A LACK OF VITAL COMMUNICATIONS
THE case of Stainton Moses, whose name we have just mentioned, is a very striking one in this respect. This Stainton Moses was a dogmatic, hard-working clergyman, whose learning, Myers tells us, in the normal state did not exceed that of an ordinary schoolmaster. But he was no sooner “entranced” before certain spirits of antiquity or of the Middle Ages who are hardly known save to profound scholars—among others, St. Hippolytus; Plotinus; Athenodorus, the tutor of Augustus; and more particularly Grocyn, the friend of Erasmus—took possession of his person and manifested themselves through his agency. Now, Grocyn, for instance, furnished certain information about Erasmus which was at first thought to have been gathered in the other world, but which was subsequently discovered in forgotten, but nevertheless accessible, books. On the other hand, Stainton Moses’s integrity was never questioned for an instant by those who knew him, and we may therefore take his word for it when he declares that he had not read the books in question. Here again the mystery, inexplicable though it be, seems really to lie hidden in the midst of ourselves. It is unconscious reminiscence, if you will, suggestion at a distance, subliminal reading; but no more than in cross-correspondence is it indispensable to have recourse to the dead and to drag them by main force into the riddle, which, seen from our side of the grave, is dark and impassioned enough as it is. Furthermore, we must not insist unduly on this cross-correspondence. We must remember that the whole thing is in its earliest stages, and that the dead appear to have no small difficulty in grasping the requirements of the living.
In regard to this subject, as to the others, the spiritualists are fond of saying:
“If you refuse to admit the agency of spirits, the majority of these phenomena are absolutely inexplicable.”
Agreed; nor do we pretend to explain them, for hardly anything is to be explained upon this earth. We are content simply to ascribe them to the incomprehensible power of the mediums, which is no more improbable than the survival of the dead, and has the advantage of not going outside the sphere which we occupy and of bearing relation to a large number of similar facts that occur among living people. Those singular faculties are baffling only because they are still sporadic, and because only a very short time has elapsed since they received scientific recognition. Properly speaking, they are no more marvelous than those which we use daily without marveling at them; as our memory, for instance, our understanding, our imagination, and so forth. They form part of the great miracle that we are; and, having once admitted the miracle, we should be surprised not so much at its extent as at its limits.
Nevertheless, I am not at all of opinion that we must definitely reject the spiritualistic theory; that would be both unjust and premature. Hitherto everything remains in suspense. We may say that things are still very little removed from the point marked by Sir William Crookes, in 1874, in an article which he contributed to the “Quarterly Journal of Science.” He there wrote:
The difference between the advocates of Psychic Force and the Spiritualists consists in this—that we contend that there is as yet insufficient proof of any other directing agent than the Intelligence of the Medium, and no proof whatever of the agency of Spirits of the Dead; while the Spiritualists hold it as a faith, not demanding further proof, that Spirits of the Dead are the sole agents in the production of all the phenomena. Thus the controversy resolves itself into a pure question of fact, only to be determined by a laborious and long-continued series of experiments and an extensive collection of psychological facts, which should be the first duty of the Psychological Society, the formation of which is now in progress.