A friend of mine tells me that psychical articles are always interesting, “because so many people die and go somewhere”. Presumably, those who remain here feel a natural curiosity as to where the departed have gone, partly for the latter’s sake, and partly because they themselves would like to know, so that they will know what to expect when their own time comes.

The teaching of religion on this point is admittedly either rather vague, or, if definite—as with the Augustinian theology—no longer credible. We have progressed in sensitiveness and humanity, and can no longer believe that a good God will inflict everlasting torment in a lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, even on the most wicked of His creatures. Still less can we believe in such punishment being inflicted for the “sin of unbelief”, for we now know well enough that “belief”, being the net outcome of our total experience and character, is not under the control of the will. Consequently, a God who punished creatures for not believing, when He knew all the time that He had so constructed most of them that they could not believe, would be either wicked or insane. This inability to believe “to order” is plainly perceived if we reflect on what our feelings would be if a Mohammedan implored us to believe in Allah and in Allah’s Prophet, as the only way of salvation. We should decline, saying perhaps that we knew better; but the real reason of our disbelief would not lie in our knowledge but in our general makeup. We could not believe in Mohammedanism if we tried. We have grown up in a different climate, and have taken a different form.

But, putting aside the vindictive hell-god of Augustine, Tertullian, Calvin, and the rest—for not even an earthly father would punish a child for ever—and taking Christianity at its best, we do not find any very specific eschatological teaching. And this very absence is a good feature. If a man tries to be good merely in order to avoid hell and gain heaven—in other words, because it will pay—his goodness is not much of a credit to him. It is only selfishness of a far-sighted kind. Religion, on the other hand, when at its best, seeks to influence character, not by threats and promises, but by encouraging moods and attitudes and habits of thought from which good actions will flow spontaneously, without any profit-and-loss calculations. Modern Christianity is therefore perhaps right in touching much more lightly on the future state than was customary in earlier centuries.

Nevertheless, we cannot repress a little curiosity. People die and go somewhere, as my friend says. Where do they go? Modern Religion having avoided definite answer, we turn to Science. And Science, much as it would surprise such fine old gladiators as Huxley and Tyndall to hear it—has an answer, and an affirmative one.

Psychical research has, in my opinion, brought together a mass of evidence strong enough to justify the following conclusions. I do not say they are “proved.” You cannot “prove” that the earth is round, unless your hearer will at least study the evidence. You cannot even prove to him that 2 plus 2 makes 4, if he refuses to add. Therefore I do not say anything about proof. I say only that after many years of careful study and investigation I am of opinion that the evidence justifies the conclusions.

(1) Telepathy is a fact. A mind may become aware of something that is passing in another mind at a distance, by means other than the normal sensory channels. The “how” of the communication is entirely unknown. The analogy of wireless telegraphy of course suggests itself, but is misleading. The ether-waves employed in wireless telegraphy are physical pulses which obey the law of inverse squares; telepathy shows no conformity with that law, and has not been shown to be an affair of physical waves at all. I believe that it is not a physical process; that it occurs in the spiritual world, between mind and mind, not primarily between brain and brain. And, if so—if mind can communicate with mind independently of brain—the theory of materialism at least is exploded. If mind can act independently of brain, mind may go on existing after brain dies.

(2) Communications, purporting to emanate from departed spirits, are sometimes so strikingly evidential that it is scientifically justifiable to assume the agency of a discarnate mind. For example, in a case known to me, a “spirit” communicating through a non-professional medium—a lady of means and position—referred to a recipe for pomatum which the communicator said she had written in her recipe book. No one knew anything about it; but, on hunting up the book, the deceased lady’s daughters found a recipe for Dr Somebody’s pomade, which their mother had evidently written shortly before her death. They confirmed that “pomatum” was the word which their mother used. The points to be noted are: That the medium was not a professional; that no one who knows her has doubted her integrity; that she was not acquainted with either the deceased lady or her daughters; that the knowledge shown was not possessed by any living (incarnate) mind, and is therefore not explainable by telepathy; and, finally, that the case was watched and reported on by one of our ablest investigators—a lecturer at Newnham College—who found no flaw in the evidence.[1] I repeat that I do not claim this to be “proof”. I give it merely as an illustration, and will give a few more detailed cases in a later chapter. For the present I must be content to say that the mass of evidence known to me justifies the belief that minds survive what we call death.

The question then arises: What is the nature of the after life? And here we are faced with great difficulties. We can ask the returning spirits, but we cannot verify their statements. If my uncle John Smith purports to communicate, I can test his identity by asking him to tell me intimate family details which I can verify by asking his widow, who still lives; but I cannot thus check his statements about his spiritual surroundings. Still, if he has proved his identity—particularly if telepathy seems excluded—we may perhaps feel fairly safe in accepting his other statements as true, or at least in admitting their possible truth. And of course we can obtain the statements of many different spirits, and can compare them. This has been done. The result is a striking amount of uniformity. The various spirits agree, on the main points.

First of all, they are surprisingly unorthodox! They tell of no heaven or hell of the traditional kind. There is no sudden ascent into unalloyed and eternal bliss for the good—who, as Jesus pointed out, are not wholly good—and no sudden plunge into eternal fires for the bad—who, similarly, are not unqualifiedly bad. There is much of bad in the best of us, and much of good in the worst of us. Accordingly, the released soul finds itself not very different from what it was while in the flesh. It has passed into a higher class of the universal school—that is all. Tennyson has the idea exactly:

I have said that this view is unorthodox, and so it is, if compared with the orthodoxy of Calvin or Edwards or Tertullian. But it is pleasant to find that orthodoxy to-day is a different thing, and that the Tennysonian notion is backed up in high quarters. The Bishopric of London is the highest ecclesiastical office in England, after the Archbishoprics of Canterbury and York, and we find the present Bishop of London (Dr Winnington-Ingram) speaking as follows:

“Is there anything definite about death in the Bible? I believe there is. I think if you follow me, you will find there are six things revealed to us about life after death. The first is that the man is the same man. Instead of death being the end of him, he is exactly the same five minutes after death as five minutes before death, except having gone through one more experience in life. In the second place the character grows after death; there is progress. As it grows in life so it grows after death. A third thing is, we have memory. ‘Son, remember’, that is what was said to Dives in the other world. Memory for places and people. We shall remember everything after death. And with memory there will be recognition; we shall know one another. Husband and wife, parents and children. Sixthly, we still take great interest in the world we have left”.

The good Bishop gets all this out of the Bible, and quite rightly. We hope no heresy-hunter will accuse him of “selecting” his texts and ignoring the hell-fire ones.

So far as earth-language can go, the foregoing represents the probable truth regarding the after life. If we inquire for details, we shall get nothing very satisfactory. If we ask a spirit concerning what he does—how he occupies himself—he will either say he “cannot explain so that you will understand” or will tell about living in houses, going to lectures, teaching children, and the like. All this is obviously symbolical. Any communications that a discarnate entity can send must, to be intelligible to us, be in human earth-language; and this language is based on sense-experience. After death, experience is different, for we no longer have the same bodily senses—eyes, ears, etc.: consequently no explanation of the nature of spiritual existence can be more than approximately true; yet such expressions as living in houses, going to lectures, and the like, may be as near the truth as earth-language can get. If a bird tried to describe air-life to a fish, the best it could do would be to say it is something like water-life, but there is more light, more ease of movement, more detail, more things of interest and beauty. Of the wonders of sound—skylark’s song, human choruses, instrumental symphonies—no idea could be conveyed to the fish. Probably our friends in the next stage of existence have, in addition to the experiences which they can partly describe, other experiences of which they can give us absolutely no idea. They have been promoted. Their interests and activities have become wider, their joys greater. Yet they are the “same” souls, as the butterfly is the “same” as the chrysalis from which it has arisen. But to know exactly what it feels like to be a butterfly, the caterpillar and chrysalis have to wait Nature’s time. So must we.