What Shall the Man of Scientific Mind
Say in the Presence of Apparently
Supernatural Phenomena?
Sir Oliver Lodge, writing in the _Fortnightly Review_ a short time ago,
asserted that every man of science who has seriously undertaken to
investigate the "occult" has ended by believing in it.
This statement, as the Portland _Oregonian_ suggests, may not be so
important as might appear, for comparatively few trained scientists have
ventured into the vague problems of the threshold. The _Oregonian_,
however, proceeds to answer some of the objections commonly made to belief
in spirit communications, and also to define limitations of investigation
of occult phenomena:
People of well-balanced judgment, whether learned or not,
are inclined to look askance upon those who have dealings
with the spirit world. Some believe that communication
between the living and dead is possible, but wicked.
Others, while their faith is firm that life continues after
death, hold, nevertheless, that the gulf between the two
worlds can never be recrossed by those who have once passed
over, and that no message can traverse its dark immensity.
Still others believe that death ends our existence utterly;
there is no future life, no world of spirits, and therefore
all phenomena purporting to be caused by the disembodied
dead necessarily originate in some other way.
None of these opinions is held by the sternly scientific
mind, like Dr. Osler's, for example. In his well-known
Ingersoll lecture that distinguished physician and graceful
man of letters comes to the conclusion that we do not and
never can know whether there is a future life or not.
There is absolutely no evidence looking either way, and
there never can be any such evidence. To his view and to all
the others one may easily find objections.
The belief that communication with disembodied souls is
wicked is a mere superstition derived from the ancient
Jewish laws against witchcraft. With them, as with all
primitive peoples, a witch was one who, like Glendower,
could call spirits from the vasty deep, and the reason for
discouraging the practise is obvious; it set up a dangerous
competition with the regular priesthood, and cut off their
revenues.
The Jewish priests had a prescribed orthodox method of
consulting spirits, which contributed handsomely to their
income, and it was scarcely to be expected that they would
tolerate the piratical competition of hideous old women like
the Witch of Endor.
Hence that command in the law of Moses, "Thou shalt not
suffer a witch to live," which has been the cause of so much
cruelty and bloodshed.
Science and Experience.
When science says a thing cannot be done, experience proves
that she speaks prematurely almost always. We may as yet
have no evidence of the reality of a future life, but that
by no means demonstrates that we never shall have such
evidence.
A century ago we had no evidence of the X-rays, of the
telephone, of the new theory of non-atomic matter. That men
have been trying from the beginning of time to demonstrate
another existence and have always failed is of no
significance. Perhaps they have not tried in the right way.
The objection that most of the things purporting to be said
and done by spirits are absurd or trivial has no weight. The
only way to find out how a spirit will act under given
conditions is to place him under those conditions and watch
the results.
What seems absurd to us may not seem so to him. If he exists
at all, his norms of worth may be, and probably are, very
different from ours. According to the valuations of the
spirit world, rapping on a table may be as exalted a
function as heading an army is with us.
How silly it was for Galvani to make a frog's leg twitch
with his bits of zinc and copper! Yet something has come of
it. How trifling a thing was the fall of Newton's apple! Yet
he could see in it the revolutions of the stars.
Perhaps some day another Newton will appear who can discern
some law of universal import in those occult trifles which
now merely puzzle without edifying us.
As the course of the falling apple involves the trajectory
of Arcturus, so the foolish raps upon a kitchen table which
mystify a superstitious circle of devotees may imply the
immortality of the soul.
Let us wait and see.
The _Oregonian_ appears to argue simply for an open mind--which is the
right attitude for investigators.