The communications of Mr Robert Hyslop--Peculiar expressions--Incidents.
After we have read the report of Professor Hyslop, weighed the slightest
facts with him, discussed the arguments for and against with him, we
cannot be surprised at his having ended by adhering to the spiritualist
hypothesis; in other words, we cannot be surprised that, in spite of his
previous prejudice, he should have ended by exclaiming, "I have been
talking with my father, my brother, my uncles. Whatever supernormal
powers we may be pleased to attribute to Mrs Piper's secondary
personalities, it would be difficult to make me believe that these
secondary personalities could have thus completely reconstituted the
mental personality of my dead relatives. To admit this would involve me
in too many improbabilities. I prefer to believe that I have been
talking to my dead relatives in person; it is simpler." This is the
conclusion at which Professor Hyslop has arrived, and he takes the
reader with him, in spite of himself. As may be imagined, I do not
pretend to do the same in a hurried sketch like the present. Here, as
was the case with George Pelham, the incidents quoted are only examples
selected from a great number; some important detail of the said
incidents may even be accidentally omitted. If the forgotten detail
lays the incident open to some great objection, the reader must blame me
only for it, and turn to Professor Hyslop's book for himself.[78]
Professor Hyslop's father, Mr Robert Hyslop, was a private person in the
strictest sense of the word; he never did anything to attract public
attention to him; he did not write in the papers, and never, or hardly
ever, lived in towns. He was born in 1821, and lived on his farm in Ohio
till 1889, when he went into a neighbouring State. He returned to his
old home in August 1896, ill with a sort of cancer of the larynx. The
old home then belonged to his brother-in-law, James Carruthers, and he
died there on the 29th of the same month. In 1860 he had contracted a
spinal affection, the result of over-exertion, and this had degenerated,
some years later, into locomotor ataxy; he lost by degrees the use of
one of his legs and used a crutch; there was afterwards an improvement,
but he could never walk without a stick. In 1876 he had a slight attack
of apoplexy, which affected his hearing, one ear being quite deaf. Three
years before his death he further had the misfortune to lose his voice,
probably from paralysis of the larynx. A year before his death a fresh
affliction was added to all the others; he thought it was catarrh, but
it was probably cancer of the larynx; and it was accompanied by frequent
spasms which threatened his life.
In short, for thirty-five years at least, Mr Robert
Hyslop was an invalid. His life was by necessity passed indoors, or at
least on his farm. This life was necessarily without events calculated
to attract a stranger's notice. There was consequently very little
possibility that the medium could obtain information about him by normal
means. But when an obscure man like Mr Robert Hyslop returns from the
Beyond to establish his identity by relating a number of small facts,
too slight and unimportant to have been observed outside his intimate
circle, such a man furnishes us with a much stronger presumption in
favour of a future life than a personage in public life could do. Even
if the latter only reported incidents of his private life, it would be
easier to suppose that the medium had been able to procure them. During
nearly all his life, but principally during the last twenty years, the
thoughts of Mr Robert Hyslop turned on a small number of subjects--his
solicitude for his family; the administration of his farm, which gave
him much care; the fulfilment of his religious duties, in which he never
failed; and lastly, political events, which much interested him, because
they naturally reacted upon his private affairs. Consequently the
greater part of the facts I shall quote belonged to one or other of
these four categories of his preoccupations.
But, to begin with, it will be useful to speak of a point which
characterises an individual as clearly as his features do--I mean his
speech. Each of us has his own language, his familiar expressions; each
of us expresses himself in his own way under given circumstances. When
Buffon said "the style is the man," he expressed an absolute truth. When
somebody talks to us by telephone, without giving his name, we say,
without a shade of hesitation, "It is So-and-so. I know him by his
style." I repeat that everybody has this individuality of expression; it
is, however, less marked in educated people. But men only slightly
cultivated use stereotyped expressions, above all when they are growing
old; the language of some of them is almost entirely composed of
aphorisms and proverbs. If Mr Robert Hyslop did not altogether belong to
this class, he yet, his son tells us, used particular expressions, and
always the same in analogous cases; some of them indeed were altogether
peculiar to him.
Now, when he communicates through Mrs Piper, he uses the same language
that he used when alive. Professor Hyslop has incessantly occasion to
remark, "This expression is quite like my father; he would have used it
when he was alive in such a case." There is even a passage of the
communications so characteristic in this way that it is nearly too much
so; it would almost suggest fraud. I will reproduce one of these
passages.[79] "Keep quiet, don't worry about anything, as I used to say.
It does not pay. You are not the strongest man, you know, and health is
important for you. Cheer up now and be quite yourself. Remember it does
not pay, and life is too short there for you to spend it in worrying.
What you cannot have, be content without, but do not worry, and not for
me. Devoted you were to me always, and I have nothing to complain of
except your uneasy temperament, and that I will certainly help."
When a father has repeated the same advice in the same terms hundreds of
times in his life, and when, after his death, he repeats it again
through an intermediary, it must certainly be difficult to say, "That is
not he; it is not my father."
I should much like to give the reader the greatest possible number of
these small facts, which convince us almost in spite of ourselves. But
it is impossible to do so without surrounding them with commentaries
indispensable to bring out all their importance. Thus, Mr Robert had a
horse named Tom, an old and faithful servant. It had grown too old to
work, but he would not kill it. He pensioned it, so to speak, and left
it to die a natural death on the farm. At one sitting he asks, "Where is
Tom?" and as James Hyslop did not understand what Tom he was speaking
of, the communicator added, "Tom, the horse, what has become of him?"
Mr Robert Hyslop wrote with quill pens, which he trimmed himself; he had
often trimmed them for his son James. He recalls this detail about the
quill pens at one of the sittings.
He was very bald, and had complained of feeling his head cold during the
night. His wife made him a black cap which he wore once. At one of the
sittings he spoke of this cap. James Hyslop, who had been away from home
a long time, had never heard of any black cap. But he wrote to his
step-mother, who corroborated the statement.
At another sitting the communicator, Robert Hyslop, said that there were
always two bottles on his desk, one round and one square. Professor
Hyslop was ignorant of this detail, as of the preceding. His
step-mother, when questioned, had difficulty in remembering this, but
his brother recalled it at once; the round bottle held ink and the
square one contained gum.
Another time Robert Hyslop asks, "Do you remember the penknife I cut my
nails with?" "No, father, not very well." "The little penknife with the
brown handle. I had it in my vest and then coat pocket. You certainly
must remember it?" "Was this after you went west?" "Yes." Professor
Hyslop was unaware of the existence of this penknife. He wrote
separately to his step-mother, brother and sister, asking them if their
father had possessed a brown-handled penknife with which he cut his
nails, without telling them why he wanted this information. All three
replied, "Yes, we have it still." But it appears that Mr Robert Hyslop
did not keep the knife either in his coat or waistcoat pockets, but in
his trousers pocket.
These little facts will suffice as examples. I will go on to more
important ones.
Mr Robert Hyslop had a son who had caused him much anxiety all his life.
He had often talked of these anxieties to his favourite son James, and
had died carrying them with him into the grave. He speaks of them
repeatedly during the sittings exactly as he did in life. "Don't you
remember, James, that we often talked of your brother and the trouble he
gave us? Don't worry about it any more, all will go well now, and if I
know that you do not worry I shall be all right."
He remembers all the members of his family and names them correctly,
except for two odd mistakes of which I shall speak later. He alludes to
incidents in the lives, and traits in the characters of each of them. He
sends them expressions of affection, "Have I forgotten anybody, James,
my son? I should not like to forget anybody." He specially asks after
his youngest child, Henrietta; he wants to know if she has succeeded in
her examinations, and he expresses delight when he hears that, on the
whole, life promises well for her.
Mr Robert Hyslop was an orthodox Calvinist; he belonged to the small,
very strict sect of Associate Presbyterians and refused to join the
United Presbyterian Church in 1858. He was extremely rigid in religious
matters. When he caused his son James to be educated, he hoped the
latter would become a minister, though he left him free choice. When he
saw his son modify his religious beliefs he was very much pained. By
degrees, however, he became resigned. It is easy to understand from all
this that religious preoccupations were in the foreground in his mind.
He often talked of religion to his family, he read the Bible and
numerous commentaries on it, and sometimes, rather than allow his family
to go to the church of a less orthodox sect, he himself preached to them
at home. Consequently, if he had not alluded to his former religious
life during the sittings, the omission might have caused a grave doubt
of his identity. But this is not the case; he constantly alludes to his
ancient religious ideas.
At one of the first sittings he says, for example, "Do you remember what
my feeling was about this life? Well, I was not so far wrong after all.
I felt sure that there would be some knowledge of this life but you
were doubtful, remember you had your own ideas, which were only yours,
James."
This last phrase, "You have your own ideas," Professor Hyslop remarks,
had been often repeated to him by his father in his lifetime. "He meant
that I was the only one of his children who was sceptical, and this was
true." Robert Hyslop's former religious ideas were the cause of a
strange incident. One day Dr Hodgson said to him, "Mr Hyslop, you ought
to look for my father and make friends with him. He had religious ideas
like yours. I think you would understand each other very well, and I
should be pleased." At a following sitting the communicator said to Dr
Hodgson, "I have met your father; we talked, and we liked each other
very much, but he was not very orthodox when he was alive." Dr Hodgson's
father was really a Wesleyan--that is to say, he belonged to a very
liberal sect. But in another place Robert Hyslop adds, "Orthodoxy does
not matter here; I should have changed my mind about many things if I
had known." In another sitting he says to his son, alluding to the
telepathic hypothesis, "Let that thought theory alone. I made theories
all my life, and what good did it do me? It only filled my mind with
doubts." In short, it appears that Robert Hyslop, the rigid Calvinist,
has greatly modified his views since he has been disincarnated.
At the last visit Professor Hyslop paid to his father, in January or
February 1895, a long conversation took place between them on religious
and philosophical subjects. Professor Hyslop spoke of his psychical
studies. The possibility of communication between the two worlds was
discussed at length, and Swedenborg and his works were mentioned. During
the sittings Robert Hyslop constantly returns to this conversation,
which had made a profound impression on him; much more profound than
would have been expected, considering his religious views. He recalls
the points which were discussed by him and his son one after another,
and adds, "You remember I promised to come back to you after I had left
the body, and I have been trying to find an opportunity ever since."
Now, no such promise had been made explicitly. But James Hyslop had
written to his father on his deathbed, "Father, when all is over, you
will try to come back to me." Robert Hyslop must from that moment have
resolved to return if possible; and he must have believed he had told
his son so, which was not the case.
When he was living in Ohio, Mr Robert Hyslop had a neighbour named
Samuel Cooper. One day Cooper's dogs killed some sheep belonging to
Robert Hyslop. An estrangement followed, which lasted several years. At
one of the sittings in which Dr Hodgson represented Professor Hyslop, he
asked a question which the latter had sent him in writing. Professor
Hyslop hoped the question would turn his father's attention to the
incidents of his life in Ohio. The question was, "Do you remember Samuel
Cooper, and can you say anything about him?" The communicator replied,
"James refers to the old friend I had in the West. I remember the visits
we used to make to each other well, and the long talks we had concerning
philosophical topics." At another sitting, when Dr Hodgson was again
alone, he returned to the same idea. "I had a friend named Cooper who
was of a philosophical turn of mind and for whom I had great respect,
with whom I had some friendly discussion and correspondence. I had some
of his letters ... you will find them." Another time, when Professor
Hyslop was present, he said, "I am trying to remember Cooper's school."
The next day he returns to the point, "You asked me, James, what I knew
about Cooper. Did you think I was no longer friend of his? I had kept
some of his letters; and I think they were with you." In all this there
was not a trace of Samuel Cooper, and Professor Hyslop did not know what
to think. He therefore put a direct question in order to bring his
father back to the point he had in mind. "I wanted to know if you
remembered anything about the dogs killing sheep?" "Oh, I should think I
did ... but I had forgotten all about it. That was what we had the
discussion about.... Yes, very well, James, but just what you asked me
this for I could not quite make out as he was no relation of mine ... if
I could have recalled what you were getting at I would have tried to
tell you. He is here, but I see him seldom." This episode is
interesting. All that Robert Hyslop said at first about Cooper has
nothing to do with Samuel Cooper, but is entirely true of an old friend
of his, Dr Joseph Cooper. Robert Hyslop had really had many
philosophical discussions with him, and they had corresponded. Professor
Hyslop had perhaps heard his name, but did not know that he was an old
friend of his father. It was his step-mother who told him this, in the
course of an inquiry he made amongst his relatives to clear up doubtful
incidents in the sittings. We see that disincarnated beings are capable
of misunderstanding as well as ourselves.
But the following is the most dramatic incident. Professor Hyslop,
remembering that his father had thought his last illness catarrh, while
he himself believed it to be cancer of the larynx, asked the
communicator a question aimed at bringing up the word "catarrh." He
asked, "Do you know what the trouble was when you passed out?" The
double meaning of the word "trouble" caused a curious misunderstanding,
which the telepathic hypothesis will find it difficult to explain.
The communicator replied in distress, "No, I did not realise that we had
the least trouble, James, ever. I thought we were always most congenial
to each other. I do not remember any trouble--tell me what it was about?
You do not mean with me, do you?" "Father, you misunderstand me. I mean
with the sickness." "Oh, yes, I hear--I know now. Yes, my stomach."
"Yes, was there anything else the matter?" "Yes, stomach, liver and
head--difficult to breathe. My heart, James, made me suffer. Don't you
remember what a trouble I had to breathe? I think it was my heart which
made me suffer the most--my heart and my lungs. Tightness of the
chest--my heart failed me; but at last I went to sleep." A little
further on he says, "Do you know, the last thing I recall is your
speaking to me. And you were the last to do so. I remember seeing your
face; but I was too weak to answer."
This dialogue at first disconcerted Professor Hyslop. He had tried to
make his father tell the name of the malady from which the latter
thought he suffered--catarrh. It was only when he read over the notes of
the sitting, a little later, that he perceived all at once that his
father had been describing the last hours of his life in the terms
habitual to him. Professor Hyslop had been mistaken again. The doctor
had noticed pain in the stomach at 7 a.m. The heart action began to
decline at 9.30; this was shortly followed by terrible difficulty in
breathing, and death followed. When his father's eyelids fell, James
Hyslop said, "He is gone," and he was the last to speak. This last
incident seems to indicate that consciousness in the dying lasts much
longer than is believed.
Soon after Professor Hyslop asked his father if he remembered some
special medicine he had sent him from New York. The communicator had
much trouble in remembering the very strange name of this medicine, but
ended by giving it, though incorrectly spelled.
During the first fifteen sittings Professor Hyslop had asked as few
questions as possible, and when he was obliged to do so, he had so
expressed them that they should not contain the answer. But at the 16th
sitting he abandoned this reserve intentionally. He wished to see what
the result would be if he took the same tone with the communicator as is
taken with a friend in flesh and blood. Professor Hyslop says, "The
result was that I talked with my disincarnated father with as much ease
as if I were talking with him living, through the telephone. We
understood each other at a hint, as in an ordinary conversation." They
spoke of everything--of a fence which Robert Hyslop was thinking of
repairing when he died; of the taxes he had left unpaid; of the cares
two of his children had caused him, one of whom had never given him much
satisfaction, while the other was an invalid; of the election of
President M'Kinley and of many other things.
Can it be said that there were no inexact statements made by the
communicator during all these sittings? There are some, but very few. I
shall speak of them in the following chapter. In any case, there is no
trace of a single intentional untruth in the whole sixteen sittings.
FOOTNOTES:
[78] _Proc. of S.P.R._, vol. xvi. In what follows here there is no
attempt to give the actual words of Professor Hyslop's communicators.
_Trans._
[79] _Proc. of S.P.R._, vol. xvi. p. 40.