PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
"How often have men thus feared that Nature's wonders
would be degraded by being closelier looked into! How
often, again, have they learnt that the truth was higher
than their imagination; and that it is man's work, but
never Nature's, which to be magnificent must remain
unknown!"--F. W. H. M., Introduction to _Phantasms of the
Living_
Our actual experience is strangely limited. We cannot be actually
conscious of more than a single instant of time. The momentary flash
which we call the present, the visual image of which can be made
permanent by the snap of a camera, is all of the external world that
we directly apprehended. But our real existence embraces far more
than that. The present, alone and isolated, would be meaningless to
us; we look before and after. Our memories are thronged with the
past; our anticipations range over the future; and it is in the past
and the future that we really live. It is so even with the higher
animals: they too order their lives by memory and anticipation. It is
under the influence of the future that the animal world performs even
the most trivial conscious acts. We eat, we rest, we work, all with
an eye to the immediate future. The present moment is illuminated
and made significant, is controlled and dominated, by experience of
the past and by expectation of the future. Without any idea of the
future our existence would be purely mechanical and meaningless: with
too little eye to the future--a mere living from hand to mouth--it
becomes monotonous and dull.
Hence it is right that humanity, transcending merely animal scope,
should seek to answer questions concerning its origin and destiny,
and should regard with intense interest every clue to the problems
of 'whence' and 'whither.'
It is no doubt possible, as always, to overstep the happy mean, and
by absorption in and premature concern with future interests to lose
the benefit and the training of this present life. But although we
may rightly decide to live with full vigour in the present, and do
our duty from moment to moment, yet in order to be full-flavoured and
really intelligent beings--not merely with mechanical drift following
the line of least resistance--we ought to be aware that there is a
future,--a future determined to some extent by action in the present;
and it is only reasonable that we should seek to ascertain, roughly
and approximately, what sort of future it is likely to be.
Inquiry into survival, and into the kind of experience through which
we shall all certainly have to go in a few years, is therefore
eminently sane, and may be vitally significant. It may colour all
our actions, and give a vivid meaning both to human history and to
personal experience.
If death is not extinction, then on the other side of dissolution
mental activity must continue, and must be interacting with other
mental activity. For the fact of telepathy proves that bodily
organs are not absolutely essential to communication of ideas. Mind
turns out to be able to act directly on mind, and stimulate it into
response by other than material means. Thought does not belong to the
material region: although it is able to exert an influence on that
region through mechanism provided by vitality. Yet the means whereby
it accomplishes the feat are essentially unknown, and the fact that
such interaction is possible would be strange and surprising if we
were not too much accustomed to it. It is reasonable to suppose that
the mind can be more at home, and more directly and more exuberantly
active, where the need for such interaction between psychical and
physical--or let us more safely and specifically say between mental
and material--no longer exists, when the restraining influence
of brain and nerve mechanism is removed, and when some of the
limitations connected with bodily location in space are ended.
Experience must be our guide. To shut the door on actual observation
and experiment in this particular region, because of preconceived
ideas and obstinate prejudices, is an attitude common enough, even
among scientific men; but it is an attitude markedly unscientific.
Certain people have decided that inquiry into the activities of
discarnate mind is futile; some few consider it impious; many,
perhaps wisely mistrusting their own powers, shrink from entering on
such an inquiry. But if there are any facts to be ascertained, it
must be the duty of some volunteers to try to ascertain them: and for
people having any acquaintance with scientific history to shut their
eyes to facts when definitely announced, and to forbid investigation
or report concerning them on pain of ostracism,--is to imitate a
bygone theological attitude in a spirit of unintended flattery--a
flattery which from every point of view is eccentric; and likewise to
display an extraordinary lack of humour.
ON THE POSSIBILITY OF PROGNOSTICATION
I do not wish to complicate the issue at present by introducing
the idea of prognostication or prevision, for I do not understand
how anticipation of the future is possible. It is only known to be
possible by one of two processes--
(_a_) Inference--_i.e._ deduction from a wide knowledge of the
present;
(_b_) Planning--_i.e._ the carrying out of a prearranged scheme.
And these methods must be pressed to the utmost before admitting any
other hypothesis.
As to the possibility of prevision in general, I do not dogmatise,
nor have I a theory wherewith to explain every instance; but I keep
an open mind and try to collate and contemplate the facts.
Scientific prediction is familiar enough; science is always either
historic or prophetic (as Dr. Schuster said at Manchester in
the British Association Address for 1915), "and history is only
prophecy pursued in the negative direction." This thesis is worth
illustrating:--That Eclipses can be calculated forwards or backwards
is well known. A tide-calculating machine, again, which is used
to churn out tidal detail in advance by turning a handle, could be
as easily run backwards and give past tides if they were wanted;
but always on the assumption that no catastrophe, no unforeseen
contingency, nothing outside the limits of the data, occurs to
interfere with the placid course of phenomena. There must be no
dredging or harbour bar operations, for instance, if the tide machine
is to be depended on. Free-will is not allowed for, in Astronomy or
Physics; nor any interference by living agents.
The real truth is that, except for unforeseen contingencies, past,
present, and future are welded together in a coherent whole; and
to a mind with wider purview, to whom perhaps hardly anything is
unforeseen, there may be possibilities of inference to an unsuspected
extent. Human character, and action based upon it, may be more
trustworthy and uncapricious than is usually supposed; and data
depending on humanity may be included in a completer scheme of
foreknowledge, without the exercise of any compulsion. "The past,"
says Bertrand Russell eloquently, "does not change or strive; like
Duncan, after life's fitful fever it sleeps well; what was eager
and grasping, what was petty and transitory, has faded away; the
things that were beautiful and eternal shine out of it like stars in
the night." My ignorance will not allow me to attempt to compose a
similar or rather a contrasting sentence about the future.
REFERENCE TO SPECIAL CASES
It will be observed that none of those indications or
intimations or intuitions which are referred to in a
note on page 34, Part I, if they mean anything, raise
the difficult question of prevision. In every case the
impression was felt after or at the time of the event,
though before reception of the news. The only question
of possible prevision in the present instance arises in
connexion with the 'Faunus' message quoted and discussed
in Part II. But even here nothing more than kindly
provision, in case anything untoward should happen, need
be definitely assumed. Moreover, if the concurrence in
time suggests prognostication, the fact that a formidable
attempt to advance the English Front at the Ypres salient
was probably in prospect in August 1915, though not known
to ordinary people in England, and not fully carried
out till well on in September, must have been within
human knowledge; and so would have to be considered
telepathically accessible, if that hypothesis is
considered preferable to the admission of what Tennyson
speaks of as--
"Such refraction of events As often rises ere they rise."
Prognostication can hardly be part of the evidence for
survival. The two things are not essential to each other;
they hardly appear to be connected. But one knows too
little about the whole thing to be sure even of this, and
I decline to take the responsibility for suppressing any
of the facts. I know that Mr. Myers used to express an
opinion that certain kinds of prevision would constitute
clear and satisfactory evidence of something supernormal,
and so attract attention; though the establishment of
such a possibility might tend to suggest a kind of higher
knowledge, not far short of what might be popularly
called omniscience, rather than of merely human survival.