A sitting with Mrs Piper--The hypothesis of
thought-transference--Incidents.
The reader may not be displeased to have a specimen of these strange
conversations between human beings and the invisible beings, who assert
that they are the disincarnated spirits of those who day by day quit
this world of woe. It will not be difficult to give the reader a
specimen of them. At least one half of the fourteen or fifteen hundred
pages dedicated to the Piper case in the _Proceedings of the Society for
Psychical Research_ are composed of reports of sittings, either taken
down in shorthand or given in great detail. In some of these reports
even the most insignificant exclamations of those present are noted.
I have chosen the 47th of the sittings which took place in England, not
because it is peculiarly interesting, but because Professor Lodge's
published report of it is not too long, and I have no room for more
extended developments.
The account of this sitting will perhaps disappoint some readers.
"What!" they will say, "is that all that spirits who return from the
other world have to say to us? They talk as we do. They speak of the
same things. They are not spirits." This conclusion would perhaps be too
hasty. I do not assert that they are spirits or that they return from
another world. I know nothing about it. But if this other world existed
we should expect that there would not be an abyss between it and our
own. Nature makes no leaps. That is surely a true principle in, and for,
all worlds.
We have a means, although an imperfect one, of endeavouring to discover
if the communicators are really returning spirits. It is to ask them to
prove their identity by relating as large a number of facts as possible
concerning their life upon earth. The investigators of the Piper case
have for fifteen years devoted themselves to this task, apparently easy,
in reality difficult and ungrateful.
In the earlier experiments in the Piper case the conversation almost
always takes place between the sitters and Dr Phinuit. Dr Phinuit does
not willingly give up his post, though he does so sometimes. When he is
giving information which he says he has received from other spirits he
sometimes talks in the third person; sometimes, on the contrary, he
reports word for word in the first person. This detail must not be
forgotten in reading the reports. The following is a report of the 47th
sitting in England.
The sitters are Professor Oliver Lodge and his brother Alfred Lodge. The
latter takes notes. The phrases between parentheses are remarks made by
Professor Lodge after the sitting.[12]
Phinuit.--"Captain,[13] do you know that as I came[14] I met the medium
going out, and she's crying. Why is that?"
O. L.--"Well, the fact is she's separated from her children for a few
days and she is feeling rather low about it."
Phinuit.--"How are you, Alfred? I've your mother's influence strong.
(Pause.) By George! that's Aunt Anne's ring (feeling ring I had put on
my hand just before sitting) given over to you. And Olly dear,[15]
that's one of the last things I ever gave you. It was one of the last
things I said to you in the body when I gave it you for Mary. I said,
'For her, through you.'" [This is precisely accurate.]
O. L.--"Yes, I remember perfectly."
Phinuit.--"I tell you I know it, I shall never forget it. Keep it in
memory of me, for I am not dead. Each spirit is not so dim (?) that it
cannot recollect its belongings in the body. They attract us if there
has been anything special about them. I tell you, my boy, I can see it
just as plain as if I were in the body. It was the last thing I gave
you, for her, through you, always in remembrance of me." (Further
conversation and advice ending, "Convince yourself,[16] and let others
do the same. We are all liable to mistakes, but you can see for
yourself. There's a gentleman wants to speak to you.")
Mr E.[17]--"Lodge, how are you? I tell you I'm living, not dead. That's
me. You know me, don't you?"
O. L.--"Yes, delighted to see you again."
Mr E.--"Don't give it up,[18] Lodge. Cling to it. It's the best thing
you have. It's coarse in the beginning, but it can be ground down fine.
You'll know best and correct (?). It can only come through a trance. You
have to put her in a trance. You've got to do it that way to make
yourself known."
O. L.--"Is it bad for the medium?"
Mr E.--"It's the only way, Lodge. In one sense it's bad, but in another
it's good. It's her work. If I take possession of the medium's body and
she goes out, then I can use her organism to tell the world important
truths. There is an infinite power above us. Lodge, believe it fully.
Infinite over all, most marvellous. One can tell a medium, she's like a
ball of light. You look as dark and material as possible, but we find
two or three lights shining. It's like a series of rooms with candles at
one end. Must use analogy to express it. When you need a light you use
it, when you have finished you put it out. They are like transparent
windows to see through. Lodge, it's a puzzle. It's a puzzle to us here
in a way, though we understand it better than you. I work at it hard. I
do. I'd give anything I possess to find out. I don't care for material
things now, our interest is much greater. I'm studying hard how to
communicate; it's not easy. But it's only a matter of a short time
before I shall be able to tell the world all sorts of things through one
medium or another. [And so on for some time.] Lodge, keep up your
courage, there's a quantity to hope for yet. Hold it up for a time.
Don't be in a hurry. Get facts; no matter what they call you, go on
investigating. Test to fullest. Assure yourself, then publish. It will
be all right in the end--no question about it. It's true."
O. L.--"You have seen my Uncle Jerry, haven't you?"[19]
Mr E.--"Yes, I met him a little while ago--a very clever man--had an
interesting talk with him."
O. L.--"What sort of person is this Dr Phinuit?"
Mr E.--"Dr Phinuit is a peculiar type of man. He goes about continually,
and is thrown in with everybody. He is eccentric and quaint, but
good-hearted. I wouldn't do the things he does for anything. He lowers
himself sometimes--it's a great pity. He has very curious ideas about
things and people; he receives a great deal about people from themselves
(?), and he gets expressions and phrases that one doesn't care
for--vulgar phrases he picks up by meeting uncanny people through the
medium. These things tickle him, and he goes about repeating them. He
has to interview a great number of people, and has no easy berth of it.
A high type of man couldn't do the work he does. But he is a
good-hearted old fellow. Good-bye, Lodge! Here's the doctor coming."
O. L.--"Good-bye, E.! Glad to have had a chat with you."
[_Doctors voice reappears._][20]
Phinuit.--"This [ring] belongs to your aunt. Your Uncle Jerry tells me
to ask.... By the way, do you know Mr E.'s been here; did you hear him?"
O. L.--"Yes, I've had a long talk with him."
Phinuit.--"Wants you to ask Uncle Bob about his cane. He whittled it out
himself. It has a crooked handle with ivory on the top. Bob has it, and
has cut initials in it." [There is a stick, but description inaccurate.]
"He has the skin also, and the ring. And he remembers Bob killing the
cat and tying its tail to the fence to see him kick before he died. He
and Bob and a lot of the fellows all together in Smith's field, I think
he said. Bob knew Smith. And the way they played tit-tat-too on the
window pane on All Hallows' Eve, and they got caught that night too."
(At Barking, where my uncles lived as children, there is a field called
Smith's field, but my Uncle does not remember the cat incident.) "Aunt
Anne wants to know about her sealskin cloak. Who was it went to Finland,
or Norway?"
O. L.--"Don't know."
Phinuit.--"Do you know Mr Clark--a tall, dark man, in the body?"[21]
O. L.--"I think so."
Phinuit.--"His brother wants to send his love to him. Your Uncle Jerry,
do you know, has been talking to Mr E. They have become very friendly.
E. has been explaining things to him. Uncle Jerry says he will tell all
the facts, and all about families near, and so on, that he can recall.
He says if you will remember all this and tell his brother, he will
know. If he doesn't fully understand he must come and see me himself,
and I will tell him. How's Mary?"[22]
O. L.--"Middling; not very well."
Phinuit.--"Glad she's going away." [She was, to the Continent; but Mrs
Piper knew it.] "William[23] is glad. His wife used to be very
distressed about him. You remember his big chair where he used to sit
and think?"
O. L.--"Yes, very well."
Phinuit.--"He often goes and sits there now.[24] Takes it easy, he says.
He used to sit opposite a window sometimes with his head in his hands,
and think and think and think." (This was at his office.) "He has grown
younger in looks, and much happier. It was Alec that fell through a hole
in the boat, Alexander Marshall, her first father."[25] (Correct, as
before.) "Where's Thompson? The one that lost the purse?"
O. L.--"Yes, I know."
Phinuit.--"Well, I met his brother, and he sent love to all--to sister
Fanny, he told me especially. He tried to say it just as he was going
out, but had no time--was too weak."
O. L.--"Oh, yes, we just heard him."
Phinuit.--"Oh, you did? That's all right. She's an angel; he has seen
her to-day. Tell Ike I'm very grateful to him. Tell Ike the girls will
come out all right. Ted's mother and.... And how's Susie? Give Susie my
love."
O. L.--"I couldn't find that Mr Stevenson you gave me a message to.
What's his name?"
Phinuit.--"What! little Minnie Stevenson? Don't you know his name is
Henry? Yes, Henry Stevenson. Mother in spirit too, not far away.[26]
Give me that watch." (Trying to open it.) "Here, open it. Take it out of
its case. Jerry says he took his knife once and made some little marks
with it up here, up here near the handle, near the ring, some little
cuts in the watch. Look at it afterwards in a good light and you will
see them." (There is a little engraved landscape in the place described,
but some of the sky-lines have been cut unnecessarily deep, I think,
apparently out of mischief or idleness. Certainly I knew nothing of
this, and had never had the watch out of its case before.--O. J. L.)
This example shows the kind of information given. Much of it is true;
other assertions are unverifiable, which does not prove that they are
untrue; others contain both truth and errors; finally, there are
certainly some which are entirely untrue. For this reason these
transcendental conversations very much resemble the conversations of
incarnated human beings. _Errare humanum est._ And it would appear that
the heavy corpse we drag about with us is not alone to blame when we
sacrifice to Error.
But, since the hypothesis of fraud and of unconscious muscular movement
may not be invoked, where shall we find the source of the mass of exact
information Mrs Piper gives us? The simplest hypothesis, after those we
have been obliged to set aside, consists in believing that the medium
obtains her information from the minds of those present. She must be
able to read their souls, as others read in a book; thought-transference
must take place between her and them. With these data, she would be
supposed to construct marionettes so perfect, so life-like, that a large
number of sitters leave the sittings persuaded that they have
communicated with their dead relatives. If this were true, the fact
alone would be a miracle. No genius, neither the divine Homer, nor the
calm Tacitus, nor Shakespeare, would have been a creator of men to
compare with Mrs Piper. Even were it thus, science would never have met
with a subject more worthy of its attention than this woman. But the
greater number of those who have had sittings with Mrs Piper affirm that
the information furnished was not in their consciousness. If they
themselves furnished it, the medium must have taken it, not from their
consciousness, but from their subconsciousness, from the most hidden
depths of their souls, from that abyss in which lie buried, far out of
our reach, facts which have occupied our minds for a moment even very
superficially, and have left therein, it appears, indelible traces.
Thus the mystery grows deeper and deeper. But this is not all. At every
moment Mrs Piper gives the sitters details which they maintain that they
never could have known. Consequently she must read them instantaneously
in the minds of persons, sometimes very far distant, who do know them.
This is the telepathic hypothesis, upon which for the moment we will not
insist, for we shall be obliged to study it carefully later on.
Professor Lodge has made a list, necessarily incomplete, of incidents
mentioned by the medium in the English sittings which the sitters had
entirely forgotten, or which they had every reason to suppose they had
never known, or which it was impossible they should ever have known.
This list contains forty-two such incidents. To give my readers some
idea of their nature, I will quote four or five of them. I will take
these incidents from the history of the Lodge family, in order to avoid
introducing new personages unnecessarily.
At the 16th sitting,[27] on November 30, 1889, Phinuit tells Professor
Lodge that one of his sons has something wrong in the calf of his leg.
Now at the time the child was merely complaining of pain in his heel
when he walked. The doctor consulted had pronounced it rheumatism, and
this was vaguely running in Dr Lodge's mind. However, some time after
the sitting, in May 1890, the pain localised itself in the calf. Now
there could be no auto-suggestion in this case, for Professor Lodge
tells us he had said nothing to his son.
At the 44th sitting,[28] Professor Lodge asked his Uncle Jerry, who is
supposed to be communicating, "Do you remember anything when you were
young?" Phinuit (for him) replies at once, "Yes, I pretty nigh got
drowned. Tried to swim the creek, and we fellows all of us got into a
little boat. We got tipped over. He will remember it. Ask Bob if he
remembers that about swimming the creek; he ought to remember it." Uncle
Robert, consulted, remembers the incident perfectly, but gives different
details. This sort of confusion about the details of a distant event,
the partial memory, occurs often to all of us.
Thus disincarnated beings would seem to resemble incarnate ones on this
point also. Apparently it was not the boat which upset, but the two
young Lodges, Jerry and Robert, on getting out of it, began some
horse-play on the bank, and fell into the stream. They were obliged to
swim, fully dressed and against a strong current, which was carrying
them under a mill-wheel.
At the 46th sitting,[29] Phinuit reports that the last visit the father
of Professor Lodge paid was to this Uncle Robert, and that he didn't
feel very well. Professor Lodge knew nothing of this fact, or, if he had
once known it, had so completely forgotten it that he was obliged to
apply to one of his cousins to know if it was true. The cousin replied
in confirmation of the fact.
At the 82nd sitting,[30] Uncle Jerry, speaking of his brother Frank, who
is still living, expresses himself thus about an event of their
childhood,--
"Yes, certainly! Frank was full of life; he crawled under the thatch
once and hid. What a lot of mischief he was capable of doing. He would
do anything; go without shirt, swop hats, anything. There was a family
near named Rodney. He pounded one of their boys named John. Frank got
the best of it, and the boy ran; how he ran! His father threatened
Frank, but he escaped; he always escaped. He could crawl through a
smaller hole than another. He could shin up a tree quick as a monkey.
What a boy he was! I remember his fishing. I remember that boy wading up
to his middle. I thought he'd catch his death of cold; but he never
did."
This Uncle Frank was aged about 80, and was living in Cornwall: the
general description is characteristic. Professor Lodge wrote to him to
ask if the above details were correct. He replied, giving exact details:
"I recollect very well my fight with a boy in the corn field. It took
place when I was ten years old, and I suppose a bit of a boy-bully."
On the 29th November[31] Professor Henry Sidgwick, of Cambridge, had a
sitting with Mrs Piper. It was arranged that Mrs Sidgwick, who stayed at
home, should do something specially marked during the sitting. Mrs Piper
was to be asked to describe it, to prove her power of seeing at a
distance. Phinuit, when questioned, replied, "She is sitting in a large
chair, she is talking to another lady, and she is wearing something on
her head." These details were perfectly correct. Mrs Sidgwick was
sitting in a large chair, talking to Miss Alice Johnson, and she had a
blue handkerchief on her head. However, Phinuit was wrong about the
description of the room in which this happened.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] For detailed report of these sittings see _Proc. of S.P.R._, vol.
vi.
[13] At the first sitting in Liverpool there was some talk of a sea
captain. Phinuit, who was rather fond of nicknames, jocularly attached
the epithet "Captain" to Professor Lodge.
[14] _I.e._, "As I entered the medium's organism."
[15] Here Phinuit is supposed to be reporting in the first person words
of Aunt Anne, treated as if present.
[16] Of a future life.
[17] Phinuit seems to have left, and Mr E. takes his place. This Mr E.
was an intimate friend of Professor Lodge; he had appeared at a
preceding sitting and had offered proofs of his identity, which were
verified later. Professor Lodge recognised his mode of address. Phinuit,
we remember, always addressed Professor Lodge as "Captain."
[18] The investigation into psychic matters.
[19] In accordance with a statement previously made by Phinuit.
[20] These changes in the medium's voice are very surprising. If there
is fraud in the case, Mrs Piper must be the most accomplished actress
who has hitherto appeared.
[21] _I.e._, still living.
[22] Mrs Lodge.
[23] Mrs Lodge's step-father.
[24] These assertions, that spirits return to the places they have lived
in, and unknown to us, do what they were accustomed to do, are very odd.
But the literature of the subject is full of such accounts.
[25] Mrs Lodge's father. Phinuit had alluded to this accident in a
previous sitting, but without being able to explain if it had happened
to Mrs Lodge's father or her step-father.
[26] In these communications the self-styled spirits always affirm that
the dead get farther and farther by degrees from our universe, in
accordance with time, and their own progress. The Stevenson episode,
referred to above, is described on page 71.
[27] _Proc. of S.P.R._, vol. vi. p. 467.
[28] _Ibid._ p. 503.
[29] _Proc. of S.P.R._, vol. vi. p. 514.
[30] _Ibid._, p. 549.
[31] _Proc. of S.P.R._, p. 627.