mother. She is a charwoman endowed with the scientific mind. Her son had
been killed by an exploding shell. Only a fragment or two had been
necessary for the task. Jimmy had no chance. Courage and energy had
never failed him. The spirit that dwelt within his thin and somewhat
stunted body would have rejoiced in battle with a lion. But shells are
no respecters of spirit. Jimmy had successfully fought poverty and
ill-health; he had risen from a newspaper-boy's existence to the dizzy
heights of a milkman's cart. His pale face with its prominent eyes and
rich, chestnut forelock bore an expression of indomitable Cockney
confidence in the ultimate decency of things. He had always been kind to
his mother. "More like a girl than a boy," she said, "in the way he
cared for his home and looked after me." And now Jimmy was dead: the
message had come that he would not return. "And why is he dead," said
the mother to me, "and where is he?" She was sitting in her kitchen,
which bore its usual aspect of order and cleanliness. But her face
looked as if some disordering power had passed over her. "I asked our
curate to explain where Jimmy is," she continued, "and he told me that
doubt is a sin, and that we shall meet again on the day of resurrection.
And when I told him that I felt Jimmy quite close to me in this kitchen,
a week after his death, and that I thought I heard his voice calling me,
the curate said I ought not to think of such things. Faith and hard work
were the best cure for such fancies, he said."
"But do you know what I did?" she added in a whisper, intended to
deceive the curate, "I went to one of those mediums that Mrs. Jones
knows about. I paid a shilling, and we all sat in a ring, and the medium
saw Jimmy and described him, just as he is in his uniform and cap, a
little over the right ear, and the scar across his nose--you know, the
scar from the fall down the front steps when he was nine--and all
smiling, and showing the missing tooth. 'Jimmy wants you to know that he
is happy, very happy,' she said, and then Jimmy came and spoke through
the medium. 'Mother,' he said to me, 'I want you to give my pipe with
the silver band to Charlie, and don't make no bones about it.' Then I
knew it was Jimmy, for Jimmy always used to say 'don't make no bones
about it.' And now I feel he is alive somewhere, and I shall go again to
the medium and find out more."
I thought of this when the clergyman complained of the prevalence of
superstition and visits to mediums. I suggested that he should
investigate the subject of spiritualism and the reasons for its appeal
to sorrow-stricken relatives and friends of soldiers. The suggestion was
indignantly rejected. Religion was to him a theory based on revelation
vouchsafed thousands of years ago; it was now a system of stereotyped
belief and conduct, strangely removed from the perplexities and anguish
of the individual soul. His academic mind recoiled from the grotesque
and trivial messages associated with seances and the performances of
professional psychics.
We are wont to contemplate immortality in much the same manner as we
contemplate the moon. It is something remote and incapable of active
interference in our daily life and tasks. It sheds a pale and pleasant
light on our earthly pilgrimage, and we in our turn render homage to
the mellow beauty which it imparts to our poetic imagination. Only
children cry for the moon. We know it is unattainable.
The rejection of the crude theories of spiritualism is not altogether
the result of wilful blindness. In our innermost minds, in the region
beyond the grasp of the brain and its ready generalizations, we hunger
for inexpressible reality, for life beyond the stars. We have eaten of
the tree of sense-knowledge: we have seen, heard, felt, tasted. We want
a reality above the traffic and deception of the senses. Vaguely, but
insistently we feel the call to the life of the spirit, and when its
definition eludes us, we prefer silence and faith. It is then that the
familiar prattle of the seance-room offends us. We sought freedom,
light, absolution from the trammels of personality, and we are told that
the dead appear in bodies and clothes, that they toil and fret, that
they inhabit houses and cities. Our plains Elysian suffer an invasion of
lawyers and physicians, of merchants and moneylenders. The weariness of
repetition pursues us.
And yet we may be more completely the victims of illusion than our
vendor of spiritualistic revelation. We who cherish the belief in
immortality forget that death can be naught but the shedding of a form.
The substance is unchanged. The fabric of the mind is woven day by day
by impressions and ideas, by experience and action. Nobody questions the
commonplace phenomena of the shaping of individuality and character.
Habits, occupation, tastes, and desires mould a distinct personality out
of the common clay. The experience of death cannot dissolve the
personality. The death-process can neither whitewash a man's sin nor
exalt him beyond his virtue.
And thus it is that he who dearly loved a joke may joke still, and he
who thought he was collecting fine old pictures may still indulge his
taste. Delusions! Not impossible or even unlikely. Kant demonstrated
once for all our complete enslavement by phenomena and our inability to
approach things-in-themselves. Spiritualistic interpretation of
post-mortem conditions offers no exception. Imagination continues to
master our souls. Spiritualism offends us by offering bread-and-butter
when we expect moonshine.
We are loath to part with the belief that death transforms the
character by one great stroke of spiritual lightning. Vanity, envy,
meanness, greed, the foibles and frailties of human nature, repel us
when we imagine their persistence in others after death. We infinitely
prefer the thought that they should be purged and radiant with spiritual
effulgence. We are not so sure about ourselves, for the objective
classification of the qualities which go to form our own character is a
difficult achievement. And the idea of dispensing with essential parts
of our mental equipment does not commend itself to us. There is a point
in all our philosophy where speculation seeks the natural repose of the
unknowable. It is quickly reached when we attempt to probe the mystery
of selfhood.
The plain question whether the dead can communicate with the living
persists in spite of the imperfections of the answer. The war has made
it paramount, and only second in importance to the crucial query: Do
they live? There is a clamour for evidence, signs, messages, testimony.
The human heart cries out for comfort. "Yesterday he breathed the same
air, felt and thought as I do. To-day he lies dead, his body shattered,
his hopes wrecked, his happy laughter silent. Does he know? Does he
feel and remember? Is there an eternal gulf of silence between us?"
O! for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still.
The Church tries vainly to ban the new inquisitiveness. The intercourse
with familiar spirits is condemned as a theological offence, a
vainglorious and futile storming of the citadel of God. The secret of
the tomb must be preserved, though the masses of Christendom have ceased
to believe in the long and mouldering sleep of the centuries before the
summons to the Judgment. They are no longer scorched by the threat of
eternal fire, nor soothed by the hope of clouds and harps. The love that
is in them would not tolerate the infliction of an eternity of torture
on a fellow-soul, and their conception of the love of God cannot place
Him below the promptings of human mercy. The reason that is in them is
not attracted by the promise of a heaven of rosy inaction and strifeless
rest. The contrast of heaven and hell, so powerful a corrective of human
waywardness in mediaeval times, fails to impress the modern mind. The
windows of experience and knowledge have been opened too widely, the
powers and manifold possibilities of the earth lie open and tempt to the
search for a super-mundane world, not poorer and more complex, but
richer and more lavish in creative force.
The law supports the opposition of the Church and frowns on the practice
of mediumship and clairvoyance. The law denies the possibility of spirit
intercourse and forbids the exercise of supernormal faculties in
exploring the untrodden realms of the future. Prosecutions are
instituted under the old Witchcraft and Vagrancy Acts, and psychic
practitioners are fined or sent to prison in the hope of stemming the
tide of inquiry. The law and the spirit were ever at variance. But it is
difficult to understand why those who mourn, and who ask questions,
should be deprived of the comfort which they may find through visits to
professional mediums. The risk of deception and false pretences is
there, it is true, but that risk exists everywhere. There are lawyers,
politicians, and physicians who tell "fortunes" and practise
"witchcraft" of their own brand, decidedly more harmful and disruptive
than the visions of the unlettered clairvoyant.
The magistrate, who sends a clairvoyant to prison because he is
convinced that all claims to psychic gifts and to communion with
discarnate spirits are fraudulent, is not troubled by his ignorance, and
the evidence of psychic research is not acceptable in his court. He
typifies the perpetual official, ever ready to suppress new and
evolutionary thought. After all, psychic science fares no worse than the
physical sciences in the judgment of respectable mediocrity. The
progress of science in the nineteenth century was one long conquest of
territory in the land of the impossible. Inventors and inventions have
met with incredulity and mockery. Railways, steamships, aeroplanes,
telegraphy, telephony and cinematographs have all emerged from the
region of "impossibilities." Roentgen-rays and radium have descended from
the sphere of miracles.
Experience should endow us with cautiousness in proclaiming
impossibilities of the future. The study of psychic science has imposed
no greater strain on my reason than the attempt to explain the mysteries
of biology and astronomy. Observation and classification do not
necessarily imply elucidation. The miracle of the foetus taking human
shape and soul, or of the oak rising out of the acorn and the brown
earth is to me as baffling as the materialization of a spirit. The
marvels of the cell-life and the daily chemistry which maintain the body
charm my attention as much as the mysterious clouds of light with which
spirits are wont to signalize their presence in the seance-room. I have
sat for hours on a summer night by the Mediterranean watching the
phosphorescent waves throw a luminous spray over the shore, and
meditating on the inexhaustible fertility of the sea. And I have watched
with the same intense wonder the phenomena of the soul illuminated by
the _daimon_ of inner vision and the infinite manifestations of the
power of spirit over matter. From the point of view of science there is
no clearly defined frontier between the natural and the supernatural,
the commonplace and the miraculous. All is soil for the plough, all
defies our designs for complete explanation. From the point of view of
religious emotion, there is the greatest possible difference between the
sciences of psychic force and those that seek to probe the mysteries of
the physical world. The question of the immortality of the human soul is
infinitely more engrossing than that of the formation of the skull of
neolithic man. The strictly evidential demonstration of communion
between the living and the dead might be almost negligible in quantity,
and yet the importance of one rap from the world of discarnate spirits,
scientifically demonstrated, would outweigh tomes of theories in
physics.
True, those who live in the spirit need no demonstrations provided by
scientific investigators of psychic problems. The mystic consciousness
with its intuition of immortality, its sensitiveness to the vibration of
life on all planes and in all forms _knows_, and in knowledge transcends
alike the boundaries of religionists and scientists. The mystic may
smile at the labour expended during the last fifty years on establishing
a strictly evidential basis for the study of transcendental facts. He
has conquered the inherited blindness of our race, and sees spirit not
as a supernatural demonstration, vouchsafed now and then to doubting
humanity, but as the living Presence of which he is joyously a part. He
does not fall into the common error of forgetting that we are spirits
sheathed in flesh, but bearing within ourselves the power over matter
which is destined to achieve the miraculous. He can dispense with a
medium, being himself a fountain of light, and experiencing the wondrous
self-illumination of which Thomas Treherne sang--
O Joy! O wonder and delight!
O sacred mystery!
My soul a spirit infinite!
An image of the Deity!
A pure substantial light!
That being greatest which doth nothing seem!
. . . . .
O wondrous Self! O sphere of light,
O sphere of joy most fair;
O act, O power infinite;
O subtile and unbounded air!
O living orb of sight!
Thou which within me art, yet me! Thou eye
And temple of His whole infinity!
But the spiritual raptures of the mystics of all ages have not moved
souls struggling in the outer darkness for tangible proofs of
immortality. To them the application of the methods approved by reason
and tested by scientific application will ever be welcome. They know
that the mind of man has wrested secret after secret from the earth by
observation, by experiment, by deduction. They know that the great
generalizations of science--the theories of the indestructibility of
matter, of gravitation, of the conservation of energy--are but counters
of mind exchanged in default of elusive realities. They know that the
pressure of research has reduced many of the lesser generalizations and
theories to a fluid and amorphous state. "Immutable" laws have been
turned into faulty conclusions, hastily drawn and readily abandoned
before the advance of new facts. The fixity of the elements in
chemistry, the undulatory movement of light, the stability of the
planetary orbits, the indestructibility of the atom, are all
abstractions which have been subjected to the reforming processes of new
thought.
Progress in physics has been marked by bold hypotheses dealing with
imponderable forces, and by experiments disclosing hidden properties of
matter. The hypothetical ether has been as fruitful in the liberation of
thought as the demonstration of the existence of the X-rays.
The application of methods of scientific accuracy to the physical
phenomena of spiritualism involves no revolution in mental processes or
reversal of the laws of logic. The publication of the results of the
classical experiments in materialization undertaken in 1874 by Sir
William Crookes with the medium Florence Cooke caused incredulous
amazement, for the simple reason that the custodians of science had not
applied themselves to the lessons afforded by the continuous shifting of
their frontiers. Crookes' report that Katie King, the spirit who took
material form during the seances, was a perfect, though mysterious
replica of the natural-born human being, roused no general scientific
interest. He asserted that Katie was physiologically complete. That she
walked, talked, expressed intelligence and feeling, that she had a
regularly beating heart and sound lungs. He further pointed out that the
personality of Katie in appearance and character differed considerably
from that of the medium, and that it was impossible to regard the
materialized form as but a phantasm of the living. A stupendous
discovery or a pitiful figment of a lunatic brain! But no flash of
lightning rent the halls of learning; Sir William Crookes' researches
into radiant matter could safely be accepted as workable intellectual
ground, but not his researches into spiritual dynamics.
And yet there was no unorthodoxy in his methods of research; he imposed
strict conditions of experimental control. There is a strange reluctance
in accepting the necessity for "mediums" in psychic manifestations. If
these things are possible, we are told, why not here, now, anywhere, in
broad daylight? Why mystifying circles, cabinets, and subdued light? Our
scoffers forget that scientific investigation always requires a medium
and method. The need of the telescope and the microscope is not
questioned, but the thought of the planchette evokes ridicule. The
practical success of wireless telegraphy depends on the use of an
adequate medium for the transmission of electricity. The most meagre
training suffices to prevent the declaration that if wireless messages
cannot be sent without apparatus they cannot be sent at all.
Notwithstanding the indifference of the majority of scientists, the
problems of spirit intercourse have proved sufficiently attractive to
stimulate a vast amount of experimentation and theorizing. The study of
mediumship has necessarily become the study of consciousness and the
occult powers of the human mind. In the centre a handful of fearless
scientists: Crookes, Wallace, Richet, Flammarion, Morselli, Baraduc,
Myers, Lombroso, Lodge, and Barrett; in the inner circle a number of
academic investigators, disdaining alike the premature proclamation of
phenomenal results and the obstinate denial of facts; in the outer
circle an ever-growing mass of souls clamouring for the crumbs of
evidence, hungry for something personal and soul-warming in our dealings
with the Divine dispensation.
The annals of psychic science--in different tongues and of different
continents--are largely devoted to the investigation of trance,
clairvoyance, clairaudience, telepathy, hypnotism, dreams, premonitions,
automatic writing, visions, and messages from the dying, multiple
personality, and all the phenomena associated with the subconscious
self. Many students have dispensed with the spirit hypothesis as an
unnecessary and embarrassing complication in a subject already
overburdened with difficulties. Spirit messages are to them examples of
the activity of the subliminal self, and a medium is a person gifted--or
cursed--with extraordinary subconscious force and lucidity.
Materializations, they argue, are produced through the effluvia of the
living and controlled by the subliminal forces of the participators in
the seance. Spirits are nothing but thought-forms. The painstaking
investigation recorded in the _Proceedings_ and _Journal of the Society
for Psychical Research_ has to a great extent been carried on by
inquirers unencumbered by any bias towards "spookery." But the theories
in elaboration of psycho-pathological vagaries and dissociation of
personality which have been substituted for the spirit hypothesis
certainly do not err on the side of intelligible explication. They have
but deepened the mystery and show the vista of new and unexplored paths
in psychic science.
Others, again, who are not unwilling to believe that the phenomena are
produced by the action of intelligences other than that of the medium,
abandon further study because of the meagreness of the intellectual
results. They have waited on the visitors from another world, notebook
in hand, plying them with careful questions intended to increase our
modest store of knowledge. The replies were unsatisfactory, commonplace,
sometimes ludicrous. Attempts to write a passable textbook on life in
the spirit world have failed lamentably. The indignation of the sorely
disappointed scientist was voiced by the late Professor Hugo
Muensterberg, of Harvard, in his _Psychology of Life_:
Thousands and thousands of spirits have appeared; the ghosts of
the greatest men have said their say, and yet the substance of it
has always been the absurdest silliness. Not one inspiring
thought has yet been transmitted by this mystical way; only the
most vulgar trivialities. It has never helped to find the truth;
it has never brought forth anything but nervous fear and
superstition.
His denunciation embraces the whole subject of spiritualistic evidence
and ends in utter pessimism--
Our belief in immortality must rest on the gossip which departed
spirits utter in dark rooms through the mouths of hypnotized
business mediums, and our deepest personality comes to light when
we scribble disconnected phrases in automatic writing. Is life
then really still worth living?
I have every sympathy with the complaint. But our psychologist forgot
that life is largely made up of trivialities, and that the spirits of
the dead, if they really wish to make themselves known to us, can do so
with greater certainty of being recognized by reminding us of events
and objects with which they are associated in our memory than by
presenting us with a corrected version of the nebular theory. The
average medium and the average gathering of inquirers are not
distinguished by any great intellectual achievement. The general
educational level may be low and the total capacity to sift and weigh
evidence may fall short of that of an undergraduates' debating society.
Yet the evidence produced may not only be entirely soul-satisfying to
the participants, but perfectly acceptable to a critic contented with
the average quality of evidence current in a court of law. It may even
be true that the evidential value rises with the number of trivialities
recorded.
And "the truth" which Professor Muensterberg sought in vain is
demonstrated to others through the same trivial evidence, as is shown by
the verdict of Alfred Russel Wallace:
Spiritualism demonstrates by direct evidence, as conclusive
as the nature of the case admits, that the so-called dead are
still alive; that our friends are often with us, though unseen,
and give direct proof of a future life--proof which so many
crave, but for want of which so many live and die in anxious
doubt. How valuable the certainty to be gained from spiritual
communications! A clergyman, a friend of mine, who witnessed
the phenomena, and who before was in a state of the greatest
depression, caused by the death of his son, said to me, "I am
now full of confidence and cheerfulness. I am a changed man."