittings, and for ten years with the careful record of what was done in both speech and writing. Here he is apparently wholly unaware of what is going on in the commu- nications. His mental condition has apparently made him oblivious to the fact of record, or what the trance personalities or controls call " registering " a mes- sage. Amnesia had come on as an accident or con- comitant of the condition necessary for communicat- ing, at least for all that affected the unnecessary parts of his communications. The control of the stream of consciousness is not so perfect as in the earthly life. The reasons for this cannot be made clear here, but the psychiatrist will understand it from his knowl- edge of uninhibited mental processes. 194 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS ; THEORIES One of the best illustrations of this is Rector's statements of the reason for the difficulties of commu- nicating, as the reader may have noticed above (p. 189). The passage, of course, is not evidential, but when the spiritistic hypothesis has been rendered ra- tional by evidential matter it is not unreasonable to examine statements of this kind with patience and to give them the status of a working hypothesis to ascertain whether it may not be confirmed by other characteristics of the phenomena. I quote some statements communicated at the sitting of February 27th, 1906. After a question that I had asked regarding a certain word that would bear on his identity, Dr. Hodgson alluded to the danger of " making a botch " of his messages and broke out with the statement : " It is so suffocating here. I can appreciate their difficulties better than ever be- fore." Here he was intimating ideas which he held as to the difficulty of communicating before he him- self passed away, and he had often compared the in- fluence of the conditions to that of mephitic gases, and we know what effect they have on the integrity of consciousness. A few minutes after the deliverance of this statement, and with it in mind, I asked if we had conjectured the difficulties fairly well. The reply was : " We did surprisingly well. I was surprised enough," and then at once passed to communications about his own handwriting which had often been illeg- ible to me when he was living. The admission here of suffocation points to the hypothesis which I have advanced, though in no way proving it, and his man- 195 PSYCHICAL, RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION ner of admitting the correctness of our view regard- ing the difficulties is a fact consistent with the hypothesis. We have only to study dreams and deliria in order to understand the influences which tend to produce con- fusion and fragmentary messages. If accidents and shocks in life which are less violent than death disturb the memory, as we know they do, the student of ab- normal psychology, being perfectly familiar with the phenomena in numerous cases, would expect that so violent a change as death would disturb memory and reproduction still more seriously. Add to this the mind's freedom from the body with all the physiolog- ical inhibitions cut off, and we might well expect less control of the processes which recall the past in the proper way for illustrating one's identity. This dis- turbance might not last indefinitely. The individual might fully recover from it in a normal spiritual life, though the time for this recovery might vary with individuals and with the circumstances of their death. But the recovery of a normal mental balance in the proper ethereal environment on the " other side " would not of itself be a complete guarantee of its retention when coming into terrestrial and material conditions to communicate. We may well suppose it possible that this " coming back " produces an effect similar to the amnesia which so often accompanies a shock or sudden interference with the normal stream of consciousness. The effect seems to be the same as that of certain kinds of dissociation which are now being studied by the student of abnormal psychology, and this is the disturbance of memory which makes 196 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS ; THEORIES it difficult or impossible to recall in one mental state the events which have been experienced in another. For at least superficial indications in the records that this is the case I shall simply repeat my reference to the first part of this article in which I quote at such length the fragmentary and confused messages purporting to come from Dr. Hodgson. I need not requote them here. They at least apparently illus- trate in a clear manner the point I am making. Nor do I rely upon the Piper case alone for evi- dence of the conditions here conjectured. I have had similar statements made through two other private mediums, whom I have quoted in this series of articles. In some cases the language is identical with that used through Mrs. Piper, though its use in Mrs. Piper was not known by the other person through whom it came. One good illustration of this abnormal mental con- dition on the part of communicators is found in an incident told me by Dr. Hodgson before his death and which I have mentioned elsewhere in another periodi- cal. It was the incident of a communicator telling through Mrs. Piper a circumstance which he said had represented some act of his life. But inquiry showed that no such act had been performed by him when living. But it turned out that he had made the same statement in the delirium of death. It is especially noticeable in certain forms of communication of the " possession " type that the last scenes of the deceased are acted over again in their first attempts to control or communicate. The mental confusion relevant to the death of my father was apparent in his first at- tempt to communicate through Mrs. Piper, and when 197 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION I recalled this period of his dying experience this con- fusion was repeated in a remarkable manner with several evidential features in the messages. Twice an uncle lost the sense of personal identity in the at- tempt to communicate. His communications were in fact so confused that it was two years before he be- came at all clear in his efforts. He had died as the result of a sudden accident. Once my father, after mentioning the illness of my living sister and her name, lost his personal identity long enough to con- fuse incidents of himself and his earthly life with those that applied to my sister and not to himself. The interesting feature of the incident was that, hav- ing failed to complete his messages a few minutes pre- viously, when he came back the second time to try it again, Rector, the control, warned me that he was a little confused, but that what he wanted to tell me certainly referred to my sister Lida. Then came the message claiming experiences for himself when liv- ing that were verifiable as my sister's. On any theory of the facts a confused state of mind is the only ex- planation of them, and when associated with incidents of a supernormal and evidential character they afford reasonable attestation of the hypothesis here sug- gested. I shall give one long and complicated instance of this confusion in an incident having great evidential value and yet showing remarkable confusion involving apparently the loss of the sense of personal identity and the correction of the error in the first allusion to the incidents. 198 CONCLUSION of experiments; theories At the sitting of June 6th, 1899, (Proceedings, Vol. XVI, pp. 469-470), I thought I would test the telepathic theory by asking my father incidents that had occurred before I was born and that my two aunts, then living, would know. I made this request and was told at once that this would not be so difficult a thing to do. In a few moments several things were communicated, one of which was verifiable and one of which came within my memory as an incident told me, not as remembered personally. Then one of the aunts was mentioned by name, Eliza, and an incident told which I could not verify. Then the communi- cator at once broke out into the following clear state- ment, purporting to come from my father : — " I have something better. Ask her if she recalls the evening when we broke the wheel to the wagon and who tried to cover it up so it would not leak out, so to speak. I remember it as if it happened yester- day, and she will remember it too." When interrogated as to the truth of this my aunt said that no such accident had ever occurred in the life of my father and herself. The consequence was that in my Report on the Piper case, published in 1901, I had to say that the incident was wholly false or unverifiable. No ascertainable meaning was then to be obtained with reference to its real pertinence. On February 5th, 1900, at another sitting this aunt was again spontaneously mentioned by my father pur- porting to communicate and I made some statement about my difficulty in getting verification for some of the incidents he had told of their early life, telling 199 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION him of her dislike and opposition to the whole sub- ject. There came the following response through the automatic writing of Mrs. Piper : — " Oh, I understand. Of course, I see clearly. Well, tell her I do not intend to say anything which would be distasteful to her, but if she will only help me in my recollections of our childhood days it will be doing nothing but right, and it will help to prove my true existence to you. James, I am your father, and there is no gainsaying it. What I would now ask is that Eliza should recall the drive home and — let me see a moment — I am sure . . . but it was one of shafts, but the wagon broke, some part of it, and we tied it with a cord. I remember this very well. Do you remember old Tom?" Now Tom was the name of a horse in my time and long after the childhood of my aunt Eliza, and he died somewhere about 1880. He had no connection with any drive that my father could have taken before I was born. The reader, however, will remark the abrupt play of memory in this matter, the exhibition of uninhibited association which is characteristic of a dream-like state of consciousness. But when I asked my aunt Eliza about the accident it was again denied as never having occurred in her life with my father, nor with any one else so far as she knew. I had, therefore, to declare this false. On June 3rd, 1902, I had another sitting with Mrs. Piper, and my uncle, who had been such a confused communicator in my earlier experiments, turned up, so to speak. He began some confused messages and 200 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS ; THEORIES I determined to ask a test question of his identity. But before continuing the statements of the record I should detail an incident that occurred with this uncle and myself the day after my father's death. He had married this aunt Eliza, my father's sister. My father died on Saturday. On the Sunday fol- lowing, while my father was lying a corpse in this uncle's house, a telegram came from Chicago which had to be delivered in the country. My uncle and I took a buggy and went into the country to deliver the telegram. While passing a negro boy with a goat and wagon the horse shied, turned the buggy over, dragged it over both of us — my uncle holding on to the lines — injured the wheels, broke the shaft and the harness, and we had to tie them up with straps and strings. When we got home it was dusk, and we resolved to say nothing about the accident to any one in the house. But both of us were so badly injured that we could not conceal it longer than the next morning, that of the funeral. I was six months getting over the effects and my uncle perhaps as long. When my uncle came to communicate on this occa- sion of June 3rd, 1902, I had these incidents in mind when I resolved to ask my test question. I now quote the record. " (You and I took something together, you remem- ber, just after father passed out.) You are thinking of that ride. I guess I do not forget it. My head is troublesome in thinking. I hope to be clearer soon. This is my second attempt. (You can tell what happened in that ride when you can make it clear.) 201 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION I will. Do you remember a stone we put together. Not quite right. I'll see you again. Farewell. He has gone out to think." [Last remark by Rector in explanation of the confusion.] The next day this uncle returned to the task and began with incidents that were not verifiable in my experience and that were as confused and erroneous as that which I have been quoting. I repeated my question to bring him back to the subject. " (Please to tell me something about that ride just after father passed out. ) Your father told you about it before, but had it on his mind, Eliza. (If you can tell it, please to do so.) Do you remember the stone we put there. (Where?) At the grave. (Whose grave?) Your father's. You mean this ride. (No.) I think we are thinking of different things. You don't mean that Sunday afternoon, do you ? (Yes, that's right.) Yes, I remember well the breakdown, etc." The communicator then went on in the most frag- mentary way and alluded to breaking the harness, the wheel, said we had a red horse and that it had been frightened by a dog [it was a goat] , that we tied the broken harness with a string and got home late in the evening, remarking: " Oh, I am your uncle all right." It would take up too much space to give the de- tailed account which is very confused. But the com- municator specified the main events in the incident of 202 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS ; THEORIES our experience at the time mentioned. They were all substantially correct, except the reference to the dog, most of them exactly correct. The most important thing to remember about this set of incidents is that they correct an error in my original Report and do it in a way to indicate that the first attempt was associated with an unusual mental state on the part of the communicator. Of course, the whole incident depends for its value on the exclu- sion of fraud from its character, and as we assume that this has been done we do not take that hypothesis into account here in the discussion. Accepting the exclusion of fraud the incidents represent one of the best evidential cases that I know for the exclusion of telepathy from their explanation. The event, too, ex- plains the meaning of the confused statements by my father. My uncle, if I may state the matter con- structively in regard to the " other side," had given the incident to my father who was a better communi- cator, thinking that it would identify him to me and his wife, my father's sister Eliza. But in his mental confusion my father gave as an incident in his own life before I was born one that had occurred with me and his brother-in-law the day after his own death, and this error is corrected by my uncle long after- ward and amidst nearly as much mental confusion as that in which the original error was committed. There is here more or less evidence of the loss of the con- sciousness of personal identity, a condition quite closely resembling that of delirium, and that certainly characterizes most of our dreams. Only the relation of the incidents is wanting in the first mention of it 203 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION to indicate its meaning and that relation is concealed by the failure to indicate that the experience was that of someone else than the narrator. What first strikes one in the incident is the absurd- ity of explaining it by any form of telepathy, assum- ing that the facts guarantee the existence of super- normal information, and with the exclusion of that hypothesis we have no alternative to the admission of the spiritistic with its accompaniment, in this instance, of some other difficulty than mediumistic obstacles to the transmission of the message. No doubt there are hindrances to clear communications in the physical and mental conditions of the medium. But in this in- stance the claim, implied in the message as I received it from my father, that the incidents were personal experiences associated with his life before I was bora and the abruptness of their introduction in connection with events with which they were not historically asso- ciated, indicates a phenomenon exactly like dreams and deliria, recognizable by any one who has studied psychology. Assuming then that this instance, with others, indicates some unnatural mental state as a con- dition of communicating, at least in " possession " types of mediumship, we have a perfectly rational ex- planation of the persistent triviality and confusion in the messages. In fact the detailed records of such phenomena have only to be patiently studied in order to give the phenomena that intelligibility and ration- ality as spiritistic communications which cannot be ap- preciated on any other hypothesis, and this because the nature and limitations of the communications are such as we might expect from human personality laboring 204 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS; THEORIES under difficulties which are not so apparent on other theories, especially as the assumption of telepathy must face the contradiction between its immense pow- ers to account for the true facts and its limitations in the errors. One incident in the communications by George Pel- ham about Dr. Hodgson bears on the main point. There is evidence — too complicated to detail in this chapter — that the communicator is less disturbed mentally ( and perhaps not at all after a certain period of time) in his normal state on the " other side " than when communicating. I quoted the instance (p. 128) in which George Pelham said regarding Dr. Hodgson, that " normally he is all right, but when he comes into our wretched atmosphere he goes all to pieces." If we take the various records in my possession repre- senting apparent attempts on Dr. Hodgson's part to communicate through other mediums than Mrs. Piper it is clear that this statement of George Pelham is perfectly true, and that he does better through Mrs. Piper than elsewhere, though he has more difficulty even there than many other communicators. But instead of producing evidence of this sort which many may question altogether, we may look at the situation in another way. We may concede for the sake of argument that all this is not proof, though some of the incidents containing supernormal infor- mation and characteristics of mental confusion at the same time can hardly be refused evidential value in reference to the claim here made. But not to in- sist on this way of discussing the hypothesis, there is one method that the scientific man cannot dispute. 205 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION This is to present the case in the light of a working hypothesis. This means that we shall simply ask if the hypothesis does not actually fit the facts and then try its application to see if it will remain consistent with them throughout. That is to say we may say to ourselves, " Let us see if it will actually explain the perplexities which are suggested by all this trivial- ity and confusion." If we find the hypothesis fitting the facts we recognize that it is the correct one to en- tertain until we find reason to reject it. Now if intelligent people — and this means those who are familiar with secondary personality, with dream states and deliria, and with abnormal psychology generally — will only imagine the pos- sibility of what is here supposed and then study the detailed records with a view of ascertaining whether it fits enough of the facts to explain their perplexities on the points mentioned, I am confident that they will find that the whole subject clears up, and its per- plexities yield to a perfectly simple conception of their cause, though they will find the same difficulties in ex- plaining certain specific details that any hypothesis has to meet. I have occupied attention regarding the conditions affecting the communicator in the process of sending messages from a transcendental world. These were supposed to account for the confusion and triviality of the messages. I shall say, however, that the dream- like trance of the communicator is not the only cause of the characteristics in the messages that have so long given rise to objections against the spiritistic hypothesis. There is another and just as important 206 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS; THEORIES a source of the confusion and possibly of the error in the communications. This is the mental condition of the medium. That this should in some way affect the communications would, perhaps, be admitted with- out dispute by any one who was familiar with psychology, especially of the abnormal type. But the point to be decided would be that which regards the nature of that influence and in what special respect the communications are affected by that mental condi- tion. In general the simple answer to this query would be that it would most naturally vary with the condition in which the medium was at the time. We must remember that the idea of a trance is not a fixed and clear one. Trance is but a name for an exceedingly fluctuating condition and that is not ex- actly the same in different mediums. The effect of this condition on messages intromitted into the psychic's mind will vary with the nature of that trance. If the medium remains normally conscious the first question to be raised would be whether the cleavage between the supraliminal or ordinary normal consciousness and the subliminal or subconscious men- tal activities is great enough to exclude the normal interpreting and other processes from modifying the thoughts introduced into the mind from the outside. In some cases the messages enter the normal con- sciousness either as a condition of their delivery or as an incident of it. In others they are delivered with- out any apparent knowledge of their coming or of their nature. On the other hand if the supraliminal consciousness is suspended the subconscious action of the mind may reproduce all the influences of the nor- 207 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION mal mind except its memory of their occurrence or of the messages. Only when the trance extends to the subconscious processes can we expect the removal of the interpreting action of the mind through which messages otherwise come. Even then we generally or always find the existence of limitations determined by the habits and experience of the medium, such as the spelling, style of writing, and even the use of terms. I have often seen the same message through different mediums expressed in different terms char- acterized by the difference of mental habits in the cases. Thus a medium who is in the habit of using the word " Sunday " in her normal life will most likely employ this term — not always, as much depends on the depth of the trance — while one used to the term " Sabbath " may employ that for the same message. I know one that was accustomed to spell the word " coughs " thus, " caughts " in her normal state, and it was so spelled in the trance, though the communi- cator would never have so spelled it, and in this case there were many supernormal incidents accompanying the language and automatic writing through which they came. In another the term " agoing," which was the natural expression of the medium's normal life for the idea conveyed, was given in the same sen- tence which had " going " in the case of Mrs. Piper. In still another the automatic writing would produce one word and the normal consciousness would think of another and synonymous or similar word. All these when they occur show unmistakable in- fluences from the mind of the medium upon messages intromitted into it. All that remains after the ad- 208 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS; THEORIES mission of the fact of this influence is the determina- tion of the extent of it by the study of actual and con- crete instances. I shall devote a little time to the study of the phenomena of Mrs. Verrall which were published in the last Report of the English Society. It is one of the most important documents in this re- spect that has been published by the Society, though it does not give as much of the detailed record as is desirable. The important fact to remember is that Mrs. Ver- rall does not go into a trance, but remains normally conscious when the automatic writing is done. It is also just as important to remember that we do not require to hold any special theory of interpretation regarding the phenomena occurring in her case. We may accept telepathy as an adequate explanation if we so prefer, it will not alter the view which I here mean to take regarding the influences affecting the " messages " recorded. It is apparently certain, and one would hardly be wrong in saying that it was demonstrated, that supernormal connection between two minds occurred in the various cases represented in that report, with important indications of failure, such as would most naturally occur in instances involving the modification of extraneously introduced informa- tion. In what I wish to quote, therefore, from that report illustrative of subjective influences on mes- sages, I do not assume the spiritistic interpretation of the incidents. I need not go farther than telep- athy between the living to account for the super- normal in the phenomena. What is undoubted in the matter is the difficulty of getting messages through 209 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION without disturbing their integrity by the various sub- conscious agencies which affect all mental action, even of the normal and supraliminal consciousness. Mrs. Verrall is a teacher of the classical languages and many of her automatic writings appear in Greek and Latin, even when the " message " is sent in English. It seems that her mental habits have some- thing to do, as in the other instances quoted, with the form in which the " messages " appear. It matters not whether we interpret the phenomena as telepathic or spiritistic, the latter hypothesis not being so plaus- ible as in the case of Mrs. Piper and others. But theories aside, it is clear that the form of expression exhibits the influence of her own mind whatever its original source. At a sitting with Mrs. Piper a certain communica- tor claimed to have been able to impress Mrs. Verrall's daughter with the phantasm of a hand and a book. Dr. Hodgson suggested that he get her to see his hand holding a spear. Mrs. Piper was near Boston and Mrs. Verrall in England. It seems that the attempts, however, to impress the daughter were failures. One day soon after Mrs. Verrall, amid seven Greek words and six Latin words wrote the Greek word Sphairas and the Latin word volatile ferrum, their English equivalents being " Spheres " and " Spear." Now the communicator, when the message in Boston was given as a spear, at first understood it to be " sphere " and had to have it corrected. The same mistake is made, the reader will remark, in the delivery of it in England. But the English " spear " comes out in Latin equivalents. Whatever the source of the mes- 210 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS ; THEORIES sage to Mrs. Verrall it is apparent that her subcon- scious mental action is involved in the result. The evidence for the supernormal in the case is consider- able and the limitations of its delivery are quite ap- parent. Besides, the partial mistake suggests that the agent delivering the message was in a state of secondary personality subject to just the kind of mental action which that conception implies. That is, the trance of the communicator, when he commu- nicates in England, like two separate hypnotic states, is continuous with that in America. The memory nexus is with the condition in which the message to be taken to England was received. Consequently we have in the incident at least a possible illustration of abnormal mental conditions in the communicator and subconscious influences in the medium through whom the message has to be delivered. Another interesting illustration of subconscious agencies in the alleged messages is an experiment made between Mrs. Verrall and Mrs. Forbes. The two ladies agreed to try communications between each other. They were and are both living. Mrs. Forbes also does automatic writing. On a certain date the writing of Mrs. Forbes al- luded to Mrs. Verrall's reading a book. As Mrs. Verrall had been reading the Symposium of Plato on the day mentioned and as some evident allusion to the Symposium had been made through her own auto- matic writing a year previous, she resolved to watch for further references to it in the automatic writing of Mrs. Forbes. For some months the automatic writing of Mrs. Forbes contained distinct allusions 211 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION to this dialogue and the contents of a certain passage. But the interesting feature of the allusions is that it was long before even a Greek letter could be gotten through Mrs. Forbes, who did not know the language. The automatic writing of Mrs. Verrall was rich in its reproduction, and the apparent communicator through Mrs. Forbes was the same person. Once Mrs. Forbes got the syllable " SYMP " and seemed unable to go any further with it, but finally ended with " a the tic." Then in later attempts the word " sympathy " was substituted for this, and very often that word is found in the messages, showing sublim- inal association and reproduction, the idea of the " Symposium " never having occurred to her in the writing, as it most naturally would not do so, since she was not acquainted with the Greek language or literature. It would be a long story to illustrate the whole series of communications between Mrs. Verrall and Mrs. Forbes, and I have chosen only two conspicuous instances of the influence of the medium's mind on the messages transmitted, as they suffice to indicate the contention advanced. We may readily under- stand how large this influence may be when it is ad- mitted to exist at all, and the study of detailed records will exhibit this to any and all who give time and patience to their study. The facts will fully justify the hypothesis assumed to account for triviality and confusion. In order to understand clearly the influences which we have been assuming as disturbing the communica- tions on the spiritistic hypothesis I may summarize 212 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS ; THEORIES the situation which I conceive to be the fact in such cases as I have been discussing. I have stated that the hypothesis assumes the communicator to be in an abnormal mental condition and that the medium in- fluences the messages consciously or unconsciously by the action of his or her mind. To make this clearer I shall state briefly the conditions under which experi- ments are made and the assumptions which are made and supported by a certain amount of evidence re- garding the mental agencies at work in disturbing communications. There are three general conditions with various subordinate possibilities and circum- stances affecting the mental action of all concerned. 1. There is the unusual condition of the medium, whether in a trance or a conscious state. In the broadest terms it can be described as abnormal, mean- ing that it is not the usual and normal condition of most people, but one in which various interrupted and perhaps dissociated mental activities take place. This condition varies in all degrees between normal con- sciousness and the deepest states of unconsciousness. The name trance is employed, not to describe its known character, but simply to indicate that the phenomena occurring in it cannot be classified with those of other and better known conditions. Communications be- tween different minds, whatever the theory we adopt about them, would naturally be affected by the mental conditions through which they passed. 2. There is then the trance personality which is named the " control " in mediumistic cases and which claims to be a discarnate spirit. Assuming, as may be done in some cases, that this trance personality is 213 PSYCHICAL, RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION a spirit, the hypothesis is that the " control " is in a trance or automatic mental condition as necessary to manage the medium through which the messages are transmitted. It is apparent that, if this hypothesis be entertained, the communications, coming through this mind, must be correspondingly modified. Of course, we may treat the trance personality or " con- trol " as a subconscious self of the medium and not as a spirit at all. This fact will not affect the hypothe- sis in so far as it represents psychological conditions influencing the communications. The cleavage be- tween a secondary personality and the normal con- sciousness is often quite as great as between two inde- pendent persons. Indeed often the communication between one's subconscious and conscious states is as difficult as between two different persons. This, in fact, is the reason that the functions of secondary per- sonality so clearly imitate spiritistic phenomena and deceive so many with the belief that they are com- municating with a spirit world when they are but dealing with subconscious states simulating it, the simulation never reaching the stage of supernormal information. Hence whether we assume the trance personality to be a spirit or a subconscious self we are confronted with a similar set of psychological conditions affecting the connection between either of these and the normal consciousness or motor action of the medium. 3. There is the hypothetical condition of the com- municator, when we assume the spiritistic hypothesis to account for the supernormal phenomena bearing upon the personal identity of certain deceased persons, 214 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS ; THEORIES This dream-like state or trance of the discarnate per- sons represents the third set of abnormal mental con- ditions affecting the character of the messages. We have, therefore, the following conception of the process in communications purporting to come from deceased persons, at least in one type of medium, namely the " possession " type. First the communi- cator is in a dream-like or somnambulic state, and communicating his thoughts to the trance-personality or " control." Then there is the " control," whether spirit or subconscious state, representing also a trance condition on any theory and receiving the supernor- mal information and transmitting it through the men- tal conditions of the medium. Then there is the trance condition of the medium involving the suspen- sion of the normal mental functions with all the dis- turbances usually affecting such a condition. Some- times also the communicator purports also to have another intermediary through whom the messages are sent to the "control" and subjecting them to still further modification. This was the case quite fre- quently in some of my experiments when one of the communicators had George Pelham to act as this in- termediary between himself and the " control." It matters not what theory we hold of the phenomena this is the psychological form which they took, and it is this which I am emphasizing rather than the spir- itistic hypothesis. In addition to these general conditions there are various degrees and stages of them, along with inter- cosmic conditions affecting the transmission of mes- sages from spirit to medium or personality to person- 215 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION ality. For instance, in the possession type of medium the trance is a deep one and the communicator seems to be affected very distinctly with some f orm of fluctu- ating amnesia or defective memory, and the difficulty is to control one's mental processes sufficiently to com- municate at all. On the other hand, there is the sub- liminal type of medium which represents a less deep condition of trance, if, indeed there is any of this at all. In such cases the mind of the medium is less in rapport with a transcendental world than the posses- sion type and so naturally modifies the communica- tions by all sorts of perceptive and interpreting pro- cesses. Apparently the communicator in such cases is clearer and less affected by the conditions of commu- nicating. But what he gains by this situation is lost by the amnesia when he comes to communicate through the possession type. When we add to these circum- stances the fact that all sorts of cerebral complications in the transmission are involved and may avail to disturb the integrity of the communications we may well wonder how any form of communication whatever is possible. The confusion might well be much worse than it is. Then again the mode of communication is not what it commonly seems. In the possession type it is usually automatic writing that serves as the process of transmission, in so far as we know it on this side. What it is on the other is not apparent on the sur- face, but seems, after a study of a large record, to involve something like telepathy between the spirit and the medium. For instance, communicators do not always refer to it as speaking, but often as thinking. 216 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS ; THEORIES The distinction is often implied in the phrase " this way of speaking," and various hints and statements indicate that the process of communication between the living has no clear analogies with that necessarily assumed in these phenomena. Whatever they are, they indicate on their surface something different from the familiar, and various circumstances suggest the existence of analogies with telepathic agencies and the presence of a dream-like mental state in the real or alleged communicator. On the other hand, if the subliminal type of medium is studied we find more definite evidence of an interesting and unusual condi- tion affecting the messages. If the communications take the form of descriptive speech by the medium it is noticeable that they seem to be describing what they see, and odd enough are the implications, very often, of these descriptions. The medium seems to be look- ing at objects and describing them as in real life. It is precisely this simulation of the material world and the real or apparent reproduction of " spirit clothes " and various material characteristics that we should naturally suppose were cast off by death that gives so much offense to the man of intelligence and common sense, especially if he has any sense of humor. But it is not at all necessary to take these descrip- tions as they appear. They may be the result of tele- pathic messages from the living or dead converted into phantasms or hallucinations by the subliminal activ- ities of the medium through whom they come. This view does not require us to suppose more than a thought world beyond the grave converted into appar- ent reality by the process necessary to establish a con- 217 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION nection between the material and the spiritual world. In the dream, somnambulic, or hypnotic life of all persons the subconscious processes reproduce ideas or mental states in the form of hallucinations. They are, of course, not of that persistent type that indicates a morbid condition, but they are just as apparently representative of reality as normal sense perceptions. Now, if ideas from outside minds can be transmitted to the living, whether in trance or other unusual con- dition, as the process is not one of sense perception, but some supernormal action, it would be most nat- ural to look in subliminal mental action for the agency through which the extraneous thought is transmitted or expressed, and as subliminal action is so closely associated with hallucinatory functions foreign thoughts might appear as realities just as hallucina- tions do, and yet not represent those realities any more than do hallucinations. Suppose, then, a dream- like state of the dead when trying to communicate and a subconscious state of the medium through which the thought must be transmitted, and we might well expect all the appearance of realities, as they are de- scribed in mediumistic phenomena. The incidents of one's past life may be simply thought on the " other side " and as their telepathic impression on the sub- liminal mind of the medium results in a phantasm, an apparent reality to the medium, we ought to expect descriptions reproducing the features of a material world, without their characterizing such as a fact. Let me take as an example the message which I re- ceived through Mrs. Smith (Cf. p. 137). " Another person is here from the family circle ; a little boy four 218 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS; THEORIES or five years old. He is grown up. He wears a little blouse and little pants like knickerbockers." Superficially such a communication, which exactly de- scribes my brother and his clothes when he died forty years ago, represents an apparently material world of an absurd sort. The circumstances enable me to treat the incident here as not wholly due to chance. But if I am expected to believe that ghosts have clothes I should have great difficulty in accepting and defend- ing such a belief. But suppose that the communica- tor was simply thinking and that the medium was getting the message telepathically, — whether from the living or the dead matters not for our purposes, — and that the subconscious mind simply converted the transmitted ideas into hallucinatory phantasms, we could easily understand in this message a reference to the boy at the time he died, a recognition of maturity now — and this seems to be a characteristic of all such phenomena — and a phantasm of his dress reproduced from the thoughts of the communicator. In that view of the matter there would be no difficulty in giving a rational interpretation of the facts, and one that most easily consists with the spiritistic theory. If, then, we suppose that the communicator is in a dream-like state ; that the trance personality is also in more or less the same condition, and that the medium is also in a morbid condition of some kind, if that term is not too strong to express it, we can well under- stand how trivial and confused messages would be the result of communication from an ethereal world, and much more would the result be affected, if telepathy be the process of communication, a process that is 219 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION extremely rare and difficult between the living. All of the influences together which I have mentioned would explain easily enough the perplexities of those who cannot make up their minds on such phenomena as we have been discussing, and ought to show that the ap- parent inconsistencies in the various hypotheses are in reality not such, but are caused by the confusion inci- dent to the operation of the several factors involved in the process of communication. In the present chapter it has been necessary to speak and think more positively regarding the spirit- istic theory than in the previous ones. In them I was primarily interested in giving the facts, and I should have continued that policy in the present article, if the triviality and confusion could have been explained in any rational way without trying the application of the spiritistic explanation. I have, therefore, imagined the spiritistic point of view as entitled to a test in its application to the very facts which give rise to the sceptics' most trusted objections. I do not put it forward as anything more than a working hypothesis, and shall unhesitatingly abandon it if a better and simpler hypothesis can be obtained and supported by evidence. I should, of course, not abandon it to the ipse dixit of any one who can talk glibly about what " might be." I want to know whether there is any evidence that a particular " might be " is in reality a fact. As this is a scientific prob- lem every hypothesis must have its evidence, and those that are supported by respectability and scepticism are quite as much under obligation to produce evi- dence as any spiritistic interpretation. All that I 220 CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS ; THEORIES should ask is that any theory advanced must produce sufficient evidence in its support to render it more probable than another, and I should not listen to a priori possibilities in this or any other matter pre- tending to be a scientific problem. The question here concerns the best hypothesis in the light of the facts, and if any better than the spiritistic can be evi- dentially sustained I shall be the first to accept it. I am interested only in discovering a clue to the per- plexities which all admit cannot be explained by the ordinary theories. 221 CHAPTER VIII THE SMEAD CASE This case, which will be of interest to psychical re- searchers, came under my notice in the following man- ner. During the holidays in December, 1901, I re- ceived a letter from a stranger, who turned out to be a clergyman, saying that he had been experimenting with his wife, who seemed to exhibit mediumistic pow- ers, and asking me to investigate the authenticity of certain statements bearing upon the personal identity of one of the " communicators." He also made the passing remark that he had a collection of " commu- nications " purporting to come from the planet Mars. I at once seized the opportunity to investigate the case and soon received the Martian matter for exami- nation. I found that the experiments had extended over several years and that a tolerably complete record had been kept. I at once became sufficiently inter- ested in the matter to arrange the materials for study and publication. The following is a summary of the results obtained, including personal experiments of my own. In this account the gentleman and his wife will, for the purpose of concealing their identity, be known as Mr. and Mrs. Smead. Of course, in spite of the fact that Mr. Smead was a clergyman, I had to be on the alert for fraud and deception, as I had no previous acquaintance with him or any of his connections. But I soon found it THE SMEAD CASE unnecessary to seriously entertain suspicions, as further acquaintance and investigation entirely re- lieved me of the duty of testing the evidence from this point of view, as was done in the Piper case. Mr. and Mrs. Smead were both honest and conscientious people, and it is especially pertinent to remark in this connection that it is the painstaking and conscientious character of their narratives and records that supplies the evidence which depreciates the spiritistic claims of many of the facts. They themselves furnished nearly all the evidence of secondary personality in their case, and showed an entire willingness to dis- credit any theory that did not appear to be war- ranted by the facts. This fortunate circumstance limited my task to the work of recording and analyzing the incidents. It seems that Mrs. Smead had been familiar with planchette writing from her childhood, and had occa- sionally practiced it. But nothing like systematic experiments had been made until 1895. In the mean- time a number of apparitions had occurred of which a contemporaneous record was made. But as they have no demonstrably veridical character no further mention of them need be made here. They simply exemplify a mental type of which we have more inter- esting examples. But when systematic experimenting began, as stated, in 1895, the phenomena assumed a more suggestive character. In so far as the " com- municators " were concerned, their names gave the appearance of a veridical character to their state- ments. They were three deceased children of Mr. and Mrs. Smead and a deceased brother of Mr. Smead. 223 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION As far as their identity is concerned they represent personalities more plausibly spiritistic than those in M. Flournoy's case, which this one resembles in many of its features. I shall recur to this later. THE MARTIAN ROMANCE. During the early part of the year above mentioned the alleged communicators referred several times to two or three of the planets. But in August of that year, a propos of a question addressed to a deceased daughter as to where she was, the answer was " every- where," and then, after denying that she had seen heaven, she remarked that " some spirits are on the earth and others are on other worlds." A few weeks afterwards a brother of this communicator, pur- porting to write through the planchette, said that the sister who had made the above statement was away, and in answer to the question, " Where? " replied " Mars." In response to a further question he said that his sister had gone to Mars " with uncle Vester." [" Vester " was the abbreviated form by which Mr. Smead had called his brother Sylvester while living, the fact of course being known to Mrs. Smead.] At another sitting Mars was mentioned again, and also the intended visit there with this uncle. In the same sitting another communicator, Maude (the sister of the previous communicator), referred spontane- ously to Jupiter, and drew a crude map of its surface, saying, in reply to a request to tell something about its people, " they are different from you." Later, amid much trivial matter, Jupiter was said to be the THE SMEAD CASE " babies' heaven," whither they were taken after death because they were better than grown-up people. Even secondary personalities cannot stand the theol- ogy of Calvin and Edwards ! There were also sev- eral statements made in connection with this reference to the infants' heaven that betrayed the influence of early teaching in the life of Mrs. Smead, and which indicated the material upon which the secondary per- sonality had drawn for its " communications." They were perhaps the memories of Sunday school teach- ing supplemented by a childish imagination of what the stars might be. It was, however, at the next experiment that the most interesting " communications " began regarding the planet Mars. The sitting started with the draw- ing of a map in considerable detail, giving the names of the zones which were represented on it. The " com- municator " was Maude, the deceased child of Mr. and Mrs. Smead. The names given for the several zones were " Zentin " (cold), " Zentinen " (very cold), " Dirnstze " (North Temperate Zone), " Dirnst- zerin " (South Temperate Zone), " Emerincenren " (Equator), and " Mimtenirimte " (Continent). After the map was drawn the following dialogue took place between the " communicator " and Mr. Smead. " At it we had a fine time. We could go all around there easy. The people are bigger and there are not so many as on this earth. The people there could talk with the people here if they knew their language, but they do not." (Do the people in Mars have flesh and blood as we do?) "Yes." (Do they look like us?) "Some." 225 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION (Are there big cities there?) "No. The inhabit- ants are most like Indians." (American Indians?) "Yes." (Are they highly civilized?) "Yes, some are, in some things." (What things?) " In fixing the water." (How in that way?) " Making it so that it is easy to get around it." (How do they do that?) " They cut great canals from ocean to ocean and great bodies of water." At this point in the sitting the " communications " stopped, and it should be said that the canals and bodies of water like lakes were represented on the map as drawn at the beginning of the experiment. A curious fact, however, connected with the incidents, is that an article was published in a paper taken by the family and dated one day after the date of this sitting, and in it reference was made to Percival Low- ell's articles in the Atlantic Monthly for that year discussing the question of Martian inhabitants and canals. Whether Mrs. Smead had seen this article before the automatic writing by the planchette de- pends upon whether the paper was printed ahead of its nominal date, which I could not ascertain, or whether she had seen any of Lowell's articles in the Atlantic Monthly, both of which Mr. and Mrs. Smead deny and with some probabilities in their favor. One need hardly make a point of this, however, as the resources of imagination are equal to all that was written by the planchette, especially since the ques- tion of Martian inhabitants and canals is one of com- mon interest. The next recorded " communications " did not refer to Mars, but consisted of apparent messages from THE SMEAD CASE the deceased children of Mr. and Mrs. Smead, in which there was an evident attempt to have some fun. Among the tricks played by the subliminal was the draft of a figure which was said to represent the Devil. The figure was of a serpentine character with the fea- tures of a dragon. It was to some extent the con- ventional devil of the theatrical stage. Two or three times during the Martian " communications " this sort of interruption occurred, involving matter that had no planetary character or connections. But when the Martian " messages " were resumed after this humor- ous diversion it was interesting to remark their abrupt- ness and completed development. It was not until five years later, however, that any further experiments were made or recorded, and it is this long interval that creates the interest in the resumption of Martian matter. The last sitting was in December, 1895. The next was in September, 1900. In this latter the " commu- nications " present a developed form and devotion to detail. The planchette began by drawing a figure which might very easily suggest a ship, and wrote the two words " Seretrevir " and " Cristririe." The former was explained to mean a sea vessel and the latter its name. It seems that the Martians have the good sense to follow terrestrial usage and to give names to their ships. But an interesting deviation from our habits was the statement that the ships were made of trees and that the inhabitants of Mars did not have sawmills as we do. In the next experiment a curious figure was drawn, unrecognizable in itself but which was explained to be 227 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION a " dog house temple." In the corners of it were drawn two animals which were explained as being meant to represent dogs, and which were said to give the name to the temple. The characters were then drawn which described the temple by name, and these were then translated into English characters, " Ti femo wahrhibivie timeviol," meaning " the dog house temple." In the same sitting was given the name of a lake that had been drawn on the map. It was " Emer- via." Mr. Smead then asked the " communicator " to give the Martian for " The boy runs," and re- ceived the answer that people do not run on Mars, but only walk. What the climate may be that pre- vents any faster pace was not explained, or whether it was climate or not. But the sentence written in Mar- tian characters and translated into English was " Ti inin amarivim." The form of thought as explained was " the boy walking " and not " the boy walks," a curious deviation from the most natural speech, unless the subliminal is shrewd enough to introduce just sufficient variation into a capricious whim of this kind to give it plausibility.* A few days later the planchette drew a rough sketch of a man and then one of a woman, explaining at the same time what they represented and giving the Mar- tian words for the two. " Mare " was for " man," " Maren " for " men," " Kare " for " woman," and * The absence of such variations is a peculiarity of the Flournoy case; the fact that in it the Martian language fol- lowed exactly the order and grammar of French, made a strong point in the argument against regarding it as an independent language. — [Editor's Note.] 228 THE SMEAD CASE " Karen " for " women." After this description Mr. Smead asked the question, " What is peculiar about that picture of the man you drew? " and received the following answer with the continued dialogue: "The way they dress." (How?) "The men wear dresses and pants." (Short dresses?) "Yes. The women wear bag-like skirts and funny hats. Their hair is hanging down their shoulders. The men put theirs up and keep long hair under their hats. We went all around. The people are different in dif- ferent places." In the next experiment a strange figure was drawn and the word " Wereven " written out, which was said to mean " serpent." This was followed by the ground plan of a house in the shape of a double cross, or two PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION crosses with their arms touching, and with the outline of a mountain range in the background. The lower part or half of the double cross, however, was ex- plained to represent the reflection of the house in the water, thus indicating that it was built on the shore of some body of water. It was afterwards explained also that the Martian houses were usually built on the shore of a lake or body of water. In the present representation there were drawn circular loops in the wing sections of the house. They were said to repre- sent windows. The doors stood on the line dividing the shadow from the house. At the next two or three sittings the tendency was to give some account of the Martian language in the form of sentences written out in Martian char- acters, which were hieroglyphic, and explained in English terms. The sentences were " This man is a great man," the Martian order being " This man a great man is," and " The great man addressing his subjects." Unfortunately Mr. Smead did not pre- serve the Martian words for these as for later sen- tences. On October 3rd the planchette drew the pic- ture of a flower and wrote the sentence : " Flowers bloom there. Many of the great men plant them " ; the Martian being, " Moken irin trinen minin aru ti maren inine tine." On the same date a still longer sentence was written. It was : " Ti maren arivie warire ti marenensis aru ti Artez feu ti timeviol." The English of this is : " The men went with the 230 THE SMEAD CASE subjects of the chief ruler to the temple." In the course of the same experiment the " communicator " stated a fact that might interest the student of poli- tics. It was that : " The people on Mars choose their rulers, so that the children of great men do not count," with the emphasis apparently on " people." Evidently the aristocrats in that planet do not possess the franchise! They may have power, but they can- not share the privilege of helping in their own elec- tion. On the next day one of the most remarkable and in- teresting of the whole series of drawings was made, especially as it was drawn by the planchette. It was preceded by the written statement : " You should see some of their embroideries. The colors are beau- tiful." Then the planchette drew a representation of an embroidered dress with flowers scattered over it in symmetrical order. After the dress was drawn in out- line the colored portions were described, and these were variations of pink, white, green, yellow, brown and lavender. The waist was pink and apparently draped with lavender lace. The upper portion of the skirt was white and contained embroidered flowers in it, the flowers having various colors. Next to this was a wide pink stripe, which was wider behind than in front. The lower portion of the skirt was lavender in color and ornamented with flowers at the margin of the pink stripe, and at the lower edges. It is ap- 231 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION parently a portion of an overskirt. In connection with it the dress was described in the following sen- tence : " Mare arivie ceassin oonei kei ahrue ruinin warire ti mare." This was interpreted in English to mean : " Man chief ruler's wife's dress when she goes riding with the man chief ruler." On the next day the figure of a wagon with some animal hitched to it was drawn and described as a " goat-cart." The Martian for it was said to be " Yeoar." Then on the following day a most re- markable and original drawing of a Martian clock was made. The whole and its parts were described in detail. The Martian name for it was " Triveniul." It consisted of two circular wooden boxes resting side by side and connected by openings, through which passed from one to the other the wire that formed the THE SMEAD CASE coil springs in each box. The spring begins in the center of one box and terminates in a coil which is wound around a circular wire to hold it in its place, runs through the opening between the boxes and, winding about another circular wire, terminates as the first begins, in the center of the other box. The spring is of brass, and the spiral Dart of it is made and fastened so that as it unwinds in one of the boxes it winds up the other in the second box. The clock is wound once a day, and as the running down of one of the spiral coils winds up the other the latter serves to run the clock during the night. Though it was described with much detail the mechanical working of it was not made clear, and hence we can only mention the ingenuity of the subconsciousness in constructing a plausible piece of machinery. It seems also that the Martians have overcome the difficulties of aerial navigation. They have an air- ship of very peculiar and ingenious construction. 233 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION The description of it by the planchette after drawing it was as follows : " Made of wire cloth-like stuff — made to go in the air. It is an air-ship. It is a coil. You see it will run a long mile (while) when they have to stop and wind it, or it must be wound while it is in motion. This coil makes the wings go. Each one (wing) is connected with this coil and then when the power is turned on it makes them go like birds' wings. The power runs it all, only the propeller guides it. Let me tell you about the wings first. " They are filled with air so that they are light. Then the wire-like cloth covers them. There are fif- teen points or parts of the wings that are filled with air. These wings go up and down. The coils at the bottom are used to help the wings open. The power winds the coil. The power is electricity and the batteries are where the coils are. There are three big coils. One is for the wind sails, one is for the wings, and one is for the propeller. The coil is used with the sails because it is sometimes needed when the 234* THE SMEAD CASE winds are strong. The propeller goes like a wing. The wind makes the ship go some." The sketch of the air-ship drawn by the planchette shows a curiously shaped mechanism that resembles roughly a flattened ballon suspended upon a flat boat with sails. All the parts of it were named and accu- rately described, including the means of entrance, which were round window-like holes on the sides. Two days later the planchette drew a mountain, or elevation, on which were placed the Martian symbols of two houses, and the place was described as an ob- servatory or " place where they look at you." There were also drawn across the mountain what may be de- scribed as tunnels dug through it, with a pipe-like appearance at one end. The Martian name for house, " wardhibivie," was written near the symbols for houses and explained to mean this. Then a com- plete Martian sentence was written describing the place, with numerals placed under the words to indi- cate the order of the Martian thought. In English it read : " The place in which man chief ruler looks on your earth from Mars." The Martian order indi- cated by the numbers was : " The man chief ruler's place in which looks on your earth from Mars." The Martian hieroglyphics for this, when put into English letters and words, were : " Ti rure neu in- few mare laries en fratuir triuen carmie." A curious coincidence between this drawing and one in Flournoy's case is to be noticed. Mile. Helene Smith also drew a Martian observatory with a tunnel in it, and it appears that Mrs. Smead was unaware of the fact, as, although Flournoy's book was in the 235 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION house, it had been withheld from her reading on pur- pose to avoid such coincidences, and unless we are to believe that Mrs. Smead had examined the book in an unconscious state we have no reason to suppose that she had seen any of Mile. Helene Smith's drawings. The subject was not resumed until a month later, when, on November 14th, the planchette wrote a Mar- tian sentence representing the statement that the peo- ple in that planet were eating a meal. The house to which the statement referred seems, according to the original record, not to have been drawn until ten days later, November 24th. But the sentence was: " Wardhibivie arri prri kau friuiol taikin sirvuen." To a question as to what the Martians were eating, the answer was, in English, " bread, cake, something like water, fruit, and chicken." The Martian for these foods was : " Fraiu, kreki, trikuil, caruitz, fluiniz." The drawing of the house represented merely the ground plan, and described the furniture in it, with the position of each piece, including couches, hassocks, a cushion, table, water vessel, clock, and doors. At the next experiment, which was on November 15th, the planchette drew the representation of a Mar- tian chicken, and said that this fowl was not so large as the terrestrial chicken. There was apparently an associative connection of the incident with those of the previous day. Then on November 16th, with prob- ably a similar associative connection, a house was drawn and said to represent the palace of Artez, the chief ruler. The parts of the palace were described in great detail after drawing it. It consisted of two 236 THE SMEAD CASE divisions, one of white and the other of gray stone- That of gray stone was by far the larger, and showed a different style of architecture. It was characterized by a series of square towers connected together on the first story. Two of the towers, of which there were eight in all, were larger than the others. There were four stairways arranged between the towers, except between the second and third, and between the fourth and fifth. The doors were large and of rectangular shape, and some of the windows round and some square. The roof was made so as to serve as a promenade, and access to it was gained through doors in the towers. The white stone house was smaller than the gray one, and built in the same general style, except that the towers, if so they may be called, ter- minated in pyramids, and the windows were all round. The foreground consisted of lawns, flower-beds, and ponds or artificial lakes. The background was a series of lofty mountains, with the blue sky to set them off. In all the representation was a magnificent piece of work, and involved conceptions worthy of a fine artist. PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION Eight days later the planchette drew the ground plan of this house or palace, as remarked above, and then the representation of a curtain used in it. The curtain is an interesting work of art in some respects. It was apparently embroidered, and was described in detail. The fringe at the bottom consisted of repre- sentations of people, and was of dark gray or brown color. Immediately above it, of a lighter color and mixed with yellow, was a sort of serpentine- shaped decoration, and above this a yellow stripe. On this was superposed a wide red stripe with four speci- mens of flowers, as if set in pots. The two middle flowers were single, and the two outside sets were of three branches each. Over this belt was a narrow strip of gray color, apparently representing the walks and gardens of a palace: for in the center of the curtain above this belt were the white stone di- visions of the palace described previously, with green swards in the background rising into mountains and sky further back. On the sides of this picture, as a margin, were rectangles of red and yellow, and at the top a heavy brown fringe like that at the bottom. The whole representation is both unique, in its way, and well conceived. Nearly a fortnight later another curtain was drawn. It was somewhat different in style from the first specimen. The fringe and margins were not of the same type, and were not described in detail. The central ornament was a representation of the Martian air-ship with a background of cloud and sky. Curi- ously enough the figure of the air-ship is quite identi- cal with that drawn much earlier, showing the same 238 THE SMEAD CASE 239 subliminal memory as is noticeable in the hieroglyphic symbols of speech and thought, which are correctly repeated when once the fabrications are made. The HHiiiH V V v y v vvv sails of the air-ship were white, the curtain generally of brown, but the embroidery of a light blue. At various intervals during the next ten days there were drawn a bridal veil which duplicates our speci- men of this article in all essential respects, a lady wearing this veil and a dress with a long train, and in connection with the latter the Martian sentence: PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION " Mirwerel Wariema Marquein wardhibivie ma- manie." The order of this in English would have been, according to the numerals placed under the words : " Marquein Wariema wardhibivie Mirwerel mamanie." The English interpretation of this was said to be : " The house where the bride Marquein Wariema lives with her husband " ; or after the grammatical structure of the Martian, " Marquein Wariema's house live together husband." It was also explained that the Martian bride retains her name after marriage, which in this case was " Wariema," as " Marquein " was said to be that of her husband. There is no record of any drawing of a house on this occasion to explain the reference of the sentence. The next drawing represented a large house with two wings, so to speak. It resembles a large bar- racks and is plain in architecture. The windows are again round and very numerous. It was described as " the place where the men that get married work." Two days later a Martian sentence was written ex- plaining that " the men work in the fields before they marry." The Martian of this was : " Ti maren oreicein ein treviens veren quren mariqim." There were some indications that the men who had to live this life before marriage were of the aristocratic class and even princes of the Crown, a most delightful way of reducing this class to democratic respectabil- ity. It is on a par with the Martian limitation of the franchise! This was the last of the Martian " communica- tions." They were suddenly interrupted and termi- nated by the appearance at the next experiment of a 240 THE SMEAD CASE new personality who called himself Harrison Clarke and who shut out all other would-be " communica- tors." He apparently had no interest in inter- planetary matters and never even alluded to them. I shall return to him presently. It is only necessary now to indicate the interruption of the Martian mat- ter and then to ask the question what it signifies. The psychologist and psychical researcher will recognize at once what these phenomena mean. There is no evidence that they are what they purport to be. The only hypothesis that recommends itself under such conditions is that of secondary personal- ity. There are internal indications in the drawings of the planchette that suggest this theory, even if we had no other evidence of it. For instance, the mechanical impossibility of the air-ship, the evident confusion of a " propeller " with the helm, the ap- propriation of forces like electricity, which is the sub- ject of present terrestrial excitement in expectation of further discoveries, the general play of this un- conscious process reproducing phenomena too much like the terrestrial to escape suspicion, all these are facts which take the Martian " communications " en- tirely out of the category of spiritistic revelations, unless better evidence is forthcoming to show a tran- scendental significance. But the most interesting and important feature of the case remains after we have classified it. It is the psychological value of such cases for the study of alleged spiritism. We find in them evidence that we need not attribute fraud to the normal consciousness, and we discover automatic processes of mentation that may be equally acquitted 241 PSYCHICAL. RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION of fraudulent intent, owing to the absence of self- consciousness, while we are also free from the obliga- tion to accept the phenomena at their assumed value. Their most extraordinary characteristic is the extent to which they imitate the organizing intelligence of a normal mind and the perfection of their impersona- tion of spirits, always betraying their limitations, however, just at the point where we have the right to expect veridical testimony to their claims. In this case these claims are more plausible than in Prof. Flournoy's. His " spirits " could do nothing to prove their identity, and assumed, what I believe is the prevailing form of spiritism in France, namely the doctrine of reincarnation. But this feature, as in spiritism in this country, is absent from the present case, which is connected with personalities who might be expected to prove their identity, and we shall find in the sequel that some things are done to satisfy this expectation, at least in its superficial aspects. THE MYSTIFICATION OF HARRISON CLARKE. As I have already remarked, the " communica- tions " exhibiting the Martian characteristics were not the only ones which occurred during this period of planchette writing. I have simply grouped the Martian incidents together for collective examination and study. They were interspersed at various times with alleged " communications " of a very different sort, and partaking of superficial characteristics similar to those which have made the Piper case so interesting. Several relatives, and even entire stran- 242 THE SMEAD CASE gers whose identity could not be traced, purported to " communicate," and gave much more plausibility to the spiritistic explanation than did the Flournoy phenomena. One special illustration of this plausible character, was the personality of Harrison Clarke. He ap- peared, as already said, without previous announce- ment and interrupted the Martian " communica- tions," shutting out all other intruders. One of his special traits is his cleverness in tricks of writing. He shows about equal facility at inverted, mirror and normal writing. The inverted writing is backwards and upside down, so that it must be read by turning the sheet over from top to bottom. The mirror writ- ing can be read only in a mirror. But it was his autobiography that proved the most interesting of all his work. At first he relied on his tricks of writ- ing to prove his spiritistic claims, but when he was given to understand that these were not sufficient he condescended to meet our demands for more appro- priate data to prove his terrestrial identity, and the result was the following story, which was given at different times and not in the chronological order in which I here arrange his statements. He was born in a small town, now a part of Chicago. He did not name the suburb. At the age of two years he was taken to Albany, New York State, where he was brought up by an aunt. When he became old enough he went to New York City and worked there awhile, but removed to Baltimore, where he obtained work in a small store. There he fell in love with a young lady, whom he called " his 243 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION girl," and became engaged to her. Thinking that if he was going to get married he ought to have a trade, he came back to New York and was emplo} r ed as a type-setter in the office of the New York Herald. In the meantime " his girl " in Baltimore died, and the effect upon Harrison Clarke was a broken heart. He enlisted in the army and was " in the last regiment that left New York City for the war." This, he said, was in 1862. He was in the battle of Shiloh. He named the Generals, Grant as in chief command there and Sherman under him, with General Lew Wallace, saying that he himself was in Wallace's di- vision and that Wallace had taken General C. F. Smith's place because of the latter's sickness. Gen- eral Bragg was also mentioned as the Confederate commander. One night Harrison Clarke and his comrade were out, for reasons not definitely explained, wandering about through swampy ground, and ap- peared to be lost. Towards morning they were dis- covered by a rebel guard and shot. Clarke was shot through the lungs, but did not die immediately. In the meantime he was visited by the spirit of his lady love, who told him that he was coming with her. He demurred at first, but finally consented on receiv- ing the promise that he should be permitted to return some time and tell that he survived the ordeal of death. This is an interesting and circumstantial story. Some of the incidents it was not possible to investi- gate for verification or disproof, as they were not accompanied by the details necessary to secure a clue. 244 THE SMEAD CASE The incident of employment in the Herald office had its possibilities, but the authorities there refused to permit the necessary examination of their books to determine whether or not any such person ever worked there as claimed. The authorities in the War De- partment at Washington, D. C, were more kind and accommodating. In response to enquiries on the matter they reported to me that there were no New York Regiments in the battle of Shiloh. This battle occurred in June, 1862. There was a Harrison Clarke in the 125th New York Regiment, but he was still living at the time of these experiments and had never been in the battle named. There was also a Harrison Clarke in one of the Illinois regiments in the battle of Shiloh, but he was mustered out at the close of the war and did not die until 1895. There was a Harrison Clarke killed in the battle of Fair Oaks in April, 1862. This place was situated in a swampy region, but the incidents narrated do not fit such a person. My discovery in Washington, how- ever, put an end to the spiritistic claims of Harrison Clarke. The mention of the Generals in the battle of Shiloh was correct, but it is possible that Mrs. Smead has read somewhere an account of that battle and does not remember the facts in her normal state. It is also true that Harrison Clarke did not spon- taneously say that he enlisted in a New York Regi- ment, though he seemed to assent to this when it was suggested. His spontaneous statement was that his regiment was the last to leave the city before that battle. But the fact that no trace can be found of 245 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION any Harrison Clarke having been killed in that battle indicates quite clearly what disposal had to be made of his claims. As soon as I had ascertained that no New York regiments had been in the battle of Shiloh I resolved to confront this personality with the facts. I sent them to Mr. Smead, and at the first opportunity he presented them to Harrison Clarke for explanation. When this was done Harrison Clarke showed the natural embarrassment which the contradiction was bound to produce, but began a battle of intellectual sparring and defiance which perhaps has hardly its equal in the annals of secondary personality. Clarke admitted the embarrassing nature of the situation, but at the suggestion of desertion he seized the chance to say that he had deserted the New York regiment and had re-enlisted under another name in a regiment that enabled him to be present in the battle of Shiloh. But he absolutely refused to give the name under which he had re-enlisted! He saw a way to escape being trapped again, and stubbornly refused to sup- ply any more data for determining his personal iden- tity. As a consequence his presence was discouraged, and he soon disappeared in a fit of anger and did not reappear again for some time, when he seemed somewhat chastened and subdued, though he would not do anything more to establish his identity. I need not tell a psychical researcher why this per- sonality cannot be treated as spiritistic. The inter- est to the psychological student lies in its simulation of the real in its circumstantial story. The superior- ity of the personality in this respect to Flournoy's THE SMEAD CASE Marie Antoinette, Leopold, and the Martian Reincar- nation is perfectly manifest, as the incidents have all the internal probabilities that the most inveterate spiritist might desire. The personality is perfectly natural and satisfies all the criteria for a spirit, except the truthfulness of the narrative. In this it exhibits a most interesting illustration of intelligence, and makes a valuable case of secondary personality for the student of spiritistic problems in either their spurious or their genuine manifestations. There were interesting phenomena, besides those that I have mentioned, which illustrate a remarkable secondary personality in this character. For in- stance, when asked to write the name of Philadelphia in mirror writing with every other letter omitted, this was done almost to perfection, with a dash and promptness that would take one off his feet, so to speak, with surprise. Again, to test the question of the supernormal I once placed my arm in a hanging position so that my body would completely conceal it from Mrs. Smead's field of vision while she was in a deep trance with her eyes closed, and moving my hand backward and forward on the wrist as a hinge, so as not to move the arm or cause any noise with the coat sleeve which might affect any supposed hyper- assthesic condition of Mrs. Smead, I asked this per- sonality what I was doing, and received the answer that I was moving my hand. On my recognition of the answer's correctness Harrison Clarke asked me triumphantly whether I did not believe in him now. I flattered him on his success, but pressed him with the necessity of proving his identity if he were Ml PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION to satisfy me. Similar feats were performed in one or two other instances, but the psychologist would want more experiments of this kind and would think of something else than spirits in all such cases. As an illustration of how much secondary person- ality had to do with the claims and character of Har- rison Clarke I may refer to a most interesting cir- cumstance. After I had reported to Mr. Smead, and he to Harrison Clarke, the fact that the person of that name in the 125th New York Regiment was still living, this personality had the audacity to cause a vision to appear to Mrs. Smead, in which he himself was represented as showing her his regiment march- ing before her, and when the ninth line was reached in which he had said originally that he had marched, he pointed out a vacancy in the line to indicate where he had been, and that he had really been killed. This was, of course, the subliminal utilizing my own in- formation and confusing it. Another incident which presents a remarkable in- stance of auto-suggestion is the following, which oc- curred in one of Mr. Smead's experiments. Mr. Smead had asked what became of Mrs. Smead's soul when he, Harrison Clarke, was writing, and the reply was that she was asleep. On a further question to know if she was aware of what was going on, Harri- son Clarke said: " Ask her what she just saw," and when Mr. Smead asked his wife to tell him what she saw, she being still in the trance, Harrison Clarke replied : " Yes, when she wakes." After she awoke, which was almost immediately, she narrated a most interesting vision. She had seen a lady dressed in 248 THE SMEAD CASE olden style, and had thought it was Harrison Clarke's lady-love. There were several other visions with much interest in them, but it would take too much time to go into their details. All of them suggest and some of them prove the influence of secondary personality, and so aid in this explanation of Harri- son Clarke in spite of his greater plausibility than any of the personalities in Flournoy's case. THE MEDIUMSHIP OF MRS. SMEAD IN CONNECTION WITH THAT OF MRS. PIPER. But the matter does not end here. Incidents with still greater interest than those of Harrison Clarke are yet to come. I had obtained some of the Clarke incidents at sittings which I held in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Smead, and the case interested me suffi- ciently to cause me to arrange for a series of experi- ments in my own house in New York, as I was so situated that I could not leave the city. My plan was to try an experiment which Dr. Hodgson had for many years wished to try in the Piper case, if we could find another medium of promise to make the trial. This was to establish communication between Mrs. Piper and another medium so that we could ex- change messages at the same time. I made arrange- ments with Dr. Hodgson to try this experiment simultaneously with his sittings near Boston. In pursuance of this I brought Mrs. Smead to New York. On the appointed day and hour Mrs. Smead went into trance in New York and at the same time Dr. Hodgson had his sitting at Arlington Heights, 24-9 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION near Boston. This was on March 12th. Somewhere about 11 :30 or 12 o'clock Dr. Hodgson told " Rec- tor," the " control " in the Piper case at the time, what I was doing in New York and what I wanted of him, namely, that he should investigate my case and see if he could communicate through that me- dium. Rector went on to finish his " communica- tions " through Mrs. Piper and after he had closed them with his usual form of statement, as if recollect- ing an important matter, the hand of Mrs. Piper wrote in good strong script, " Remember . Hyslop." I omit between these two words the pass sentence that my father, acting as supposed communicator, had spontaneously given me on February 7th, 1900, at a sitting with Mrs. Piper and intended as a means of identification in future experiments with mediums other than Mrs. Piper. On the next day, March 13th, Rector took up a part of the sitting with Mrs. Piper at which Dr. Hodgson was present and in the " com- munications " discussed the case with Mrs. Smead. I report here the record as made at Arlington Heights, with the omission of reference to other cases not af- fecting mine, and of certain confusions in the " com- munications." Rector's statements were as follows: " Friends, in looking over the light with friend Hyslop there is little indeed to be said by us concern- ing it, or the antecedents therein exercised by the so- called light. It is really not worth recording, i.e., the genuineness of it." (R. H., You mean that there is a little real light, but not much ? ) " Yes, have we not so expressed it, in different words, perhaps? " 250 THE SMEAD CASE (Is there enough for you to send any message there?) " No there is not." (Then is it worth our spending any more time about it here now?) [Mrs. Piper's hand listens, as it were, to the invisible.] (Have you any advice to give?) " Yes, and hast thou any arti- cle of his, Hyslop's, friend? " (No.) " We will for absolute surety send Prudens there at once and see precisely what the conditions are while the meeting is going on. We ask thee to ask him to be wary. The so-called light as seen by us is not a light given from our world at all, but the conditions are hypocritic (deceptive) and fanciful." (Then do you see whether the deception is on the part of the supraliminal consciousness, or is it due to the subliminal or understratum?) " Subliminal and not supraliminal. And therefore the subject is not consciously deceiving, but a few suggestions from the experimenter would soon determine in his mind the conditions as herein described. It would be infinitely wiser to suggest to the subject that the statements, visions, etc., were due to the hidden consciousness, and were being produced through the condition known as thought transference" (She has, I understand from you, a capacity for re- ceiving impressions to some extent telepathically from incarnate persons.) " Yes, and not discarnate. This explains abso- lutely the conditions there represented." [Hand then thumps the table once, then points to invisible.] Prudens. " The statements by the spirit register- ing are correct." (You mean by Rector?) "Yes, I do. Prudens." " We can point out numerous cases similar." (It is quite frequent do you find?) "Yes, in our long search for other lights than the one through which we 251 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION now operate we find this unfortunately to be the case." (Do you in such cases see a light?) " Not in all, but with an exceptional few." (Do you mean a light that cannot be used by discarnate spirits?) " No, but a light which if rightly developed and understood could be used at times by discarnate spirits." Some further statements were made by the trance personality about other cases, comparing them with my own, and they ended with the sentence : " There is in the person with Hyslop a light, but not a decep- tive one." My sittings with Mrs. Smead in New York on both of these dates, March 12th and 13th, were entire failures. Not a line or word was obtained that would even suggest the supernormal evidentially, and even secondary personality was not evident except in the fact of automatic writing. On the second of these days I received the name of my wife in the automatic writing. She had died a few months previously and Mrs. Smead was told the fact after the sitting of the previous day, and the circumstances were such that they do not encourage the belief that there was any- thing significant in the incident. But it is extremely interesting to find that my own results coincided with the judgment of Rector and Prudens at the sittings with Mrs. Piper. The Martian " communications " and the incidents of Harrison Clarke were so palpably complicated with secondary personality, or subliminal mental action on the part of Mrs. Smead, that the reader who recognizes this fact must be struck with the general correctness of Rector's diagnosis. Most striking was his reference to " visions," since the 252 THE SMEAD CASE reader has been informed that subjective apparitions and visions are a very frequent phenomenon in the experience of Mrs. Smead, and there are many more of them than I have mentioned. INTRODUCTION OF OTHER COMMUNICATORS ', SOME IN- DICATIONS OF SPIRITISTIC MESSAGES. At the next few sittings some incidents developed that suggest the correctness of Rector's admission of supernormal capacity to the extent of thought trans- ference, as necessary to explain at least one circum- stance. The sitting on the 14th showed nothing of importance. On the 15th, early in the experiment, I got my father's name, but as this was probably known to Mrs. Smead from my article in Harper's Maga- zine I could attach no significance to it, and hence I asked that the pass sentence be given, to which I have referred above. My request was followed by scrawls at first and then in a few minutes the first word of that sentence and probably the second were written, the first quite clearly. This was in a lan- guage which Mrs. Smead does not know and never has known. The sentence was known to but two persons, Dr. Hodgson (since deceased) and myself, and is secured under lock and key against discovery. At this and the next sitting I also received several names suggestive of a spiritistic theory, but as the circumstances made it possible that Mrs. Smead might have accidently heard them I can attach no import- ance to the facts, though the probabilities are against her knowledge of them. The last sitting was an en- 253 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION tire failure owing to an attack of influenza which seized Mrs. Smead. On the whole I was not im- pressed with the sittings, in spite of the significance attaching to the delivery of a part of the pass sen- tence. The evidence for the supernormal of any kind was too small to deserve much consideration, and it is only the remarkably correct diagnosis of the trance personalities in the Piper experiments that demands attention. There are incidents, however, that lend much more support to the spiritistic theory and might confirm the possibility, recognized by Rector, of communica- tions from the discarnate. They were sporadic oc- currences during the whole period of these manifesta- tions. The first important one occurred as far back as 1896. Besides a large number which are amen- able to the hypothesis of secondary personality the following seem to be exempt from suspicion of this kind. While Mr. Smead had charge of a small pastorate in another town than his present residence he and Mrs. Smead had an intimate friend and parishioner in the person of a young lady of the name of Maude L. Janes. Mr. Smead had moved in the meantime and an occasional letter between Mrs. Smead and this Miss Janes had passed for a year after the removal in 1894, and then according to the testimony of Mr. and Mrs. Smead, all correspondence, ceased. In Au- gust, 1896, fully a year after the cessation of corre- spondence, at a sitting of which a record was made at the time, the planchette wrote that this Miss Maude L. Janes had died of pneumonia, that she had died 254 THE SMEAD CASE on March 25th, 1896, and that her attending physi- cian was a Dr. St. John. This purported to come direct from Maude L. Janes herself. Mr. Smead wrote to the mother of the lady to know if Maude was living or not, and learned in reply that she had died of pneumonia on April 25th, 1896, and that her physician was Dr. St. John. She had also mentioned the place of her burial, but the statement proved on enquiry to be incorrect. The circumstances of the case, and the measures taken by Mr. and Mrs. Smead to ascertain whether the " communications " were true or not, seem to in- dicate that the knowledge thus gained through the instrumentality of the planchette was in some way supernormal. It is interesting to observe in this con- nection that Miss Janes, in a conversation with Mrs. Smead some years before, had remarked, " I'll come to you when I die." She did not purport to com- municate again until February, 1901, when a very pretty series of " messages " was delivered, one of them about a certain little boy with whom she had gone to school, giving his name, and saying that he had gone to New Haven. This was unknown to Mr. and Mrs. Smead and proved on enquiry to be correct. The other incidents at this sitting, all well calcu- lated to prove personal identity, were known to Mr. and Mrs. Smead. These were the death of several persons, among them that of Maude Janes' mother, and a reference to a singular postal card which this Maude Janes had written to Mrs. Smead, explaining correctly why it had been written " backwards." Later she named her teacher previous to the time of 255 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION Mr. Smead's pastorate in the place, whom Mr. and Mrs. Smead had never known and whose name they did not know. She also mentioned a visit to South Hadley, Mass., about which Mr. and Mrs. Smead knew nothing and which, on enquiry, proved to have been correct. At a later sitting she attempted to give a geometrical demonstration of bisecting an angle and some other problems, and though she was not successful in making it clear, the figures were rightly drawn. Now, according to their testimony, Mr. and Mrs. Smead never knew whether Maude Janes had studied geometry or not. Mrs. Smead knew that she had studied algebra, which was dur- ing the last year of Mr. Smead's pastorate in the place, and the study of geometry followed a year later after Mr. Smead's removal. In addition Mrs. Smead never studied geometry and never knew any- thing about the science, not enough to draw the fig- ure of bisecting an angle. What might have inci- dentally come across her knowledge no one knows, but the testimony in this case is against secondary personality. On another occasion the " communications " pur- ported to come from a Mr. George Morse. He stated, among other incidents given with some con- fusion, that he had died of pneumonia, that his wife was still living, and that he himself had been a master mason. Mrs. Smead had known the man many years before, but had not seen or heard of him for seventeen years; never knew that he had been a master mason, as this was only during the last two years of his life, and did not know that his wife 256 THE SMEAD CASE was living. The reference to pneumonia was wrong, as he died of paralysis. All of these facts had to be verified by making a special trip to Boston to make the inquiries. Mrs. Smead had not for many years been in the part of Boston in which Mr. Morse lived, except to ride through it on the street cars once or twice, and never had any communications with the family since she left the place seventeen years before. Another " communicator " mentioned, about the same time, along with a number of incidents known to both Mr. and Mrs. Smead, one fact known only to Mr. Smead. When asked to tell something to prove his identity in addition to giving his name the planchette wrote the following: " I, Burleigh Hoyt, told this brother, when I was walking with him in the driveway at the back of his house near the pump, that I could and did have the power or gift from God which enabled me to tell whether the place which was selected was a place in which the water supply was good and would be last- ing, and I, Burleigh Hoyt, write this to prove to anyone who may doubt my good pastor's word that it is and was B. B. Hoyt." A reference to an insane son and the troubles of his wife on that account were characteristic but not evidential. Another instance is especially interesting for its mixture of truth and error, in view of the ignorance of Mr. and Mrs. Smead regarding the facts, and also because its confusion resembles some cases in the Piper phenomena. A " communicator," whose name I could not decipher in the original automatic 257 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION writing, indicated, nevertheless, enough to lead to the discovery of her identity. My attempt at de- ciphering the name, before I ascertained who it might be, ended in the letters " Celelee." But she finally gave her name as Mrs. Stearns, and in connection with it mentioned Lowell (Mass.) and then the name of Robert Russell and said that she was his wife's sister. She then said that she and her father wanted Mr. Smead to thank this sister, but did not succeed in telling why she wanted it done. Now Mr. and Mrs. Smead had known this Robert Russell and his wife in connection with some religious work four or five years previously, and learned after this sitting, through them, that the deceased sister was a Mrs. Keliher (possibly the name intended by " Celelee " ) , whom they had never known. Her name was not Stearns, but inquiry showed that her husband worked in Stearns' Manufacturing Company in Law- rence, both this fact and his person being entirely unknown to Mr. and Mrs. Smead. The sister, Mrs. Robert Russell, had cared for the father during his last days in Lowell, Mass. It is interesting to re- mark also that Mrs. Keliher died in a delirious condi- tion, having forgotten her name and identity, accord- ing to the testimony in the case. The circumstance has its analogies in the Piper record. Mr. Smead's brother Sylvester, who was killed by a railway engine, and who purported to participate in the Martian " communications," made some inter- esting replies in response to questions. I had asked Mr. Smead to test him in an appropriate way, and this was done. He was first asked to give the name 258 THE SMEAD CASE of his lady-love, as Mr. Smead did not know cer- tainly who this was, and the reply was " Evelyn," which turned out correct, and was not known to Mrs. Smead so far as her recollection goes. Then he was asked to give the name of another lady who had worked in a certain foundry, and the planchette wrote, " Grace Cregg," Grace Craig being the cor- rect name, also unknown to Mrs. Smead. He was then asked to name the station agent at a certain place, and this was done in the confused forms, " Hwtt, Hwett, Hewitt." The correct name was " Hoit." This name was entirely unknown to Mrs. Smead. At this point Sylvester began to tease his brother about the " communications " being the re- sult of Mrs. Smead's secondary personality, Mr. Smead having told Harrison Clarke that he was no veritable spirit but a secondary personality. Then he was asked for another test, which was that he should name the man who had once chased the two brothers when they were playing tick-tack together as boys. He gave this correctly as Roberts, the name and incidents being unknown to Mrs. Smead, so far as she can recollect. As I had arranged that Mrs. Smead should come to New York for experi- mentation, as above indicated, Mr. Smead asked his brother Sylvester to accompany her thither. He promised to do so, and said : " You won't be afraid now, Billy, with me." Before Mr. Smead's marriage his brother used to tease him by exciting his jealousy, until Mr. Smead would fear that his brother might marry the present Mrs. Smead. After this episode Mr. Smead again asked him to give the name of PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION his lady-love, and received the answer : " Evelyn Sargent." Mr. Smead did not know what her name was, but from a poem found in the pocket of his brother after the hitter's death he suspected that it was " Evelyn," as the poem was dedicated to some- one of that name. When he asked the question of his brother he had in mind three persons whom he thought possible candidates. One of them was named Minnie Sargent. It was thus interesting to find the name Sargent added to that of Evelyn. Inquiry, however, showed that the correct name was " Evelyn Hamel." Mrs. Smead, of course, never knew any of the facts. The incident is amenable to the suspicion of being telepathic in part at least, if we admit the supernormal at all, though the fact that Mr. Smead generally had his own hand also on the planchette might suggest its origin in his own sec- ondary personality. There were some interesting incidents " communi- cated " by a Mr. Miller, who was also a relative of Mr. Smead, but it would extend this paper to an un- due length to repeat and explain them. I could also mention quite a number of others were it not for the same reason. There were several alleged " com- municators " whose identity could not be traced, though they gave their names. There was, however, too little collateral evidence to enable us to make any investigation as to identity. One, a Rev. Henry Smith, who said he had lived in Saco, Maine, and who gave a number of specific details, well calculated to establish his identity, was found to have been wholly wrong in regard to them. In fact, it was noticeable 260 THE SMEAD CASH all through the experiments that where the " com- municators " were unknown to Mrs. Smead at any time in her life, the " messages " were exceedingly meager and confused, so that even the simulation of spiritistic material was imperfect. Some later incidents have occurred which may be of interest. The experiments have been continued and the record kept as before. The same mixed fea- tures exhibit themselves in the case, leaving the stu- dent without conclusive evidence in favor of any one interpretation, but it is still a most instructive case on any theory whatsoever. In the summer of 1901 Mr. and Mrs. Smead lost a little son very suddenly, apparently from some sort of poisoning. About two weeks after his death he apparently returned as a " communicator " through his mother. Nearly all the incidents which were given to establish his identity were known to his mother, as would be a matter of course. But there were two that were not so known and which are worth mentioning. When Mrs. Smead came to New York for experi- ments with me Mr. Smead and the little boy kept house. During this time Mr. Smead and the little boy went to another city by train. This incident was mentioned in the " communications," and allusion made to his having gone on an " express " train on that trip, and also to his night-dress and to a pair of mittens worn then. Now there was no express train on the railroad by which the two went, but it seems that on the trip the little boy was very much pleased 261 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION by the ride and, alluding to his own toy cars at home, spoke of those by which he was traveling as an " express train." This fact was not known to his mother, but only the fact that he had made the trip. Something, of course, might have been said about it by the boy in the presence of the mother and then the incident forgotten by her. But she does not re- member it. In one of his " communications " this boy referred to a little trunk that his brother George had given him a short time before he died. He indicated that he had asked his brother for it and that his brother had gone across the room and got it for him. Mr. Smead cross-questioned the living brother without putting leading questions, and found that while he himself and Mrs. Smead were out of the room, the day before the boy died, this little brother had been asked to bring the box or trunk to the sick child and had done it precisely as described at the sitting. A feature of the automatic writing bearing on the identity of the boy is of some interest. It was very characteristic of the boy that he wrote in capitals while living. That is, it was a habit of his fre- quently to do so. In the earlier " communications " purporting to come from him most of the writing was in capitals. When he first appeared the writing was about evenly divided between the ordinary script and capitals, but it was noticeable that he was often ap- parently assisted by his deceased sister. But as he came to be able to act without help the use of capitals diminished, until they finally disappeared and the ordinary script returned in all his " communications." 262 THE SMEAD CASE Of course this habit was known to both Mr. and Mrs. Smead. There have been many other alleged communicators who have given interesting incidents in proof of iden- tity. But these incidents are either so well known to Mrs. Smead or so mixed up with what she certainly did know, and are so complicated that I cannot ven- ture in a short summary like this to detail them. They have a most striking bearing, however, on the theory of secondary personality, especially as in some of them there is exhibited something of the dramatic play of personality which is so impressive a feature of the Piper phenomena. THE APPARITION OF AUNT SARAH. I must, however, narrate one experience, and an experiment connected with it, which has some interest to the psychical researcher, even though we cannot consider it as proving anything. On the evening of September 27th, 1901, Mr. and Mrs. Smead had a sitting, and the names of George Lowrey and George Smead were given, and an ap- parent attempt was made to " communicate " some- thing. The George Lowrey mentioned was deceased, the fact being known to the Smeads. He was an uncle of Mrs. Smead. The possible and apparent significance of the name may be connected with the following experience, which followed closely upon the sitting to which I have just referred. The same night, September 27th, Mrs. Smead had a vision. I give her account of it. 263 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION " I had been for a ride Friday afternoon and was very tired, so could not sleep very well during the first part of the night. About midnight I awoke with my right arm so painful that I could not move it from the wrist. I turned over to the left of the room and thought that it was very lonely without Cecil (the deceased son), and how much I would like to see him, if only for a few moments, when there was a loud rap in his room and another near me on the floor. I looked towards the spot where the rap came from, when I saw a vision of an elderly lady. This vision was different from any that I had seen before. It looked very ghostly. It had snowy white hair and wore a white gown. The hands and face were very white, so much so that I looked very steadily at it to be sure that I was not mistaken. I thought that, per- haps, the lady we had seen that afternoon had died. This was not true. This person that I saw was very old and I was so much surprised at the difference in her appearance from those that I have seen before that when morning came I at once told my husband what I had seen. He told me to write it out at once. I said that I did not wish to do so, because it was so ghostly that I did not like to think of it." Mr. Smead confirms the fact of having been told the narrative on the morning of the 28th, and the vision was soon afterwards written down as described. This was on September 30th. On the morning of September 30th they received a letter from a relative dated the same day, saying that an Aunt Sarah, aunt of Mrs. Smead, and living in Baltimore, some five hundred miles distant, had died. Further enquiry showed that she had died on 264 THE SMEAD CASE September 26th, the day before the sitting in which the name of George Lowrey, who was a nephew of this aunt, was mentioned. Enquiry also showed that Mrs. Smead had never seen this aunt. I obtained the written testimony of another person that this was the fact, not accepting as conclusive the testimony of Mrs. Smead. But as soon as I learned this fact I asked Mr. Smead in a private letter, which Mrs. Smead was not to see, and which he reports that she did not see, the letter having been destroyed imme- diately, according to my request, to obtain a photo- graph of this deceased aunt and put it with a num- ber of others as much like it as possible, and observe if Mrs. Smead spontaneously discovered the one rep- resenting this aunt. The following is the result of the experiment, which took some months to arrange: " I put the photo that I got from Baltimore in the midst of a lot of others, over fifty of them, and after an hour of so had elapsed I brought the whole lot downstairs, began to talk of some of her girl friends, told her I wanted to see if she could find me the pic- ture of Lottie Dudley that she knew was dead, and asked her to see if she knew who Annie Hedengran was in the lot of pictures and named over two or three others, so that she thought that some of those that I named were dead, or had died recently, and that my point was to see if she could find the pictures. I fooled her completely and threw her off her guard as to aunt Sarah. So she went along looking at the photos and talked of this one and that one of her girl friends. Some she was sure were living, others she knew were dead, and others she thought might pos- sibly be dead, thinking all the while that I was driving 265 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION at that, to see if she would pick out the photo of this dead girl friend, when by and by she came at once upon this photo of aunt Sarah. She was greatly shocked, looked at me, knew it at once and recognized the face, said the face she saw (in the vision) had no glasses, the hair was crimped as in the photo, but natter on the forehead. She had a white dress when Mrs. Smead saw her (in the vision) and was not quite as fleshy as the photo would indicate. The recogni- tion was absolute. I then took another tack. I told her she was too sure, that it was all nonsense for her to be so positive, that I might have got a picture of some other woman and put it there to make her think it was the one she saw and kept back the real picture, if I had it, and that I was trying to fool her, etc., etc. It was all no use. She was sure and positive. The identification was complete. I had to give it up. So I then told her that it was the photo. She had never seen a photo of her before. This picture was the last one taken before her death." I can only give this for what it is worth. It is not complex enough in its incidents to prove anything by itself, but it has a coincidental interest which may be worthy of record along with other matter. There are some recent developments of interest in this case. They are, at least, a simulation of the Imperator phenomena in the Piper case. As no evi- dential incidents have occurred to show the presence and influence of this group of personalities the facts need not be further mentioned. Comments on this interesting case, I think, may be very brief. Enough has been given in my narrative to show that, on any theory whatsoever of such phe- 266 THE SMEAD CASE nomena, the present case is intermediate between that of M. Floumoy's Helene Smith and Mrs. Piper. In fact it may be called a case on the border-line be- tween secondary personality and spiritistic phenom- ena. Mrs. Piper's phenomena are in many respects unique. M. Flournoy's case is a most remark- able instance of secondary personalities masquerad- ing as spirits.* The case of Mrs. Smead began, as the record shows, in the most naive secondary person- ality and ended in the production of phenomena much like those of Mrs. Piper, showing a gradual devel- opment from the purely secondary consciousness to what might possibly be complicated with occasional spiritistic messages. The difficulty with a spiritistic theory in this case is (1) that there is obviously so much secondary personality in it as to create suspi- cion regarding the remainder, and (2) that the ap- parently supernormal incidents depend too much upon the memories of Mr. and Mrs. Smead, while the Piper case presents conditions in which it is incon- ceivable or impossible to suppose that she gets her information in any normal way. But if we can sup- pose that the Smead case contains a few spiritistic episodes (and there are some possibilities of this) we have an interesting illustration of the part which secondary personality may play in the development of mediumistic powers. * Since the original publication of this paper in the Annals of Psychical Science some very important experiments have been made with Mrs. Smead and the results show the existence of genuinely supernormal phenomena beyond any question whatever. Whatever hesitation the present paper may show is removed by these later experiments. 267 CHAPTER IX SOME FEATURES IN MEDIUMISTIC PHENOMENA Readers of the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research may recall some discussion regarding the nature of the life after death. It may be useful to give a concrete example of the difficul- ties with which we have to contend in the solution of problems connected therewith, and hence I give the detailed record of a sitting with Mrs. Smead. I have published also a preliminary Report on the Smead case which gives evidence of the supernormal and shows its exemption from the most natural sus- picions entertained against mediumship. Suffice it to say here that Mrs. Smead is the wife of an ortho- dox clergyman and has never received any money for her work. Her identity has to be concealed under the name which I have given, and other experiments than the one I am quoting will have to be relied on to answer the doubts of the sceptic. I am using the present record with the assumption that his objec- tions have already been removed, so that I do not mean to discuss the genuineness of the phenomena in this connection. I wish to take this for granted, at least hypothetically, for the sake of an important illustration in the perplexities of non-evidential phe- nomena. Some years ago in the experiments which Mr. Smead was conducting under my directions, there 268 SOME FEATURES IN MIlDIUMISTIC PHENOMENA were apparently some attempts on the part of the Rev. Stainton Moses, who died in 1892 in England, to communicate through Mrs. Smead. But the fail- ure seems to have been as conspicuous as in the case of Mrs. Piper. Occasionally, however, there are traces of his personality attempting to manifest itself, and the record below is one of them. Mr. Smead was not expecting this personality to appear at this experiment, but rather hoped for one who passes as the Cardinal. The manifestation of Stainton Moses was thus unexpected by both Mr. and Mrs. Smead. I give the record in full, confusions and mistakes ex- actly as they occurred. It must be remembered, however, that I am not quoting the record in illustration of what it actually purports to be, namely, spirit communications. Any reader who wishes to so interpret the matter may do so, but it is not assumed by me to be this in fact. I concede any interpretation that the sceptic may choose to make of it, except that of conscious fraud. The student of abnormal psychology will see nothing more in it than secondary personality, and in so far as conclusive evidence is concerned it cannot be claimed to be anything else. But I mean to quote it and to consider it as a psychological production which has to be examined without regard to the security of its claims to be what it superficially purports to be. Coming, as it does, in conjunction with matter that has the same claim to being supernormal as in the case of numerous similar cases, it becomes a part of the problem which is associated with the supernor- mal. For that reason we may examine its nature 269 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION and claims in spite of the natural temptation to ascribe it the same source as the evidential matter. The primary interest is to study the problem which the psychic researcher has before him, when estimat- ing the claims of strictly non-evidential matter to a supernormal origin. All that is assured at the out- set is the fact that the record was automatically pro- duced and purports to have a spiritistic source. What its rights are to this claim will have to be ex- amined, but regardless of these it has considerable psychological interest in illustration of the large lit- erature presenting similar superficial credentials. The record is a recent one, being dated February 6th, 1907. I place in parentheses what Mr. Smead said or asked during the experiment and as reported by him. In square brackets I place such comments and explantory notes as were necessary afterward to explain the meaning of the record at specific points. Asterisks mean that certain words or passages of the automatic writing are not legible. February 6th, 1907. Present Mr. and Mrs. Smead. (All ready.) That is right. We are here, coming here. (AU right.) coming nearer, yes. it is I be not afraid. (Very good. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with thy spirit. ) [Mr. Smead thought he was addressing Cardinal L. but this was not accepted by the communicator.] 270 SOME FEATURES IN MEDIUMISTIC PHENOMENA Behold ye him. it is Him of whom and to whom thou speakest. (Is Jesus Christ present this morning?) I am with ye in thy endeavor to do the work of Him that chooses thee, th [' th ' evidently written to convert ' chooses ' into ' chooseth.'] (Who is writing? Is it my Lord and Master, Jesus Christ?) He speaks with thee friend, through another. (I am delighted. What has he to say to me. I am unworthy to be in his presence. ) were that so, would he come to thee, hast thou not yet learned that he was not a respector of persons, that all were equal in His sight that believed. (I feel as did St. Thomas when he said: 'My Lord and my God.') but there are many that do not understand his His [' His ' superposed on the first to erase it.] teachings that now he is helping to enlighten the mind of man- kind through these Earthly channels, its [it] is right for them to be opened to the earth. (What has he to say to me?) Come. . . [pause.] That he is and was the creator of the new Law, yes, and that all should strive to come by the natural way into this life here and do as near the way as he taught when on earth, it is a sorrowful thing to es. . . [' es ' erased] behold the souls of those that [are] on the earth singing praises to Him and then taking the ways of life into their own hands, it is not as he said to do, and they are not taught to Honor the Father enough, else they would value life more, so the error in is in the way the teachings are set forth to the people of the earth, they do not understand that if they come here under a delusion that thev are escaping the wrath of 271 PSYCHICAL. RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION the most high, that it can continue here, that if it so Pleases the Greater Light they must continue the self same existence as they have just left and that by * * * * they must perhaps for ages continue where they could only have remained in the true light there and done their just and right part of life on the earth to be able to enter into the pleasure of a better life, that is eternal punishment. (Does eternal punishment continue forever?) it continues until they can by pleading [with] and Honoring the Most High God the Father . . . plead- ing with Him, I should have said . . . then, if in his good pleasure he deems it just that they are alowed [allowed] to go a little higher, but it sometimes takes them ages, it is as their deeds, so their reward or punishment, the part of eternal punishment is with the soul of the one that has disobeyed the Father, no creeds can help it after these deeds are done, the soul must then help itself. (Cannot we Episcopalians escape punishment by believing in Christ?) not from eternal punishment of the way you under- stand it. (I do not understand. Please explain.) * * [they?] the very soul that enters this life has to begin to work and help itself [written ' itseff '] for a higher existence, the life here nearest yours is what St. Paul said was the first heaven, they must that have lied, stolen, or comited [committed] any of the Greater sin ... . greater sins . . . must remain in this abode until he has well purged himself of them by prayed to the f . . . Father, then if he has not thought to do them again he may be allowed to go to the Second higher abode and so as you may see his punishment may continue for ages. 272 SOME FEATURES IN MEDIUMISTIC PHENOMENA (I supposed that belief in Christ gave everlasting life, not everlasting punishment. Tell me about this.) he did not say everlasting life without punish- ment, so the deeds done in the body . . . what did I just tell you. [Above message read aloud to com- municator.] for the deeds, yes. ( I think you are right. ) but the souls that continue on the earth to live righteous and Godly lives, doing in the [' in the ' erased] as in the presence of God will receive a greater blessing, when entering this life they do not need to remain on the [' the ' erased] earthwise, but can gonne [go on] doing good work amongst the souls that are near the earth as He did when he entered this life, we are tested, yes. (Do I understand that Christ is Imperator, called by Robert Hyslop the Greater Light?) [Robert Hyslop is the name of my father and purports to com- municate through Mrs. Smead at times. Imperator is the assumed name of one of the trance personalities in the Piper case.] I would that thou, friend, could see Him. (Do you mean Christ or Imperator, the Greater Light?) _ Christ is a light and was one on the Earth. (Is Christ Imperator, the Greater Light?) [Sign of the cross drawn, which is the sign of Im- perator] we could not let the cardinal come this time, as you see, friend, a greater than he has been with you [' you ' erased] us, yes, and so we will have him after the Sabbath. (Who has been with me to-day?) yes, Jesus Christus, yes. He has been here adn [' adn ' erased] and do you doubt. 273 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION (How can I help doubting? Whom did he talk through?) S. M. is willing to be an interpreter at all times. (Did Christ talk through Stainton Moses?) You still doubt. (Did Christ talk to me through Stainton Moses?) I told you at the beginning, yes, he did so. We cannot tell the [thee] when the friend that came yes- terday can come again, as she exhausts the Light to its extreme. ( Shall I expect the Cardinal the first day after the Sabbath?) yes, no, no one [on] the first. (Shall I sit that day?) yes, but no one to talk yet. (All right. We shall hold sittings next week as usual. ) yes, we cannot tell the [thee] now. Oh Most Merciful Father we halve [have] try . . . [erased] tried in our humble way to do t . . . Thy will, grant us th . . . Th, blessing for thee, friend, this day, The sitting at this point came to an end. But Mrs. Smead, when she recovered consciousness, re- ported an interesting vision which was described as follows : — " A man tall, features clear cut, as if cut from stone like a model, dark hair, peculiar color or com- plexion, full beard and mustache, beard about eight inches in length, hair long and curly, hanging over his shoulders, hair parted on left side and fell over toward the right side. His face was beautiful and stately. He looked quiet and peaceful with majestic 274 SOME FEATURES IN MEDIUMISTIC PHENOMENA bearing. He wore long white robes. The cross was not with him, but was seen some distance off." Mrs. Smead took this apparition to be that of Christ. The description might very well represent the historical pictures of him. But Mr. Smead does not, and did not at the time, in spite of the appear- ance of the record, believe that he was in communica- tion with the Savior. He supposed that it was a sermon to him by Stainton Moses. There are three ways in which we can explain such phenomena. (1) We may say that it is con- scious pretension that a spirit is producing the re- sult; (2) we may call it secondary personality; (3) we may say that it is what it claims to be on the face of it, namely, messages from the deceased Stain- ton Moses, under the hallucination that he is acting as an intermediary for the Savior. I throw the first of these hypotheses out of account, not because it is always to be ignored, but because I have reasons independently of this particular rec- ord to neglect it. The mistakes and confusions, as well as occasional errors in the spelling which are not natural to Mrs. Smead in her normal state, and various mechanical features of the writing tend to justify our disregarding conscious effort to deceive. I say nothing of its incompatibility with her whole previous life and what I know of its earnestness. Disregarding it we must construct some theory which rationally explains the phenomena, and we have the other two hypotheses to reckon with in this attempt. Secondary personality, or unconscious impersona- lly PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION tion, such as is common to dream or somnambulic states, presents itself as the most likely view, at least on a priori grounds, and I have no doubt that the student of psychology would feel perfectly as- sured of its applicability and validity. There is certainly no apparent evidence of a spiritistic source, at least as judged by the standards which such a theory must adopt in the present status of that doc- trine. It is precisely this want of supernormal evi- dence on the face of the phenomena that makes all attempts at spiritistic explanations seem absurd. This would leave us with the alternative of secondary personality as the only explanation which would most naturally commend itself. But accept the hypothesis as satisfactory on a priori ground, have we any more evidence that it is the true one than we have of the spiritistic? The phenomena are undoubtedly similar to many that present the claim of a spiritistic source and receive the credence of it. But it is precisely the defect of proper evidence that makes this view incredible, and the most natural theory would be that of sub- conscious impersonation. A most interesting circumstance in the phenomena is that which shows a fairly rational view of pun- ishment for sin. The " communications " purport to represent the policy of nature or Providence with regard to sin, and this is that true punishment is the consequence of sin and not some artificial penalty such as we have been accustomed to believe. The representation is that of conditions in another life and of what many wish to know regarding it. More- SOME FEATURES IN MEDIUMISTIC PHENOMENA over it is also important to remark to the man who advances secondary personality as the explanation that the type of punishment here defended is not the one which Mrs. Smead's theology has held. The idea is comparatively new to her mind. She would not naturally accept this view from her early teach- ing. Her theology makes a very different account of punishment for sin, and if her subliminal action is producing the results of her previous experience it would hardly take the course here manifest. Appar- ently, then, the hypothesis of secondary personality has difficulty in maintaining itself. I have no doubt that many will prefer the spirit- istic theory to account for the phenomena and so would accept them on their own certificate of non- relation to Mrs. Smead's usual habits of thought. But there are two very important facts in the record itself which the student of psychology will detect at sight and which afford him a perfectly good ex- cuse for referring the phenomena to secondary per- sonality. The first of these facts is the vision at the end of the experiment. That apparition is the his- torical representation of Christ and can most easily be explained by supposing that the general drift of the thought during the sitting might easily sug- gest such a thing to Mrs. Smead's mind. The sec- ond and still more important fact is Mr. Smead's own unwary statement to the " communicator " ear- lier in the experiment. When he, assuming that he was talking to the Cardinal, exclaimed " the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with thy spirit," he gave a most distinct suggestion to Mrs. Smead's 277 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION subliminal mental action, and we may assume that the whole impersonation of Christ was due entirely to that suggestion, and that the vision at the terminus of it was the result of its momentum as she was re- covering consciousness. Here the scientific man would say is the advantage of a verbatim record of all that occurs on such occa- sions. In all ordinary experiments a memory report of what was received would be all that we should have to base our judgment upon, and unless we were familiar with the delicate influences which suggestion exercises we should hardly remember our giving rise to productions like this by some casual remark of our own. We have, therefore, in this record the superficial indication at least of a perfectly normal explanation of the phenomena, especially when we recognize the dramatic character of some of our dream life. Our dreams often represent the pres- ence and conversation with us of various personali- ties living or dead, and as that state is extremely susceptible to dramatic play of personality, being free of the inhibitions or arrests which affect the judgment in normal consciousness, every suggestion is liable to take effect, and as Mrs. Smead is a very religious woman, or has all • her life been addicted to a religious view of things, it would be perfectly natural that her mind would take this suggestion in her trance state. Consequently what the spiritualist might accept as having an extra mental source, on the ground of rationality and antagonism to the natural convic- tions of Mrs. Smead, thus becomes interpretable by 278 SOME FEATURES IN MEDIUMISTIC PHENOMENA subjective action and all the representation of a transcendental life would be such " stuff as dreams are made of," and the case a good example of what we have to be on our guard against in our desire to have some definite knowledge of another world. Any information about a transcendental existence, coming in this way, has to pass the ordeal of just such criticism as I have indicated, and students will have to learn that the task of certifying the extra- mental source of such communications is an extremely difficult one. The circumstance which will strike the average man of intelligence as absurd is the readi- ness with which certain alleged spirits can be called, or the apparent ever-presence of any particular per- son that may attract the fancy of a medium. We cannot easily be made to believe that great historical personalities are forever hovering about to make themselves known to obscure persons all over the world on all sorts of occasions. It is a suspicious circumstance that such phenomena should occur, no matter how attractive it may appear to our preju- dices or wishes. Hence it would be a stumbling block to our belief to expect a ready acceptance of such phenomena on their superficial character. We might more easily accede to the claim that Stainton Moses was present, but even this would be feasible only on the supposition that his appearance had some purpose and consistency with the general scheme of the experiments. If he was only a casual visitor, as so often appears in phenomena of mediumship in general, we could hardly accept his claims an} r more readily than we would those of such a person- 279 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION allty as Jesus. It happens that the appearance of Stainton Moses as an alleged communicator in this case was a natural accompaniment of the alleged presence of other communicators, as the same group of personalities have been represented in the Piper case. On any theory, especially that of secondary personality, Stainton Moses ought to be represented as a communicator here. But this sudden and in- explicable appearance of Christ can only serve to make us sceptical of any source but that of subliminal mental action, and this, not because of any prejudices which either scepticism or religious belief might en- tertain about its possibility, but because of the casual and purposeless character of the appearance. When, therefore, we find such traces of suggestion as Mr. Smead's exclamation, we may well understand the represented appearance without having our minds perplexed by the semblance of spirit communication. But there are some interesting facts which create difficulties for the hypothesis of secondary person- ality, preferable as it may seem to the student of abnormal psychology. While one does not require, perhaps, to insist too rigidly that the alternatives are to be drawn between subliminal or subjective action and spirit influence, and while we may not feel attracted to a spirit theory, these facts do not justify an uncritical confidence in that of secondary personality. If we accept that view we must justify it in spite of the difficulties and objections which it has to encounter. I do not conceal from myself the fact that it has its perplexities as viewed from a scientific position, and we are bound to recognize 280 SOME FEATURES IN MEDIUMISTIC PHENOMENA them. Agnosticism in the matter is better than any theory which does not apply. The first important fact which is not easily ex- plained by secondary personality, as usually man- ifested in connection with the fact of suggestibility, is the circumstance that Mrs. Smead does not show any suggestibility whatever in her trance condition. I have many times tried to apply suggestion to her in the trance and I have not succeeded in securing any evidence of it whatever. We might limit the rapport to Mr. Smead, but I have no evidence for that fact. She seems as thoroughly proof against it as a perfectly normal person usually is. In this respect she quite resembles Mrs. Piper in whom I have found no proof of suggestibility. Possibly this may be the necessary condition of the trance which is associated with alleged spirit communica- tions. We, of course, do not yet understand that state. It is called a trance because it does not show any material traces of a condition like that of hyp- nosis. That is, the contents of what purports to be communications do not resemble essentially the contents of hypnotic states under the suggestion of an ordinary operator. It is possible for us to obtain a view regarding this trance which may ally it with hypnotic or somnambulic states. If we do this, how- ever, we may be required to interpret the difference through the idea of rapport. We have found in the experiments of Dr. Moll (Cf. Rapport in der Hypnose, Moll), that a subject may not be in rap- port with any or every one near by. He may be in suggestible relation only to the operator, or to 281 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE REStTRRECTlOtt one or two others, or even only to the person whom the operator suggests. Rapport is not a fixed or universal condition. It apparently exists only in degrees. If, then, we supposed that Mrs. Piper's and similar trances are to be distinguished from hypnosis and ordinary secondary personality only by the nature of the rapport, we may find why their phenomena take the form of spiritistic communica- tions. If they are en rapport with deceased persons and not with the living we can well understand why they do not respond to suggestion from the living, though the trance state may be essentially like hyp- nosis in its other characteristics. I understand that at one period of her life, the early development of her mental condition associated with the trance, Mrs. Piper exhibited phenomena of echolalia, which means that she echoed whatever she heard uttered in her presence. Assuming this condition of her mind and body in the trance, and rapport with deceased per- sons, we may well comprehend the automatic nature of her phenomena and their limitation to real or alleged spirit communications. Now as we have not found evidence that Mrs. Smead is in the least suggestible we may well ask how it fares with the incident which we have here supposed was due to this action. It is all very well to note the possibility as suggested by the coincidence between Mr. Smead's exclamation and the trend of the communications and the apparition at the end, but if Mrs. Smead is so suggestible as this we should find frequent indications of its presence in all other instances. But it is not appar- 282 SOME FEATURES IN MEDIUMISTIC PHENOMENA ent in anything that I have observed, and I have been wholly unable to prove it or to produce it by ex- periment. Consequently, what I have pointed out as conceivable indication of this has its force con- siderably diminished, or even made doubtful. The second fact which disturbs the hypothesis of secondary personality is the circumstance that the view of eternal punishment taken in Mrs. Smead's record is not only quite different from the one most natural to her normal beliefs but shows traces of identity with the view expressed in the " Spirit Teachings " of Stainton Moses himself, which there is every reason to believe Mrs. Smead never saw. That identity is not of the kind that can be treated as scientific evidence, but the resemblance is so close that the advocate of secondary personality might well seize it as proof of that hypothesis, if there were any reason to believe that Mrs. Smead had ever seen the book. But Mrs. Smead affirms that she has never seen it, and Mr. Smead has not the book in his library and has purposely refrained from pur- chasing it, so that knowledge of its contents should not influence the personality claiming to be Stainton Moses. They live at least one hundred miles from any library which might be supposed to contain the work, and have never consciously had access to it in any library with which they are familiar, and this knowledge is limited to small libraries which are found in country towns. Though Mrs. Smead has been familiar with the planchette since her childhood, she has not only not read literature on Spiritualism, but was brought up in strict orthodoxy and in regions 283 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION which had few or no library facilities. The only assumption that can be made regarding the possi- bility of her having seen the book is that she may either have seen it casually as a child or have con- sulted it in some somnambulic state, both of which suppositions are considerably strained, though con- ceivably possible. I doubt very much if it is a fact, especially as it is a book which one would not easily forget, unless read when too young to remember it. Her environment and religious habits as a child would most probably exclude this supposition. The relation between the thought expressed through Mrs. Smead and that of the " Spirit Teachings " through Stainton Moses can be best determined by a comparison. I shall quote passages from " Spirit Teachings " that the reader may decide for himself. We must remember that this book of Mr. Moses purported to be communications from discarnate spirits, personalities who allege through Mrs. Piper that they are the same spirits who communicated through Mr. Moses. The contents of his book rep- resent their teaching with regard to spirit life and in it they describe the nature of punishment in the life after death. In one passage, after saying that deceased persons who have sinned in this life are free to reform in the next life or to remain in their sinful desires, the statement of " Spirit Teachings " is as follows : — " This is the unpardonable sin. Unpardonable, not because the Supreme will not pardon, but because the sinner chooses it to be so. Unpardonable, be- cause pardon is impossible where sin is congenial 284 SOME FEATURES IN MEDIUMISTIC PHENOMENA and penitence unfelt. Punishment is ever the imme- diate consequences of sin ; it is of its essence, not arbitrarily meted out, but the inevitable result of the violation of law." In another passage, it says : " This mortal exist- ence is but a fragment of life. Its deeds and their results remain when the body is dead. The ramifica- tions of wilful sin have to be followed out, and its results remedied in sorrow and shame." Again : " To say that we teach a motiveless reli- gion is surely the strangest misconception. What ! is it nothing that we teach you that each act in this, the seed-time of your life, will bear its own fruit ; that the results of conscious and deliberate sin must be remedied in sorrow and shame at the cost of painful toil in far distant ages; that the erring spirit must gather up the tangled thread and un- ravel the evil of which it was long ages ago the perpetrator? " This last passage is identical in meaning with the Smead record, and in another passage the thought is not less identical in that the communicator indi- cates that the sin cannot be remedied by another but only by the sinner himself, and that no happiness is possible for him until he grows a purer, better, truer man. And in another passage occurs the fol- lowing : " The spirit which has been slothful or impure gravitates necessarily to its congenial sphere, and commences there a period of probation which has for its object the purification of the spirit from the accumulated habits of its earth-life; the remedying 285 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION in remorse and shame of the evil done, and the gradual rising of itself to a higher state to that which each process of purification has been a step." There are many long passages with the same im- port, and though the exact language is not found in both sets of records the identity of thought is clear enough. It is not sufficient to justify the belief or assertion that they have necessarily the same source, but considering that Mrs. Smead never saw the work I have been quoting, and that she was an- nouncing a doctrine more or less at variance with her natural beliefs, we may at least entertain a sus- picion that their identity is not due to chance. I do not claim that the matter has a spirit source in either case. There is no adequate scientific proof that it had such an origin in the case of Stainton Moses, though the teaching was in direct opposition to his native beliefs. But whatever the source, the identity of the general thought in both cases is unmistakable, and as it claims to come from Stainton Moses in the Smead case where his original writings were not known, the fact has just as much weight against the hypothesis of secondary personality as the suppo- sition of their identity has. This may not be great, but it is not a negligible quantity. Of course, it is possible to regard the idea expressed in Mrs. Smead's automatic writing as the natural reaction of her own mind against her orthodox belief, a reaction possibly caused by the growing interest in the real or alleged evidence of spirit return through her own writing. But it is not possible to decide this one way or the other, though the admitted possibility of that growth SOME FEATURES IN MEDIUMISTIC PHENOMENA makes it unnecessary to press the objection to sec- ondary personality on the basis mentioned. It might be a casual coincidence that the two should have iden- tical views on a question in which the most natural tendencies of the mind are to accept the specified view of punishment. But without denying the expla- nation of secondary personality it is quite legitimate to insist that the identity of the teaching in the two cases is not favorable to the hypothesis of subjective creation on the part of Mrs. Smead and that it is consistent with another and more important theory, even though that theory be neither provable nor sat- isfactory in this case. I shall not reject the hypothesis of secondary per- sonality, in spite of the objections to its assured application. It may be possible on other grounds than the doubtfulness of the spiritistic view. But the circumstance that Mrs. Smead has shown no traces of suggestibility, which had been invoked to explain the curious claim that the indirect communi- cator was Christ, and that the contents of the com- munications are so identical, or nearly identical, with those which we might expect Stainton Moses to be- lieve or to remember, clearly establishes a duty to as much suspense of judgment on that view as we may be supposed to feel on other grounds against the spiritistic doctrine. We are not to feel any special favor for secondary personality simply be- cause we feel unimpressed with a less reputable view. It may be wiser to admit ignorance on both sides of the subject. But whatever our individual predilections, all must 287 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION admit that it is fair to discuss one possibility as much as another. We have presented three alter- native explanations of the phenomena under review, and rejected the first one as in fact out of the ques- tion, namely, that of conscious fabrication. If we are entitled to admit the possibility of spirit com- munication it should receive such attention as its admitted rivalry with subliminal mental action en- titles it to receive. I do not grant its possibility on a priori grounds or upon the evidence in the record. Neither of these reasons would suffice to justify any- thing. But the mass of the supernormal that is relevant in many cases to the spiritistic hypothesis, and the existence in the Smead case of phenomena that classify it with that of Mrs. Piper make spirit communications such a possibility that we cannot easily assign its limits, and hence for the sake of understanding how it may be invoked to explain incidents in the record under consideration which are not so easily explicable by secondary personality, I shall tolerate the spiritistic hypothesis and see what it will effect. I shall not assume that it is necessarily the true view to be taken, but simply as one to be tested in the same way as its rival alternative. What I wish to show is that it is possible to sup- pose the spiritistic theory in the case without accept- ing the view that the communicator is other than Stainton Moses. The believer in the spirit theory is always tempted to take that view on the face of the returns, so to speak. But in supposing that spirits have anything to do with the phenomena I 288 SOME FEATURES IN MEDIUMISTIC PHENOMENA do not feel compelled to assume that Christ is either directly or indirectly the communicator as claimed. We need not go beyond supposing that it is Stainton Moses. I do not pretend that there is any satisfac- tory evidence of his presence, but that, with this theory once justified in other cases, it is rational to try the hypothesis to see how much may be explicable by it which does not seem clear on that of secondary personality. Let us, then, assume that Stainton Moses deceased is actually in " control " and that he is trying to communicate. We may venture to consider the iden- tity of view in the case with his past experiences in life to be evidence of his presence and attempt to communicate, taking this with other references to him through Mrs. Smead and more or less evidential incidents in connection with him. I cannot quote these, as they would require too much space. Now if there are peculiar difficulties associated with at- tempts to communicate with the living, such as are indicated throughout all or nearly all instances of " possession " mediumship, we may well imagine a source and explanation for the perplexities involved in the messages. These difficulties I have summed up as an abnormal mental condition while communicat- ing, in addition to correlated difficulties in the abnor- mal condition of the medium. This abnormal men- tal condition of the communicator may be compared to a state of secondary personality in its dreamlike or somnambulic character. It is much more like somnambulism than chaotic dreaming in many cases, PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION and so shows an active mental condition, though it is prevented from having that rational control which characterizes normal consciousness. Now if we suppose this somnambulic condition of Stainton Moses we may well understand that he is suggestible and liable to all the phenomena which exhibit themselves in suggestible persons. As I have not been able to find suggestibility in Mrs. Smead we may transfer the application of the hypothesis to the communicator and see how it fits the facts. Assuming, then, that Stainton Moses is somnambulic and suggestible while communicating, we may well understand how he should impersonate another, pro- vided the same hallucinatory tendencies showed them- selves in his mental action that so often are asso- ciated with somnambulic, delirious, and dream con- ditions with the living. It is well known that dreams, deliria, and hallucinations are more or less closely related to each other in the functions exercised, and somnambulism and hypnosis exhibit the same char- acteristics in many, if not all cases. We know what a sense of reality accompanies hallucinations, and how easily a morbid mental condition mistakes them for real objects, the person experiencing them not being responsible for his error of judgment and being incapable of correcting it. If this be the con- dition of Stainton Moses we may well suppose that Mr. Smead's reference to Christ created a hallucina- tion in his mind ; i. e., it put a thought into his mind which immediately took the form of reality, and was, in his morbid condition, construed as we do the objects in our dreams. I have already alluded SOME FEATURES IN MEDIUMISTIC PHENOMENA to the dramatic play of our dreams in which we carry on conversations and discussions as real as in life with persons whose non-reality we rarely sus- pect until we awaken and look at the experience from a normal point of view. There is no reason to deny this condition in Stainton Moses, in this assumed condition for communicating, and in fact there is much to sustain the contention. Impersonation is a marked feature of such experiences, and every idea that comes into the mind will naturally take the form of the " apperception mass," or main thought of the moment, if it does not arrest it, so that, with this supposed suggestibility of Stainton Moses, he would naturally impersonate communication with Christ, once he became possessed with the notion of his reality, itself a product of his hallucinatory con- dition. In the interfusion of his mental condition with the personality, subliminal personality, of Mrs. Smead, which is presumably suggestible from the spiritual and not the material side of her being, we may well suppose that the idea or hallucination is transmitted to her mind and emerges as a dream or hypnogogic product as she comes out of the trance. Nor is this supposed interfusion of personalities an a 'priori conjecture. It exhibits itself in nearly all mediumistic phenomena. I cannot undertake here to prove it. I only assert that I am not making the assumption arbitrarily and without cumulative evidence in other cases. That is, the hypothesis is not constructed for the occasion. It is the common phenomenon in mediumistic experiences, and all that 291 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION seems new — and this may not really be new — is the coincidence between the impersonation on " the other side " and the vision of Mrs. Smead in the borderland state. It is noticeable in the contents of Mrs. Smead's record that the communications purport to represent the state of things in a transcendental world. It is said that the system of punishment is only the con- tinuance of the sinful condition of this life, that virtue and vice are their own rewards, etc. Appar- ently we have material which would answer the query regarding what the after life is. But if we are to assume this to be communication from the other world at all, its contents are the memory of Stainton Moses, or at least mingled with the experiences of his memory. We have seen that there is more or less identity between what his " Spirit Teachings " taught and this purported communication from him after death, and if we accept this view of the facts we have no evidence whatever that he is correctly representing the conditions of a spiritual world. He is only repeating, in a somnambulic state, the mem- ories of his earthly life as expressed in his work, and in that work itself the " control " recognized that the communications were colored by Stainton Moses* own mind while he was receiving the messages. " Your state now colors your views," says a passage of " Spirit Teachings." " Much we are obliged to clothe in allegory, and to elucidate by borrowing your phraseology." In another communication the same personality, speaking of a demand by Stainton Moses for a specific type of evidence, said that the SOME FEATURES IN MEDIUMISTIC PHENOMENA result would be " imperfect and unreliable, from the admixture of your own mental action and that of the circle." In still another passage Stainton Moses was told that the communications are affected by his own mind, especially when he was not well. This same modifying influence would be expected in the mental habits of Mrs. Smead, and hence, given the somnambulic state of Stainton Moses when com- municating, we should naturally expect a tendency to reproduce more or less of his memories associated with the very subject which had been discussed in his own automatic writing when living, and such they seem to be. Accepting them as such we readily perceive the weakness of supposing that they cor- rectly report the conditions of the life after death, even though they suffice to prove the fact of it. There are no means of testing how much the mind of Mrs. Smead may have influenced the purity of the communications. An interesting incident recently in the Smead case reinforces the hypothesis here suggested. In a sit- ting occurring a few days before and reported to me at once, my father purports to communicate, and he alludes to this Cardinal which has been mentioned in connection with the record under discussion. He asks Mrs. Smead if this Cardinal may be permitted to serve as a helper in the work of communicating. I quote the record: " We would ask that the friend who calls himself C. L. be granted the permission to help here. Will it be desirable, friends? He will ofttimes give his former ideas, but of course [they] are changed with 293 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION his experiences, as are all our views in waking in this life." The italics are my own. But what the passage emphasizes is the unconscious evidence which it sup- plies to the tendency of spirits to reproduce their memories in some form, not always in incidents, but often in views, and as often distorted and made un- intelligible by intermixture with new ideas acquired in their new experience and uncommunicable in sen- sory terms that can be clear. While all this does not prove that Stainton Moses is actually communi- cating in the Smead case it does explain why the messages take that form, if we assume for hypothet- ical purposes that he is communicating. We have then only to suppose (and there is much evidence in mediumistic phenomena to warrant our belief) that communicators are in a highly suggestible con- dition, some of them at least, and this once assumed we can well understand the form of impersonation imagined in this special case. That such is possible is still further indicated by the common phenomenon in mediumistic communica- tions, especially of the subliminal as distinct from the possession type of psychic, that the messages seem to describe objects seen, where we have only to suppose that the things seen are telepathically transmitted phantasms. They may be hallucinations of the veridical type in the medium produced tele- pathically from an extraneous source, and they may be, in addition, phantasms in the mind of the com- municator, a phenomenon that seems to be supported by some cases of telepathy between the living. That SOME FEATURES IN MEDIUMISTIC PHENOMENA is, in some cases, it seems that a predisposition to hallucinatory images in connection with thoughts by the agent is accompanied by similar conditions in the percipient as at least an aid in the success of telepathy. Assuming this to be more true of a spiritual than of a material world, as we may well do from what we know of subliminal mental action in the living, we can well imagine that this function figures in that type of messages which involve appar- ent description of things and events in the other life. If we accept it, the whole set of phenomena fall into easy interpretation on the spiritistic hypothesis, and we should only have to await adequate evidence to prove it to be a fact. It might be objected that this theory is too com- plicated. But I should reply that it is either not complicated at all or that it is less so than the ordi- nary hypotheses which are advanced to eliminate the spiritistic. Besides it would not make any differ- ence about its applicability if it were as complicated as it may be supposed to be. If it explains more rationally than others it would have the preference. But I must contest the claim that it is especially complicated, at least that it is any more complicated than the materialistic theory of subjective hallucina- tions. All that I am doing is to suppose the same psychological phenomena in a discarnate that we find in an incarnate mind. We find extreme suggestibil- ity and somnambulic conditions very frequently asso- ciated in the living, and it is the only explanation which normal and abnormal psychology accepts of certain phenomena in the living. It is no worse 295 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION to suppose the same laws of action in the discarnate. It is as simple in one as in the other, and if it ex- plains it is entitled to recognition as an hypothesis, pending the production of evidence for its actual truth. Nor will it alter matters to say or suppose that subjective hallucinations and abnormal phenomena generally in the living are caused by morbid brain conditions, as all such phenomena are mental in nature, no matter what their antecedent cause in brain action. Of course, on the materialistic theory they are purely cerebral as well as the normal mental states. But if we have evidence in the proper super- normal phenomena for the existence of a soul and its survival — and survival is necessary to prove its existence now — we should have to treat all normal and abnormal mental phenomena as functions of the soul, with such interaction between body and soul as permits at least an efficient causal relation between them. Hence being mental phenomena in any case and determined by the nature of the mind rather than the occasional or exciting cause, we can understand how hallucinatory functions would characterize a dis- carnate mind in any abnormal conditions of its ex- ercise. This supposition would do no violence to any scientific doctrine of a soul and would have the advantage of as simple an explanation of certain phenomena having a claim to a spiritistic origin as any similar phenomena in living minds. In fact, it would seem that scientific method and the very con- ception of personal identity would compel us to sup- pose the same mental functions as such in a spiritual 296 SOME FEATURES IN MEDIUMISTIC PHENOMENA world as a condition of supposing any survival at all, and with this granted we should have abundant right to extend hypotheses of mental action which explain certain facts in the living to explain similar phenomena in the deceased. We are thus conforming to the very demand of science that we avoid the multiplication of hypotheses. In the procedure here adopted I have only accepted and applied the very theory which psychologically explains the same type of facts in the living, and the question of simplicity and complexity is, for that reason, excluded from the account. There is an interesting incident which in some respects confirms the hypothesis here advanced for mental conditions on " the other side." It finds its suggestiveness from the general theory of idealism accepted by the philosophers. This doctrine main- tains that all our ideas are mental constructs. By this is meant that our minds have to form their own conceptions and representations of reality, that we do not see things as they in reality are, but that their appearances are the result of mental reaction upon stimuli whose nature we cannot describe in sense terms or experiences. These forms of reality, as it appears, are determined by the way the mind is affected, and in this material world the bodily senses modify the relation between the outer world and the inner life. Now there is a distinction be- tween sensational and inner experience. Sensation occurs only on the occasion of physical stimuli, but inner mental action and its conceptions are either not due to external stimuli or are not related to it 297 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION in any such way as normal sensations. Now the subliminal life of the mind, even when it reproduces the forms of sensory experience, does not represent external reality as do sensations, and in our dreams, deliria, and hallucinations, whether systematic or otherwise, we have functions which do not depend on correlated physical stimuli of the normal type to explain their character. That is, inner activity may simulate a real world, though the physical conditions which determine a normal experience are not present. The normal physical functions may be wholly sus- pended and yet the inner functions of the mind may completely simulate reality. Now if a soul exists and survives death it simply casts off the physical organism which determines its relation to the physical and sensory world. There remain, by hypothesis, those inner functions which may produce all the appearances of reality without its being other than a thought world. In a life after death the conditions for a more literal realiza- tion of idealism may exist than in the bodily life, and if we could make the normal condition after death what a philosophic friend once said to me he wished it were, namely, a rationalized dream life, we might well understand many of the reported phenom- ena which perplex the student of psychology and the man of the world in the investigation of spirit- istic theories. We would only interpret such phe- nomena as we are discussing in the light of mental productions without physical stimuli, productions under the law of habits which we formed in the body. But whether determined by these habits or not they 298 SOME FEATURES IN MEDIUMISTIC PHENOMENA would be conceived as subjective activities, and if telepathy be a more general mode of communication in the spiritual world we could understand many phenomena occurring in it which seem perplexing now. Until we became familiar with the processes of such a world we should take for physical reality the hallucinatory products of our own mind. The intermediate state of our development might be fraught with abnormal conditions until we became adjusted to the new environment. Now I come to the incident which I had in mind when introducing this discussion on the basis of the orthodox idealism. I obtained a verbal report re- cently from a purely private source of some real or alleged communications from a man who died a few years ago. He was a rising man in his depart- ment of work and was prematurely cut off by death. His family has been apparently in communication with him, and the evidence for this, not through a professional medium, is of the same type as the Piper phenomena. In one of his communications, however, while commenting on the peculiarities of his spiritual life he stated that he " sometimes saw, for instance, a man reading a book, but when he approached to talk with him he found it was only a thought." This is sufficiently paradoxical at least to strike our attention, and if we are of the Philistine type we will summarily reject it as absurd. But as the report can not be treated as fraudulent and as it is not a natural view to take of such a world, we have only to ask how it comports with other phenomena 299 PSYCHICAL EESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION purporting to come from a transcendental life. I think that it will be perfectly easy to explain it on the lines just suggested. Suppose it to be an hallucination in the spiritual world, if you like, tel- epathically transmitted from some other spirit, and we have no difficulty in understanding it. The per- son who reported the fact to me took it as evidence of " thought forms," assuming that " thoughts are things." This may be true for all that I know, but it is more in accordance with the orthodox idealism and with the multifarious incidents of mediumistic communications associated with subliminal processes of all kinds, to interpret it as a veridical hallucina- tion in the spiritual life, or even a subjective one, than to suppose it to represent a reality so at vari- ance with all that we know. Assuming this view of the incident, we can well comprehend such phenom- ena as we have provisionally referred to the suggesti- bility and somnambulism of a real Stainton Moses communicating under adverse circumstances. The same general functions are involved in the explana- tion of this incident under notice as we assume in that of Mr. Moses, namely, a liability to hallucina- tions which are taken for reality, just as we all do in our ordinary dreams and deliria. I am not defending the spiritistic theory of the facts as the true hypothesis in the record under re- view, but only its capacity to explain the facts. It may not be true. The evidential criterion has not been satisfied. But neither is the evidential as- pect of secondary personality satisfied. All that I have been trying to do is to ascertain which theory 300 SOME FEATURES IN MEDIUMISTIC PHENOMENA explains certain facts and which does not. It seems to me that the spiritistic hypothesis best applies to all the phenomena in the case, even though it may not be true in fact and though we might prefer that of secondary personality if we had consistent evidence in its support. But the most important lesson from the incidents is that which shows the reservations we have to make in accepting as evidence of conditions in a spiritual world, statements that we assume to come from spir- its. There are few records that offer a better oppor- tunity than this one for testing the claims to a revelation of transcendental conditions. The evi- dence on the whole, taking other incidents into ac- count than those present, are sufficient to suggest the possibility and nothing more of spirit communi- cation, and the facts are just perplexing enough to raise serious doubts about it, partly from the lim- itations of the theory of secondary personality on the part of Mrs. Smead, and partly from the nat- ural dubiousness that the facts could be all that they claim to be. But some unity is needed to account for them when fraud is excluded, and when this can be sought in a combination of supernormal sources for the messages and an abnormal condition analogous to somnambulism and suggestibility in the living, we remove all the perplexities apparent in the sup- position of the superficial claims of the matter while we escape the difficulties incident to the hypothesis of subliminal action and fabrication on Mrs. Smead's part. That is to say, we neither accept the com- munications as correctly representing a spiritual 301 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION world, while we admit the possibility of that source for them, nor admit the sufficiency of secondary per- sonality as an explanation of them. The analysis also illustrates the fact that the alternative between subliminal production by Mrs. Smead and spiritistic reality as apparent is not so sharply drawn as contro- versial demands would like to have it, and such a view illustrates the need of patience and critical methods in the treatment of these and similar phe- nomena. What we need, to make the hypothesis of sec- ondary personality perfectly applicable to the case, is more knowledge of its nature and laws of action. It is all very well to use it to explain phenomena which we have no reason to believe are consciously fraudulent and which are not evidential of the super- normal, but we require to meet the responsibilities which every man assumes when he presents an hypoth- esis. We must be able to apply it to details consistently with the known facts and to give sat- isfactory evidence that it is true. We have not yet determined the nature and limits of secondary per- sonality, and cannot do more than appeal to it as a precaution against hasty credulity in more difficult theories until we have subjected it to a more thorough investigation. From what we know of the work of Dr. Boris Sidis in Psychopathology and of Dr. Mor- ton Prince in the same field, especially in the Beau- champ case, we may well entertain a large extension of the capacities of subliminal impersonation. But in none of these cases of the psychiatrist, have they reached the kind of realism and dramatic play which 302 SOME FEATURES IN MEDIUMISTIC PHENOMENA characterizes such instances as we are studying, and hence whatever value secondary personality may have for putting limitations on spiritism it will not be a universal solvent until we know more about it. So much we may as well frankly admit and demand the means and opportunities for studying it ade- quately. Its weaknesses, however, will be no excuse for accepting the alternative hypothesis, which may seem more difficult of belief than the more familiar phenomena of abnormal psychology. The utmost that we can do is to test the hypotheses for their consistency and possibility, and then look for the evidence which will prove one rather than the other. Such evidence we do not possess in the record before us, and it is not pretended that it is the desired evi- dence. It is only an example of the kind of phe- nomena which exist in large quantities and which more and more demand an intelligible explanation. The case can be summarized in the following man- ner, assuming that we have two general hypotheses which will serve as the points of view to be at least emphasized as the primary factors in the phenomena. (1) We may hold that the whole product is one of secondary personality, and this in spite of the real or apparent difficulties which I have discussed. This will discredit a transcendental source for the facts. (2) We may concede that secondary personality is not adequate and, though accepting the applicability of the spiritistic theory, we have no reason to suppose that it rightly represents the alleged source of the statements made, at least in so far as the assumed chief communicator is concerned. It has been with 303 PSYCHICAL, RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION a view of indicating this limitation of judgment in the case that I have discussed the spiritistic possi- bility at all. The opportunity for sustaining a more or less conservative and critical method was so im- portant that it could not be lost, and it must not be supposed that the hypothesis thus entertained has anything like the evidence for its being a fact that it has for its mere conceivability. 304 CHAPTER X TELEPATHY Telepathy has been such a solvent of difficulties in psychic research when people were not willing to admit what they did not know, that it is time to " take stock " of this term. Hardly a phenomenon during the last twenty years has appeared that has not at least suggested to certain kinds of minds the explanation of it by some sort of " telepathy." In season and out of season it has played a prominent part in the attempt to escape some other and perhaps more simple theory. But the time has come to ascer- tain with some clearness what we mean by it. We think that " mind reading " and " thought transfer- ence " make good synonyms for it and so they may, but they are no clearer conceptions when we are pressed for their exact meaning. The scepticism which prevails in scientific quarters as to the mere facts of " telepathy " is more than half due to the circumstance that we can never learn from popular usage what definite limits it is supposed to have, or what are the laws and conditions under which the phenomena denoted by it may happen to occur. If popular conceptions about it were clear and if the facts which the untrained mind tries to explain by it had any simple general characteristics which the assumed explanation made intelligible we might take a charitable view of the term. But such a medley 305 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION of real or alleged phenomena is referred to it that the term is like " special providence " for explana- tion. It is assumed to explain any coincidence that may happen to occur in the experiences of two minds, or any class of supernormal phenomena that are mental. This overweight of meaning attached to it is just the circumstance that makes the scientific man pause at its use and application. We can ex- plain the distribution of the planets by gravitation but not the distribution of animals. Science has some respect to relevancy when it classifies effects under causes, but the extravagant believer in telep- athy seems to know no bounds to his credulity if only he can evade something more rational but less respectable. In popular parlance " telepathy " is a name for a process supposed to explain the supernormal ac- quisition of information without regard to any lim- its whatever. If Mr. Smith happens to learn super- normally some facts which can be shown to have once been known by Mr. Jones, " telepathy " is supposed to explain them, and they may even be construed as evidence of this. If Mr. Jones does not happen to know them, or to have experienced them, and we learn that some friends of his did know them we are confronted with " telepathy " a trois. This means that in some way Smith is put into rapport with Jones's friend and filches the facts from his memory telepathically. Or if Jones's friend does not know them and they happen to be known by his friend Barlow whom Jones does not know the rapport with Barlow is established through the relation of 306 TELEPATHY his friend to Jones and the process is as easy as before. In this way " telepathy " is made to do anything and to indicate an ad libitum access to the minds and memories of all living persons. That is a capacious power which it is hard to defeat m an argument, especially when it is assumed a priori and without one iota of scientific evidence in its sup- port. It is so arbitrary in its application that it takes no account of the fact that the process never seems to occur except when it is necessary to sim- ulate some other explanation and it becomes the part of men who have no sense of humor to believe any- thing rather than confess ignorance or agnosticism. If those who use " telepathy " so freely to explain mysteries would take the trouble to examine the con- ditions under which it obtained currency and the facts which required its acceptance they would have no difficulty in understanding the limits of its use. Its original meaning was " a coincidence between two persons' thoughts which requires a causal explana- tion." It is to be noticed in this conception that it is not a name for a cause of any kind. It but de- nominates a fact for which we have still to seek and find the cause. This is a most important circum- stance to keep in mind, as it assigns a decided limita- tion to the usage of the term which is so popular. The phenomena which gave rise to the employment of the term were just what the definition indicates, namely, coincidences between the thoughts of persons which were not due to chance. It is probable that the performances of Bishop and Cumberland with their claims of " mind reading " gave the problem of 307 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION investigating and explaining such coincidences its emphasis and importance. But their performances, with similar others described in books of magic, were not all that suggested the idea. There were and are spontaneous coincidences between people's thoughts which were not exposed to the suspicion of prestidigi- tation and so made the question of their explanation a more serious one. The situation gave rise to the effort to organize the investigation of such phenom- ena, and experiment succeeded in reproducing similar coincidences under test conditions. The phenomena did not seem explicable by chance, but seemed to indicate some causal nexus between antecedent and consequent, and as this was unusual the best thing to do was to denominate it by a term which did not carry with it any associations with known normal agencies. There are three distinct groups of coincidence to which the popular and unscientific mind applies the term " telepathy," and only one of these to which the scientific mind applies it. The first group of facts is that which is comprised of the present active mental states of the agent obtained by a percipient. The agent is the person whose thoughts are sup- posedly transmitted: the percipient is the person who receives the thoughts transferred. The second group of phenomena consists of those facts which a per- cipient obtains and which the agent present at the experiment is not thinking of at the time, but has them in his memory. They represent experiences or knowledge which he once had and which he may or may not recall at the time they are reproduced for 308 TELEPATHY him by another person or psychic. The third group of facts consists of those which represent events not known by the agent or sitter present at an experi- ment but which can be proved to have been the knowl- edge of some other living person at the time and at any distance imaginable from the place of the experi- ment. This assumes that the percipient can select at any distance from the memory of any living person such facts as are desirable to use for the impersona- tion of such persons as may suit the medium's object, and this consciously or unconsciously. This is the most comprehensive application which the term ob- tains and is complicated with various incredible con- ceptions of rapport. The first of these conceptions of the term is the only one that is entitled to any scientific standing. It derived its significance from several considerations which associated it as a phenomenon more closely with what is known regarding the law of cause and effect than in any case involved in the second and third group of facts. The first thing was the coincidence between the agent's present thoughts and those which the percipient had at the same time. But this was only one aspect of the case. The suggestive circum- stance was the fact that in mechanical phenomena the antecedent is supposed to be the cause of the con- sequent and it is the activity of the antecedent that enables us to assume causality in its relation to the consequent. The fact that the two are associated closely in time and space is the circumstance that enables us to prove this causality, though it might not actually constitute it. But it is the analogy of 309 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION telepathic with mechanical coincidences in respect of this activity that makes it plausible at least to sup- pose a causal nexus when the coincidence is observed. If it were not for this circumstance it is possible that we should never think of the direct causal connection in telepathic phenomena. It is the present active state of consciousness that we can assume to be a cause, just as any present active state in a physical object is presumably the cause of some event in- variably associated with it. It is probably this fact which gives telepathy its real or apparent consistency with the materialistic interpretation of mental phenomena. But whether this be true or not, it is the existence of mental coincidences between different per- sons taken in connection with the assumption that active conditions of a subject may be causal of in- variable consequents that makes the idea of a causal relation of a supernormal type between mind and mind a reasonable assumption. Now the evidence of some causal relation is appar- ent in such records as the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, and I shall not illustrate them here. I shall either refer those who are not con- vinced of the phenomena to those records or take for granted that the phenomena are numerous enough to justify the assumption of a nexus not due to chance in such cases, and then proceed to indicate what " telepathy " means when applied to them. All that " telepathy " means and meant in reference to these facts is that they are not due to chance, but that some causal relation exists between the antecedent and consequent. It does not explain the phenomena 310 TELEPATHY in any respect. It is not a name for a cause of any kind whatever. It only indicates that the normal causes are not present or at least not discoverable. In so far as causality is concerned the term denotes no positive agency, but is purely negative in its im- port. It does not name a known cause, but indicates that the known causes do not explain the facts and that some as yet unknown cause must account for what is not due to chance and so they bear the marks of having some causal agency yet to be found. This limitation of the meaning of the term should be emphasized and repeated. It is not the name of any cause or of any process by which the causal nexus between persons' thoughts is established. It does not explain the phenomenon, as is too frequently sup- posed, but actually leaves it wholly unexplained. It is merely a convenient expression to denote that we have gone beyond the normally explicable and are still seeking the explanatory cause. Hence so far from explaining thought coincidences it explains nothing whatever. It only names the facts which re- quire explanation and any attempt on the part of a psychic researcher to deceive the reader with the assumption that phenomena are explained by it de- serves the severest scientific reprobation. It may well indicate that a phenomenon is not explained in some other way, or at least is not evidence of that ex- planation, but it is not a name for any positive causal agency that is known, though it may become known under further investigation. It only refers a fact to some cause yet unknown even when it implies that a certain specific cause is not indicated bv the facts. 311 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION The fact that it may exclude the belief in spirit agency does not make it an explanation of the phe- nomena concerned. It merely indicates that the phenomena which had associated themselves with spir- itistic causes are to be explained by the same causes which were supposed to extend beyond the normal action of sense without presenting evidence of these immaterial agencies. It is because the term has been constantly used to denote an alternative to spiritism that its original meaning has been forgotten or ignored. The con- ception of spirit is actually explanatory of certain phenomena and in criticizing the evidence for this view of them the possibility of telepathy came in to eliminate certain facts assumed to be evidence of the former and in this comparison of the two ideas telep- athy borrowed an explanatory import which it did not and does not possess. The reason for this is the simple fact that every problem has two distinct aspects which we too frequently forget. They are the explanatory and the evidential. They are often so closely associated that they may be mistaken for one another. They should be briefly examined. The explanatory function of a conception is to denote a cause that will account for the occurrence of an event. Thus gravitation is supposed to explain why objects fall to the ground, sunlight is an agent in accounting for the growth of vegetation, heat is an explanation of expansion in bodies, electricity names a cause in a great variety of phenomena, and so on with hundreds of terms. Now when any new phenomenon appears demanding an explanation and 312 TELEPATHY we refer it to one of these we already take their exist- ence for granted and the new phenomenon is not an evidence of their existence. For instance I find a group of new phenomena in the behavior of certain physical bodies, phenomena exhibiting certain re- semblances to the known action of electricity, and I at once refer the phenomena to that source. I do so to avoid the hypothesis of new agencies. If known causes explain the facts I have no reason to interpret these facts as evidence of new agencies, and the new facts are not evidence of the existence of the assumed causes. They are simply explained by them. If they were not explained by them we should have a right to seek new causes to account for their occur- rence. The possibility of appealing to existing causes to account for new facts makes it unnecessary to set up new agents in the cosmos, and, though such new agents may happen to exist, we have to seek else- where for evidence of the fact. Some other reality explains the phenomena equally well and when that is known to exist on other grounds the new facts do not appear as evidence of it. They are simply ex- plained by it. The evidential aspect of a problem is much nar- rower than its explanatory. There are fewer situa- tions in which facts serve as evidence of the existence of a cause than when they are explicable by it. Facts will serve to prove the existence of a cause only when they cannot be explained by known agencies. As long as alternative causes may exist, the facts ex- plicable by any one of them are not proof of any, and especially not proof of a new cause whose exist- 313 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION ence may possibly be questioned, or for which the evidence is less than well known agents. Let me illustrate the evidential and explanatory aspect of one problem, namely, the velocity of light. A phe- nomenon in the eclipse of the moons of Jupiter served to prove, or render most probable, the fact that light had velocity. The supposition that it had velocity might very well have been entertained as a corollary of certain other facts, but proof may have been want- ing. Its transmission from the sun to the earth was an admitted fact and that it had velocity or required a period of time for this transmission could be ex- plained by this velocity, if we could show that time was involved. Consequently when certain phenomena were observed in the eclipses of the moons of Jupiter, they seemed to prove that this time element was in- volved in the transmission of light. For instance it was noticed that at one period the eclipses of a moon was earlier than the calculated astronomical time and at another later than this. This fact coincided with the fact that at one of these periods the light had to traverse the distance represented by the diameter of the earth's orbit greater than at the other period. Consequently the difference of time was an evidence of velocity in the transmission of light. In the ordi- nary phenomena of sunlight and its transmission there is no situation in which this velocity is indicated, and until we could bring the phenomena of light under the law of luminous undulations there would be no reason to suppose from that circumstance that it re- quired time for its transmission. But the proof that it required this time created a presumption, if it was 314 TELEPATHY not proof, that undulations were the cause of the lapse of time in the transmission, in accordance with known laws in vibratory phenomena, while the lapse of time was not an explanation of the facts but an evidence of their existence. Or to take a much simpler instance. Sunlight is the cause of vegetable growth, at least one of its causes, but this growth is not the evidence of sunlight. Other facts have proved to us that the sun shines and we have found in the progress of inquiry that the sunlight is more or less necessary to the growth of vegetation. Now when it comes to the phenomena which gave rise to the idea of telepathy we found a situation in which we had new facts not explicable by known and familiar causes, namely, sense perception of the nor- mal type. The ordinary explanation was excluded, but a new one was not thereby established. We simply found a set of facts which required some new cause and as we had no known process for rendering the facts intelligible we had to represent them as in- volving some causal connection, direct or indirect be- tween living minds, that still had to be determined. The facts were evidence of this, but they were not explained by merely coining a new term, as the pro- cess or causal agency was not thereby indicated. The term was not an explanation, nor a name for any ex- planation, but a name for the facts requiring a new cause still to be determined. The point of view of which telepathy is supposed to be a rival hypothesis is the spiritistic. Both have their evidential and both their explanatory functions. The evidence of the spiritistic theory is, not the mere 315 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION fact of the supernormal, or facts not explicable by normal mental action, but in addition to the super- normal, it is, incidents bearing upon the personal identity of deceased persons. If we are to believe in spirits of any kind we must expect them, if they sur- vive, to communicate facts which besides being super- normal must be such as discarnate spirits would most naturally tell in proof of their identity. I shall not undertake to tell what such facts should be. I leave this to the reader to determine. But the evidence of the theory must partake of the character described in order to invoke an explanation which the theory supposes. But this evidence must exclude an alter- native hypothesis, and hence any phenomenon classi- fiable with telepathy will not be evidence of spirits whatever we may think of the latter's capacity for explaining the facts. Nothing is clearer than the fact that the spiritistic hypothesis is capable of ex- plaining a certain type of phenomena, but the funda- mental question is, whether it is the true explanation, and this requires us to obtain the evidence for it. Whether the hypothesis has any evidence in its sup- port is not the problem here, and I am not concerned with this issue, but with its relation to telepathy either as a fact or as an hypothesis. As remarked the evi- dence of spirit agency must be some type of facts illustrating personal identity and at the same time probably supernormal. But if such alleged evidence can be classified with the phenomena which are termed telepathic it will lose its character as proof of spirits. Hence, though telepathy explains nothing, it may limit or destroy the evidence for spirits, provided it is 316 TELEPATHY comprehensive enough in its application to all that is explicable by spirit agency. It is therefore not a rival theory to the spiritistic in regard to explanation, but only in evidential matters. We often speak of " explaining " certain facts by telepathy and, in implying that they are explicable by the same process, this is legitimate enough way of speaking. But classification is never a true explana- tion. It only places things in allied groups and if the cause is previously known the explanation is im- plied, but if it is unknown the phenomena so classified remain really as unexplained as before. Telepathy is this sort of term. It only classifies and does not yet imply the process by which phenomena are pro- duced or made to occur. It is merely a term for plac- ing limitations on evidence, not a term of explanation. I have been using the word for the moment in its widest application to include all three meanings noticed at the outset. I have done this as a conces- sion for the time to the popular conception in order to indicate the extent of its limitations in relation to a supposedly rival hypothesis. But it is time to show still further limitation in the use of the term. I deny the legitimacy of the second and third meanings of the term. That is, I deny that there is any evidence of a scientific character for the mind of one person reading another in any such way as is implied by selecting incidents either from the memory of the per- son present or from the memories of distant and un- known persons. All that we can pretend to have scientific evidence for is the acquisition supernormally of the present active mental states of the agent by a 317 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION percipient. There is a large mass of facts on record which answer to this conception of the matter and there is as yet in the scientific world no unanimity of opinion with regard even to this. But such as it is, it represents the only body of scientific evidence which can claim to represent some supernormal connection between one mind and another, and this connection in all but four or five incidents is synonymous with the present mental states of agent and percipient, the person whose mind is read and the person who reads it. The four or five incidents among the thousands of facts are not sufficient to justify the supposition that the memory is read either in these particular in- stances or in the whole mass of evidence, especially that they are referable to deferred association which, as we know, is a very common phenomenon in ordi- nary life. The overwhelming mass of facts claim- ing to be evidence represents present active mental states and whatever we may think of subliminal pro- cesses as possibly involved in the results it is clear that there is no such selective access to the mind of the agent by percipients as would be implied in the con- struction of an independent personality. The phe- nomena sustain an analogy with what is known in me- chanical processes, namely, the fact that the cause and effect represent present and non-selective action. It is this characteristic that gives the idea of telepathy its conceivable import. But the analogy or resemblance to mechanical coin- cidences, suggesting or proving a causal nexus, re- ceives a part of its interest or significance from the circumstance that, in mechanical phenomena, we 318 TELEPATHY know or suppose something about the nature of the process involved in producing the effect. Thus, when we strike an object, the noise produced is supposed to be the effect of transmitted force from the external object to the subject of the effect. In many types of phenomena the cause is supposed to be some mode of motion, as in the case of sound and light, or the transmission of motion in mechanical operations. It is not the mere fact that we have an antecedent and consequent to contemplate that satisfies us, but we imagine or believe that some agency in the form of motion is involved in the total phenomenon as ren- dering it intelligible and explicable. But in real or alleged telepathy we have no such supposition to guide our judgments. There is no scientific reason or evi- dence whatever that thought is connected with vibra- tions of any kind. The prevailing belief in philo- sophic circles is that mental phenomena are not modes of motion and any such assumption must render men- tal coincidences such as are involved in alleged telep- athy quite unintelligible in mechanical terms. This belief of philosophy may be wrong for all that I know. It may be that consciousness is either consti- tuted by or associated with vibrations or undulations of some kind, ethereal or material. I do not know, and I am willing also to say that I do not care one way or the other. But until there is some reason to believe that mental states are associated with undula- tory action of some kind in a way to affect their na- ture and relations with each other, both in the mind of their subject and between different minds, there will be no ground for identifying them closely with 319 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION mechanical phenomena, and alleged telepathic coinci- dences will not be assimilable with physical facts or events. All that they will indicate is the fact of some causal relation which has yet to be determined. That they are associated with present active mental states of a certain person and the percipiency of an- other is the only resemblance with mechanical causes that they offer, and that may suffice to prove phe- nomena not due to chance, but it does not make them intelligible to physical science, at least in any such terms as are usually demanded of coincidences demand- ing explanation in the usual manner. They remain facts to be reckoned with, but not physically ex- plicable. In the physical world it is the present active cause associated with some event directly connected with it in time and space that gives rise to our conviction of a causal nexus. That is to say, we must have as evi- dence of a rational causal connection the coincidence between a consequent and an antecedent and that ante- cedent must be some active agency which will com- mend itself to our minds as the probable or necessary fact in the phenomena. It is not the association of an event with any passive set of conditions that we find in proximity to it, but the presence of an active agency that gives force to the assumed connection. Were it not for this fact we should probably never think of a cause in a particular case of antecedence and consequence. Thus a flash of lightning is followed by a clap of thunder. If this occurs frequently enough I am assured of the causal nexus. But I would naturally 320 TELEPATHY suspect it on the first occasion if the association in time and space were close enough, and repetition would only confirm the conjecture. But if the thun- der were to occur two or three days after the flash of lightning I would not suspect a causal nexus between them, unless I could discover a series of causally re- lated phenomena between the first and last experience. We have to get some continuous connection between a nearer and remoter fact in a series to justify the sup- position of a causal nexus. Thus when I see and hear the action of a locomotive whistle near by there is practical simultaneity or an immediate connection between the escape of the steam and the occurrence of the sound. I therefore suppose them causally related. But would I as easily suppose this connection if I saw the steam escape a mile distant and heard the sound some moments later? I think not. But if I have learned that sound requires time to transmit its vibra- tions to a distance I might suspect that the difference in time between the visual and auditory experience is accounted for by the difference in velocity between light and sound, and I could then suppose an imme- diate nexus between them for the point of their occur- rence and an apparent discrepancy at a distance. But I still trace the causal connection through the in- tervening phenomena. The evidence, however, must begin with spatial and temporal coincidences, and the causal idea associated with present active agencies. It is this that makes explanation possible in the physical world. It is this analogy of temporal coincidence between present active thoughts in agent and percipient that 321 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION suggests a causal nexus, especially when the fact is related to the absence of such apparent connection between latent memories. The phenomena which sug- gest telepathy, or prove it, are coincidences between present mental states, and these coincidences must rep- resent likeness of the contents in mind. Otherwise there will be no reason whatever to suppose a causal nexus. This is a truism, but I call attention to the fact for the purpose of emphasizing a maxim of scientific procedure in the matter. This is that simi- larity of content and present active phenomena are essential to the idea of a causal relation in cases of alleged telepathy. If we attempt to adopt and fol- low any other criterion we might trace a causal con- nection between any of my thoughts and the similar thoughts of others at any time. We never attempt, however, to suppose that our thoughts to-day are con- nected either with the same thoughts others experi- ence at the same time, under exactly similar condi- tions, or with the thoughts of others like our experi- ence at some previous time and explicable by the or- dinary processes of acquiring knowledge. We have to exclude the ordinary access to sense perception and assure ourselves of an identity of thought between two subjects, under circumstances to suggest a direct and not a parallel or coincidental connection, in order to suspect a relation other than the normal one. Now the only phenomena which have suggested a causal nexus between mental states in different minds are those which show identity and temporal coinci- dence along with evidence that the coincidence is not due to similar sensory experience. There is no other 322 TELEPATHY evidence of telepathy and until we have secured evi- dence of some other connection we are not entitled to apply the term telepathy to any other conception of the case. We have to define our conceptions by the phenomena which serve as evidence for the hypoth- esis concerned. If the phenomena do not show that likeness of kind which determines their classification we cannot apply the same causal explanation. Thus we do not apply gravitation to the phenomena of ad- hesion and cohesion. Neither do we confuse chemical affinity with any of these. We limit each of these causal ideas to the types of phenomena which guar- antee their existence. It must be the same with telep- athy. We have no evidence whatever that it occurs between the memories of an " agent " and the state- ments of a percipient. It is not sufficient to say or suppose that the fact told by the psychic is identical in character with the fact in the memory of the " agent," or conjectured " agent." There must be some reason to believe that memories are active causal agencies, and we have no evidence whatever of this. We have evidence that active consciousness is a causal agent and it is this fact which gives force to the idea of telepathy when identity and coincidence between two minds occur independently of ordinary sensory experience. I may express this perhaps in another way. I have indicated that telepathy when first applied to mental coincidences assumed the point of view that the phe- nomena had their interest in the hypothesis that the explanation began with the agent and not with the 'percipient. I have referred to the analogies with 323 Psychical research and the resurrection the law of mechanics, that causal explanation started with the antecedent phenomenon which might be assumed to represent or to indicate the cause. In telepathic phenomena the mental state of the agent, if anything can be supposed to be the cause, might be represented as such and the percipient is the passive recipient of what is transmitted to him. The point of view for explanation in this first conception of causality was the antecedent thought of the agent, not any active function of the percipient. Telepathy had analogies with the ordinary phenomena of the transmission of force or motion. But in this wider import of the term it assumes nothing of the kind. It supposes that the percipient is the primary factor in the work. The point of view for explanation is completely reversed. Instead of supposing that the agent is the primary factor ; that is, that the mind from which the information is pre- sumably obtained is the causal agent, the telepathy which explains phenomena having at least a super- ficial claim to a spiritistic source assumes that the percipient is the causal agent in the result: that is, instead of supposing that the mind from which the facts are presumably obtained is an influence in the result it assumes that the mind which obtains it selects the facts from the other. Instead of remaining by the conception of mechanical analogies in which the agent is the cause and the percipient the passive re- cipient of the knowledge it supposes that the per- cipient is the cause and the other mind the passive giver of the facts. That is, it assumes an intelligent, not a mechanical process. The relation of agent and TELEPATHY percipient is completely reversed. In the original and only legitimate application of the term telepathy the agent was the active and the percipient the passive factor while the new a priori conception is that the percipient is the active and the agent the passive power in the phenomena. In addition to this general reversion it is noticeable that in the former the per- cipient is not intelligently selective, while in the lat- ter it is infinitely intelligent and selective. The whole mechanical implications of the older meaning are lost and abandoned. And they are abandoned without evidence of any kind, other than that it is not respect- able to accept any other view. The fact is that there is not a particle of scientific evidence for this wider meaning of the term. It is not enough to find one or two incidents which seem neither like what has passed for the older meaning of telepathy nor appears as evidence of transcendental agencies. Such as ap- pear to be neither thought transference of present mental states nor evidence of discarnate agencies will have to be multiplied in much larger quantities and represent much better quality than any that we have yet seen before we are entitled to suppose a causal relation between the memories of others and the super- normal information which mediums give us relative to the deceased. Before we can admit a selective telep- athy of any kind we shall have to give evidence which does not coincide with facts persistently and uniformly related to deceased persons. We must have the limitation of the facts obtained to experiences of living persons and not illustrative of the identity of deceased persons. Until that is done there can be 325 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION no scientific evidence whatever for this assumed " se- lective telepathy." I am not questioning the fact of it, but denying that there is evidence for it, and no man can pretend to be scientific who indulges in the assumption until it can produce satisfactory evidence for itself. The circumstance that a supernormal fact may not be evidence of spirits does not require us to explain it by telepathy. We may better say that we have not found the explanation than to assume the necessity of telepathy because the evidence is not for spirits. We may well express our agnosticism, especially that spirits might explain much which is not evidence of their existence, if once we have found consistent evidence for them. What I remarked earlier in this chapter holds here, namely, that the ex- planatory function of a theory is wider than its evi- dential, provided that the phenomena exhibit any reasonable relation to those which admit of a given explanation. Briefly, then, this selective telepathy involving in- telligent action of the percipient as distinct from the passive recipience of knowledge after mechanical analogies is an illegitimate extension of the term in so far as evidence is concerned, and science can take no steps without evidence. Of course such telepathy may be a fact, but it has no credentials at present and must not be permitted to usurp functions which never attached to the term as scientifically qualified. It is far better to confess ignorance. We may fool for a while those who are not intelligent enough to discover our equivocations, but we shall soon find our- selves in the company of those self-complacent people 326 TELEPATHY who have mistaken the nature and progress of clear thinking. All this explains why the scientific mind regards the popular conception of telepathy with contempt. If the public had limited its conception to the phe- nomena which claimed to be evidence of it and also had not assumed that the phenomena were explained by the term, their convictions might have received more respect from scientific students. But instead of this the general conception of telepathy is, not only that it explains certain facts of mental coincidence, but that it explains such systematic relations between different minds as simply subliminal and supernor- mal conversations of great range and complexity. It also assumes too readily that some process of motion or undulation is necessarily associated with the con- nection between mind and mind, or constitutes that connection. There is not one iota of scientific evi- dence for the idea. It may be legitimate speculation, but science is not speculation and it is not primarily explanation. It is first the collection of facts and evidence, and it may rest content with this result until it has reason to accept an intelligible causal agency after it has accumulated sufficient data to relate its phenomena to some systematic cause. In the present status of inquiry into the relation between different minds, it will not accept the idea that telepathy im- plies any reason to believe in a transcendental access to the memories of people at any distance by any par- ticular person. This is especially true when scientific minds are called upon to believe that the mind of some psychic can select as it pleases the person from whom 327 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION it shall obtain knowledge of the past and select this knowledge with reference to the illustration of any particular person living or dead. There is no scien- tific evidence whatever that such supernormal inter- communication is possible. It is an inexcusable abuse of the term telepathy to apply it in this manner. I do not believe that there is such a thing. I do not say that I would not believe it if the evidence were produced, but I must limit my belief to that for which I have evidence, and I deny that there is any scientific evidence for such a fact or process as this unlimited reading of minds supposes. Telepathy, I repeat, is acquiring present active mental states in a supernormal manner, and in thus defining it I do not imply that it is a proved fact. I think there is adequate evidence for its occasional oc- currence. But I respect the scepticism which wishes to have more evidence before accepting it, and especially do I respect the scepticism which denies that telepathy can filch knowledge subliminally and systematically from living people at pleasure. The process in one case is so different from that assumed in the other that there is no rational ground for iden- tifying their relation under the same term. Super- normal access to what I am now trying to transmit to the mind of another person is one thing, and it is a very different thing, requiring a radically distinct type of causal action, to systematically read human minds all over the world, to collect facts illustrative of the personality of a given person, living or dead. It will require a great deal of evidence to prove such a thing, and the evidence will have to be very different TELEPATHY from that which we have in illustration of something supernormal, if we are to make it intelligible on any other hypothesis than the most superficial one. I must blame psychic researchers, even some who ought to know better, for permitting this illegitimate use of the term to gain currency. Too many have used it to blind the vision to its relation to the vari- ous problems we have to solve. Let me summarize. There has been a tendency to apply its meaning to phenomena which are as distant from those which it legitimately names and classifies as are chance coinci- dences or clairvoyance. The temptation to do this arose out of the desire to avoid admitting or tolerating a less respectable theory. But it must be emphasized that it is not an explanatory conception of any kind. It merely classifies a certain type of phenomena hav- ing some unknown cause. It does not explain any- thing whatever, much less that group of phenomena which illustrate the imitation or production in some supernormal manner of the personality of others, es- pecially the deceased. There is no longer excuse for the vague use of the term. It is better to admit frankly that we have no explanation of certain phe- nomena than to pretend to knowledge by using a term of unlimited meaning, equal to any difficulty we meet, in the attempt to escape a cause that is perfectly rational and simple. It is time to insist upon the only legitimate use of the term, and those who insist upon employing it to explain all the mysteries of men- tal coincidences and the reproduction supernormally of independent personalities, must be held responsible for their action, and evidence exacted of them that 329 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION their assumption has adequate credentials. Until this is done no tolerance can be given to speculations based upon assumptions. Any and all extensions of the term's meaning must be accompanied by the scientific evidence that justifies it. We are not entitled to assume the larger meaning of telepathy to be a fact because we are not sure of its limitations. Here is where we have been negligent of the maxims of scien- tific method and the legitimate formation of convic- tions. We have felt reasons for accepting a causal connection between present active mental states and then, from the desire to be cautious about accepting some other explanation of proved supernormal phe- nomena, and from our ignorance of the limitations of communication between mind and mind, we have asked the question whether the memory of a subject, regard- less of spatial and temporal limitations, might be supernormally ascertained, and then from the habit of tolerating this as possible have jumped to the belief that it is a fact, without any adequate scientific evi- dence for it. There would have been no temptation to this procedure if it had been as respectable to be- lieve in something more intelligible. The mental condition which makes this tendency feasible and acceptable is one that follows the modern sceptical method which does not always distinguish be- tween rationality and the line of least resistance. We have come to think that any term which excludes, or supposedly excludes, the supernormal and the " super- natural " is a clear explanation of phenomena. The fact is, however, that they often explain nothing and are but terms for our ignorance. But the modern 330 TELEPATHY propensity for the " natural," (which does not mean what it once did) makes us think that any term that is associated with the " natural," though quite mysti- fying in its connotation, is a perfectly satisfactory explanation of facts. When we want to escape some perfectly clear explanation we have only to appeal to vibrations, telepathy, clairvoyance, etc., to assure our- selves a place among the wise ! Denn eben wo Begriffe fehlen Da stellt ein Wort zur rechten Zeit sich ein. This habit was once the property of theology, but it seems now to have afflicted the spirit of science at times. But whatever it is, psychic researchers should be the first to correct and disillusion the popular judg- ment in the matter. We gain nothing by the mere use of words whose meaning is not clear and which only conceal our ignorance in the guise of a pretended explanation. 331 CHAPTER XI THE NATURE OF LIFE AFTER DEATH A most interesting psychological phenomenon ex- ists in the expectations which many, perhaps nearly all, people entertain regarding what psychical research ought to accomplish if it affords any evidence of a future life. It is the avowal of incredulity regarding it on the ground that the results do not reveal the con- ditions of that existence, what it is like, whether it is one of happiness or not, what its employments, etc. I have seen many articles demanding information on these points before the existence of such a world can be regarded as credible. I have also talked with many who see the matter in no other light. Because we cannot tell them some idyllic story of the trans- cendental world, they are sceptical of the only facts that can possibly prove it, and virtually concede their willingness to believe anything impossible if we will only encourage them. In spite of the most careful explanation that such a problem as the conditions of an existence in another world is not the primary ques- tion, I find this demand for knowledge regarding them so widespread and so deep-seated that it may be worth while to examine it carefully and to show its irrational character from both a scientific and a moral point of view. In the first place, after all the fraud and illusion on the one hand, and the phenomena of secondary per- 332 THE NATURE OF LIFE AFTER DEATH sonality on the other, ordinarily intelligent men ought to recognize, without the necessity of being told it, that the first problem is one of personal identity after death, if any transcendental form of existence is to be admitted at all. The fundamental trouble is that most people assume another world as a foregone con- clusion, and they do this without one iota of evidence. With this taken for granted, they demand to know the mode of life in it. Moreover, if there be other conditions of existence than the material world which we know, there would still remain the open question whether any independent intelligence either possibly or actually existed in them. The religious belief in the existence of spirits counts for nothing in the prob- lem unless founded on some kind of adequate evidence. Scepticism in regard to this fundamental matter must be satisfied, so that materialism, or the conception of things for which that doctrine stands, must hold the field of probabilities until the evidence is sufficient to indicate the continuance of personal identity after death. That is the primary problem, whose solution conditions inquiry into all others. I do not say or imply that any adequate answer can be given to this question; for with that secondary personality and its deceptive, half -fiendish simulation of spiritistic ideas, and the possibilities of telepathy, whose limits no one can define at present, to say nothing of the ease with which the necessary phenomena can be fraudulently imitated, the task of proving identity, even in pre- sumably genuine phenomena, is a gigantic one, and until it is done scepticism regarding both the existence and the alleged conditions of a transcendental life and 333 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION consciousness must be conceded its rights. Nor do I say that there is any hope of attaining knowledge of those conditions, even if it be possible to determine the fact of survival. This is a separate problem. But it is certain that if we wish to obtain any position making it rational to inquire as to the mode of life in another state of existence, we must in some way establish the veracity of the spirits which claim to re- veal themselves to us. These alleged spirits, however, must prove their veracity by first proving their iden- tity, their present and previous existence, and we may then reckon with their statements relative to their mode of life. There can be no truce with the man who does not see the priority of personal identity to all other questions of psychical research. I understand the disposition to ask for the condi- tions of another life, but I cannot grant either its in- telligence or its morality. Religious considerations, connected with poor morals and a desire for irrespon- sibility in conduct, have been the chief influence in determining this demand. Revelation, fortified by the poetry of Dante and Milton, to say nothing of the ineradicable instinct for immortality and happiness, has fixed men's convictions regarding the presumed fact of a hereafter. But materialistic scepticism and the progress of science since the Renaissance under- mined this belief, at least among the intellectual classes, and either loosened the springs of hope and morality, or offered sound moral temperaments the opportunity to display the virtues of stoics. But amid all this doubt, reluctantly entertained often even by the scientific in deference to the sovereignty of rea- 334 THE NATURE OF LIFE AFTER DEATH son, human instinct among the generality of men has been strong enough to subordinate the demand for evidence of the fact of a future life to the curiosity regarding its character. But I must demur to this desire for knowledge where it is either impossible or unverifiable when as- sumed to be possible. If any knowledge of the condi- tions of existence hereafter be possible at all, it will only be after the most prolonged investigation, involv- ing inductive material and constructive scientific the- ories of a high order and complexity far beyond any- thing seen in Copernican astronomy, Newtonian grav- itation, or Darwinian evolution. Personally I have no interest, scientific or moral, in such a question, con- vinced as I am of the difficulties in the way of any intelligible conception or evidence of such conditions. I must even question the morality of any interest in it. A man must be very conscious of what his deserts ought to be, or have little faith in the order of nature, certainly no great strength of character to withstand the buffets of fortune, if he raises the query regard- ing the consequences of his present life, or feels curi- ous about matters that bear no important relation to his present environment and duties. The limits of human knowledge on the one hand, and the tempta- tions to libertinism on the other, are such that it is easy for the average man to fall into the position of either a fool or a knave: a fool if he does not know and appreciate the rights of scepticism regarding both the fact and the nature of a transcendental world, and a knave if he would abolish the influences, even if they are not of an ideal sort, that make for some kind 335 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION of virtue in a being who craves liberty more than he respects the monitions of conscience. Of this again, if we have time, as I must return to the main issue. This is the dilemma between the impossibility and the unverifiability of all knowledge about the mode of existence beyond the grave, even after we have as- sumed that the fact of it is proved, or the belief in it justified. There are two arguments for this contention, which may be discussed at some length. They are (1) the impossibility of making any statements regarding an- other world intelligible to any ordinary human un- derstanding limited to sensory experience, and (2) the mental and other conditions under which commu- nications from such a world must probably take place. The most elementary training in psychology, or even the simple observation of every-day life, ought to teach a man the necessary difficulties in the way of un- derstanding any statements about another life. If those statements describe it in terms resembling our own world, we must naturally set them down as ab- surd. It would not be another and transcendental world if so described. On the other hand, if they describe it as different, we can neither conceive it nor prove it in terms of what we generally recognize as in- telligible. In either case accounts of it are perfectly worthless. We are limited in our knowledge to the ex- periences of the senses in so far as the data are con- cerned by which a world becomes intelligible. Our language represents the experiences of vision, hear- ing, touch, and the other senses to a minor degree. When we name a fact it is a phenomenon of these 336 THE NATURE OF LIFE AFTER DEATH senses that we name, and these experiences cannot be made interchangeable with each other. They are only associable or capable of being connected in time in the same consciousness. In all the higher and ab- stract conceptions or theoretical constructions of science the reference is always to data that are purely sensory. We picture a horse in the form in which it is seen, unless we are blind, when either the sound of its neighing or feelings of touch represent the meaning of the term to us. Laura Bridgeman had, and Helen Keller has, to identify the meaning of terms in experiences of touch alone. In general, then, things are intelligible to us only in terms of sensory experience, no matter how refined our conceptions become. Now unless we admit that the transcendental world exists in space relations like our own, and that the theosophical doctrine of the " astral body," which is described as a fac-simile of the physical body, repre- sents the nature of the case, and that there is a spir- itual universe that is the analogue of the physical, this world can have no sensory resemblance whatever to our present conditions, and so cannot be described in our existing language. But there is no adequate evidence of any " astral body " doctrine, and certainly the facts and significance of psychical research will have to be admitted if the doctrine can have even a plausible possibility assumed in its favor. But apart from this supposed analogy between the two worlds, we can no more expect a statement about it to be in- telligible than we should expect a person who had no sense of touch and only the sense of vision to make his 337 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION visual experiences clear to one who had the sense of touch and not that of sight. We know how difficult it is to establish communication with the deaf and dumb, even with all the common points of experience and interest, and how additionally difficult it is to make certain experiences intelligible to them after the communication is established. In fact, it is impos- sible to give them an idea of an auditory world of sound, and only the most obscure analogies drawn from the experience of feeling or emotion can suggest to them a meaning of any kind in that sense, and this meaning is not in terms of sensation, but only in those of the emotional element common to all the senses, with a difference, too, for each sense. Witness the cases of Laura Bridgeman and Helen Keller, to whom I have already referred. It would naturally be the same with the description of a world beyond the grave. The " astral body " doctrine would not alter this statement. Whatever analogies it offers to our present world, they are too few and too little like ours in detail to help the case. Its connecting links are not even as useful as those between the normal man and the deaf, dumb, and blind. It would fail at every point except the one of space relations, and these seem also to desert it in important aspects. But without this conception, and in all other respects than its own analogy, it would be impossible to communicate any- thing sensible to us about the transcendental world, and hence, if it exists, whatever we can learn about it must be learned there, and not here. A discarnate spirit would have some hope of estab- lishing its identity. This can be accomplished by re- 338 THE NATURE OF LIFE AFTER DEATH ferring to its past, not its present. Memory is the condition both of our sense of personal identity and of the proof of this identity, whether in this or any other life. If, then, personal identity and the sense of it survived the event of death, and if any possible conditions for communication with a terrestrial world occurred, a discarnate spirit could hope to prove that identity by reference to its past. Its language would be intelligible not by virtue of its present conditions or its reference to them, but by virtue of our knowl- edge of the facts on this side. The statements would be intelligible because they described terrestrial facts. But we have no assurance that the same language would be intelligible when applied to the description of the " other side " ; on the contrary, the assurance is against its possibility. Besides, it is noticeable in the attempts, reported by various persons, to give such descriptions that the combination of terms is not that which is most natural to us in either our sensory or our rational experience. Secondary personality, of course, illustrates the same phenomenon, and were it not that this fact nullifies the assumption that we are ever really dealing with spirit communications, we might have in the absurd association of conceptions purporting to be spiritistic very good illustrations of the impossibility of making a transcendental world intelligible to our experience. But we do not need actual communications to prove this. It is a neces- sary consequence of our ps3 r chological nature, and if mankind were sufficiently acquainted with philosophy since Locke and Kant, they would take this impossi- bility as an axiom. We might, after a hundred years' 339 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION investigation and accumulation of data, form some highly abstract ideas of such a world, but they would not be intelligible to mankind in general. When it comes to what is called empirical evidence for this contention it is not easy, if possible at all, to supply it with assurance. Empirical evidence is that of facts representing actual communications, but the extreme difficulty is that of showing them to be what they claim to be. Such as we have and to which we can appeal at all is found in the Piper case, where we assume that the demands of personal identity are probably satisfied. In my own experiments with that case, however, there is practically nothing illustrat- ing the matter at hand. There is another very important reason for not ac- cepting descriptions of the next life as intelligible. This is the apparent mental confusion connected with the communications purporting to come from spirits. It is evident in the content of the messages, and can be recognized without believing that they have a spir- itistic origin. It is worth remarking that this view of the case is borne out by the direct assertions of the alleged spirits themselves. They state that they are dazed or con- fused while communicating. Assuming such a con- fused state of mind, it would seem only natural that the subject should be seriously hampered in the at- tempt to describe its life. A semiconscious state or a dazed condition in our own lives is not favorable to an intelligible account of anything whatever that we have experienced. If, then, a discarnate spirit, assuming that it exists, becomes mentally confused 340 THE NATURE OF LIFE AFTER DEATH from the influence of the various circumstances under which it is necessary to communicate with us, it is ap- parent that there must be great difficulty in telling us anything at all, and especially anything intelligible about a transcendental world and its life. This brings us to the phenomena of double person- ality, which are now becoming quite familiar to the scientist, though he has, as yet, no clear explanation of them. The facts are definite enough. They are represented in somnambulism, hypnosis, certain forms of insanity, and cases of the lost sense of personal identity. They involve the suspension of normal consciousness or memory, so that when the normal consciousness returns there is no recollection of what has transpired during the secondary state. These cases often represent all the appearances of two dis- tinct persons, or parallel streams of consciousness in the same organism, though their manifestation is rather consecutive than simultaneous. This is the reason that the phenomena are called those of double personality, or even multiplex personality, as there are cases of numerous distinct streams of mental ac- tion. Generally the normal consciousness has no memory of the abnormal; and sometimes, if not gen- erally, the abnormal has either no memory of the nor- mal at all, or no apparently self-conscious recollection of it. The normal consciousness is called the pri- mary, and the abnormal the secondary or tertiary con- sciousness, as the case may be. Now it is the usual cleavage between these separate streams of activity that constitutes the main point of interest for us. It must be emphasized. 341 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION There are all grades and degrees of distinction be- tween the primary and secondary streams, from an in- termixture of their data to their absolute separation, the latter perhaps being the prevalent. We may then say that we generally find no conscious appro- priation of the facts of one personality by another. That is to say, the primary consciousness does not know what the secondary state experiences. This is perhaps all but universal, and in cases of the deeper secondary states the cleavage seems to be absolute. On the other hand, the secondary personality, if it appropriates the experiences of the primary conscious- ness and memory at all (and in some cases it does not seem to do so), shows no conscious knowledge of their origin in the primary consciousness, but recalls them in a fragmentary and automatic way, and indi- cates considerable cleavage between them. There are exceptions to this statement, but they do not affect the general rule. To illustrate this rule, a man un- der hypnosis may forget his own name and most of the facts of his normal experience and memory. He may recall only a few capricious incidents in his past life, and these wholly non-representative of his char- acter, and he may combine with his narrative all sorts of dream-like utterances, not indicative of anything but mental confusion. I recently hypnotized a man who, in this secondary condition, had completely for- gotten his name and age, but he recalled two facts which I was able to prove belonged to his normal state. But he could remember nothing else except the names of some of his companions, and these had been asso- ciated with his dazed condition after an accident in THE NATURE OF LIFE AFTER DEATH which he lost normal consciousness. Yet he could talk about things that he said took place a thousand years ago, and which demonstrably did not take place then, but which possibly had been partly experienced in his normal condition. The cleavage between the two personalities in this case was almost as great as between two different persons whose individual streams of consciousness never interpenetrate, even when telep- athy may be supposed to suggest such interpenetra- tion. Now if we suppose that a discarnate spirit has to assume an abnormal and secondary condition like hypnosis, somnambulism, or subliminal mentality, we may easily understand two probable effects that might follow, after what has just been said. They are (1) confusion and triviality in the messages delivered, and this wholly independent of the disturbing influence of conditions external to the communicating mind and supposed to exist between the terrestrial and tran- scendental worlds, and (2) separation from a clear knowledge of the normal life and consciousness on the " other side." The condition necessary for com- munications of any sort may be that rare state be- tween total unconsciousness in which no messages can be given, and that normal spiritual state in which also no messages may be given, so far as we know. It may be a state in which the subject is wholly un- conscious of its normal life beyond and conscious only of its past, and even of this only in the fragmentary way of secondary personality. Or it may be a state in which the subject may be partly conscious of its normal life beyond and also partly conscious of its 343 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION past. In one of the cases we should get nothing whatever of the life on the " other side," and in the other too little to be intelligible, even if we were quali- fied to understand it when correctly reported. It is also not only possible, but it is most natural psycho- logically considered, that contact with terrestrial con- ditions should suggest terrestrial memories. This, however, would be truer at first than afterwards. But the existence of a secondary state as a condition of communicating would follow known analogies if it cut the communicator off more or less from the tran- scendental life and its experiences. So much for the possibilities. Have we, however, any evidence that a secondary or confused state of mind exists in the act of commu- nicating ? The answer to this question, of course, de- pends on our first having satisfied the demands of per- sonal identity. If the difficulties proposed in the Piper phenomena by a combination of telepathy and secondary personality have been sufficiently overcome, we may suppose that the identity of deceased persons has been satisfactorily established. Assuming this for the purpose of the present argument, I can reply to the above question with an affirmative. This evi- dence of a confused state of mind is often not only clearly indicated by the messages, but is also as often connected with peculiar traces of important facts in the midst of much confusion. There are two kinds of evidence for this confusion. They are, first, the internal character of the commu- nications, and second, the direct statements of the communicators. The most important illustration of 344 THE NATURE OF LIFE AFTER DEATH the first type is the condition of things which seems to necessitate an alternation of communicators. A communicator can stay but a short time. What the exact cause of this is we do not know. But it is an in- variable fact, and the character of the communication at the termination of one of these periods often runs off into great confusion and dreamy nonsense, like the drivel of secondary personality. This is very prettily illustrated in one of my own sittings, where the com- municator twice exclaimed (so to speak, as the mes- sage came in automatic writing), " Give me my hat," just as he left off communicating. This language had no connection with the rest of the communica- tions, but, strange enough, my inquiries brought out accidentally that the communicator in life was accus- tomed to use this very expression in situations like this when suddenly called to go out-of-doors. Here we apparently have a secondary state suddenly ap- proaching syncope, so to speak, and the psychological situation elicits automatically, by ordinary associa- tion, the very phrase which the person was accus- tomed to utter in partly similar circumstances in life. On another occasion this same communicator told me a story about a fire that had once given him a fright, and described the case so extravagantly that I considered it false. This was early in my experi- ments. Much later he recurred to the same incident spontaneously, and told it in more sober terms, re- marking that he was often confused when trying to tell me facts. In the attempt to get my step-mother's name rightly a singular incident took place. Her name had been 345 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION given wrongly in all communications regarding her until I discovered what was probably intended, and asked for the right one. It had been confused with that of my aunt Nannie, the right name being Maggie. It was first given Mannie and then Nannie. In the effort to give it rightly, after I had asked for it, the communicator recognized very clearly his dif- ficulties and confusion, and in the attempt to explain why it had occurred, said: " Help me. Oh, help me to recall what I so longed to say. My own mother Nannie. I — Wait. I will go for a moment." Now his own mother's name was not Nannie. It was Margaret, and the same as that of my step-mother. But Nannie was the name of his sister, and was the name with which he had confused that of my step- mother, as indicated above. A little later the com- municator explained that in this attempt to straighten out the confusion he thought of his own mother and sister at the same time. This confusion is a very pretty illustration and evidence of the mental dif- ficulties under which discarnate spirits apparently labor in their attempts to make themselves intelligible. It is possible, however, that at times the confusion is due to the rapidity of thought in comparison with the greater slowness of the writing. We know that our thoughts flow more rapidly than we can write them, and that we have to make an effort to control their movement in the interest of our writing. I have no doubt that the discrepancy at times is due to this or an analogous phenomenon. But quite often it is a different mental condition altogether. On one occasion, for instance, in illustration of a 346 THE NATURE OF LIFE AFTER DEATH disturbed consciousness, my uncle in trying to com- municate lost completely the sense of personal iden- tity, and had to cease his attempts, when my father (I use the spiritistic lingo for clearness) suddenly appeared with the half -humorous remark, " Yes, Hyslop, I know who I am, and Annie too," the latter being the name of my deceased sister. Take another instance. My father said, after ap- parently mentioning my step-mother : " And yet I am thinking of F** [asterisks mean that the rest of the name could not be deciphered in the original automatic writing] and my visit to him. I mean your brother . . . [pause] brother . . . Hear it? Annie ... I want to help father to re- member everything, because I came here first and long ago." Now my sister had died in 1864 and my father in 1896. F is the initial of my brother Frank. My father never paid a visit to him, but he, together with my step-mother, made a visit to friends in Pennsyl- vania with my brother Frank in 1873. In the matter of testimony to this confusion the illustrations are quite as interesting. Apropos of the possible rapidity of thought as a disturbing influence, after mentioning the name of an old favorite horse in the family, my father suddenly changed to some- thing else to which there is no clew as to what was intended, and said : "I am thinking about it now, and everything I ever knew, I believe, because my mind travels so fast, and I try to get away from the rest as much as possible. I think of twenty things all at once." After some further confused references 347 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION he remarked, " Ah, James, do not, my son, think I am degenerating because I am disturbed in thinking over my earthly life, but if you will wait for me I will remember all, everything I used to know." Over and over again he asserts that he is confused when trying to communicate, and several times remarks that when he is not communicating his memory is clear. In fa- vor of this is the fact that often clear messages are sent just as Mrs. Piper returns to her normal con- sciousness, as if this could be done at an opportune moment just before the conditions disappear that make it possible, and while the communicator is far enough from the ordinary conditions of the trance to maintain a better mental equilibrium. One more illustration. In allusion to some com- munications at sittings much earlier, my father said: " I am here, and I am thinking over the things I said when I was confused. Do you remember of my tell- ing you I thought it possible that we might live else- where? But to speak was doubtful, very. . . . Ah, yes, we do speak, although vaguely at times. Ah, but we ... at best ... we do. . What is on my mind at present is the condi- tions which help me to return." This is one little in- cident among a number of others more evidential and connected with several conversations with my father on the subject of spirit return, and in which I doubted the possibility of any such thing as communications. The reader can see for himself both the confusion and the evident consciousness of the communicator that he suffers from it. There is much interesting testimony in Dr. Hodg- 348 THE NATURE OF LIFE AFTER DEATH son's sittings bearing on the same question. The reader can determine for himself by reading Dr. Hodgson's report the numerous instances of this men- tal confusion as evidenced by the contents of the mes- sages. I shall here limit myself to a few testimonial illustrations of the confusion as given by some of the communicators. George Pelham, (pseudonym), who died in 1892, and who succeeded in establishing his identity sufficiently to quote his statements, remarked on one occasion to Dr. Hodgson, " Do not talk too fast, because I am in a daze, so to speak." On an- other occasion he explained to Dr. Hodgson at some length the condition of mind in which he had to get in order to communicate. " Remember we have, and always shall have our friends, in the dream life — i. e., your life, so to speak — which will attract us forever and forever, and so long as we have any friends sleeping in the ma- terial world; you to us are more 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, H. 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 must remark the use of the word " sleep " in this passage, apparently indicating that the communicator was at a loss to describe the condi- tion of his mind when communicating. We know that hypnosis in some conditions and respects resem- 349 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION bles sleep, and that sleep is a natural analogy of it, often perhaps more favorable to the establishment of a connection with the normal consciousness than hyp- nosis. But aside from all technical comparison be- tween the two states, we have in this communication of George Pelham a recognition of a fact which we might possibly infer from the contents of many com- munications. Direct testimony in this instance coin- cides with the inference that we should most naturally make from the character of the data. Another communicator remarked to Dr. Hodgson, "lama little dull, H., in the head " ; and on another occasion, while saying something about a cigar-case for the purpose of proving his identity, suddenly said, " Am I dreaming? " as if aware of the confused and dream-like drift of consciousness in the act of com- munication. But one of the most interesting testimonies to the position here advanced is rather indirect, and at the same time affords some evidence of the spiritistic the- ory of the phenomena. What I have already quoted can hardly claim this character. But a friend of this George Pelham, deceased and purporting to com- municate with him through Mrs. Piper, was the sitter. He is called Mr. Hart in the report. This Mr. Hart was much puzzled with the confusion in the com- munications and the evidence of an apparently de- generating personality, if he had to suppose that he was dealing with his friend George Pelham. But not long after his sittings this Mr. Hart himself died in Paris, and soon turned up to communicate, and found that he could not succeed so well as his friend 350 THE NATURE OF LIFE AFTEE DEATH George Pelham had done, and on one occasion indi- cated some aggrievance because he did not have the opportunity to communicate so often as he wished. He said : " 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." (Dr. Hodgson: "You were confused at first." ) " Very, but I did not really understand how confused I was. It was more so — I am more so when I try to speak to you. I understand now why George spelled his words to me." Mr. Hart had to learn on the " other side " the facts which explained the former confusion of George Pelham, and the incident here crops out as an interest- ing piece of evidence for personal identity, while it attests the fact of mental confusion in the act of communication. Evidence of this sort could be multiplied almost in- definitely, but this is sufficient to illustrate my point. Now if the cleavage between the normal consciousness of a discarnate spirit and its condition necessary for communicating is like the cleavage between primary and secondary personality, even though it is not al- ways so great, we can readily understand both the dearth of material reflecting the conditions of life in the transcendental world and the return of the per- son's consciousness to terrestrial memories, and also the tendency to trivial recollections, as this latter fea- ture is characteristic of all disturbed consciousness. 351 CHAPTER XII PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION Serious discussions of the resurrection, as described in the New Testament, have almost passed out of no- tice, even in the field of theology. In my early life and during my college education, it received attention in apologetics. But since that time the subject has almost disappeared from intelligent interest. Lecky's verdict on Miracles seems to apply to this topic, and indeed includes it. Nothing can be clearer in the biblical literature of the past, including the New Tes- tament, than the important and central place occupied by the story of the resurrection. The whole fabric of Christianity rested upon its integrity, whatever inter- pretation was placed upon it, at least for the rational theory of the system. This is as true for Roman- ism as for Protestantism. Both made the Christian system depend on the validity of the incidents com- prised in the idea of the resurrection, because it is evi- dent that the immortality of the soul was the key-note of the religion which supplanted Paganism and Ma- terialism. But gradually science undermined this be- lief as it has many others, and often religion, to save itself or some of its social and spiritual ideals, palters with the word and escapes the duty of stating itself frankly and honestly on the issue which defines its own authority. I do not here either assert or deny the importance 352 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION of the doctrine which so engrossed the human mind during the centuries preceding the triumph of phy- sical science. I am not reviving dead controversies, but stating the facts and tendencies of history. It may not be important either to believe or to deny the story of the resurrection. Many will still think it important to hold and defend that belief. I do not af- firm or deny this. All that is important here to remark is the place which it once had in the deter- mination of human allegiance to religion, at least the Christian religion. That it was the central is- sue in the validity of Christianity for long cen- turies will hardly be questioned, and was ap- parently made so by those who saw no reason to ac- cept that religion, unless the integrity of the belief in the resurrection could be sustained. But it is as clear to all intelligent men to-day that the doctrine either has no such important place or is evanescent, if not actually dead. What the logical mind has to ask in the face of such an admitted fact is, what basis can the system have which made its ideals and hopes rest upon a belief which is now no longer accepted? There can be no doubt that the plainest interpre- tation of the New Testament is that the resurrection was intended to mean that of the physical body, at least in the application of it to Christ. The doc- trine of St. Paul for the human race at death was most probably applied to the " spiritual " and not to the physical body. But the clearest import of the New Testament teaching regarding Christ was that his body arose from the dead after the crucifixion and was seen as in life by his disciples and others. 353 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION The most natural inference from this was that the resurrection of others, at the day of judgment, would be that of the body. We know how the ages came to believe in that view, and it does not matter for us at this day whether the interpretation was correct or not. In the definition which the belief received through the process of discussion afterward we have the issue which thinking minds had to meet, and this was that the immortality of the soul was conditioned on the resurrection of the physical body which it had inhabited during its natural life. The interpretation of New Testament doctrine which led to this view did not assume that there was any source of natural error in the accounts of Christ's resurrection. Va- rious influences tended to suppress inquiry into the nature of biblical authority on such matters, or to prevent revision of the narratives on which it was founded. That the reporters were honest in their statements was either taken for granted or made evi- dent by the accounts themselves, and that they were honest will be admitted by all who are familiar with the records, or the evidence, such as it is. But there was no disposition to reckon with other difficulties than the honesty of informants. That there should be mal-observation, illusion, and unconscious distor- tion of the facts, and imperfections of record, in the accounts was not sufficiently appreciated by early students of the narratives, and hence it was supposed that we had adequate data for accepting the story of the resurrection in its literal form. It was more natural until the 17th century to ac- cept the possibility of a resurrection than since the 354 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION revival of science. We must remember that the be- lief in its possibility was supported by the theistic in- terpretation of the world. This view of the cosmos was a definite denial of the fundamental assumption of Greek philosophy in its later period. This as- sumption was the eternity of matter. Early Greek thought admitted the created nature of the world as we knew it in sense perception. That is, the sensible universe was believed to have been formed in some way, whether by an intelligent agency or the fortuitous combination of elements. Wherever the elements were assumed they were supposed to be permanent or eter- nal. The Epicurean school laid great emphasis upon this and it was the dominant point of view at the time of the Christian era. In its opposition to this view, Christian theology had two alternatives before it. ( 1 ) It could rely upon the argument of design to show that the order of the sensible cosmos was not due to chance, but to intelligent arrangement. This was practically the position of Plato and others. The eternity and uncreated nature of the elements so ar- ranged was granted. The function of a deity was not creation but the orderly arrangement of things, in this view of the world. (2) It could extend the idea of power to the creation of the very elements as well as the sensible order of things. It could hold that all matter, whether sensible or supersensible, was created. This latter alternative was the one taken, and it had the advantage of displacing matter by an- other principle as the eternal basis of things. The conception that matter was ephemeral or phenomenal, whether in its sensible or supersensible form, placed 255 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION spirit in the position of the physical as the permanent background of the world. Spirit, not matter, be- came the eternal, and as personality or intelligence was the essential characteristic of spirit, there was no difficulty in supposing it capable of recreating the body at the end of the world as it was assumed to have created it for this life. Every conception which would endow the new point of view with probability was found in the doctrine of the theism, namely, intel- ligence, power, and morality. That the source of things was personal made it probable that its end would be, and immortality followed as a natural se- quence. The respect and worship which the divine received was a surety that its character could be trusted to fulfill hope and aspiration. Deity had to fulfill the hopes it had inspired, as a condition of retaining the character and reverence which it had received. Spiritual life was not any longer at the mercy of the " elements." It had its own basis and was not dependent on the contingencies of material embodiment for its existence or destiny. It had a supposed subject placed on a basis as well guaranteed as any other fact. The consequence was that, during all the centuries until the revival of science, the theistic point of view had full sway and it was easy to believe in the possi- bility of a physical resurrection. The reverence for the past and the exaltation of authority strengthened this wider view, and men no more questioned, or could question, the possibility of a bodily survival or resur- rection than they could the existence of an absolute, and it was natural to add the fact of it to the concep- PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION tions which they took of the order of creation. The plain interpretation of the Bible had nothing offensive in it, because it did not contradict the fundamental theory of the universe. The order of things was not conceived as an inexorable fate without intelligence, but as an intelligent and ethical order, and such a view carried with it every possibility which was found in the basic doctrine of creation and providence. But all this was changed by the revival of learning with its reinstatement of Greek ideals and philosophy. The direct study of nature supplanted the dependence on authority and reverence for the past. Each indi- vidual felt the desire and the power to judge of na- ture for himself. The meager accounts of the world that came from priestcraft and superstition did not satisfy, and the emancipated human intellect sprang with unbounded enthusiasm into the new field of in- terest. Almost the first step in its inquiry resulted in the indestructibility of matter and the conservation of energy. These apparently undermined the funda- mental position of theism. Theology had enjoyed perfect immunity in its claims as long as it could maintain the ephemeral nature of matter and the per- manent character of spirit. But the moment that matter became the permanent substratum of things again there were two claimants for the throne of the universe, and just to the extent to which the hu- man mind feels confidence in the ultimate unity of the cosmos, as against what is called a dualistic interpre- tation of it, to that extent will belief accept any the- ory which makes its claims of unity good. Now the indestructibility of matter and the conservation of 357 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION energy were accepted as indubitably proved. This proof came in the determination of certain indubita- ble facts, and the speculative doctrines of theology were based upon assumptions which were not experi- mentally supported, and with experiment as the new test of truth the way was clear for science as op- posed to theology. Matter again became the eternal and spirit the ephemeral concomitant of it, a func- tion of matter, not its director or creator. The change in the point of view was absolute and the ul- timate consequences inevitable. Consciousness, in- stead of being the function of a soul which was not dependent on matter for its existence, became the ac- companiment or accident of material compounds. Spirit became the phenomenal thing, or at least had its claims to support upon an entirely different basis. The body became the first condition of its existence, that is, of consciousness and hence any doctrine of the resurrection had to rely upon the assumption that the bodily organism would be revived in some way, if personal life were possible beyond the grave. Everything in the new philosophy tended to dis- pute the possibility of survival, and especially the restoration of the bodily organism. The law of the world was one of constancy, not the action of a free will. All that observation showed was a succession of species, not the permanence of the individual, and physiology added its evidence to the dependence of consciousness on the body with no hope that the same basis for consciousness could be reinstated, in the absence of a divine agency whose existence seemed not to be required in the new system. The confidence 358 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION in the constancy of nature, which was a fixed and in- variable order, and the absence of evidence of a posi- tive kind that consciousness could survive bodily con- ditions, conspired to give scepticism its triumph. In- telligent men thought they could not any longer main- tain the immortality of the soul on the ground that the story of the physical resurrection was true. The original attack on Greek materialism had been made on this alleged fact, and then, when such phenomena had not been repeated, philosophy had to fall back upon a system of theism to support the probability of its hopes. But when the theistic interpretation of nature lost its main basis, namely, the phenomenal character of matter, everything depending on this fundamental postulate had its integrity attacked to the same extent. The belief in the original allega- tions, besides the loss of its basic assumptions about matter, had to contend with the demands for ordi- nary scientific evidence. There was no way to save the story of the resurrection from the antecedent prob- abilities of the new theory of matter, and whatever allegiance it retained in spite of the progress of physical science, it had to meet the criterion which science imposes on every conviction, namely, that it supply present evidence for its contention. I need not dwell on the logical tendencies of the mind when it has to accept the doubtfulness of the facts on which its most important ideals and hopes have been based. The doctrine of immortality had founded a new civilization and supported all its ethi- cal and political ideals, and this immortality had been based upon the theory of the resurrection, which 359 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION claimed to find its defence in a philosophical scheme of the universe, but which, traced to its historical source, depended wholly upon the integrity of the story of Christ's bodily resurrection, as that had been interpreted. But science was not in the habit of mak- ing a large theory of things dependent on an isolated event. Such phenomena might be a ground for pause or investigation, but not for a reconstruction of the cosmos. But when it came to the assertion of human immortality on the ground that a single instance of bodily resurrection had been alleged, especially in the period that marked the dissolution of Greco-Roman society when ignorance and superstition were so rife, it was hardly to be expected that the confidence in scientific method would be shaken by such a story. It makes no difference what the facts were. The point we are making is the habit of the human mind in the use of its established laws of nature. In all our daily life we have to regulate belief and ac- tion by the constancy of nature, even though we may be obliged ultimately to investigate the ground of this constancy. But having found that this constancy shut out the occurrence of resurrection as a law of the natural order, there was nothing left but scepticism for isolated events not apparently consistent with human experience. With this went every conclusion which had rested on the original belief, and the doc- trine of a physical resurrection easily became a relic of the past, a belief which science could not sustain. There would be no special interest in the mere fact of Christ's resurrection, whether bodily or otherwise. Science might ask why such an exceptional event 360 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION took place. But it would have no other interest in it. The chief interest attaching to it was the mean- ing applied to its occurrence. This was its refuta- tion of the Epicurean materialism and the implica- tion of survival after death. Hence it was its relation to the doctrine of immortality, as we well know, that gave the alleged fact all its interest and importance. No one would care a penny whether the incident was true or false, unless certain other interests were associated with it, and all apologetics had made the belief in a future life to hinge upon this single in- stance of resurrection as against the universal obser- vation that bodies perished. The consequence was that immortality, in losing its basis, lost the confidence which had been reposed in it as an ethico-political be- lief. It became a secondary matter in the construc- tion of life and its ideals. The economal and materi- alistic view supplanted it, and we are to-day living in the atmosphere of that changed point of view. The reaction has set in and has not yet reached its full development. It refuses to construct the universe upon exceptional phenomena unless they can be shown to have a law of their own. It doubts the oc- currence of merely isolated events and seeks to find their repetition, even though they be more or less sporadic. Hence unless the doctrine of a future life can secure credentials in the evidence of present oc- currences proving it, the belief takes an unsupported place in the system of human convictions, and must suffer the destiny of all beliefs which cannot claim the defence of reason and general experience. I repeat that it does not matter whether New Tes- 361 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION tament facts and statements have been misinterpreted. The heritage of human belief was a doctrine of the bodily resurrection, and we have to face that claim whatever the original belief may have been, or what- ever the real facts were. Hence clear thinking re- quires us to clearly affirm or deny the doctrine of a physical resurrection as a condition of a future life. There can be no doubt that in all intellectual minds scepticism has taken the place of belief and all efforts to sustain that belief has the whole weight of science to contend with and can never do more than sophisti- cate men who are not familiar with the problems of thought. But while we cannot accept the proverbial story of the resurrection from the point of view of science, there may be a view of it which will bear scrutiny and which would have all the meaning that history and tradition have attached to it. But this will not be ap- parent until we have seen the antecedent concep- tions which led up to the story. This new interpreta- tion of the facts is the result of the light which psy- chic research throws on the past. It would hardly have been suspected but for this new point of view, and it has had sufficient influence on the mind of a man like Mr. Frederick W. H. Myers to induce him to say in his work on Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, perhaps with more confidence than the circumstances permitted, but yet with some in- sight into the modified tendencies of the present day interest in the problem, that within a century all reasonable men would believe in the resurrection of Christ. Whatever view the future takes of it, how- 362 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION ever, the philosophic conceptions of the Greco-Roman period will have to be taken into account when inter- preting it, and also the phenomena which recent years have reinstated in human interest but which the period between the present and primitive Christianity came to be disregarded for lack of methods and criteria for determining their value. If we wish to understand how the idea of the resur- rection became distorted we have only to look at the general variation between philosophic and common minds in regard to the same events at any time. The uneducated man to-day represents things in a man- ner which will not bear investigation in the light of science, though he actually has an important fact or truth at the basis of his conceptions. We are all too familiar with this to make more than a cursory men- tion of it here and I leave the matter to readers for il- lustration in their own experience. I wish to lay the stress of this aspect of the matter before us on the relation between the current philosophic conceptions at the time of Christ and the story of the resurrec- tion. To make this clear we must briefly indicate the general trend of Greek thought which had deter- mined the conceptions against which Christianity was a protest, especially the materialism of the Epicu- reans. The Greek had a genius for the enjoyment of na- ture. So much so that all his pessimism, when it dis- played itself at all, was the reflection of the transitory character of life or the limitations under which his coveted joys had to be obtained. This " nature " which attracted him so much, aesthetically and other- 363 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION wise, was the sensible world, the world of sense per- ception. It was only when he began to reflect philo- sophically upon it that he discovered something trans- cending sense perception. But he did not know ex- actly how to express his new point of view and could not always escape the prevalent conceptions of the race in his attempts to describe it while he satisfied the instincts of that race. The controversy between Heraclitus and the Eleatics was the first effort to give the opposition between these two points of view defi- nite expression. We need not dwell upon it here. But it divided, or originated the division of Greek thinkers, into two fundamental schools, those who un- dertook to judge of things from the point of view of sense perception and those who adjudged from the point of view of reason or inner principles. One ter- minated in Epicureanism and the other in Platonism. For a moment Plato combined the two speculative ten- dencies, that of the Eleatics and Heraclitus, and in spite of some decided points of antithesis to the ma- terialists, sympathized with them in more than he is usually supposed to have done. Both the idealists and the materialists of the time departed from sense perception to seek and find the basic cause of things, even though they had to rely on some of the conceptions of sense to make their prin- ciples intelligible. The idealists, however, tried more earnestly to transcend the conceptions of sense to de- termine the nature of their causal principles, and never made themselves perfectly clear regarding the question whether the world was to be interpreted by efficient or by material or constitutive causes. This aside is in- 364 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION volving too much metaphysics, the main point is to understand that the real distinction between the two schools was just in this different point of view, one of them being influenced by the desire for material causes, or the elements out of which the world and all sensible reality were made, and the other by the de- sire for the efficient cause which was intrumental in collocating these elements. The first simple attempts to explain things were based on the idea that they were composed of ele- ments. Of these there were four, earth, air, fire, and water. Early thinkers thought they could find four primitive substances which were combined and modi- fied to constitute the nature of the whole visible world. This view gradually developed into the atomic theory which made the elements infinite in number, though of the same kind. Such a view assumed at once that there was a great difference between the appearance of complexity and multiplicity of things and the real simplicity of them. The rich complexity of the world was phenomenal and transcient, the simple ele- ments were permanent and eternal. All the complex- ity of nature was due to the accidents of combina- tion, not to the inherent nature of the things that were permanent. When then the elements or atoms became all of one kind and indefinite in number, it was apparent that there were very few qualities which would remain permanent in the scheme of reality. Everything but matter was transient and phenomenal, and this matter was not accessible to the senses. The sensible world was a phantasm, an illusion, an appear- ance, anything but eternal, and hence directly op- 365 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION posed in its character to the material elements out of which it was composed or which in some way managed to throw up on the surface of its evolution the evanes- cent forms of things seen. Consciousness in such a philosophy would be a mere function of compounds which had none of it in their elements. Conscious- ness and personality would be accidents of composi- tion, phenomenal consequences of interaction like di- gestion, circulation, and if I may take a physical anal- ogy, comparable to eddies and whirlpools in the con- fluence of two streams. Hence the school dominated by this philosophy consistently denied the persistence of personality after death. The idealists, while they could not combat the ex- istence or supposition of elements constituting the transcendental basis of things, were not satisfied with the explanation of their composition in fortuitious combinations. They had a strong leaning for some kind of directing cause, though they seldom reached the theistic conception of that agency. Plato and Aristotle affirmed it with Anaxagoras and Socrates, but they did not escape the sense of transiency in things, and even Plato's immortality of the soul was nonpersonal, unless we accept occasional temptations on his part to recognize facts which ran athwart the main premises and conclusions of his philosophy. The fundamental feature of his philosophy obliged him to conceive his immortality in the same terms as the modern doctrine of the conservation of energy and conceive the indestructibility of matter as the per- manence of motion and substance. He endeavored wholly to transcend sense perception in his treatment 366 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION of " ideas," but the permanent with him was a re- currence of the same elements or properties in suc- cessive types of reality, not the persistence of iden- tity of the same individual. Similarity, which re- flected a permanent reality behind it, was the basis of his idea of the eternal, not the persistence of the same thing. Hence he would have agreed, at least in his main philosophy, with the materialists that the personality which we know in the present form of our existence was perishable. It was only in moments of sympathy with abnormal phenomena that he came to consider the possibilities of survival after death, but these moods never worked their way into metaphysi- cal clearness or to a point where they would traverse his main philosophy. It was his ethical idealism that kept him in the eyes of the great and sympathetic minds of subsequent ages, and only his language on immortality, associated with the general instincts of the human race, availed to attach Christian philos- ophy to him and his metaphysics. Besides Platon- ism developed into a form which excited no special interest in that age. Neo-Platonism was either unin- telligible or so in conflict with the prevailing ten- dencies of the age, as well as with the pleasure lov- ing instincts of the Greeks and the latter day Ro- mans, that it offered no attractive rallying point for the ethical minds of the time. It was too ascetic and too far removed in its conceptions from the view of nature which the scientific spirit of the day reflected. Hence in that declining period the materialist easily won the credence and interest of speculative tempera- ments. 367 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION But there was a feature of Epicureanism and ma- terialistic ideas that was the starting point of their undoing. The main theory of the school, as I have said, was that all things were composed of atoms which combined in a manner to give rise to various phenom- enal manifestations that disappeared with the disso- lution of the compounds. When it came to their inter- pretation of consciousness they most naturally would make it an accident of the organism. But in con- tradiction with this view they did nothing of the kind. It remained for the later materialism to develop itself into a more consistent view. The Epicureans did not wholly escape the natural assumption of Greek thought that consciousness was so different from other functional phenomena that it required a subject of its own. Hence for various reasons they admitted the existence of a soul concomitant with the physical or- ganism and inhabiting it, but denied its immortality. The Epicureans held that the soul was an organism of very fine matter. This fine matter was sometimes called " ether " by them. It was not the ether of modern science, but a more refined form of matter than the senses could perceive. But instead of main- taining that this etherial soul survived death, which they might well have done from their assumption of the permanence of substance, they affirmed its perishable nature. The point of consistency in this denial of its persistence was in the assumption of its complex character. The Greeks believed the essen- tially perishable nature of all compounds and assum- ing the compound nature of the soul they would log- ically make it phenomenal, and so they did. They 368 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION had no evidence of this outcome but their a priori theory of the very nature of things as complex. All that they had evidence for was the transient character of things sensible. As these were supposedly complex they made complexity convertible with transiency, when their evidence did not take them beyond sensi- ble things for this phenomenal conception. They had asserted the permanence of transcendental elements, and there was no reason but an a priori one why they should make transcendental organisms equally perish- able. They should have realized that they required evidence at this point. The law of inertia supports the permanence of everything, and it is but a form of the conservation of energy. It is not intrinsically in the nature of complex things that they shall dis- solve any more than it is in the nature of an ele- ment or an atom that it should perish. It is a ques- tion of fact pure and simple. All that the Epicurean had definite evidence for was the empirical fact that complex things of sense perished, not that they neces- sarily perished. And with this evidence went the fact that there was a cause for this dissolution or tran- sient appearance. But for the action of that cause even compound things would not perish. Hence the materialist should have observed that, if he were go- ing to assert the phenomenal nature of the soul, it was his duty to supply the same kind of evidence for this that he had for that of the body. But he resorted to a priori assumptions instead of scientific evidence. He distinguished between the sensible and the super- sensible world by making one transient and the other permanent, and then forgot the distinction on winch 369 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION he based this view when he came to estimate the na- ture of complex organisms. It was the supersensible that was eternal, and as he had made the soul super- sensible he should have seen that its permanence went with this, and would have done so but for the a priori assumption about the complex. It may be a fact that they are all perishable, but it is not a necessity. It is a matter of evidence, not of assumption. Besides, it was a purely a priori assumption that the soul was an organism, a complex compound of etherial elements. It might as well have been a monad, so far as the Epicureans knew. They had no evidence that it was a complex organism. Hence if it were a monad, its imperishable nature was to be placed on the same basis as that of the atoms. The inde- structibility of the atoms was an assumption without any special proof, a view which all will admit in this day since the discussion of the atomic theory and the new doctrine of ions and electrons. But it was not necessary for the believer in immortality to challenge the eternity of the atoms or the assumption which affirmed it, as he could simply demand evidence for the complexity of the soul and in lieu of finding it as- sume with equal propriety its simplicity and affirm its persistence on the same basis as that of the ele- ments. On the philosophic side, Christianity would have had the alternatives of holding that the soul was sim- ple and indestructible or that its mere complexity did not insure its destruction. Tertullian seized upon its simplicity and its material nature as an ad hominem argument which the materialist could not resist. But 370 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION he lacked evidence for the simplicity of the soul and other philosophic views had become so infected with the opposition between matter and spirit that they could not accept the material nature of the soul, even if it afforded a vantage ground in the argument. But we anticipate the real attack of Christianity on materialism by referring to Tertullian, as he came long after that religion had gained its position. The real attack on materialism was not philosophical, but an appeal to a fact, or an alleged fact. This was the story of the resurrection. Materialism had saturated thought with the belief that even if the soul existed it did not survive the grave. Philosophy had shown itself incapable of solving the riddle, and left to the gatherer of evidence the duty or the opportunity to assert what material- ism denied. It was no philosophic time when the re- vival of the belief in immortality arose. There was no disposition to debate the issue on assumptions which could well demand evidence for their making on both sides of the the controversy. Hence instead of rely- ing on the argument that the doctrine of inertia fav- ored the continuity of the soul, the new movement fell back on an alleged fact to support its contention against materialism. It did not challenge the mate- rialist for evidence that complex organisms perish, but undertook directly the support of its own con- tention that the soul did rise from the grave. Ancient thought would naturally enough suppose that the fine material organism, which existed as the soul in association with the body would fare the same destiny. The very assumption that it was matter, and 371 PSYCHICAL. RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION complex matter at that, would incline it in that direc- tion, while the various traditions of popular religion and its theory of Hades left the soul to follow the course of the body. But as Greek thought had al- ways taken the view of gravity which held that light substances rose and heavy ones fell, it was easy to con- struct a theory of a resurrection before any alleged facts occurred to justify its assertion, and in fact such a theory existed before it was alleged of Christ. The controversy between the Pharisees and Sadducees is absolute proof of this. It may be doubtful if the mere philosophic theory had suggested any such view, but when suggested, philosophy might well harbor it as consistent with its general conceptions. It is far more probable that the belief in apparitions had sug- gested the mode of attack on materialism, as even the Epicureans admitted the existence of such phenomena, and Epicureans admitted the existence of the gods on the evidence of dreams. It is hardly possible that the dispute between the two dominant sects of Pales- tine grew out of a philosophic controversy based on a thorough acquaintance with Greek thought. It is more probable that the intellectual atmosphere was saturated with its general ideas and certain actual ex- periences which sought cover in sectarian theories, and the belief in apparitions in all ages would very natur- ally suggest that conception of things which the story of the resurrection illustrates, and especially in the crisis of ancient materialism, surrounded as it was by the assumptions which I have explained. Hence we may suppose that Christianity arose to the challenge for evidence of survival which the belief in apparitions 872 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION easily suggested. It was not a philosophy, but an appeal to alleged facts, which, accepting their appar- ent character, directly disproved the a priori assertion of the Epicurean. The mind of the time was prepared for the recog- nition of phenomena which would suggest just what the anti-materialist wanted in his support. We have only to suppose that an apparition of Christ appeared to his disciples after his death and we should have all the conditions which would supply a reply to the claims of materialism. The appearance of such a per- sonality would have an unusual influence, more than any average person, and it would suggest a triumph- ant answer to scepticism, as we know the story ac- tually took that character. It would constitute an ex- ception to the assertions that survival was impossible. All that the advocate would have to say was that it was not a question of what was possible or impossible, but of what the facts were, attested as they apparently were in this case by collective testimony. Materialism asserted that a resurrection, the survival of the ethe- rial organism, the Pauline spiritual body, or the as- tral of the theosophist, was impossible. The Chris- tian believer simply pointed to a case of it in fact and asked the Epicurean to explain it on any other than the most natural hypothesis. The repetition of such phenomena would add strength to the influence of the first one and awakened a new interest which materialism would not be able to withstand. I am not claiming that there was an actual appari- tion of Christ at the time. I am only saying that, in the sceptical situation about the resurrection of 373 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION the physical body, we can most easily explain the con- sensus of testimony in the matter by supposing that an apparition occurred, whatever source we gave to the apparition. We may treat it as an hallucination, if we prefer, as Renan actually did, and as physiol- ogists and psychiatrists now do, where they do not consider it a myth. I am not concerned at present in the question whether the apparition was real or hallu- cinatory. The experience of the human race makes the phenomenon, whatever its cause, a frequent and familiar one, and we need not enter into criticism of the story when estimating its effect on belief, philo- sophical and otherwise. It is sufficient to believe a thing to make it a potent factor in intellectual con- structions, and there can hardly be a doubt that the early Christians believed in the occurrence of some appearance, subjective and hallucinatory or real, at the time of the crucifixion, and that belief was in an alleged fact which, if real, clearly contradicted the conceptions of the materialist. That the phenomena which have characterized the field of psychic research are not new and that they were associated with the allegations of the resurrection of Christ are apparent in other statements of the New Testament. There is the story of the apparition of Moses and Elias on the mount. We may not credit such a story as a fact. But it makes no differ- ence. The record of it shows that people believed in such* things, at least to some extent. It may have been, like many other similar incidents, a mere myth, but its assertion indicates what the mind was accredit- ing in the field of the apparently superphysical. 374 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION Then again we have the instance of the disciples aware of Christ's presence with them on the way to Em- maus. He was not distinctly recognized at first, but seemed like one of those instances with which psychic researchers are now so familiar, namely, the phenom- ena in which some people seem to be conscious of an independent presence, though nothing sensible is rec- ognized. These too may be hallucinations, but they are experiences, and it would be natural for unscien- tific times to accept them at their face value and to base a philosophy or a religion upon them. St. Paul's vision on the way to Damascus, the " speaking with tongues " on the day of Pentecost, the command to " try the spirits and see whether they were of God or not," were all phenomena with which we are perfectly familiar to-day, whether of the na- ture of hallucinations or indicative of transcendental realities. It would only be natural to expect an ap- parition of Christ on any theory of the facts, so far as any such event can be expected at all, and certainly its occurrence to people of that time would offer the best of opportunities to challenge materialism. The phenomenon would, if real, be a clear disproof of the materialist claim that the etherial organism perished with the body. That idea once accepted would af- ford a rallying point for all the forces which mate- rialism had kept in submission. Such it was at that time for any one who knows history. The despair of those who had felt the weight of doubt was at once turned into joy and a new enthusiasm given to the ethical and religious consciousness. The whole movement of Neo-Platonism was deeply 375 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION associated with these phenomena. The orthodox his- torian of philosophy knows well the stories of the trances of Plotinus, and all are familiar with the magic and theurgy connected with that philosophy, and it seems to have escaped the repute attaching to similar associations in modern times. We have long since separated philosophic pursuits from dabbling in magic and prestidigitation, and these may not have infected Neo-Platonism in its early stages. But whether they did or not, the work of Plotinus and his followers is evidence of an attempt to solve the riddle of the sphinx by other than introspective meth- ods in spite of an exaggerated use of them. Simon Magus, of the New Testament, is probably a type of the frauds which arose during the decline of the oracles. Bishop Hippolytos, in his Refutatio Herce- slum, shows what the situation was in some minds, whether he was correct in his judgment or not. He seems to have attacked the oracles as unqualifiedly fraudulent. Plutarch, who was a young man in 66 A. D., wrote on the cessation of the oracles in his time in a spirit which indicates familiarity with genuine phenomena of an interesting type, the inexplicable to him and others. All these show what the materialistic spirit has challenged and produced by way of refuta- tion, and this regardless of the merits of the case. Hence the stories in the New Testament but reflect the conceptions of the time, namely, phenomena less exceptional than popular belief in miracles would im- ply- With this intellectual atmosphere and the immemo- 376 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION rial knowledge of apparitions, it would be natural at any appearance of such a phenomenon in the person of a teacher like Jesus, that the event would be seized upon as a triumphant refutation of materialism. Whether he did so appear or not is another question. The consensus of testimony would be on that side, even though we chose to explain the phenomenon as an hal- lucination. Its influence on men would not depend, at that time, upon its reality in fact, but upon the belief in that reality, and there was no antecedent presumption against such things, as three hundred years of physical science has predisposed us. It mat- ters not what theory we adopt of the event character- ized as the resurrection, its influence as a belief in a fact was sufficient to revolutionize philosophic thought. It could do this all the more effectively from the fact that men's conception of matter and spirit were not then as clearly distinguished as to-day. The monis- tic temper of philosophic thought allowed the distinc- tion between grosser matter and spirit to be lightly drawn, the latter being only a finer type of the for- mer. The bodily resurrection might be taken to refer to the " spiritual " body, which was matter of one kind, and when the antithesis between matter and spirit became more clearly defined the very phrase " bodily " resurrection would naturally imply the grosser body. This development might easily take place among the common people who had no philoso- phic ideas of a monistic sort and who more naturally distinguished between " matter " and " spirit," while they remained by the sensory interpretation of the 377 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RMURRECTION " physical body " associated with the resurrection. As time passed this view would crystallize into per- fectly definite form, as it did. But the real phenomena, whatever their explana- tion, seem to have persisted, though the weight of scientific authority for many centuries kept their rel- evance unnoticed or suppressed their importance in the interest of a materialistic philosophy. The assets of history were not sufficient to counteract this ten- dency, and as science triumphed over ancient meth- ods, it left no appeal to facts that seemed impressive in such a problem. Science is an interrogation of the present for the facts that enable us to read the past and the future. If I may so express it, science is an examination of a cross section of evolution and expects to find there the evidence of what has occurred and of what will occur, the indicia of history and hope. As long as it discredited psychic phenomena it had no alternative to its materialistic interpretation. It was natural and legitimate as method that it should do so, and hence the stories of apparitions re- ceived no attention but to be discarded as coincidences and hallucinations. Whether they can always be so considered is for each individual to determine on the evidence. But one thing the Society for Psychical Research has proved beyond cavil is the fact that apparitions do occur. We need not care what explanation offers itself. They are facts of human experience, whether products of a disordered brain or of external agencies of a human type surviving death. In the present stage of inquiry it is not necessary to insist which. PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION They are the continuation of ancient experience which even Tylor in his Primitive Culture admits betokens important facts in the lives of savages. Whether they are more than hallucinations will depend wholly upon their relation to the events they seem to attest and the subject's ignorance of those events. When an apparition of a given person is seen — whether living or dead makes no difference to our problem at present — by some one and the fact coincides with an important event at a distance and not known to the percipient, and when they occur in sufficient num- bers and variety to eliminate chance from their in- terpretation, the phenomena offer science an important datum for speculation. It is not the mere fact of an identified apparition that has value, as every man does know or ought to know, but the relation of it to the events indicated and coinciding with it as well as the really or apparently supernormal information conveyed by it, that invites attention, and any effort to press hallucination, which excludes external stimuli from the case, into service to discredit the phenome- non as insignificant, is an evasion of the issue. The man who discards the facts as hallucinations does well when he is estimating a single case against all real or supposed human experience on the negative side. But the multiplication of the phenomena puts them on the same footing with meteors and comets, and all other sporadic or residual facts. Their regular oc- currence after a definite type suggests some other law than hallucination, extensive as that is. The collec- tion of a census of such events would satisfy science of the need of investigation at least, and that indefi- 379 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION nitely. Ridicule after that would only indicate the cries of a dying philosophy. Very early in its history the English Society for Psychical Research set about this very task. It planned the collection of a " Census of Hallucina- tions," as they were called, though distinguishing be- tween subjective and veridical hallucinations. The former type meant that they were products of ab- normal and intra-organic stimuli, that is, various dis- turbances within the organism. The latter meant that certain types of experience representing an ap- parition, whatever its form, real or symbolic, were related, perhaps causally to certain events independent of the organism in which the hallucination or appari- tion occurred. This last type had to be proved, but the coincidnce between certain alleged apparitions and the events which they seemed to indicate sug- gested such a definition upon which to work for evi- dence. All apparitions which occurred in connection with knowledge of the events to which they were re- lated had to be regarded as subjective, that is, mere productions of the brain. Abnormal psychology had been familiar enough with such phenomena to dis- credit any claims for the reality of such things unless they could present the credentials of supernormal phe- nomena. The criterion set up for the determination of this supernormal nature was that the apparition should satisfy several evidential demands. ( 1 ) They must coincide with some event at a distance, such as a death or critical illness. (2) The events which they seemed to indicate must not be known to the percip- ient, so that the information really or apparently con- 380 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION veyed should at least seem to be supernormal. (3) Some record of the experience should be made before any knowledge of the event coinciding had been ob- tained. This record may be either a note made at the time or a statement of the facts made to some friend previous to other information. (4) Anxiety and ex- pectation regarding the person concerned must be ab- sent. In the absence of these standards of evidence, such others as would guarantee the phenomena against the objections of ordinary hallucination had to be presented before any instance could be received as sug- gesting an external source for its occurrence. The object of this inquiry was to test the sceptic's hypothesis of chance coincidence in the occurrence of apparitions related to the events which they seemed to identity. Instances were collected over a definite ter- ritory representing apparitions of dying and deceased persons. The time limit was arbitrarily fixed at twelve hours after the moment supposed to mark physiological death. Within the territory assigned they obtained 350 cases which seemed worthy of con- sideration. But 270 of these were rejected from a scientific account because they failed to satisfy the rigid criteria which had been considered necessary to guarantee their integrity against the hypothesis of subjective hallucination. Then 28 more were elim- inated for various other reasons. This left 52 which satisfied the most severe tests of scientific method as to the probabilities of their truth. By mathematical methods which it is not necessary to explain here, these 52 cases were compared with the law of chance and the conclusion adopted that they were not due to 381 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION chance coincidence. This conclusion was emphasized by italics and it was stated that the committee re- garded it as a proved fact. It is clear that, if 52 cases were beyond chance pro- duction, 350 cases were much more this. No estimate was made for this latter number, and many more have been collected since. Dr. Hodgson told me before his death that he thought he had a thousand instances on record in his files, and though all of them may not have been equally evidential or assured by severe standards, the fact that veridical apparitions have been established would make it probable that a very large proportion of coincidental phenomena of the kind had the same character. The scientific acceptability of such facts to-day, when subjected to the scrutiny of scepticism, would make it entirely credible that Christ may have ap- peared in a similar way to his disciples, and explain a perfectly natural source for the story of the resurrec- tion, a source too that would carry with it more or less guarantee for the conclusion which the early Chris- tians had based upon the one incident. If the exam- ination of the present finds the phenomena credible as real and significant, there is no difficulty in accepting the credibility of it in the past, which we know to be full of assertions of it. Of course, each instance of alleged appearance must be submitted to the evidential test and credited or rejected accordingly. But when the fact of apparitions has been once established scien- tifically the ancient allegations of them are less in- credible than they would otherwise be. This is a tru- ism. But it is mentioned in order to connect the ac- 382 PSYCHICAL, RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION ceptability of the present with the possibility of the past and to make the past a part of the present in the interpretation of its nature and tendencies. This does not prove the truth of the story of the resurrec- tion of Christ, but it does remove its supposed con- tradiction with the law of nature, except in so far as history and tradition have interpreted it as a physi- cal resurrection. This must remain incredible as long as such phenomena are not now frequent and so long as human experience does not reproduce it as a law of nature. But the existence of veridical apparitions would substantiate all that is useful in the story of the resurrection and make human experience in all ages akin. The same opposition to the materialistic view of things comes from these experiences as in an- tiquity. Thinkers may entertain what view they please of them. They certainly offer to many minds an escape from the dogmatism of doubt. It may take long to assure ourselves generally of the truth involved, but whether it does or not, it is certain that we find a new point of view for interpreting the New Testament. That this is coming is apparent in the asserted views of leading men like Newman Smyth and others. It will probably not be through public recog- nition of psychic research, but by covert admission of its conclusions and the method of reinterpreting the record of antiquity under the sgis of authority. But it matters not to science how men come to its accep- tance, so that they do come, and if we make the res- urrection a law of nature, sporadic it is true, we have done all that is necessary to protect the ethical and re- ligious view of life. PSYCHICAL, RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION It is important, however, to remind the reader that this interpretation and defence of the story of the resurrection is not intended as a protection to any of the dogmas and authority which have so long kept men in bondage. It is not so important to say that the past was right in its conceptions as it is to es- tablish its affinity with the present. Hence I am not vindicating a single one of the dogmas associated with a bigoted history. It is not the idea of a resurrec- tion, whether physical or otherwise, that is important. There is nothing gained by establishing a truth that merely enables a certain uncritical and intolerant class of people to say : " I told you so." It might be better to have a bitter scepticism in its place for a while. But as a reconciliation between science and religion, it is important to discover the significance of such phenomena for the beliefs of the one and the methods of the other. There is no use to revive old controversies or to vindicate old and false beliefs about the resurrection. No value of any sort attaches to a belief in it, except such as would be implied in the re- ality of similar phenomena now as controverting cer- tain philosophic theories. We may believe in a res- urrection as much as we please to satisfy some dogma or prejudice and be no wiser for the fact. But if there was any concealed truth in the real facts which tradition has covered up in the stories of the New Testament, it will be important as a scientific matter to have uncovered it, if only for the interpretation of history which it may afford. But there is nothing in the vindication of any form of the incident except the light which it may shed on the question of per- 384 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION sonality and its survival of death. Whatever im- portance men may attach to a belief in a future life attaches to the phenomena which I have discussed here, whether they are of present or past occurrence, and that is all that I have had in mind when discussing the historical view of the resurrection and in the attempted reconciliation of science and religion through this mode of approach. There is nothing clearer to intelligent observers than the fact that the older orthodox conceptions are fast dissolving and are bound to be supplanted by some others in the near future. Unless a point of view for the ethical consciousness can be obtained we shall have nothing in the common mind to which to anchor except the instincts which are themselves perfectly modifiable and submissive to environment. If this be agnostic and irreligious, the morality which has been the product of association with Christian ideas of life will go the way of all social customs which have no vindication in the nature of things. What the immortality of the soul did for the past was that it protected certain views of the present life and their importance, no matter whether these views should have had their own intrinsic value apart from artificial de- fence. When this is the fact, we know perfectly well that the system will perish with the doctrine and con- ceptions which gave it vitality and cohesion. That at least is the value which attaches to the proof of a future life for man. Greco-Roman history shows this. As soon as ancient religions lost their vitality as aids to political life the morality which they fos- tered disintegrated, and they lost their vitality because 385 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION they could not sustain their truth under the light of inquiry. Philosophy dissolved their grounds and left them no heritage of truth which would enable them to survive the corrosive influence of scepticism. It will be the same with Christianity unless it can ad- just itself to the scientific point of view and unless science can supply data for some form of idealism. In defending the great importance attaching to the belief in a future life I am going first to make a con- cession to certain types of mind. There are many who think that the belief has been actually harmful to progress. There are many others who think it a matter of indifference to mankind and wholly unnecessary to ethics or religion. Some maintain that ethical ideals are sufficiently evident of themselves and that no harm can come to them by complete ignorance or even by denial of a life beyond the grave. There is a still larger class that is indifferent intellectually and mor- ally to the whole question and the implications said to be based upon it. They are quite content with the present existence and the risks and fortunes which ac- company it. It seems that only a few are interested in the protection of the belief for impersonal reasons, the majority being emotionally and perhaps often selfishly concerned in it. I must, however, remind the sceptic who think ethics safe without such belief and that moral instincts can be trusted to take care of themselves, that he neglects to reckon with the perfectly established fact that mo- rality is no more stable than the intellectual beliefs upon which it is founded. History has demonstrated this beyond a doubt. The only question to be de- 386 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION termined is whether the immortality of the soul has ever influenced any ethical system. Those who think ethics safe without it forget that the very ideals which they accept are the product of the system which ob- tained its strength from this very belief. It is clear to all intelligent people that the ancient morality dis- appeared with the prevalence of materialism. Its dissolution began with the disintegrating influence of the Sophists and ended in the debaucheries of the Roman Empire. It was a matter of slow growth, and would have been more rapid but for the preservation among common people of beliefs long after the gov- erning classes gave them up. This is apparent in the epitaphs of ancient tombs. And it was slow then because the solidarity of communities was not such as it is now. Religious tolerance was more necessary then to protect the state than now, and as the politi- cal classes were the materialists their protection lay in tolerating religion while they collected the revenues. But as soon as Paganism lost its hold on the allegiance of the common people the morality which it fostered declined rapidly enough. Its place was taken by the reconstructive ideas of Christianity. We may say and think what we please about these ideas, they moulded a new civilization. There were many things in the system besides the belief in a future life which gave it power, but this belief was the primary factor which protected the influence of what had been asso- ciated with it. For instance the doctrine of limited probation and of eternal punishment. Neither of these could have maintained itself for a moment with- out the belief in a future life. But they were potent 387 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION factors in determining the power of the priesthood over the masses. The morality which we regard as sustaining the present family and political life came from this growth and will dissolve with the beliefs that determined it. This morality is slower to perish than the intellectual beliefs affecting it, because men ad- just themselves to environment in their actions when they do not in their convictions. But in time the en- vironment is changed and with it the protective agency for its old morality. It is true enough that many persons do not need the belief for its influence on certain specific maxims of conduct, because a variety of forces combine to preserve the integrity of some principles. But in the long run the most powerful agents in securing the cohesiveness of the best principles of conduct are those which give the greatest tenacity to maxims affected by time. Environment, example, tradition, personal affection, heredity, political and social restraints, and a thousand interests will avail to preserve for a while certain habits of thought and action without a belief in a future life. But they do not suffice to create an ethical system which will make the individual sacrifice the present to the future, which is always necessary for the highest ideals, at least in some measure of their realization. The sceptic who speaks so confi- dently of our present moral agencies forgets their parentage and that they are living on the momentum of eighteen centuries of the tremendous religious and political power which did so much to displace Pagan- ism. That momentum will spend itself unless rein- forced from time to time with the primary motives 388 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION which gave it impulse. Our ethics to-day are the off- spring of ideals which got their whole impetus and animation from the enthusiasm of immortality. The New Testament records the exultant triumph of the poor in the consciousness of immortality as against the teaching of materialism. They felt both political and moral oppression, but the hope of a future life dispelled the burdens of political tyranny and enlisted nature on their side when this life came to an end. They may have been and may be entitled to better treatment in the present, but the inequalities of nature and society are less when nature shows itself in con- tinued opportunities for life and work, as it does in the doctrine of a future existence for the soul. It was hardly an accident that associated human broth- erhood with the belief. Unfortunately the social sys- tem of the early period did not favor either voluntary or compulsory adjustment to this ideal, and it van- ished, to be practically forgotten by the church alto- gether, though its teaching preserved the maxims which made it imperative. In supporting and pre- serving the value of the individual against the impe- rialism of politics and the materialism of philosophy it had, or seemed to have, a sufficient task. Now that the church makes no effort to realize human brother- hood, this ideal of its early history survives in the doctrine of socialism, while the efforts to realize what human brotherhood might effect are inspired by eco- nomic instead of ethical methods, by materialistic in- stead of religious conceptions. And religion itself is fast losing its hold on the first and the last belief which gave it potency and enthusiasm. The revival 389 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION of both its social and ethical functions will fall to science, unless it quickly assumes the offensive in the fundamental ideas which gave it birth. I quite agree that it is not the mere belief in a future existence that will regenerate either the indi- vidual or society. This is adequately proved by the lives of savages, and by other forms of social organi- zation. It is well enough illustrated in the history of modern spiritualism. But I am not contending that its value lies merely in its being believed. Nor do I expect the belief alone to animate every one at once with the highest ideals of life. I am not de- fending its importance on the assumption that men and women have only to be convinced of it to become angelic. I know too well that it requires much more to bring about such a change in man individually and socially. But it nevertheless is the most important factor in the protection of such virtues as can effect this result in the long run. The morality of the pres- ent moment often makes itself felt without incentives borrowed from the future. But there is a point where men cannot be induced to sacrifice the present to the future unless the latter be guaranteed. The principle which I am defending here is per- fectly apparent in all the morality of the present life regardless of the immortality of the soul. All that the idea of a future life does is to say that the line affecting conduct is not drawn at the grave. It ex- tends the place of time in thought and action. All sound ethics recognizes time in the application of its maxims. It is always teaching the importance of sac- 390 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION rificing the present moment to a distant one. The doctrine of " enlightened self-interest " always empha- sizes the idea of rewards for resisting present impulse in the expectation of later compensation. The man who thinks of the consequences to-morrow and gives up the pleasure of to-day is always regarded the wiser. We are in no case the best for taking the present moment on the wing and ignoring the next. It is the same in our economic life. We always re- gard the future in the rate of profit and interest. The less the risk the less the rate of interest. The surer the investment the less the profit expected or desired. Time is thus a primary factor in both our ethical and economic conduct. In all maxims of life this element of time is one of the most important, and there is no reason for refusing it the same importance for a life after death, provided that life can be as- sured to us. It only extends the time with which ethical maxims must reckon in their teaching. Now the belief in a future life furnishes two things of importance for all reflective life. The first is the value of human personality. That is, its permanence along with that of the indestructibility of matter and the conservation of energy. The second is the exten- sion of time in the estimation of ethical maxims. These two facts may serve as protectives to other rules of conduct which might not have power enough to sustain themselves on other grounds. It is the inner spiritual life that needs protection against the temptations of the moment, not because we may see its value, but because the human mind naturally tends to recognize 391 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION the securities of the present sensory experience against the claims of the unassured permanence of any other life. But the point at which the belief in a future exist- ence becomes of the most importance is in its relation to what may be called the intellectual or philosophical systems which serve as agencies in the sustenance and propagation of ideals. No doubt many individuals in all ages, even where a future life may not be thought of or have any fundamental importance in the individual and social systems of conduct, have been able to attain high ideals of life without perpetually keeping the mind on such a belief. But a rational system of thought can hardly ignore its efficiency in moving communities to some common conception of duty and interest. In all ages it has been the intel- lectual man, the philosopher in some sense, that has dominated the thought of the community. In some sense it is the most intelligent man that governs us. It may be that he is most intelligent only in the ma- chinery of bad politics. But all depends on what the ideal of the community is. The man is always selected who represents the real or imagined interest of the largest number of people in the community, where democracy is the social system. The best man from other points of view may be excluded from recognition. But everywhere and always intelligence of some kind is the dominating agency in private and political life. If that intelligence is associated with a religious and ethical view of the cosmos, it inspires law and custom with its ideals more or less. If it be materialistic it recognizes unethical ideals in its policy. 392 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION Now the immortality of the soul has always been one of the main stays of the religious conception of life and duty. It has rationalized many of the maxims of conduct which would hardly stand alone. What the teacher wants always is some premise in nature and fact for reinforcing the ethical maxims which he values. Give him an established major premise that protects the value of the individual and he will instill a community with its implications wherever he can get that premise admitted. No unanimous sen- timent can exist on any other basis. The intellectual classes constitute the teaching members of the community and they require as a con- dition of effectiveness that some assured fact be established in order to make it the fulcrum for logical reasoning. Men have to be influenced either by force or reason. In the absence of reason the mediaeval period used persecution to create unanimity of sentiment and action. The conqueror has always subdued the intellects of his enemies as well as their bodies, at least subdued their influence. No com- munity can exist without some unanimity of belief and action. This common sentiment has to be brought about in some way, and there are only two ways in which it can be done. The strong may in- sist by force that the weaker shall submit, or they may reason them into voluntary agreement regard- ing the wiser course of action. Reason is the peace- ful way of obtaining unanimity of thought and ac- tion, force is the method of war. But the condition of reasoning is a major premise which no one will dis- pute. On that may be built a system of minor prem- PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION ises which will organize a series of common beliefs that will determine the various actions of the com- munity, and this method consists with the largest amount of freedom for the individual, especially re- garding actions on which the sentiment of the com- munity is not agreed. Now men have a tendency to adopt some one ideal of action to which all other ends are subordinated. It may be wealth to which a man subordinates all other desires; it may be fame and ambition to which he sacrifices all other impulses; it may be knowledge; it may be physical appetite; it may be dress; it may be art; it may be power; it may be religion. In all such cases the maxim of a man's life is to make everything a means to the one chief end. What- ever sanctity the chief end has, it will carry with it that of the subordinate aims, and whatever vicious as- pect the chief aim has will give its character to the others. What is wanted, therefore, in ethics is some position which will enable the moralist, by rational methods, to give true perspective to the various pos- sibilities of human life. If the sensory life is the only one man is to have, he will naturally subordinate all to it ; if he is to have a supersensory life it will be possible to give a permanent and more exalted impor- tance to his inner and reflective habits, and to urge by reason the transcendent seriousness of taking time more carefully into account in the regulation of thought and action. The proof of a future life would supply the premise which would enable the intellectual and rationalizing mind to sustain the importance of the time element in the maxims of conduct and to asso- 394 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION ciate with it all the virtues which are necessary for attaining the one chief end, namely, the culture which promises permanent interest and value. The various means to this one end could be more effectively sanc- tified and human interests unified and directed to one ideal. At present with the incertitude on this one center of gravity for human ideals, there is nothing to do but to leave the mind to its own liberties and to keep in existence a system of warring interests which the intelligent man cannot unify or reconcile. There is no sufficient premise for urging assuredly the importance which nature attaches to the spiritual ideal. Many instincts guide us rightly toward the correct goal, but we require in addition to this the co- operation of reason, of the systematizing intellect, in order to create by its unifying processes the unanim- ity of thought and sentiment that will enable the in- tellectual classes to rule the world again as against the brute force of materialism. It is not that men shall always be consciously look- ing at a future life as a condition of salvation that the immortality of the soul shall have its importance recognized, but that the assurance of it can be made a protection for the virtues of the present life, vir- tues that too often are neglected because they are not seen in the light of the eternal. They are sub- ordinated or wholly sacrificed to earthly aims alone. What is needed is a means for giving prominence and emphasis to lines of thought and action that are suppressed by a materialistic outlook in things. We may say all we please that a man's duties are in the present, a view which I think is entirely true. But 395 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION as the present carries in its alembic the germs of a far distant future we can no more neglect that future in our action than we can the present. Besides, those duties will get their value recognized only in their relation to that future, if the philosophy of Immanuel Kant be true. But true or false, there is no more effective way to enable the human mind to select wisely the duties which shall prevail in the present than to assure it of the relation which they sustain to a remoter future, just as intelligent men take ac- count of the distant in their investments. It is not the interest of the present moment alone that the rational man estimates most highly. He tries to select from the various conflicting interests that appear be- fore his vision the one that runs like a golden thread through all the web and woof of past, present and future. Nor do men in their other studies of nature confine themselves to the mere past and present. Even Mr. Herbert Spencer, in spite of his agnosticism in all matters religious, insists that the fundamental test of science is prevision. A man who insists that it concerns itself only with the past and the present, with present facts and their antecedent causes, either narrows the functions of his inquiries or disregards all the human interests that make the pursuit of knowledge a useful affair. The self-same people also are always predicting, on the basis established by fact, the course of the future, and in fact it is the future in which every man lives in all his daily con- duct. He plans for the morrow or the next year, and his present gets half its joys from the hopes of the future in which the fruition of the present is found. 396 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION Men no more disregard the future in their lives than they do the past. In fact, they can well neglect the past altogether but for its determinative relation to the permanent in reality. We cannot undo the past, but we can prevent the future from being what it would be without previsionary action. The one important thing is to admit the place which time has in the determination of the most rational life and then to accept any fact which shows itself a part of the cosmic scheme in the determination of progress. A future life will do as much for ethics as the stabil- ity of an economic system will do for industrial de- velopment, and it is as absurd to ignore the one as it is the other. There is no reason for desiring sta- bility in economic ideals and forces that does not apply to ethics and the belief in a future existence for the soul. There is no belief which can be so effective in miti- gating the sufferings of the world as that of a future life. Those who have accumulated property enough to defy the rest of the world in their living and those whose salaries give them social independence may not see this. They can satisfy their earthly ideals with- out adjusting their opinions to the demands of their neighbors. But they have no means of answering the bitter queries of those who have been less suc- cessful and who have no circumstances to make them optimistic. A man with a living and his liberty and with no sense of obligation to the community may well think this world is good enough and may resolve to take things as they come. But in enjoying the share to which others may be equally entitled in the 397 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION struggle for existence he has nothing but the im- munity of his position to protect him against the gibes and sarcasm of those who have not won a part of his honors and freedom. When your policy has been to escape responsibility for all the aspirations of the world and to obtain security in the pursuit of your own ideals, it is but natural that you would evade the consideration of all that humankind regards as valu- able, and the penalty in the end will be the contempt of those whose interests and ideals you despise. When they come into their power they will have their re- venge. If the intellectual classes who are endowed with the duties of the world's teachers do not assume to guide them in the great questions that affect their ethical lives, but sit in aristocratic contempt of the hopes and ideals that have dominated history, they will find their mission supplanted. If philosophy cannot condescend to help the multitudes with a gos- pel that moves life at its foundations, it must go the way of all useless doctrines. The practical man wants assurance as to the meaning of this life for the individual and unless the academic man can give him this he will seek his information from those who can give it. It is not that philosophy needs always to be harping on the destiny of the soul, but that it needs to buttress up practical ethics by their relation to a future which makes the present its servant or which protects the earnest mind in its desire to justify its ideals. It was but yesterday that I overheard a man on the train say, pointing to a sister of charity, " If there 398 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION is any heaven, she will get there. She sacrifices her life to that work." The man himself was one of these eupeptic specimens who evidently like the physical life and was not disposed to make any sac- rifices to what he regarded as doubtful. To him the future life was a risk not worth taking into account. But he could recognize the merit of virtue and the deserts which it brought with it. To him, as to all who feel the strength of scepticism, life had to be measured in its rules by the risks involved, and a future life was not so certain as were the pleasures of this. In his choice he made for the certainties and shifted on nature or providence the responsibility for the incertitudes of existence. He felt no duty to act where there was no assured promise of fruition. He chose for what he could see, or where the risks seemed less than for the alternative. What is needed, therefore, is assurance on a belief so funda- mental to ethical choice. What it would do in alter- ing the center of gravity for human endeavor and patience is evident to all who have read history in- telligently. The thought has been well expressed by Mr. Stedman who has so recently passed from us. He, I happen to know, was interested in the work which investigation has undertaken in this direction, but could never bring himself to understand its per- plexities and method. But both the rational and emotional needs of many souls were beautifully set forth in the poem which I quote. The burden of its cry is for assurance which the idealist might use for redeeming the wavering mind. 399 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION Could we but know The land that ends our dark uncertain travel, Where lie those happier rills and meadows low — And, if beyond the spirit's inmost cavil, Aught of that country could we surely know, Who would not go? Might we but hear The hovering angels' high imagined chorus, Or catch betimes, with wakeful eyes and clear, One radiant vista of the realm before us — Ah, who would fear? Were we quite sure To find the peerless friend who left us lonely, Or, there by some celestial stream as pure, To gaze in eyes that here were lovely only, This weary mortal coil, were we quite sure Who would endure? Perhaps " We could endure," would either express the poet's thought or give the Stoical touch to its strain and indicate the ethics which would dominate all life when hope would be as effective in its attitude toward death as it is in its influence on the efforts of the earthly life where some material end is its aim. The poet is only reflecting the feelings of all high souls and those who affect indifference to sentiment of this kind usually reserve their emotions for a " smoker " or a beefsteak and a glass of wine. The hypocrisy or ignorance of the philosopher is mani- fest when he exhibits a consuming passion for the social and material pleasures of life and affects a righteous contempt for emotion when it concerns the ideals of religion and a future life. Once he was supposed to help the race in guiding its emotions 400 PSYCHICAL. RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION toward a right goal and so saw life in its true per- spective. But latterly, assuming the unbiased nature of doubt, he prides himself in laughing at inspiration and hope when they suffer at the loss of all that gave meaning to life and effort while he labors with all his might to secure the pleasures of a good table and social recognition without accepting any responsibil- ity to share human struggle and suffering. Philos- ophic idealism is often nothing more than contempt for those whom it is the business of the more success- ful to help. It affects to guide man into the truth and then shies at every form of it which promises to justify its own vocation, and only because it eschews religious emotion while it revels in the passion for an aristocratic life. It is true enough that emotion and desire do not and should not determine what is true, and it is the merit of the philosopher that he keeps a cool eye on the criteria of facts. But he makes an equal mis- take when he refuses to recognize the place of emo- tion in the affairs of life. No ideal is ever formed under any other influence. Emotion estimates or determines the values of life, whether they are chosen in material or spiritual ends. It is quite as legiti- mate to desire immortality as it is to desire a good breakfast. Whether we shall estimate one above the other depends on our moral perspective. No doubt the one can be abused as well as the other, but that does not prove that it can be ignored. All depends upon the coloring we give it in the life we wish to realize. We may not be able to reach all that we idealize, and emotion may stimulate us toward ends 401 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION which we have no hope of attaining. But it is the criterion of value, as it is the satisfaction which we take in what we attain and strive to attain. The in- tellect can determine no ideal whatever. Its function is to decide coolly and dispassionately the means to an end predetermined by emotion. It is passion, if we may so call it, that decides the summnnn bonwn, the good to which all other aims are subordinated. All that the intellect, the philosopher, can do is to de- cide whether it is attainable or not. He cannot pro- nounce on its value without invoking the emotional nature which he affects to despise. No doubt the believer in a future life has too often forgotten the place which his faith has in sanctifying patience with the present, in protecting " eternal life " in the pass- ing moment, whatever the shadows that hover over it ; but in deprecating the abuse of emotion in that belief, we may easily fall heir to the materialism which it was the function of philosophy to criticize and modify. Nor am I unmindful that we may make materialism more of a bugbear than it is. The idealist thinks that it is easily refuted, when in fact, the materialism which has influenced really thinking men is not only not easily refuted, but is not the " materialism " which the idealist attacks. The materialism which serves as a useful punching bag for the idealist, and as a cover to conceal his indifference to the real prob- lems of philosophy and life, may be readily attacked, but that form of it which negatives the ideals of re- ligion will not yield to the veiled and misty equivo- cations of Kant and Hegel. But granting its 402 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION strength in its most objectionable form it still carries with it an important lesson for the development of man. Its great lesson to the world is a fixed order of things. Idealism emphasizes freedom and vanity. Just as man conceives his independence of the physical order, he assumes to disregard its laws and seeks emancipation from their limitations. Nowhere was this more true than for those ages that made the world carnal while insisting that it was divine. The reaction against Greco-Roman materialism carried with it the neglect of present duties, and in the midst of a certain kind of humility fostered a spiritual pride that ignored the laws of God quite as much as the materialist. Man needs freedom, but not the free- dom from law and order. Obedience is quite as much a duty as commanding the services of nature. In emancipating himself from the tyranny of the world, he too often assumes an arrogance which can be cor- rected only by the humiliations of defeat, and ma- terialism has come to fix for him an order which he cannot defy. It is the embodiment of the idea of irrevocable laws, conceding no liberties except such as come within the limits of its unchangeable order. This function of its nature we do not yet see. We shall not see it until we find that a future life is within its providential scheme. In the meantime we can only attack its attitude toward the facts which destroy its denial of immortality while they leave untouched its real contribution to ethical thought. A sane philosophy is poetry or it is nothing, just as poetry is the philosophy of the imaginative mind, and each needs the other in the determination of 403 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION human truths and worths. The story of the resur- rection gave rise to a philosophy which had poetry enough in it to give it a life of many centuries, with all its good and evil. Had the early philosophers had the critical method and the stable civilization to help them escape the abuses that gathered like moss about the incidents which gave rise to a new order, the conflict between science and religion might have been pacified long ago. The waste of passion and superstition might have been saved its ravages, and philosophy would have had no reason to vindi- cate itself by scepticism. But it has fallen to science to mediate between the agnosticism of philosophy and the faith of religion, and if it can find in the passing moment the facts which reveal the obscured meaning of the story of the resurrection it will subdue all the animosities of the ages and reconcile the passions of truth and hope. In educating me it was my father's wish that I should choose the ministry. He would not interfere with my spontaneous desires, but his disappointment was keen when his hopes were blasted, but he bowed quietly and patiently to a decision which his faith made him believe was providential. He never wholly knew the influences which determined my develop- ment. It was impossible to convey them to a nar- rower experience. The ministry had its attractions, but its denial of freedom and its irreconcilable atti- tude toward science made it impossible to stultify my intellect or my conscience, and destiny found a way to emancipate me from the priesthood of both the church and the university, while it kept in me the 404 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION ideals of both. It was a long and weary struggle. Taste, aspirations, environment physical and social, education, all conspired to make the choice desirable. But every influence which time and circumstances con- jured up to decide the issue only found its specific aim defeated, though the fundamental tendencies of religious ideals did not abate their power and signifi- cance. Philosophy and literature poured their con- tents into the lap of fortune and left in their train the still abiding spiritualism which made life worth living or kept alive the faith that revelation had ob- scured. The works of nature appealed to me as they do to all who have to decide between the fictions of speculative philosophy and the realities of things. Every department of nature and human experience was ransacked for data to aid in the solution of this momentous question. It was in the midst of these influences that I found myself one autumn afternoon on a hill overlooking a beautiful valley. The little hamlets which were scattered over the landscape sent their smoke heaven- ward and contained the domestic peace which pioneer life may give. A little kirk stood in the village, where the rural worshippers gathered once a week to keep alive their faith and hopes. A mountain stream dashed over the rocks on its hurried course to rest in the sea. The flocks and herds were grazing peace- fully on the meadows, ignorant of the sorrows that fleck the little life of unhappy man in other climes. The sky had uncovered its expanse and opened its im- measurable depths to a clear vision, cooling and sub- lime in the reverential moods which it excited. The 405 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION sun had driven his chariot down the western slopes of space and pausing on the horizon's bar threw back upon that autumn valley the melancholy and majestic gloom of twilight, the " dim religious light " of God. The clouds that gathered around his splendid throne to catch the last benediction of his radiance, linger- ing for a while in his gorgeous hues of red and gold, turned to wander down the azure blue of night in end- less voyage. The forests on the distant hills, mel- lowed by the October frosts, were waving in sad but beautiful luxuriance. A little cemetery lay on the right where the mossy dead were supposed to wait for the happy resurrection and where the cypress and the pine kept watch over the gates to immortality and God. Over all this a strange wind was blowing, De Quincy's Sarsar wind of death that might have swept the fields of mortality for a thousand centuries, mov- ing slowly and solemnly in Memnonian strains over the everlasting Sabbath of the grave. And there, as the stars broke through the crystal empyrean to lighten the shades of night with their natural splen- dor, I found myself dedicated to the work of justify- ing the ways of God to men. But scarcely had those feelings shaped themselves into resolution when the chilling breath of scepticism came to cool the ardor of my hopes. The first step in this direction was the discovered need for me of revised biblical interpretation enforced by a little sec- tarian controversy about amending the Constitution of the United States in favor of certain religious acknowledgments. The fatal chapter, however, fix- ing doubt beyond recovery was that on the Incarna- 406 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION tion and the Resurrection in Barnes' Evidences of Christianity. Faith might have had its way had it not submitted its claims to proof. The very gibes of religious fanatics and cartoonists against the doc- trine of Darwin strengthened it in my sight, and every discovery of geology, of physiology, and of psychology pointed to only one conclusion, that of materialism. I accepted it, not because it was a de- sirable philosophy, but because the evidence of fact was on its side, and neither the illusions of idealism nor the interests of religious hope were sufficient to tempt me into a career of hypocrisy and cowardice. I had to temporize with many a situation until I could assure my own mind where it stood. In the pursuit of some final truth on which to base a life work I passed through all the labyrinths of philosophy, los- ing nothing and gaining nothing in its meshes. After Plato and Aristotle it seemed to lose its moor- ings in facts and lived on tradition and authority. New discoveries and reconstruction it despised as it would the occupation of neophytes and children. At last I was directed to the idealism of Kant for light and found there a system as helpless as it was mysti- fying, though it had been born in the atmosphere of Swedenborg's distinction between the transcendental and the phenomenal and of which it soon became ashamed. In it the bankruptcy of philosophy was the opportunity of science, and in a favorable, though accidental moment my attention was attracted by psychic research in which the first prospect of crucial facts presented itself. However satisfactory philosophy had been in show- 407 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION ing that the meaning of the cosmos was to be found in the supersensible, whether by idealism or atomic materialism, the more exacting method of science, which had strengthened the claims of physical law and causes and which became the standard of truth, made it necessary to regard the residual phenomena of human experience, if only to corroborate the in- ferences which idealism had drawn from the normal. In fact, whatever the validity of the older views as possible constructions of the world, their probability was lost in the face of the certitudes of science which had multiplied evidence for the extension of physical explanations, and religion had to turn to the residual phenomena of life, as it had once done, to vindicate its aspirations and interpretation of the cosmos. It does not yet clearly see the direction from which its light is to come. But in the accumulation of facts within the field of supernormal phenomena I found the dawn of another day for an idealism that will last as long as scientific method can claim respect. All the mythical and misty past, seen in the light of a slow and patient evolution, assumed a new meaning, and we may exclaim with the first lines of Goethe's Faust: — Ihr naht euch wieder schwankende Gestalten ! Die fruh sich einst dem triiben Blick gezeigt. Ye come again ye vanishing forms, That once had crossed my troubled view. The darkness which inhuman theories and ethical indifference brings to disappointment and suffering promises to lift in the light of those facts which estab- lish a link between the past and the future, holding 408 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND THE RESURRECTION out to those who have lost in the struggle of the present existence the hope and the chance to recover the pursuit of their ideals in another life. No one can then censure the philosopher, if, in the hour of such a triumph, he looks with gratitude at the facts which renew his power over the world and breaks into the same passion as Goethe again. Ihr bringt mit euch die Bilder froher Tage Und manche liebe Schatten steigen auf; Gleich einer alten, halb verklungen Sage, Kommt erste Lieb' und Freundschaft mit hierauf. Ye bring with you the vision pure of happy days, And many lovely shadows rise upon the lea; And like an ancient half forgotten song, Ye bring my love and friendship back to me. There are signs enough of social and political up- heaval in the dissolution of the older ethical and re- ligious ideals and it will devolve on a new philosophy to aid in the reconstruction of order. The academic world is blind to the needs of the hour and has iso- lated itself in aristocratic seclusion from contact with the life of those who are ruling the tendencies of the future. It is left, as it apparently has always been, to the outside world to find a leaven for the regener- ation, and if any spiritual ideal be discovered it must be in the little beacon lights that shine out from the residual and neglected phenomena of mind which promise as wide an extension in psychological knowl- edge as the new discoveries in the material world have produced in physical science. History may repeat itself and must before the revival of ethical passion and religious ideals. 409 1 1 1 N i v p P • RETURN EDUCATION-PSYCHOLOGY LIBRARY TO— -► 2600 Tolman Hall 642-4209 LOAN PERIOD 1 SEMESTER 2 3 4f W ester LOAN 5 t m TELEPHONE RENEWALS D ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 2-hour books must be renewed in person Return to desk from which borrowed DUE AS STAMPED BELOW UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY FORM NO. DD10 BERKELEY, CA 94720 @$ U C BERKELEY LIBRARIES 1 1 Mil I CD2TSDMb5fl 3lAHV 180708