Spiritualism and Psychical Research are to the fore just now, and there is much newspaper and vocal discussion, based for the most part on ignorance, particularly as regards the violent attackers of these things. It is desirable that exact knowledge of the subject should become more general, and in a recent volume I have tried to review the whole subject impartially.[2]

But there are many who in these stressful days have no time for even one volume on this kind of thing, and for them, or such of them as may read this, I have tried in the present article to give an idea of what psychical research is, on the spiritualistic side, omitting the medical side which concerns itself with suggestive therapeutics. The article was first written as a paper which was read before a society of clergy in Bradford, whose request for it was a significant and pleasing indication that ministers are aware of the importance of the subject. They are realising that psychical research is a powerful support to religious faith, and that its results provide comfort for the bereaved. We live in a scientific age, and the sorrowing heart asks for more than a text and an assurance that it is God’s will and all for the best; it asks whether it is a fact that the departed one still lives and knows and loves, whether it is well with him, and whether there will be reunion “over there”. Psychical research enables us to answer these questions in the affirmative. Science is now backing up religion, and is providing ministers with by far the best weapon against materialism and so-called rationalism. It meets these negative ’isms on their own ground, and does not need to take cover under intuition or personal religious experience, which are convincing only to the experient. I am not belittling these; I am only saying that the phenomenal evidence is more potent for the scientific type of mind, and that a knowledge of this evidence is useful to those who are defending religion.

TELEPATHY

It is found by experiment that ideas can be communicated from mind to mind through channels other than the known sensory ones. Professor Gilbert Murray of Oxford, probably the most famous Greek scholar in this country, recently carried out some interesting experiments of this kind in his own family. He would go into another room, leaving his wife and daughter to decide on something which they would try to communicate to him on his return. They chose the most absurd and unlikely things, but in a large number of cases Professor Murray, by making his mind as passive as possible and saying the first thing that came into his head, was able to reproduce with startling accuracy the idea they had in mind. For instance, they thought of Savonarola at Florence and the people burning their clothes and pictures and valuables. Says Professor Murray: “I first felt ‘This is Italy’, then, ‘this is not modern’; and then hesitated, when accidentally a small tarry bit of coal tumbled out of the fire. I smelt oil or paint burning and so got the whole scene. It seems as though here some subconscious impression, struggling up towards consciousness, caught hold of the burning coal as a means of getting through”.[3] On another occasion they thought of “Grandfather at the Harrow and Winchester cricket match, dropping hot cigar-ash on Miss Thompson’s parasol.” Professor Murray’s guess, reported verbatim, was: “Why, this is grandfather! He’s at a cricket match—why it’s absurd: he seems to be dropping ashes on a lady’s parasol.” Another time they thought of a scene in a book of Strindberg’s which Professor Murray had not read: a poor, old, cross, disappointed schoolmaster eating crabs for lunch at a restaurant, and insisting on having female crabs. Professor Murray says: “I got the atmosphere, the man, the lunch in the restaurant on crabs, and thought I had finished, when my daughter asked: ‘What kind of crabs?’ I felt rather impatient and said: ‘Oh, Lord, I don’t know: female crabs.’ That is, the response to the question came automatically, with no preparation, while I thought I could not give it. I may add that I had never before heard of there being any inequality between the sexes among crabs, regarded as food.”

This kind of evidence is not the best, because the thoughts of members of one family run more or less in similar grooves; though the experimenters recognised this and chose unlikely things purposely. Other investigators have sometimes used cards, drawing one at random from a shuffled pack, looking at it, and the percipient then trying to say what it is. The chance of success is of course one in fifty-two, and the amount of success which we might expect by chance in any series can be mathematically determined. In one series of successful experiments conducted by Sir Oliver Lodge the odds against an explanation by chance alone were about ten millions to one. In ordinary matters this would be regarded as proof.

Other experiments of the same general character have been carried out by Sir William Barrett, Professor Sidgwick, and others, and details may be found in the S.P.R. Proceedings. In most cases the idea comes into the mind as an impression, but if the percipient is a good visualiser it is sometimes seen almost externalised as a hallucination. This leads us to the next step.

If it is possible to convey to another mind—sometimes so vividly that the thing is almost seen as if out there in space—an image of scenes thought about, may it not be possible to convey an image of oneself? This idea occurred to a gentleman referred to by Myers as Mr S.H.B. in his book Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death. Mr S.H.B., whom I know by correspondence and whose brother I have known personally for many years, decided that he would try to make himself visible to two young ladies whom he knew, and he concentrated his mind on the effort just before going to bed. He willed to show himself in their room at one o’clock in the morning. The distance from his house to theirs was three miles. Next time he saw them, a few days later, they told him they had had a great fright: the elder sister had seen Mr B.’s apparition, had screamed and awakened her little sister, who also saw him. The time was one o’clock in the morning. They told him this before he said anything about his experiment, and they had no reason to expect that he would try anything of the kind. Both Mr B. and his brother are keen and successful business men; Mr S.H.B. is now retired, his brother is still the head of a large firm. I mention this because some critics seem to have a notion that psychical researchers are a crowd of long-haired poets or semi-lunatic cranks.

PHANTASMS OF THE DEAD

Now if a living man can by force of will project a telepathic phantasm of himself, it is reasonable to suppose that a dead man can do the same, if the so-called dead man still exists; for telepathy does not seem to be a physical process of ether-waves, does not conform to the law of inverse squares or propagate itself in all directions as physical forces do. It seems to occur in the mental world, between mind and mind rather than between brain and brain. Consequently, telepathy from the dead is likely to be easier than from the living, for they over there are not clogged with the fleshly body. Certainly, however they may be explained, there are many cases of the apparition of a deceased person. The difficulty about accepting the evidentiality of some of them is that if the percipient knew that the person appearing was dead, the apparition may be merely a subjective hallucination. And even if the death was not known, it might be surmised, and the apparition might be the result of expectancy if the person appearing was known to be ill or in danger. But there are some cases in which a certain amount of detail is conveyed, rendering a subjective explanation not very probable. For instance, Captain Colt had a vision of his brother, in a kneeling position, with a bullet wound in his right temple. He described the vision to several people in the house before any news came, so the case does not rest on his word alone. In due time information arrived that his brother had been killed. He had been shot through the right temple, had fallen among a heap of others, and was found in a kneeling position. In his pocket was a letter from Capt. Colt asking him, if anything happened to him, to make his presence known in the room in which as a matter of fact the apparition was seen. The vision, it was found, occurred a few hours after the death. Mr Myers gives full details in Human Personality. In this case the bullet-wound and the kneeling position are points of correct detail which are hardly explicable on a subjective theory. The best sceptical theory is that the incident was telepathic, the wounded brother sending out his telepathic message after being shot. This is possible, but hardly probable; for death in the case of a bullet-wound through the temple must be almost instantaneous.

Spontaneous cases of this kind and of this degree of evidentiality are rare, but there is a large mass of evidence of the same general character. The S.P.R. once carried out an extensive inquiry, receiving answers from 17,000 people, and tabulating the results in a volume of the Proceedings. The final conclusion, expressed in weighed and guarded words, was that “Between deaths and apparitions of the dying person a connexion exists which is not due to chance alone”. This was signed, among other members of the Committee, by Professor Sidgwick, whom Professor James once called “the most exasperatingly critical mind in England”. Some of the apparitions occur before the person’s actual death, but usually in such cases he is already unconscious and the spirit practically free. As to those occurring after, the main difficulty about admitting them as proof of survival is, as just said, the possibility that although they may appear after the death of the person, the telepathic impulse may have been sent out before, and may have remained latent for some time in the mind of the percipient. This has been carefully considered by investigators, and in many cases there are reasons for regarding it as an insufficient theory. On the whole, the evidence tends more and more to suggest that in at least some instances these happenings are due to the agency of a discarnate mind. The proof is cumulative, and no single case can be crucial. There is no coerciveness about it, and each can invent his own hypothesis. But those who have considered the subject most carefully have come to the provisional conclusion that the agency of the so-called dead is in some cases a reasonable, and indeed the most reasonable, supposition. There are of course many narratives of this kind in the Bible,[4] the Lives of the Saints, and other literature, but these records, being of pre-scientific date, and lacking the corroborative testimony which we now require, are of a lower order of evidentiality. The new evidence, however, is throwing a backward light on many of these ancient stories, and making them credible once more. To me personally, the Bible is a much more living book than it used to be. I believe that many things in it which I used to regard as myths may have been facts.

NORMAL CLAIRVOYANCE

There are instances, then, of people occasionally having visions which seem to be in some way caused by departed persons. Sometimes the percipient has only one experience of the kind in his life; more often he has several, for this seeing power is somehow temperamental—a sort of gift, like the alleged second sight of the Highlander. It was well known to St Paul, as his reference to “discerning of spirits” shows (1Cor.,xii). With some people the experience is fairly common. And in a very few persons the gift is so strong that it is to some extent under control. I say to some extent, and I wish to use words very carefully and to have them understood very clearly at this point. I know several people, who by putting themselves into a passive and receptive condition, but without any trance state, can generally get evidential messages from somewhere; that is, messages embodying facts which the sensitive did not normally know. And some of this matter seems to be due to telepathy from the dead. But it cannot be done at will. I believe that professional mediums who sit for all comers for a fee are often, and indeed generally, quite honest people, but that they cannot distinguish between their own imaginations and what really comes through. Professor Murray, when saying what came into his head, did not know whether it was right or not; that is, he did not know, until he was told, whether he had really got the thing telepathically or whether it was an idea thrown up by his own imagination. So with professional mediums. They give out the ideas that come to them, but as a rule they cannot distinguish; and, the power not being entirely under control, there is often a large mixture of their own imagination.

I have, however, the good fortune to be acquainted with a sensitive who has the unusual power of being able to distinguish; and this is a great advantage, rendering verbatim note-taking much easier, and eliminating any necessity for balancing hits against misses. If nothing comes, he sits silent or talks ordinarily. If he gets anything, it is practically always correct. The amount of his success varies, and he will not sit for people in general. I know many people who have asked him to visit them, offering handsome payment, but he usually declines. He says he cannot do it to order, and would be upset if he failed and caused disappointment. He comes to me, however, because I understand and always tell him that he need not worry if he gets nothing. In fact the meeting is regarded as a social call and not as a sÉance. We talk for a while about ordinary things, and in half-an-hour or so, if the medium can get his mind placid enough and is in good trim generally, he will begin to see and describe spirits present, often getting their names and all sorts of details. These come for the most part in flashes, and I take down every word he says, in shorthand, without giving any help or indication as to whether he is right or wrong. Sometimes in a whole afternoon he will have only one or two of these gleams, and on one occasion he got nothing. With conditions at their best he will talk almost continuously for an hour, the flashes following each other closely; and sometimes a spirit will remain visible for several minutes, moving about the room. About a dozen of these interviews are described in detail in my book Psychical Investigations, and other investigations of the same sensitive by two very able friends of mine in another town are described in New Evidences in Psychical Research.

Perhaps one or two illustrative incidents may make things clearer.

The first time Wilkinson came to see me he said, in the middle of ordinary talk, that he saw with me the form of a woman who looked about fifty-four, and whom he described, saying further that her name was Mary. Taking up a piece of paper and a pencil, he wrote in an abstracted manner the words “Roundfield Place”. He looked at it, without reading it aloud, then said: “That will be a house”, and proceeded to write something else. I got up to look, and found “Roundfield Place. Yes” (the “Yes” written in answer to his remark “That will be a house”) and a signature “Mary”. Now it happens that my mother’s name was Mary, that the description applied to her, and that she died, in 1886, at Roundfield Place, not the house to which Wilkinson came, whither we removed in 1897. Other similar things were said, about other deceased relatives, all true.

In this kind of thing it is our duty to stick to known causes before admitting unknown, and my first supposition was that Wilkinson had primed himself with information. He could have ascertained most of the things by local inquiry, though it would not be very easy, for my mother had been dead twenty-two years, and only middle-aged or elderly people would remember her. Further interviews with him, however, soon carried me beyond the fraud theory—for holding which I now apologise to him, feeling considerably ashamed—for he gave me messages from many people whose association with me I feel sure he did not know, and also some family matter of a very private kind, characteristic of the spirit who purported to be communicating, but known to only four living people. I then fell back on telepathy, assuming that the medium was reading my mind. But, pursuing my investigations, I received information which I did not know but which turned out true. For example, Wilkinson on one occasion described a Ruth and Jacob Robertshaw, giving details about them and saying that Ruth had a very spiritual appearance, with a sort of radiance about her, indicating that she had been a very good woman, and giving other particulars. All this meant nothing to me, for the names were unknown. But, as I had on some other occasions found that spirits were described who were relatives of my last visitor, I asked the person who had last entered the room—except inhabitants of the house—whether she had known people of these names. It turned out that they were connexions of hers with whom she had been in close touch during life, and everything said by the medium was correct. Now in the first place this incident ruled out fraud, for Miss North’s visit had occurred three days before, and Wilkinson would have had to have detectives watching both doors of my house, from first thing in the morning to the last thing at night, to find out who my last visitor had been; or he would have had to be in league with a servant or a neighbour, and even thus could hardly have succeeded, for servants are sometimes out—moreover, similar things have happened during the rÉgime of different servants—and neighbours could not easily watch both doors during dark winter evenings. Further, our neighbours are friends of ours, non-spiritualists, and not acquainted with Wilkinson. And, after getting to know who my last visitor was, information about her deceased relatives would have had to be hunted up. I could give further reasons for believing that fraud was an untenable hypothesis, but I must be brief. What, next, about telepathy? Well, I had no conscious knowledge of these people, so the medium could not have got his information from my conscious mind. It is possible to assume that I knew it subliminally, and that the medium abstracted it from those hidden levels of my mind. This is a guess, but a legitimate guess. It is the guess that Miss Dougall (author of Pro Christo et Ecclesia) makes in criticising this very incident in the book of essays called Immortality, by Canon Streeter and others. She suggests that on the occasion of Miss North’s visit my mind had photographed the contents of hers, without my knowing it, and that the medium developed the photograph and read off the required information. It may be so, but it seems to me far-fetched. Miss Dougall, I may add, is a member of the S.P.R., and her criticism is instructed criticism, worthy of careful attention. But I cannot accept her theory, which seems to me more wonderful and to require more credulity than the spirit theory. For it is to be observed that the assumed mind-reading is of a character quite different from anything that has been experimentally established. In telepathic experiments, like those of Professor Murray, some incarnate person is trying to communicate the thought. This is not the case in my sittings with Wilkinson. I am not trying to communicate anything to him; very much the contrary. And I do not find, after long and careful observation, any parallelism between what he says and what I happen to be thinking about. There is, in short, no evidence for the supposition that my mind is read. The evidence points unmistakably to discarnate agency—telepathy from the dead.

TRANCE

The sort of thing I have described is usually known as normal clairvoyance, because the sensitive is in a normal state, not in trance. But there is a further stage, into which, indeed, Mr Wilkinson sometimes passes, in which there is a change of personality, and a spirit purports to speak or write with the medium’s organs. There is nothing weird or uncanny in the procedure, nothing deathly or coma-like; the medium usually sits up and even walks about, though some trance mediums have to sit still and keep their eyes closed. I have had visits from many trance mediums; and most of them have failed to get anything evidential—which at least suggests their honesty, for they could easily have obtained some information about my deceased relatives. But the whole matter of trance control is a thorny problem. Indubitably, evidence of supernormal faculty is sometimes given in this state, but we of the S.P.R. are divided as to what the control really is. Some think it is a spirit, as claimed; others think it is a secondary personality of the medium, as in the remarkable case of split personality described in Dr Morton Prince’s book The Dissociation of a Personality. Mrs Sidgwick, widow of the Professor and sister of Mr A.J. Balfour, has made a careful psychological study of the case of Mrs Piper, given in 657 pages of Proceedings, vol.28, and her conclusion is that though telepathy from the dead is probably shown, and certainly some kind of supernormality, the controls themselves are dream-fragments of the medium’s mind. I am not qualified to pronounce an opinion on Mrs Piper, not having met her; but as to the trance mediums I have experimented with, I incline to agree with Mrs Sidgwick. I think it may be a dodge of the subliminal to get the over-anxious normal consciousness temporarily out of the way. But this is a psychological detail, and a difficult one, requiring much further study. From the psychical research point of view Mrs Piper’s case may be studied in Proceedings, vols. 6, 8, 13, 16, and a few of the later ones, or some idea of it can be got from Sir Oliver Lodge’s Survival of Man. All the investigators were convinced of either telepathy or something more. Fraud was excluded by introducing sitters anonymously, Dr Hodgson himself introducing over 150 different people in this way, and taking careful notes. I have experimented similarly with Wilkinson, introducing people from distant places such as Middlesex and Northumberland as well as from towns nearer home, either under false names or with no names at all, and being present myself to take notes. Friends of mine have done the same thing. We were unanimously sceptical to start with, probably more sceptical than most of those who will read this paper, for we disbelieved in survival itself. We are now convinced that the fraud theory is out of the question, that at the very least a complicated theory of mind-reading—including the reading of the minds of distant and unknown persons—must be assumed if the theory of survival and communication is to be avoided.

Of late years there has been a great development in automatic writing among quite non-professional mediums—private people who are members of the S.P.R., as for instance the late Mrs Verrall, Classical Lecturer at Newnham—and some noteworthy evidence has been obtained. But it is too complex even to summarise here. It seems to be the work of Gurney, Hodgson, Myers, and Sidgwick, on the other side, for different messages have come through different sensitives, making sense when put together, and sense characteristic of these departed leaders. This had not been thought of, so far as we know, by any living person, and it seems to eliminate telepathy from the living, for the messages are not understood until the bits are pieced together. The evidence fills several volumes of our Proceedings, and students should read them carefully.

There are many other kinds of mediumship or psychic faculty, and many volumes are in existence on each phase; the library of the London Spiritualist Alliance contains about 3,000. I have read about 500 of them, and would not recommend anyone else to do the same. There is a great deal of rubbish among them, though they are not all rubbish. The reading I recommend is the Proceedings of the S.P.R., the writings of Sir William Barrett, Sir Oliver Lodge, Dr W.J. Crawford, and, above all, the great work of F.W.H. Myers, Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death, in the original two-volume edition. The abridged one-volume edition omits many of the illustrative cases. I do not think that conviction is to be achieved by mere reading; books would never have convinced me. But careful reading is perhaps sufficient to lead a fairly tolerant mind to realise that there is something here which must not be dismissed off-hand; something which is worthy of investigation. That is as much as we expect. Sir Oliver Lodge often says that we shall do well if we succeed, in this generation, in modifying the psychological climate, creating an atmosphere more favourable to unprejudiced examination of the facts. We have no desire for revolutions; we want knowledge to grow slowly and surely. The S.P.R. has been in existence only thirty-seven years, and the subject is in its scientific infancy. Take the beginnings of any one science—say, Chemistry, dating it somewhat arbitrarily from Priestley or Dalton—and note what a little way discovery had gone in a like period. With increased numbers of workers the pace increases; but in every science the progress at first must be slow. In psychical research a good start has been made, and the investigators seem to be certainly on the track of something, whether their inferences are right in every detail or not. And every advance in science has extended our conceptions of this wonderful universe. The heavens declare the glory of God in a tremendously larger way than they did in the days of the old Ptolemaic astronomy, though man foolishly fought the Copernican idea because it seemed to lessen our dignity by making our earth a speck on the scale of creation instead of the central body thereof. So with all other phenomena, physical and psychical. We may be sure that all discovery will be real revelation. With this faith—a well-grounded faith—we need not fear advance.

RECENT CRITICISM

I add a few words, rather against my inclination, about recent criticism of a kind which is hardly worthy that name. Two books, one by Dr Mercier and one by Mr Edward Clodd, have had a certain popularity, mainly because they attacked, with a certain smartness of phrase, the book of a greater man. “Raymond” was being widely read and talked about, and its popularity secured some success for these hostile books. Curiously enough, even some of the clergy have quoted approvingly some of the arguments of these rationalists, no doubt much to the glee of Mr Clodd in particular. Now I have said before that instructed criticism is always welcome, for we may hope to learn something from it. But Dr Mercier, on his own statement, came new to the subject at the age of sixty-four, read Raymond and The Survival of Man, and immediately sat down to write a flippant book the publication of which we hope he now regrets. Not only had he never investigated for himself, but he was also ignorant of the work of the S.P.R.

As to Mr Clodd, his book is better-informed, though frequently unfair. For instance, in his references to me he is very careful to avoid any consideration of the strong parts of my case. Like the famous theological professor, he looks the difficulties boldly in the face—not very boldly—and passes on, without speaking to them. He has obviously read fairly widely, but where he does criticise in detail, he always seizes on weak points and quietly ignores the strong ones. As to personal investigation he is almost entirely without experience. He says he attended a sÉance about fifty years ago, but has forgotten most of what happened! He says this, with a momentary lapse from his usual cleverness—for it gives away his case—in a letter to the April (1918) International Psychic Gazette. In other words, he poses as an authority on a branch of science of which he has no first-hand knowledge. He criticises and dismisses airily the opinions and investigations of those who have worked at the subject for ten, twenty, thirty, or forty years; for it is over forty years since Sir William Barrett brought his experiments in telepathy before the British Association. Mr Clodd is a Rationalist, and knows without investigation that these things cannot be. He is as À prioristic as a medieval Schoolman, in spite of his scientific pose. And his prejudices unfortunately prevent him from seeking and studying the facts which might lead him to other conclusions.

I have not said anything about the S.P.R. itself, but may here add a few remarks. Says its official leaflet: “The aim of the Society is to approach these various problems without prejudice or prepossession of any kind, and in the same spirit of exact and unimpassioned inquiry which has enabled Science to solve so many problems, once not less obscure nor less hotly debated.… Membership of the Society does not imply the acceptance of any particular explanation of the phenomena investigated, nor any belief as to the operation, in the physical world, of forces other than those recognised by Physical Science”. In other words, the Society has no creed, except that the subject is worth investigating.

The Society has well over 1,000 members, and is growing steadily. It includes many famous men in all walks of life, and indeed its membership list has been said to contain more well-known names than any other scientific society except the Royal Society itself. Among the Vice-presidents are the Right Honourables A.J. and G.W. Balfour, Sir William Barrett, Sir Oliver Lodge, the late Bishop Boyd-Carpenter and the late Sir William Crookes. The President for the current year is Lord Rayleigh, probably the greatest mathematical physicist now living.[5] The President of the Royal Society (Sir J.J. Thomson) is a member, also Professor Henri Bergson of Paris, Dr L.P. Jacks (editor of The Hibbert Journal) and innumerable other scientists and scholars whose names are known to everyone.

Finally let me assure you that the S.P.R. is so conservative and suspicious that admission is almost as difficult to obtain as membership of a high-class London club. It is extremely anxious to keep out cranks and emotional people of all sorts, and it requires any applicant to be vouched for as suitable by two existing members; and each application is separately considered by the Council. The result is a level-headed lot of members, and the maintenance of a sane and scientific attitude and management.

From the philosophic side it is sometimes urged that we cannot reason from the phenomenal to the noumenal, from the world of appearance to the world of reality; that consequently nothing happening in the material world can prove the existence of a spiritual one. But this is easily answered. We cheerfully agree, with Kant, that a spiritual world cannot be proved coercively and in such knock-down fashion that belief cannot be avoided. But it can be proved in the same way and to the same extent as many other things which we believe and find ourselves justified in believing. For instance, atoms and electrons and the Ether of Space are not phenomenal; no one has ever seen or heard or felt or smelt them; but we infer their real existence from the behaviour of the matter which does affect our senses. Again: we cannot prove to ourselves that other human beings exist, or even that an external world exists; my experience may be a huge subjective hallucination. If I were reading this paper I should not be able to prove to myself that any other mind was present. Looking around, I should receive certain impressions—sensations of sight—and I should call certain aggregations of these the physical bodies of beings like myself. From the similarity of their structure and behaviour to the structure and behaviour of my own body, I should infer that they have got minds somehow associated with them, as my mind is associated with my body. But you could not prove it to me. If you got angry with my obstinacy, and knocked me down, I should experience painful sensations, but the existence of a mind external to me—and an angry one—would still be a matter of inference only. But we find that the inference is justified. We find that it “works,” and social life is possible. For the purposes, then, both of science and of ordinary life, we do reason from phenomenon to noumenon, from appearance to reality, from attribute to substance; and our reasoning justifies itself. I affirm, therefore, that the kind of proof which we as psychical researchers put forward for the existence of and communication from discarnate minds, is philosophically the same kind as the proof we have of the existence of incarnate minds. If a short and clear exposition of the point is required, free from any psychical-research bias, I may refer inquirers to the chapter on the Psychological Theory of an External World in J.S. Mill’s Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy. Our evidence may be insufficient to justify belief—in the opinion of many, it is—and I blame no one for disbelieving; but it is evidence. And if it sufficiently accumulates and improves in quality, it may amount to a degree of proof at least comparable with that concerning electrons, which are now accepted as real by all physicists.

One or two difficulties may here be briefly referred to:

1. The appearance in Mrs Piper’s script of such obvious dream-stuff as messages from Homer, Ulysses, and Telemachus! These are of course absurdities, and no psychical researcher regards them as anything else. But they are no more absurd than many of our own dreams, and we must remember that automatic writing comes from the dream-strata of the medium’s mind, these strata seeming to lie between our normal consciousness and the spiritual world. Consequently messages which really seem to come from beyond: i.e., which are evidential—are often mixed with subliminal matter from the medium’s mind. As a communicator once said: “The medium’s dreams get in my way.” All this has to be allowed for, but in good mediums there is not much of it. In my friend Wilkinson’s case there is none, for he can distinguish. In Mrs Piper’s case there is a little, but it does not invalidate the huge mass of real evidence that has come. And it at least testifies to her honesty, for no medium would pretend to get messages from people whom everyone knows to be mythical—messages which are indeed comic and therefore enable opponents to score points with the general public by obvious witticisms.

Huxley is often referred to, as having wisely declined to investigate, knowing beforehand that it was all nonsense. Huxley was busy with his own work, and, believing À priori that alleged psychical phenomena were either fraud or self-delusion, naturally declined to give any time to them. We need not regret his decision, for he was doing work that was more important than psychical investigation would have been, just then. But he was wrong in his À priori belief, or rather unbelief. He had never seen any of these phenomena, but that did not prove that they did not happen. A native of mid-Africa may never have seen snow, but that does not prove that no snow exists.

And it happens that the Dialectical Society went on with its task, appointing committees which investigated without any paid medium. The majority of the investigators were utterly sceptical at first; they were practically all convinced at the finish. I state this merely as a fact, not as a specially important fact; for I find that beginners, when suddenly faced with striking phenomena, are liable to go from the extreme of unbelief to an extreme of belief. When one’s materialistic scheme is exploded, there seems no criterion left, and anything may happen. It usually takes an investigator a year or two to adjust himself and to learn to follow the evidence and not overshoot it.

Some people say: “But if communication is possible, why cannot I communicate direct with my own departed loved ones?” The question is seen on reflection, however, to be easily answered. In the first place, we cannot communicate direct even with our friends in the next town; we have to get the help of postmen or telegraph clerks and the like. It is therefore not at all surprising that an intermediary is needed when they are removed further from our conditions. Probably all of us have germs of psychic faculty—though I have not yet discovered any in myself—somewhat as we can all play or sing a little; but the Paderewskis and Carusos are few. Similarly with psychic faculty. Few have enough of it to communicate for themselves. On the other hand, it is much commoner than Carusos are; but of course, when it occurs in a private person, that person does not advertise the fact. Outsiders would either scoff, or say “lunacy”, or crowd round asking for “sittings”, out of curiosity. Consequently only sympathetic intimates are told, or people who, like myself, are known to be sympathetic investigators. Some of the most remarkable sensitives in England at the present day are of this private kind—people of education and position—and they are not even spiritualists in the sense of belonging to the spiritualist sect. They are of various religious persuasions, and belong mostly to rather orthodox bodies. There is nothing of the crank about them; they are not Theosophists or Christian Scientists or adherents of any other of what the sergeant called “fancy religions.” I may say that the most extraordinary experiences I have ever had have been with a psychic of this kind. I have not alluded to these experiences in my paper, because the matter is private. But I just mention these things because I find that psychic faculties are more common than I once thought, and a sympathetic minister could probably hear of private cases if he let his sympathy and interest be known. But of course, if he is known to have condemned the whole thing as Satanic—as Father Bernard Vaughan does—or as lunacy, people with psychic experiences will take very good care not to tell him about them.

As to details about the nature of the after-life, I have no dogmatic opinions to offer. Probably it is impossible for those over there to describe their experience adequately, in our earthly terms. Such information as we get must be largely symbolical, as when mediums describe a specially good deceased person as surrounded with radiance. I have several times noticed that the relative “brightness” or “radiance” of a spirit, as described by the medium, has correctly indicated that spirit’s character, though the medium had no normal knowledge whatever of either the person’s character or even existence. But though our information must probably be mainly symbolical, I think we are justified in believing that we begin the next stage pretty nearly where we leave off here. There is no sudden jump to unalloyed bliss for even such good people as you, no sudden plunge to everlasting woe even for sinners like me. This, I admit, is not in accordance with what I used to hear from the pulpit twenty years ago. But it agrees with what I read now of the opinions of such men as the Bishop of London and Dr J.D. Jones; and other clerical writers, such as Canon Storr in his Christianity and Immortality and Dr Paterson Smyth in his excellent Gospel of the Hereafter take the same view. Our modern moral sense refuses to believe that a good God will sentence any creature to everlasting pain; and although it may be contended that man has free-will and is therefore the arbiter of his own fate, it still remains that God gave him that freedom, and therefore still bears the ultimate responsibility. To retain belief in a God who can be loved and worshipped, I at least must disbelieve in everlasting pain for anyone.

And, added to this moral revolt, there has come a war in which millions of young men have died before their natural time. These young fellows, we feel, are at least in most cases neither good enough for heaven nor bad enough for hell. The sensible supposition seems to be—and it is borne out by psychical facts—that they have gone on to the next stage of life, which to most or all of them is an improvement; that they are busy and happy there; that they are still more or less interested in and cognisant of our affairs; that they will come to meet their loved ones when they cross over—of this I have had much evidence—and that they and humanity as a whole are travelling on an upward path toward some goal at present inconceivable to our small and flesh-bound souls.

Some people have objected that psychical research will substitute knowledge for faith. This is surely a curious objection, and few will advance it. The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof, and my belief is that He wants us to learn all we can about His handiwork. Nature is a book given to us by our Father, for our good; study of it is a duty, neglect of it is unfilial and wrong. Psychical research studies its own particular facts in nature, and is thus trying to learn a little more of God’s mind. It is not we, but those who oppose us, who are irreligious.

And as to this matter of faith; well, after we have learnt all we can, there will still be plenty of scope left for the exercise of faith in general, for our knowledge will always be surrounded by regions of the unknown. If anyone says that psychical research antagonises Christian faith, I say most emphatically that on the contrary it supports it. Christianity was based on a Fact: the Resurrection and Appearances of Jesus. Psychical-research facts are rendering that event credible to many who have disbelieved it. Myers says that in consequence of our evidence, everyone will believe, a century hence, in that Resurrection; whereas, in default of our evidence, a century hence no one would have believed it. And to him, personally, psychical research brought back the Christian faith which he had lost.

I hope that the facts and inferences which I have very sketchily put before you will have made it clear that there is some reality in the subject-matter of our investigations, and that these latter powerfully support a religious view of the universe. I believe that we are giving materialism its death-blow; hence the wild antagonism of such well-meaning but belated writers as Mr Clodd. But we are not ourselves religious teachers. That is your domain. You will use our work and its results, as you use the work and results of other labourers in the scientific vineyard. And I think you will find ours specially helpful.