other countries possess, first of all, a real historical value. The
attested phenomena of telepathy, clairvoyance, and physical mediumship
throw a clear light upon many dark corners of the past.
The Sibylline and other oracles uttered by the entranced priestesses
of old, and many of the features of medieval magic, have their
unmistakable counterparts in the experiences of modern mediumship. The
appalling records of the most devilish machinery ever devised for the
torture of mankind, the witchcraft persecutions (not of the Dark Ages
but of the Renaissance), possess an added horror when one realizes that
the offences alleged against the nine million persons burnt to death in
two centuries were to a large extent the outcome of psychic forces and
conditions whose character was totally unknown to either the victims or
their tormentors.
The sacred books of Christianity and other religions speak of visible
and audible phenomena of supernormal character which have their obvious
analogues in the psychic experiences of our own days. The messages
revealed in the shining Urim and Thummim, the quaint telepathy of
Jacob’s sheep-farming, the phantasm and the voice at Endor――these
things appear no longer as the isolated happenings of a remote and
dissimilar past or of a special dispensation. In the pages of the New
Testament, too, the healing touch for the sick, the rescue of the
possessed, the experiences of the first Eastertide on the way to Emmaus
or on the Galilean beach, the testimony of the “five hundred brethren
at once,” the sudden conversion on the Damascus road――such records
are indeed “worthier of all men to be believed” because they are no
longer relegated to a far-off “age of miracles” but are repeated and
exemplified in the phenomena of modern research.
Apart, however, from the question of historical interest, is it too
much to hope that we may sooner or later succeed in controlling
and utilizing to a vastly greater degree than at present those new
forces which our researches have brought to light? Mr. H. G. Wells,
in a prophetic page of _When the Sleeper Awakes_ pictures a Harley
Street of the future occupied by the consulting-rooms of telepathic
specialists, and there can be little doubt that the valuable work even
now accomplished in cases of nervous derangements and mental pathology
by suggestion, hypnotic or otherwise, is capable of still further
expansion as fuller information accumulates and earlier prejudices
subside.
The employment of suggestion in the education of the young is a field
at present almost unexplored, although suggestion is so obvious
a factor in the “endless imitation” of childhood. The increased
application of psycho-analytic methods may in the future not only
relieve to an infinitely greater extent the maladies and distresses of
the ordinary individual, but revolutionize our attitude towards the
criminal. Just as the treatment of hysteria has already advanced far
beyond the beatings and cold douches of our grandparents’ days, so do
our methods of handling the criminal become ever more curative than
penal; nor is it probable that fifty years hence civilized nations will
still regard the rope or the electric chair as the only possible fate
even for the murderer.
In another direction psychical research may stretch out a helping
hand to reinvigorate the failing forces of religion. The structure
of organized Christianity to-day exhibits all the signs of gradual
but inevitable decay. Even of those who may be willing to render
lip-service to the formulae of orthodoxy few ever enter a church or
chapel. The forces of Christianity appear to exercise little control
over domestic politics, and none at all over the international conduct
of the nations, which so often displays a complete contempt for the
precepts of either religion or morality. While the organized religion
of Christ has still a message for the individual and can still guide
His faithful followers in life and cheer them in the hour of death,
the despairing cry of the Saxon chronicler might well be uttered over
the masses of “Christian” mankind to-day: “Christ and His saints
sleep.” Faced with such hard facts, thoughtful men are beginning to
realize that some reconsideration and restatement of the Christian
position is inevitable. In such enterprise valuable data would be
provided by the results of scientific psychical research. One of our
best known psychologists has indeed gone so far as to declare that no
other power than psychic research can hope to arrest the advancing
forces of materialism. The acceptance of the fact that communications
and influences can reach us which are manifestly not the product of
human minds nor conveyed through the ordinary channels of sense would
stultify any _a priori_ denial of the possibility of that “spiritual
communion” which is an essential feature of religion.
In the second place, psychical research is, in the view of many,
already able to endow with a measure of precision and certainty those
vague and tremulous promises of a future life which are offered by
the Churches. Owing to the rapid decay of religious forces in the
western world this vital doctrine of a personal survival has for the
vast majority even of so-called Christians lost any real significance.
In answer to the query “Do you desire a future life whatever the
conditions may be?” which appeared in a questionnaire circulated by
the American Branch of the S. P. R. in 1900, “noes” numbered no less
than 78 per cent. of the total replies received (3321)――many taking
the form of “not at all,” “not in the least,” “never think about
it.” And although the results of an investigation within such narrow
limits cannot be regarded as decisive, it is probable that the note
of scepticism or indifference which runs through the majority of the
replies reflects to a large extent the attitude towards a personal
survival adopted by the average man or woman of the present day.
Against the advancing tide of unbelief or indifference the modern
presentation of religion seems wellnigh helpless. Nevertheless, if
this spirit of blank negation or complete indifference continues to
make headway, it is difficult to see how either moral or religious
sanctions can retain their authority. If annihilation be our fate,
any moral guidance of the Universe must appear to many minds almost
inconceivable. And if the moral guidance of the whole collapses,
schemes of morality for the parts become a _reductio ad absurdum_: the
Divine sanctions of the Sermon on the Mount are replaced by systems of
glorified Police Regulations imposed by the shifting decrees of a human
majority.
Within the narrow limits at our disposal we can only indicate very
briefly the main lines along which psychic research may serve to
establish the fact of a survival. The cumulative effect of the evidence
offered is very great and may avail――in Glanville’s words of old――“to
secure some of the out-works of religion and regain a parcel of ground
which bold infidelity hath invaded.”
(1) Various forms of automatism and certain well attested physical
phenomena indicate the existence of discarnate intelligences.
(2) Telepathy proves that thought can be conveyed apart from the
ordinary channels of sense, and, if telepathy be accepted as the
cause of apparitions of the living, it would seem that the dead whose
phantasmal forms appear to us are also capable of volition. The
apparition (seen simultaneously by two witnesses) of a dead mother
bending over the cot of her dying child “with a look of infinite love
and tenderness” is deeply significant. Of even greater evidential value
are the well-attested accounts of apparitions seen by dying children or
their young brothers and sisters who were present at the deathbed.
(3) Many of the communications which reach us from tried and tested
mediums, like Mrs Piper, appear to be what they claim to be, actual
messages from deceased persons.
(4) It is virtually impossible to attribute some of the
‘cross-correspondences’ recorded by the S. P. R. to any other agency
but the conscious and detailed activity of a discarnate personality.
* * * * *
And so our patient work continues. The men and women who forty years
ago served faithfully as the pioneers of modern psychical research
have nearly all passed away. There can be little doubt that they had
pitched their hopes too high. So deep was the devotion inspired by
these new labours, so large the mass of facts offered by a veritable
cloud of contemporary witnesses, that leaders like Myers and Sidgwick
and Gurney hoped with confidence that in their own days the compelling
force of the facts they had gathered would bring intellectual
conviction and change the whole outlook of mankind. Such clear
certainty came to few men in the ranks of these pioneers themselves
and most of them died “seeing the promises from afar but not having
attained unto them.” But fresh recruits have filled the gaps in our
line, fresh channels of research have been opened up, and fresh facts
recorded: modern science tends rather to clear our path than to close
it, and the light of that earlier hope still shines brightly. Amid the
limitless possibilities of the next fifty years――great developments in
surgery, bio-chemistry, television, lighting, and transport――it may be
that not the least of the discoveries which glorify the new age will
come from the scientific results of psychical research. “Hardly as
yet,” said William James a year before he died, “has the surface of the
facts called ‘psychic’ begun to be scratched for scientific purposes.
It is through following these facts, I am persuaded that the greatest
scientific conquests of the coming generation will be achieved. _Kühn
ist das Mühen, herrlich der Lohn!_”
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
――Obvious punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently
corrected.
――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.