AN OPEN ATTITUDE IN STUDYING THE OCCULT.
What Shall the Man of Scientific Mind
Say in the Presence of Apparently
Supernatural Phenomena?
Sir Oliver Lodge, writing in the Fortnightly Review a short time ago, asserted that every man of science who has seriously undertaken to investigate the "occult" has ended by believing in it.
This statement, as the Portland Oregonian suggests, may not be so important as might appear, for comparatively few trained scientists have ventured into the vague problems of the threshold. The Oregonian, however, proceeds to answer some of the objections commonly made to belief in spirit communications, and also to define limitations of investigation of occult phenomena:
People of well-balanced judgment, whether learned or not, are inclined to look askance upon those who have dealings with the spirit world. Some believe that communication between the living and dead is possible, but wicked.
Others, while their faith is firm that life continues after death, hold, nevertheless, that the gulf between the two worlds can never be recrossed by those who have once passed over, and that no message can traverse its dark immensity.
Still others believe that death ends our existence utterly; there is no future life, no world of spirits, and therefore all phenomena purporting to be caused by the disembodied dead necessarily originate in some other way.
None of these opinions is held by the sternly scientific mind, like Dr. Osler's, for example. In his well-known Ingersoll lecture that distinguished physician and graceful man of letters comes to the conclusion that we do not and never can know whether there is a future life or not.
There is absolutely no evidence looking either way, and there never can be any such evidence. To his view and to all the others one may easily find objections.
The belief that communication with disembodied souls is wicked is a mere superstition derived from the ancient Jewish laws against witchcraft. With them, as with all primitive peoples, a witch was one who, like Glendower, could call spirits from the vasty deep, and the reason for discouraging the practise is obvious; it set up a dangerous competition with the regular priesthood, and cut off their revenues.
The Jewish priests had a prescribed orthodox method of consulting spirits, which contributed handsomely to their income, and it was scarcely to be expected that they would tolerate the piratical competition of hideous old women like the Witch of Endor.
Hence that command in the law of Moses, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," which has been the cause of so much cruelty and bloodshed.