PROFESSOR BERGSON AND THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
When, some months since, M. Bergson delivered his inaugural address as President of the Society for Psychical Research, the circumstance was considered of enough importance to justify many cablegrams in the American papers, and much editorial comment. Had the address not been in French, it probably would have been reproduced here. Yet the event was not exceptional enough for that feature to explain the attention of the press. Men to be named in the same breath with Professor Bergson, for instance Professor William James and Mr. Arthur Balfour, had already been presidents of the Society. Therefore the importance attached to M. Bergson's acceptance of the presidency may indicate not merely an interest in his views of the subjects attacked by the Society, but a growing interest in the subjects themselves—perhaps an interest that may lead such of our readers as have not already studied them, to welcome some account of both. The information is doubly worth giving, as there is such a wide belief that the Society is but a group of cranks, while in fact it has always included some of the best minds of the age. This account, however, despite the disproportionate space we venture to allot to it, can give but a pitifully inadequate idea of the Society's work, and has been prepared mainly on the chance that it may lead a few readers to seek adequate knowledge elsewhere.
There is also a better reason for attention to the subject. No argument is needed to convince thinking people that this age stands in peculiar need of a revival, from some source, of that interest in the mysteries surrounding our little experience, without which no age has been really great.
The work hardly seemed worth doing at all unless on the present scale. If any reader begrudges the space, we can pretty safely promise that the subject will not call for so large a proportion in future [Editor].
In 1882 a group of friends who had been meeting occasionally at Cambridge for the discussion of mysterious phenomena, formed the Society for Psychical Research, and took rooms in London. The best known of the early members were Professor (now Sir William) Barrett, Professor Henry Sidgwick, Frederick W. H. Myers, Fellow of Cambridge, Arthur J. Balfour, Richard Holt Hutton (Editor of The Spectator); Professor Balfour Stewart, Hensleigh Wedgwood, Lord Houghton and Archbishop Trench. They were soon joined by, among others, Professor (now Sir William) Crookes, Alfred Russel Wallace, Lord Raleigh, Ruskin, Tennyson, William James, Edmund Gurney, Richard Hodgson, Frank Podmore, Professor (now Sir Oliver) Lodge, and Professor Schiller.
The Society's Proceedings now fill twenty-six octavo volumes, and it has also published a Journal for its members which has reached fifteen large twelvemo volumes.
All were originally published in "parts," of which, in all but two or three cases, several composed a volume. Any portion of the material can be obtained from the Society's American agents, the W. B. Clarke Co. of Boston.
The topic first reported on by the society was thought-transference. Experiments were made with cards, words, pictures and all sorts of objects. The Society published scores, possibly hundreds, of pairs of drawings, one of each pair having been made by a person not seeing the original, who had copied it closely enough to be recognized, in consequence of willing to copy it, and being similarly willed by another person drawing or gazing at it. Some of the duplicates would have been very fair performances even if the originals had been in sight.
The conviction before existing that all sorts of impressions could be conveyed at the will of a hypnotist, was abundantly confirmed, and a strong conviction was aroused in some minds, and it seems to be increasing, that all transference of thought without visible means has a hypnotic element, and is much more frequent than yet generally recognized.
Pictures were of course conveyed as subjective visions, and the Society began very early to collect and classify accounts of visions of all kinds, applying rigid canons of verification.
In 1886 the Society published a collection of "Phantasms of the Living" compiled by Gurney, Myers and Podmore. Seven hundred cases were thought sufficiently verified to be worth including.
This work was severely criticised by Mr. Charles Pearce in the Proceedings of a short-lived American society, and he was there answered by Mr. Gurney.
Gurney died while preparing a work on Phantasms of the Dead. His material was put in shape by Myers, and published in the Proceedings of the Society, Vol. V, pp. 403f. "Phantasms of the Living" is now out of print but much of its material is obtainable in Journal I and the Reports of the Literary Committee in the early volumes of the Proceedings.
Space does not admit of enough citation and discussion from these works to be of value. It may be said in general, however, that with one class of partial exceptions, there is hardly any ghost story that one has ever heard of which does not find its parallel here, confirmed by excellent witnesses and often by considerable supplementary investigation. The partial exceptions are the stories of freezing horror which, the evidence now suggests, would appear to have little, if any, basis in actual experience, but to be mainly the products of imagination—often of deliberate imagination laboring for dramatic effect. The authenticated phenomena are generally of gentle and innocuous character—appearance of dying friends, etc. There are some apparently of troubled souls, but hardly ever of malevolent ones.
The vast majority of the experiences have taken place in bed, and therefore are presumably dreams, and there is much reason to believe that the others come in some sort of a dream state, the whole business probably being associated, as before indicated, with telepathy, and telepathy probably being associated with hypnotism, not always voluntary or conscious.
The experiences are apparently of sight, sound, touch—all the senses. And yet in connection with visions, there have been few changes in objective Nature to account for them.
Much regarding hypnotism was published in the early volumes, but that subject is now so much a part of the knowledge of the medical world, and even the world in general, that we will not enlarge upon it here.
As there have "always" been stories of visions and hypnotic control, so there have been stories of objects moved by human beings without the exercise of muscular force, and indeed without contact. Years before the foundation of the S. P. R., the present writer saw a conclusive illustration of the first. It was an exhibition of something to which it might be well to transfer the name of zoömagnetism, which was originally suggested by Dr. Liebault for the force assumed to act in hypnotism. That assumption is now abandoned. For the effects of the force—the manifestations to the senses, the name telekinesis is accepted by the Society.
This zoömagnetic force with telekinetic effects seems quite plainly a mode of the cosmic energy. Putting it forth generally leaves the agent much exhausted, although very strangely in one of the best accounts, in Pr. S. P. R. VII, 175f. by Professor Alexander, of the University of Rio Janiero, regarding his neighbors the Davis children's performance, he says that they were not fatigued. This seems like a denial of the persistence of force. But there may be a force manifested by the human system and yet not generated in it (or appropriated by it from food and air), but merely passing through it, as some classes of thoughts are held by some students to be entirely independent of human origination. If so, there are two modes of force as yet uncorrelated with our knowledge, which produce telekinetic effects: for there is certainly one which exhausts human energies. (See Pr. VI, VII, IX, XII.)
Perhaps a more certain correlation of the zoömagnetic force with the modes of force already well correlated, is that, if the evidence collected by the S. P. R. is reliable, it is, like them, mutable into the production of light—including the alleged magnetic aura, even around persons—sound, electricity and the other modes of force already well known. (See Pr. IV, VIII, IX, XI.) These modes possibly include that which moves the dowser's rod. But as we know of no case where a dowser has manifested any of the more definitely correlated modes of zoömagnetic force, the chance of dowsing being one is small. Much information regarding dowsing, which convinced several eminent scientists—Sir William Barrett among them, is published by the Society in Pr. II, XIII, XV. Moreover, there is evidence (Jour. IX, Pr. XV), so far as it goes, that the zoömagnetic force can resist heat, not only in the Fijian "fire walk," but in London drawing-rooms in the person of the medium Home, but in him alone—that it has enabled him and many others to counteract the effects of gravity upon their own persons; and to "materialize," that is to produce on the senses of other people, possibly by hypnotizing several at once, without the aid of matter as we know it, the impressions of light, sound, resistance and pressure which ordinarily indicate the presence of the living human body, when no such object in the ordinary sense is actually present. (For all this see Jour. VI, Pr. VI, IX.)
The Society investigated the display of these phenomena by many agents, among them the notorious Eusapia Palladino. Her working in the dark and with a "cabinet" and other apparatus favorable for fraud, was of course against her, but it seems the unescapable conclusion that of her phenomena some were genuine—and some fraudulent. With unintelligent and uneducated mediums, the doctrine "falsus in uno falsus in omnibus" does not hold: for such mediums, often, sometimes involuntarily, eke out the lion's skin with the fox's.
The records of the Society contain much evidence of a connection between telekinetic power and the telepsychic power of conveying thought already described. Perhaps Mrs. Piper is the only well known medium not manifesting both. The two powers are shown together in tipping furniture or producing sounds or lights to signal yes and no; and while the alphabet is being enunciated, to mark letters so as to spell out significant words and sentences. There is strong reason to believe that the intelligence in these indications has been generally that of the operator, often acting involuntarily and entirely honestly, and sometimes, especially in the case of "planchette," that of some other person present, acting telepathically through the operator. (Pr. VII, IX, XI.)
Of course there has not been the slightest necessity of attributing any of these queer manifestations of zoömagnetism to "spirits," and, despite one or two exceptions (notably the late Stainton Moses), the members of the Society for Psychical Research have not so attributed them. But the average man has attributed all mysterious things to spirits, ever since the primitive times when everything was mysterious.
Unfortunately, two of the most remarkable mediums, perhaps the most remarkable, Foster and Home, were too early to come directly under the investigation of the S. P. R. as a body; but fortunately Sir William Crookes did come into association with Home in the early Seventies before the foundation of the Society, tested his zoömagnetism many times in the laboratory, with entirely satisfactory results, and later gave the Society the results of his observations, which were published in Journals VI and IX, and Pr. VI, IX and XV. Of course his testimony to a laboratory experiment is the last word, but many of his accounts of social sittings with Home stagger belief, and tempt an impression that there must have been hypnosis somewhere. But the Proceedings contain considerable collateral evidence. And Myers and Sir William Barrett applied "the higher criticism" to Home's autobiography and his wife's accounts of him, and published the results, which were favorable, in Jour. IV, VI.
But while the evidence for the things already recounted here was pouring in, there came evidence too strong to be thrown aside without examination, of things harder to attribute to any incarnate power.
Home's accordeon, we are told by no less an authority than Sir William Crookes, and by several others (Pr. Vol. VI), was often played intelligently and beautifully without the apparent agency of human hands; and the inspirational writing which in earlier times had come from overwrought religious mystics, began to appear from people who were by no means overwrought or mystical, or even religious, though the most noted of them was. This was the Rev. W. Stainton Moses, the first remarkable medium who associated freely with the members of the Society. It is alleged that he manifested movement of objects without contact, lights, sounds in both the air and material objects, levitation and materialization—all the modes of zoömagnetism except resistance to heat—assuming that to be one of them. His molecular telekineses indicated intelligence.
Myers says (Pr. IX, 250f.):
"In 1882 he aided in the foundation of the Society for Psychical Research; but he left that body in 1886, on account of its attitude towards Spiritualism, which he regarded as unduly critical.... Many members of the Society held an intellectual position widely differing from that of Mr. Moses, and although his own published records were of a kind not easily credible, no suspicion as to his personal probity and veracity was ever, so far as I know, either expressed or entertained.
"... [Moses] was very reticent about exhibiting his powers, and consequently almost the only records are his own and those of his physician, Dr. Stanhope Speer, Mrs. Speer, and their son, Mr. Charlton T. Speer, Associate of the Royal Academy of Music—all persons of undoubted capacity and probity.... Dr. Speer's cast of mind was thoroughly materialistic, and it is remarkable that his interest in Mr. Moses' phenomena was from first to last of a purely scientific, as contrasted with an emotional or religious nature."
There are half a dozen other good witnesses, however.
Despite Moses' telepsychic telekineses, his principal alleged communications with the spirit world were by automatic (we prefer to call it heteromatic) writing. Of this he left twenty-four note books. The writings in these were in several different hands and bore the marks of as many different characters, that were never mixed up. They signed the names, Imperator, Rector, Doctor, etc., and declared their earthly selves to have been various eminent persons in the remote past.
We shall find later that after Moses' death, his alleged spirit gave an entirely different set of names for the earthly originals of these alleged personalities. Myers, having seen all the heteromatic writing, tacitly endorses Moses' statements regarding its visible qualities. Moses continues:
"By degrees I found that many spirits who were unable to influence my hand themselves sought the aid of a spirit 'Rector'
He says that they differed from him and criticised him severely, but ultimately converted him to a higher faith than the Anglicanism he had previously preached.
Myers comments (Pr. XI, 69):
"The tone of the spirits towards Mr. Moses himself is habitually courteous and respectful. But occasionally they have some criticism which pierces to the quick, and which goes far to explain to me Mr. Moses's unwillingness to have the books fully inspected during his lifetime."
We have no space for any of this script, and it probably would not tend much to edification if we had. After a good deal of reading and pondering, I find the proportion of Moses' self in all these proceedings looming in my apprehension larger and larger. The benefits he got from them look to me like that portion—how large a portion I am not saying—of the benefits of prayer which are independent of external results, and consist in the effect upon character of intense absorption in an inspiring subject.
Myers testifies that Moses' heteromatic writing announced the death of a friend of Myers before it could have been known by other means, and that the writing closely resembled hers. Moses himself declares, and many fairly judicious people believed him, that among other marvels, the writing told him, in advance of any other possible agency, of the death of President Garfield, and of a suicide in London under a steam roller. The latter statement has several confirmatory witnesses.
The account of Moses is given here, not so much because of himself, as to prepare for later appearances of Imperator, Rector, Doctor & Co., which will be of more interest.
In America there was of course not leisure enough to continue the Am. S. P. R., which had been started a couple of years after the English one, and it was merged with the English Society, becoming a "branch." In 1887 Dr. Richard Hodgson, who had been lecturing at Cambridge, was sent over as secretary to take charge of it, and soon began a set of experiences which immeasurably surpass all others in connection with the subject.
In 1886, Professor William James had found a remarkable medium in Mrs. Piper, a New England woman of average position and education, and Dr. Hodgson devoted himself to her phenomena. In trance she spoke as a self-alleged French physician who called himself Dr. Jean Phinuit Schliville, and who professed to be in the other world in association with friends of people who came to sit with Mrs. Piper. Dr. Phinuit professed to give messages from them, and to deliver the sitters' messages to them. The only thing apparently unprecedented in these proceedings was the consistently dramatic character of Dr. Phinuit himself, and the verisimilitude, varying but often astounding, between the utterances, dramatic characterizations and recollections of the alleged message senders, and the persons as known in life.
Mrs. Piper's career with Dr. Phinuit was an inheritance by her from a Dr. Cocke, who was controlled by a Dr. Finney. Dr. Cocke was an "inspirational healer" and in 1884 Mrs. Piper went to consult him about some physical ailment. A circle was being held, and she joined it. On a second visit she experienced a sensation as of a blinding flash, and then fainted, and on recovering began to talk in trance as somebody else.
Hodgson says (Pr. VIII, 46f.):
"She was said to have been controlled by an Indian girl who gave the name 'Chlorine,' and to have given a remarkable test to a stranger who was present. She had several more sittings with Mr. Cocke, and was again controlled, apparently on each occasion by 'Chlorine.'
This name is evidently pitched upon on account of its euphony and apparent femininity, by some consciousness—we can't tell whose, perhaps Mrs. Piper's subliminal (whatever that may mean)—unaware of the meaning of the word, which I hardly need tell the reader usually refers to a rather fetid gas. Hodgson continues:
"She was also ostensibly controlled at occasional times by Mrs. Siddons, Bach, Longfellow, Commodore Vanderbilt, and Loretta Ponchini. It was said that 'Mrs. Siddons' recited a scene from Macbeth, Longfellow was said to have written some verses, and Loretta Ponchini (who purported to be an Italian girl) to have made some drawings....
"Dr. Phinuit only came at first to give medical advice. He 'didn't care to come for other matters,' as he thought them 'too trivial.'
"Finally Sebastian Bach said they were going to concentrate all their powers on Phinuit, and he became ultimately the chief control.
"Mr. Piper says that there is no question but that it is the same Phinuit or personality who controls Dr. Cocke, no matter how their names are spelt."
All this seems clap-trap, but wait.
The questions regarding Phinuit are different from those regarding most of the other controls in the Society's records: for, with the exception of the Imperator group, they, in ordinary life, were generally known, personally or historically, to the sitters; while Phinuit has loomed upon the world as free from origins as Melchizedek, and some people think, despite his lack of priestly ways, with as important a mission. But he has alleged a lot of origins that, so far, cannot be traced. Even, however, if they never can be, the fact would not prove that he never existed.
After a while the communications began to be occasionally in writing, and at times the voice would be speaking as Phinuit, and the hand writing as somebody else. There was at least one occasion (Pr. XIII, 293) when Phinuit was joking with a lot of young girls, and the hand writing on other subjects with Dr. Hodgson.
The records of the S. P. R. contain the most contradictory accounts of Phinuit's character and attainments. Several habitual sitters are very fond of him. He and Sir Oliver Lodge were intimate friends, and while I have had but one conversation with him, I find reading him as delightful as reading Falstaff. Yet Professor Shaler calls him a preposterous scoundrel, as was Falstaff; but I can't find serious dishonesty in Phinuit.
Professor William James, who went to school in French Switzerland, and was entirely at home in French, says Phinuit knew none. Other sitters agree with him. Mr. Rogers Rich, who was equally at home in the language, says he and Phinuit talked French together a good deal, to Mr. Rich's entire satisfaction. Other sitters indicate the same. Mrs. Piper knew no French. Mr. Rich and many sitters, including Sir Oliver Lodge, in whose family Dr. Phinuit practiced extensively, found benefit in his prescriptions; he successfully gave one treatment which seems to the lay mind the opposite of reasonable, and yet I myself found prompt relief through a similar one given by an eminent New York physician. Nevertheless there are those who call Phinuit a shameless quack. While in the Pr. S. P. R. there are several prescriptions by him in correct technical language, there are also several statements that he does not know the ordinary terms of the pharmacopeia.
The following particulars are taken from a report on Mrs. Piper's trance which Hodgson made to the S. P. R. in 1892 published in Vol. VIII of their Proceedings. Although the messages generally went through Dr. Phinuit, sometimes the alleged personages themselves took control and carried on conversations with their friends through the vocal organs and gestures of Mrs. Piper. The voices of the controls varied with the alleged personalities.
R. Hodgson. First Sitting. May 4th, 1887. (Pr. VIII, 60.)
[From notes made on return to my rooms immediately after the sitting.]
"Phinuit began, after the usual introduction, by describing [correctly] members of my family....
"Phinuit mentioned the name 'Fred.' ... 'He says you went to school together. He goes on jumping-frogs, and laughs.... He had convulsive movements before his death, struggles. He went off in a sort of spasm.... [My cousin Fred far excelled any other person that I have seen in the games of leap-frog, fly the garter, etc.... He injured his spine in a gymnasium ... lingered for a fortnight, with occasional spasmodic convulsions, in one of which he died.] Phinuit described a lady, in general terms, dark hair, dark eyes, slim figure, etc., and said she was much closer to me than any other person: that she 'died slowly.' ... She had two rings; one was buried with her body; the other ought to have gone to you. The second part of her first name is—sie.' [True, with the exception of the statement about the rings, which may or may not be true.... No ring ever passed between the lady and myself.... After trying in vain to 'hear distinctly' the first part of the name, Phinuit gave up the attempt, and asked me what the first name was. I told him. I shall refer to it afterwards as 'Q.']"
All this could well have been involuntary telepathy from Hodgson to the medium. But again, wait.
At Hodgson's second sitting, November 18th, 1887, Phinuit referred to the beautiful teeth of "Q." and Hodgson says: "'Q.'s' teeth were not beautiful."
Here is something better (Pr. VIII):
"5, Boylston-place, March 6th, 1889.
"Mr. Robertson James has just called here on return from a sitting with Mrs. P., during which he was informed by Mrs. P.—entranced—that 'Aunt Kate' had died about 2 or 2.30 in the morning. Aunt Kate was also referred to as Mrs. Walsh.
"Mrs. Walsh has been ill for some time and has been expected during the last few days to die at any hour. This is written before any despatch has been received informing of the death, in presence of the following:—
"Richard Hodgson.
"William James.
"Robertson James.
"On reaching home an hour later I found a telegram as follows:—'Aunt Kate passed away a few minutes after midnight.—E. R. Walsh.'
"(Signed) Wm. James.
"Mrs. William James, who accompanied Mr. Robertson James to the sitting on March 6th, writes as follows:—
"18, Garden-street, Cambridge, March 28th, 1889.
"Concerning the sitting mentioned above on March 6th, I may add that the 'control' said, when mentioning that Aunt Kate had died, that I would find 'a letter or telegram' when I got home, saying she was gone.
"Alice H. James."
Now all this seems quite possibly telepathy and coincidence. But how about this?
"July, 1890.
"Early at this sitting I inquired, 'How is Aunt Kate?' The reply was, 'She is poorly.' This reply disappointed me, from its baldness. Nothing more was said about Aunt Kate till towards the close of the sitting, when I again said, 'Can you tell me nothing more about Aunt Kate?' The medium suddenly threw back her head and said in a startled way, 'Why, Aunt Kate's here. All round me I hear voices saying, "Aunt Kate has come."' Then followed the announcement that she had died very early that morning, and on being pressed to give the time, shortly after two was named.
"A. H. J."
And here is a manifestation eight months after Mrs. Walsh's death:
R. Hodgson. November 7th, 1889. (Pr. VIII, 93-4.)
[From a letter written to Professor W. James on the day of the sitting.]
"Mrs. D. and I had sitting to-day at Arlington Heights, and the usurpation by 'Kate Walsh' was extraordinary. The personality seemed very intense, and spoke in effortful whispers.
"'William—William—God bless you.' Sitter: 'Who are you?' 'Kate—Walsh.' (S. 'I know you.') 'Help me—help me——' [Taking (i. e., Mrs. Piper "taking," &c. Ed.) my right hand with her right, and passing it to her left and making me take hold of her left hand.] 'That hand's dead—dead—this one's alive' [i. e., the right]—'help me.'
"The left hand ... was cooler than either of my hands, while the right hand was warmer than either of my hands [the implication being that Mrs. Piper was possessed by Mrs. Walsh. Ed.]
"I'm alive—I'm alive—Albert's coming over soon. He can't stay—poor boy—poor boy—Albert—Albert—Alfred—Albert—I know you—Alice—Alice—William—Alice——' (S. 'Yes, I know. I'll tell them. You remember me. I stayed with you in New York.') 'Yes, I know. But, oh, I can't remember. I'm so cold—I'm so cold. Oh, help me—help me'—[making tremulous movements of hands]. (S. 'I know. I'll tell them. You remember me; my name's Hodgson.') 'Yes. Mr. Hodgson. Where are the girls? Yes. You had fish for breakfast on the second day, didn't you?' (S. 'I don't remember very well.') 'And the tea—who was it spilt the cup of tea? Was it you or William?' [I think I remember something about the tea, but not very clearly. R. H.] 'You were in the corner room—bedroom—upstairs. Were you cold? Then there was some blancmange—you didn't like that. No. It was cream—Bavarian cream. [Is all this Mrs. Piper, or is it Shakspere, or is it the spirit of a fussy old lady? Ed.] Albert—poor boy; he's coming soon. William—[something about arranging the property]—William—God bless him.'
"The above was much less than was really said. But that was the sort of thing, and nothing à la mode Phinuit at all. It was the most strikingly personal thing I have seen."
This, some commentators want us to believe, was still "another personality" of Mrs. Piper—if Phinuit was. Four in the case of Sallie Beauchamp are well established, and nine in the case of Dr. Wilcox's patient. I wonder how many Dr. Prince would consider a probable number, and at what number the spiritistic hypothesis would begin to appear easier than the divided personality one. All unquestionable cases of secondary personality that I know of do not cross the sex, and are the results of brain injury or disease. Mrs. Piper and most of the mediums are normal people, and do their best when physically at their best.
The following report (Pr. VIII, 126f.) by Mr. T. Rogers Rich, a well known artist of Boston, made from contemporary notes of the sittings, is among the best:
"My first sitting with her was on September 6th, 1888. With little trouble she went into the trance ... and after a moment's silence ... I was startled by the remarkable change in her voice—an exclamation, a sort of grunt of satisfaction, as if the person had reached his destination and gave vent to his pleasure thereat by this sound, uttered in an unmistakably male voice, but rather husky. I was at once addressed in French with, 'Bonjour, Monsieur, comment vous portez vous?' to which I gave answer in the same language, with which I happen to be perfectly familiar. My answer was responded to with a sort of inquiring grunt, much like the French 'Hein?'.... Nearly all my interviews were begun in the same manner.... I was quite unwell with nervous troubles.... The first thing told me was of a 'great light behind me, a good sign,' &c. Then suddenly all my ills were very clearly and distinctly explained and so thoroughly that I felt certain that Mrs. Piper herself would have hesitated to use such plain language! Prescriptions were given to me...."
"Second Sitting on October 5th.—... The 'Doctor' told me of my niece being frequently 'in my surroundings,' and that she was then at my side. Up to this time I had not heard my name mentioned, so I asked for it from my niece. The 'Doctor' was again puzzled and said, 'What a funny name—wait, I cannot go so fast!' Then my entire name was correctly spelt out but entirely with the French alphabet, each separate letter being clearly pronounced in that language. My niece had been born, lived most of her short life, and died in France. Then the attempt to pronounce my name was amusing—finally calling me 'Thames Rowghearce Reach.' The 'Doctor' never called me after that anything but 'Reach.'"
The spelling of a name "entirely with the French alphabet, each separate letter being clearly pronounced in that language," is a feat that few English-speaking students could accomplish, because the matter is of little consequence, and generally neglected. I have been in France some, and have translated two French books without incurring critical censure that I am aware of, and yet that feat would be far beyond me.
"One day Mrs. Piper pointed to a plain gold ring on my finger and said: 'C'est une alliance, how you call that? A wedding ring, n'est-ce pas?' This was true. Now if Mrs. Piper had learned French at school here [which she did not or anywhere else. Ed.] she would most probably have called this ring 'un anneau de marriage,' and not have given it the technical name 'alliance.'"
There are many cases of mediums speaking in languages which they did not know, but which the control, when incarnate, did. Mr. Rich continued:
"Breaking into the run of conversation, the 'Doctor' of a sudden said, 'Hullo, here's Newell!' [pseudonym] (mentioning the name of a friend who had died some months before).... 'Newell' had frequently purported to communicate directly with his mother through Mrs. Piper at previous sittings, but this was the first time that any intimation of his presence was given to me. I was totally unprepared for this, and said, 'Who did you say?' The name was repeated with a strong foreign accent, and in the familiar voice and tone of the 'Doctor.' Then there seemed for a moment to be a mingling of voices as if in dispute, followed by silence and heavy breathing of the medium. All at once I was astonished to hear, in an entirely different tone and in the purest English accent, 'Well, of all persons under the sun, Rogers Rich, what brought you here? I'm glad to see you, old fellow! How is X and Y and Z, and all the boys at the club?' Some names were given which I knew of, but their owners I had never met, and so reminded my friend 'Newell,' who recalled that he followed me in college by some years and that all his acquaintances were younger than I. I remarked an odd movement of the medium while under this influence; she apparently was twirling a mustache, a trick which my friend formerly practised much."
Now if all this drama is telepathy, it certainly is not of the "common or garden variety," and if "Newell" is a secondary personality of Mrs. Piper, it is one of hundreds of instances of that woman having secondary personalities who are men. I have read accounts of a good many undoubted cases of secondary personality, and have yet to read of one where the sex was crossed. Aren't these interpretations growing to look a little absurd? Mr. Rich goes on:
"June 3rd, 1889.—This time I asked to communicate with my friend 'Newell.' ... The 'Doctor' said, 'I'll send for him,' and kept on talking with me for a while. Then he said, 'Here's Newell, and he wants to talk with you "Reach," so I'll go about my business whilst you are talking with him, and will come back again later.' ... My name was called clearly as 'Rogers, old fellow!' without a sign of accent [Remember that 'Phinuit' always pronounced it with an accent. Ed.] and the same questions put as to how were the 'fellows at the club.' My hand was cordially shaken [by the medium. Ed.], and I remarked the same movement of twisting the mustache, ... When 'Newell' left me there was the usual disturbance in the medium's condition, and then the resumption of the familiar voice, accent and mannerisms of Dr. Phinuit...."
Mr. Rich continues (Pr. VIII, 130):
"I produced a dog's collar. After some handling of it [by the medium] the 'Doctor' recognized it as belonging to a dog which I had once owned. I asked 'If there were dogs where he was?' 'Thousands of them!' and he said he would try to attract the attention of my dog with this collar. In the midst of our conversation he suddenly exclaimed, 'There! I think he knows you are here, for I see [him] coming from away off!' He then described my collie perfectly, and said, 'You call him, Reach,' and I gave my whistle by which I used to call him. 'Here he comes! Oh, how he jumps! There he is now, jumping upon and around you. So glad to see you! Rover! Rover! No—G-rover, Grover! That's his name!' The dog was once called Rover, but his name was changed to Grover in 1884, in honor of the election of Grover Cleveland."
The knowledge here may have been telepathic, but how about the dramatization?
Mrs. Piper's English Sittings of 1889-90 were held under the supervision of Sir Oliver Lodge and Dr. Walter Leaf, and the report of them has an introduction by Myers, and is followed by a statement of impressions of Mrs. Piper by James. All these experts expressed perfect confidence in the honesty of the medium, and that the phenomena were not explicable by any agency yet known to science.
Sir Oliver Lodge says (Pr. VI, 445):
"The details given of my family are just such as one might imagine obtained by a perfect stranger surrounded by the whole of one's relations in a group and able to converse freely but hastily with one after the other; not knowing them and being rather confused with their number and half-understood messages and personalities, and having a special eye to their physical weaknesses and defects. [Phinuit was (?) a doctor. Ed.] A person in a hurry thus trying to tell a stranger as much about his friends as he could in this way gather, would seem to me to be likely to make much the same kind of communication as was actually made to me."
Here is an episode explaining a nickname that Phinuit habitually applied to Sir Oliver (Pr. VI, 471f.):
"Cousin married, and the gentleman passed out at sea, round the sea.... Hullo, he's got funny buttons, big, bright.... A uniform. He has been a commander, an officer, a leader; not military, but a commander.... [A little further on Phinuit suddenly brings out the word Cap'n in connection with him, but, in a curious and half puzzled way, applies it to me. It remained my Phinuit nickname to the end, though quite inapplicable.] Your mother has got a good picture of him taken a long time ago, pretty good, old-fashioned, but not so bad of him. Yes, pretty good. He looks like that now. He looks younger than he did...."
As in this vision, so it was in one of my own dreams which I suspect was in several respects veridical; and in two other dreams where I cannot trace any veridicity: the persons had grown young.
This recalls Peter Ibbetson's statement that he and his beloved kept themselves about twenty-seven. There are reports that Peter Ibbetson is not all fancy, but even if it were, such reports would be inevitable.
But in another dream which I fully believe to have been veridical, the person had grown older in proportion to the time since "passing over," but there was a peculiar reason for such a manifestation: I fancy that my friend may have wanted to appear to "grow old with me."
There are some things to suggest that if there are post-carnate souls, they can appear as of any age in their experience—and so show their history since separation, to anyone rejoining them.
Edmund Gurney, author of "Phantasms of the Living," and a very active member of the S. P. R. died in 1888. In December, 1889, his ostensible spirit communicated at several sittings with Sir Oliver Lodge through Mrs. Piper. Sir Oliver says (Pr. XXIII, 141f.):
"I learned in this way more about the life and thoughts of Edmund Gurney than I had known in his lifetime."
And Mrs. Piper knew less. Then where did it come from? These Gurney sittings are very interesting and suggestive, but we can use our limited space to better advantage.
Here are some characteristic Phinuit Touches (Pr. VI, 484):
"She remembers more than you do. What do you think she says to me? She says, don't swear, doctor; she did, sure as you live....
"Dr.: 'Do you know who Jerry—J—E—R—R—Y—is?' O. L.: 'Yes. Tell him I want to hear from him.' U[ncle] J[erry. Ed.]: 'Tell Robert, [his brother] Jerry still lives. I will be very glad to hear from me. This is my watch. Uncle Jerry—my watch.'...
"P.: 'I say, Captain, your friends have a lot to tell you, they're just clamoring to get at you. Why the devil don't you give them a chance?' O. L.: 'Well, I will next time.' (Watch handled again. It was a repeater, and happened to go off.) P.: 'Hullo, I didn't do that. Jerry did that, to remind you of him. Here, take it away—it goes springing off—it's alive.' ... 'It was Uncle Jerry, the one that had the fall. I'll bring you some more news of him. Give me back his nine-shooter.' (Meaning the watch.)"
Phinuit and the Lodge family and their next-door neighbors, the Thompsons, got to be great friends. Phinuit had given them much good advice, professional and other, and had really been of considerable service to them, even if only through their imaginations.
At the end of their second series of sittings, Feb. 23, 1890, he said:
"Now, all you people come here. Good-by, Susie. Good-by, Ike. Good-by, Nelly. Now, all clear out and let me talk to Marie. (Long conversation of a paternal kind, with thoroughly sensible advice. Then O. L. returned.) Captain, it's not good-by, it's au revoir, and you shall hear of me when I've gone away.' O. L.: 'How can I?' P.: 'Oh, I will tell some gentleman a message and he will write it for me. You'll see.
"Au revoir, au revoir, &c."
Hodgson's inclination while writing his report, was to attribute the phenomena to telepathy from the sitter. This might account for a part of the knowledge which the medium displayed, but it did not account for knowledge which the sitter never had, but left such knowledge to be accounted for by the vastly less probable hypothesis of teloteropathy from absent persons, which begins to approach the improbability of spiritism itself. But after the medium's possession of the knowledge is accounted for, the main problem is yet to be approached. Knowledge of a particular circumstance is virtually the same in all minds possessing it. But after a medium, say Mrs. Piper, has obtained an item of knowledge from, let it be granted for argument's sake, the sitter's mind, what makes her emotional attitude regarding it not that of the sitter or of herself, but of some departed friend of the sitter? What makes her rejoice in it or regret it as this departed friend, alone among all intelligences, would? What makes the play of her mind regarding it—suggestion, response, appreciation or depreciation, comment and discussion of all kinds, just what would be that of the departed soul which professes to be speaking through her? And what makes all this occur with a fidelity to the character and situation worthy of the greatest dramatists? And how comes that average New England woman to display that supreme dramatic genius virtually every day for a generation? This is not telepathy or teloteropathy. When Hodgson wrote his first report, he and the researchers generally had not got as far as the questions raised by the dramatic features. But he closed with the following mysterious paragraph:
"The foregoing report is based upon sittings not later than 1891. Mrs. Piper has given some sittings very recently which materially strengthen the evidence for the existence of some faculty that goes beyond thought-transference from the sitters, and which certainly primâ facie appear to render some form of the 'spiritistic' hypothesis more plausible. I hope to discuss these among other results in a later article."
The occasion for this paragraph was made plain in his next report, issued in 1898, and published in Pr. S. P. R., Vol. XIII.
A young man alluded to in the S. P. R. reports as George Pelham, had died. He was a member of a very prominent English family, and on the distaff side, of an equally prominent family in New York. He had graduated at Harvard and spent some years as a housemate with the Howards (pseudonym) in Boston, though he died in New York, after some later years passed there. He was well known to the present writer, who finds the utterances of his alleged post-carnate self entirely in character. He was of a very philosophic bent, and no mean writer in both prose and verse. Psychical research was by no means his most prominent interest, or Hodgson his most intimate friend, though he had discussed the subject several times with Hodgson, and been introduced by him, under a pseudonym, for a single sitting with Mrs. Piper. For a month after G. P.'s death Hodgson's regular sittings with Mrs. Piper went on without there being any manifestation professing to come from G. P., when Mr. John Hart (pseudonym) who had been much more intimate with G. P. than Hodgson had, was sitting, in Hodgson's presence, with Mrs. Piper, and after Phinuit had announced a "George," an uncle of Mr. Hart, he went on, as Hodgson reports (Pr. XIII, 297f.):
"There is another George who wants to speak to you. How many Georges are there about you any way? [Hodgson continues. Ed.]
"The rest of the sitting, until almost the close, was occupied by statements from G. P., Phinuit acting as intermediary. George Pelham's real name was given in full, also the names, both Christian and surname, of several of his most intimate friends, including the name of the sitter. Moreover, incidents were referred to which were unknown to the sitter or myself. One of the pair of studs which J. H. was wearing was given to Phinuit [i. e. to the medium. Ed.].... '(Who gave them to me?) [Throughout these sittings, the sitters' remarks are in parentheses. Ed.] That's mine. Mother gave you that. (No.) Well, father then, father and mother together. You got those after I passed out. Mother took them. Gave them to father, and father gave them to you. I want you to keep them. I will them to you.' Mr. Hart notes: 'The studs were sent to me by Mr. Pelham as a remembrance of his son....
"James and Mary [Mr. and Mrs.] Howard [Pseudonyms. Ed.] were mentioned with strongly specific references, and in connection with Mrs. Howard came the name Katharine. 'Tell her, she'll know. I will solve the problems, Katharine.' Mr. Hart notes: 'George, when he had last stayed with [the Howards], had talked frequently with Katharine (a girl of fifteen years of age) upon such subjects as Time, Space, God, Eternity, and pointed out to her how unsatisfactory the commonly accepted solutions were. He added that some time he would solve the problems.' Mr. Hart added that he was entirely unaware of these circumstances. I was myself unaware of them, and was not at that time acquainted with the Howards.
No telepathy then. Phinuit continues:
"'Who's Rogets? [Phinuit tries to spell the real name.] (Spell that again.) [At the first attempt afterwards Phinuit leaves out a letter, then spells it correctly.] Rogers.... Rogers has got a book of mine. (What is he going to do with it?)'
"[Both Hart and G. P. knew Rogers, who at that time had a certain MS. book of G. P. in his possession. The book was found after G. P.'s death and given to Rogers to be edited. G. P. had promised during his lifetime that a particular disposition should be made of this book after his death. This action ... was here, and in subsequent utterances which from their private nature I cannot quote, enjoined emphatically and repeatedly, and had it been at once carried out, as desired by G. P., much subsequent unhappiness and confusion might have been avoided.]
"During the latter part of the sitting, and without any relevance to the remarks immediately before and after, which were quite clear as expressions from G. P. came the words, 'Who's James? Will—William.' [It must be remembered that Phinuit was reporting G. P. throughout.] This was apparently explained by Phinuit's further remarks at the close of the sitting.
"Phinuit: 'Who's Alice? (What do you want me to say to her?) [To R. H.] Alice in spirit. Alice in spirit says it's all over now and tell Alice in the body all is well. Tell Will I'll explain things later on. He [George] calls Alice, too, in the body. I want her to know me, too, Alice and Katharine.... He won't go till you say good-by. [The hand then wrote: George Pelham. Good day (?) John.] ...'
"[Alice James, the sister of Professor William James, had recently died in England. The first name of Mrs. James is also Alice. Alice, the sister of Katharine, is the youngest daughter of Mr. Howard and was very fond of G. P.]
"As I have already said, the most personal references made at the sitting cannot be quoted; they were regarded by J. H. as profoundly characteristic of Pelham.
This was followed by the most remarkable experiences of the kind that ever occurred before Hodgson himself passed over to the majority and was ostensibly manifested to his surviving friends through Mrs. Piper and other mediums. G. P. sent for his friends the Howards (pseudonym) with whom he had been a housemate in Boston, for his parents, and for other friends. All of these came, very skeptical regarding the genuineness of the manifestations, but Mr. Howard—an eminent scholar of wide experience of the world, became convinced that he was in converse with the postcarnate intelligence of his old friend; the majority of the relatives, who were of a more orthodox habit than Mr. Howard, were brought at least to a condition of agnosticism on the subject, and the arch-critic Hodgson who had exposed more "spiritualistic" frauds than all other men put together, was turned into a militant spiritualist. G. P. was asked.
"(Can't you tell us something he or your mother has done?) 'I saw her brush my clothes and put them away. I was by her side as she did it. I saw her take my sleeve buttons from a small box and give them to my father. I saw him send them to John Hart. I saw her putting papers, etc., into a tin box.'
"The incident of the 'studs' was mentioned at the sitting of Hart. G. P.'s clothes were brushed and put away, as Mrs. Pelham wrote, not by herself, but by 'the man who had valeted George.'"
This incident is used by Mrs. Sidgwick in Pr. XV, 31, in support of the thesis that a medium's communications are influenced by education and social habits. I am disposed entirely to endorse this. The communications seem to me to come from a blending of the control, the medium, and the sitter. Perhaps this utterance will seem less Delphic as we go on.
The following (Pr. XIII, 416f.) does not seem much like telepathy.
"Mrs. Piper [on coming out of the trance. Ed.]: 'There is the man with the beard' [whom she saw in the trance. Ed.] Mrs. Piper then described what she thought was a dream. 'I saw a bright light and a face in it, a gentleman with a beard on his face, and he had a very high forehead and he was writing.' R. H.: 'Would you know it again if you saw it?' Mrs. Piper: 'Oh, yes. I would know it, I think.' R. H.: 'Well, try and recall it....'
Within twenty-four hours of this experience, or some other reported elsewhere, the dream recollection had, like dream recollections generally, faded away: she could not recognize the photograph. We can talk about telopsis here, if we want to, but telopsis of what? Of that photograph? Nonsense! And as strange as anything else about it, is that there is nothing strange about it. In my own dreams I see any number of people I never saw before, just as plainly as I see any number on the street, and if photographs were handed me, as those were to Mrs. Piper, immediately on awaking, I could identify them. This identification is nothing out of the ordinary course of nature, only the wit to see that it is, has but just come.
But with any sitter, Mrs. Piper may have had telepathically just as definite an idea as the sitter has, or she may always have been telepathically impressed in her dream by the post-carnate man himself. Each one of us will have to fumble to his own conviction, if he ever reaches one.
Hodgson continues (Pr. XIII, 321-2):
"It was during this sitting [Dec. 22, 1892] that perhaps the most dramatic incident of the whole series occurred....
"Mr. Howard: 'Tell me something that you and I alone know, something in our past that you and I alone know.' G. P.: 'Do you doubt me, dear old fellow?' Mr. H.: 'I simply want something—you have failed to answer certain questions that I have asked—now I want you to give me the equivalent of the answers to those questions in your own terms....' G. P.: 'You used to talk to me about....'
"The writing which followed ... contains too much of the personal element in G. P.'s life to be reproduced here. Several statements were read by me, and assented to by Mr. Howard, and then was written 'private' and the hand gently pushed me away. I retired to the other side of the room, and Mr. Howard took my place close to the hand where he could read the writing. He did not, of course, read it aloud, and it was too private for my perusal. The hand, as it reached the end of each sheet, tore it off from the block-book, and thrust it wildly at Mr. Howard, and then continued writing. The circumstances narrated, Mr. Howard informed me, contained precisely the kind of test for which he had asked, and he said that he was 'perfectly satisfied, perfectly.'
"Characteristic also of the living G. P. was the remark made to me later, apparently with reference to the circumstances of the private statements:
"'Thanks, Hodgson, for your kind help and reserved manners, also patience in this difficult matter.'"
All this, I suppose, is mere telepathy or the subliminal self, or divided self, or some other self, of an average New England housewife!
In this report the sittings take up some two hundred pages, and Hodgson devoted about fifty pages to his reasons for accepting the spiritistic hypothesis regarding them. James said: "I know of no more masterly handling anywhere of so unwieldy a mass of material"; and yet he never squarely agreed with Hodgson, though he often says he was tempted to.
Hodgson's reasons cannot be fairly understood without familiarity with the evidence. They are very ingenious and interesting, and would give the most skeptical reader pause, but we have space for only a few generalizations.
"The manifestations of this G. P. communicating have not been of a fitful and spasmodic nature, they have exhibited the marks of a continuous living and persistent personality ... what change has been discernible is a change not of any process of disintegration, but rather of integration and evolution...."
"That G. P. could get into some closer relation with his father and the Howards than with Miss M. or myself is intelligible; but it is not so obvious why Mrs. Piper's secondary personality should...."
"... The mixtures of truth and error bear no discernible relation to the consciousness of the sitters, but suggest the action of another intelligence groping confusedly among its own remembrances."
"We get all varieties of communication; some of them, purporting to come from persons who when living were much mentally disturbed, suggesting the incoherency of delirium; others of them, purporting to come from persons who have been dead very many years, suggesting a fainter dreaminess [or more remoteness. Ed.]; others purporting to come from persons recently deceased whose minds have been clear, showing a corresponding clearness. My own conclusion ... is forced upon me by experience, and strengthened by various statements of the communicators themselves concerning the causes of confusion."
"Again, that persons just 'deceased' should be extremely confused and unable to communicate directly, or even at all, seems perfectly natural after the shock and wrench of death.
"Of such confusions as I have indicated above I cannot find any satisfactory explanation in 'telepathy from the living,' but they fall into a rational order when related to the personalities of the 'dead.'"
"In cases where we should a priori be led to expect that the communicators would certainly not be confused, or, if they were confused, the confusion would not make much difference, Phinuit was particularly successful. The cases I refer to are those of little children recently deceased."
This seems to me a very strong point. Its force will be realized by most of those who read the Sutton and Thaw sittings in Pr. XIII. Phinuit, the "preposterous old scoundrel," is eminently "the children's friend." Hodgson continues:
"Having tried the hypothesis of telepathy from the living for several years, and the 'spirit' hypothesis also for several years, I have no hesitation in affirming with the most absolute assurance that the 'spirit' hypothesis is justified by its fruits, and the other hypothesis is not."
"Since Phinuit's 'departure' [explained below. Ed.] the voice has been used on a few rare occasions only, and almost exclusively by communicators who purported to be relatives of the sitters, and who had used the voice before Phinuit's 'departure.' ... But there never seemed to be any confusion between the personality using the hand, whether this was 'clear' or not, and the personality using the voice."
This consideration and those before associated with it seem to me more for the spiritistic hypothesis than any others which we have met so far.
G. P. soon developed into the Mercury of the spiritistic Pantheon, turned up at almost all sittings, went to seek the friends of the sitters in the "spirit-world," and acted as intermediary for those who were new to the conditions of communication or had not enough of the psychokinetic power which was alleged to be necessary to use them effectively.
It should be noted that during G. P.'s life, telepathy from the sitter had been reluctantly conceded as a defense against the spiritistic hypothesis, but it was not till after his death that teloteropathy from persons at a distance had been conceded; and it was not until 1909—seven years later, that James, one of the most steadfast holders of the conservative fort, in his report on the communications from Hodgson's alleged spirit, in Pr. XXIII, admitted, as among the possible "sources other than R. H.'s surviving spirit for the veridical communications from the Hodgson control," "access to some cosmic reservoir, where the memory of all mundane facts is stored and grouped around personal centers of association."
James had a subtler mind than mine or almost anybody's. Mine is not subtle enough to be very seriously impressed by the difference between "memory of mundane facts stored and grouped around personal centers of association," and a surviving personality; and what difference does impress me, is pretty well filled up when the "personal center" also has "grouped around" it, the initiative, response, repartee and emotional and dramatic elements that, as shown not only by the G. P. control, but, years later, by the Hodgson control, and by hundreds of others, make a gallery of characters more vivid than those depicted by all the historians. But even claiming them to be historical, as in a sense they are, would not be claiming them to be surviving. Many historical characters have put in that claim through Mrs. Piper and other mediums, and while our greatest psychologist knew as much as anybody about the claims, and seemed somewhat on the road to admitting them to be from surviving personalities, he did not live to go farther than memories "stored and grouped around personal centers of association."
But à bas the "memories"! one is tempted to say; credit them all to telepathy if you will: what are they beside the active and spontaneous emotions and responses?
Meantime in 1892 our old acquaintance Stainton Moses had "passed over," and in 1895 had ostensibly appeared through Mrs. Piper to Professor Newbold of the University of Pennsylvania, and Professor Newbold asked him to bring his friends Imperator, Rector, etc. These high-toned personages—none high-toneder, as John Hay of blessed memory, puts it—nor more bombastic or long-winded, had manifested before only through Moses (for convenience I am using the simple phraseology that would attend their genuineness, but do not mean to convey any opinion), and when they came through Mrs. Piper, they professed to find her in a very bad way because of the "earth-bound" Phinuit, and they professed to remove him to a higher sphere where he would be purified and disinfected and sanctified and turned from a genial sympathetic, humorous and, it must be admitted, occasionally slangy and profane soul, into a prig of purest ray serene. Rector now generally took his place with Mrs. Piper, which he had done to some extent before. The gang was very well satisfied with G. P., however, and he appeared for some years as their valued friend and collaborator, until in 1897 they declared his work done, and his proper place a "higher sphere." He bade his friends here affectionate farewells, but has occasionally sent back messages, and has once or twice spoken himself. Mind, I am throughout speaking only provisionally; but I would defy any writer to escape the verisimilitude, and even if that were possible, it would involve intolerable verbiage.
Imperator & Co. now proposed to do most of the talking themselves, and they did a frightful amount of it; and occasionally really said something.
Moreover, they took charge of Mrs. Piper and Hodgson too, in their goings and comings and all their ways, dictated their diet and exercise, and even whom they should have at sittings, giving the preference to people of exceptionally high character, and to those in deep distress from loss of friends, and eager to communicate with them.
The present writer and some others are tempted to think that these autocratic personages are products telepathically conveyed to Mrs. Piper from the unconscious imagination of Hodgson and his recollection of Moses' writings, with perhaps a little involuntary dash of Prof. Newbold. But if they are, the imagination is expanded to a degree entirely outside of ordinary experience, and its study must enlarge our conception of the range of human faculty. Whatever they were, if only an allegorized form of faith cure, there is no question about their beneficial effect on the clearness of the sittings, and on the health and happiness of Mrs. Piper and Hodgson.
James says something which goes to the root of the whole business, and which, though it is episodic to the Hodgson narrative, may as well be considered here (Pr. XXIII, 3):
"Dr. Hodgson was disposed to admit the claim to reality of Rector and of the whole Imperator-Band, ... while I have rather favored the idea of their all being dream-creations of Mrs. Piper.... I can see no contradiction between Rector's being on the one hand an improvised creature of this sort, and his being on the other hand the extraordinarily impressive personality which he unquestionably is.... Critical and fastidious sitters have recognized his wisdom, and confess their debt to him as a moral adviser. With all due respect to Mrs. Piper, I feel very sure that her own waking capacity for being a spiritual adviser, if it were compared with Rector's, would fall greatly behind."
"With all due respect" for Professor James's opinion, I think I do "see [a] contradiction," and I see the contradiction because, with Professor James, "I feel very sure that her own waking capacity for being a spiritual adviser, if it were compared with Rector's, would fall greatly behind." If the Imperator band were merely, as James suggests, "dream creations," ... and if "her own waking capacity ... compared with Rector's, would fall greatly behind," how could she make anything so superior to herself? How can she do better as Rector than she can as herself? The whole scheme seems to me akin to the Du-Prel and Myers scheme of making a man lift himself higher than his head by his own boot-straps; and beside it the spiritistic hypothesis seems simplicity and probability themselves.
The simplest individual, incarnate (or discarnate?), of course manifests himself in a way that the most skillful dramatist could not equal, and it may well be questioned whether it is not more rational to assume that the hundreds of alleged personalities dramatized in the words and gestures of Mrs. Piper are manifestations by the personalities themselves, than that they are creations of some as yet unknown kind of genius residing in some layer of Mrs. Piper's consciousness, and getting its material from fragments among her own memories or by telepathy from those of other living persons, present or remote.
Hodgson closes his report (Pr. XIII, 409):
"It has been stated repeatedly that the 'channel is not yet clear,' that the machine is still in process of repair; and it has been prophesied that I shall myself return eventually to America and spend several years further in the investigation of Mrs. Piper's trance, and that more remarkable evidence of identity will be given than any heretofore obtained."
He did return and continue his beloved work for several years. But the next time we meet him it will be as an alleged denizen of the spirit world, and perhaps his testimony in that capacity was part of the "more remarkable evidence of identity" promised.
These influences, whatever their fundamental character, having made a saint of Hodgson, as was alleged by a friend who did not believe that the influences were from a post-carnate world, the drama took a new turn on December 20, 1905, in the death which Hodgson had eagerly awaited, and his ostensible reappearances through Mrs. Piper and other mediums. The principal report of them is made by his friends Professor William James, Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, Mr. J. G. Piddington and Sir Oliver Lodge in Pr. XXIII, and occupies some 170 octavo pages, most of them literal reports of sittings. Other manifestations appear in the heteromatic writing of Mrs. Holland (Pr. XX) and elsewhere. Of course but a few entirely inadequate scraps can be given here.
As in the case of G. P., the first appearance did not take place until, on Dec. 28th, a peculiarly close and congenial friend of Hodgson happened to have a sitting—an argument of course for telepathy from the friend, but an equal argument for a genuine communication that had to await a congenial sitter.
To avoid constant circumlocution, I will provisionally write as if Hodgson were really speaking. Indeed, I doubt if I could persistently do otherwise: for the utterances are so natural that all the editors of the Pr. S. P. R. unconsciously fall into that way of expression.
James says (Pr. XXIII, 7) that the first alleged appearance of Hodgson:
"was at Miss Theodate Pope's sitting on Dec. 28th, 1905 [the eighth day after Hodgson's death. Ed.] ... Rector had been writing, when the hand dropped the pencil and worked convulsively several seconds in a very excited manner.
"Miss P.: 'What is the matter?' [The hand, shaking with apparently great excitement, wrote the letter H, ... bearing down so hard on the paper that the point of the pencil was broken. It then wrote 'Hodgson.']
Was all this a "put-up job?" And if so, who put it up, and why?
"Miss P.: 'God bless you!' [The hand writes 'I am'—followed by rapid scrawls, as if regulator of machine were out of order.] Miss P.: 'Is this my friend?' [Hand assents by knocking five times on paper-pad.] (Rector): 'Peace, friends, he is here, it was he, but he could not remain, he was so choked. He is doing all in his power to return.... Better wait for a few moments until he breathes freer again.'"
Do spirits require a supply of oxygen, or is the expression metaphorical for something not accurately communicable to our intelligence? It occurs several times. Frequently the "spirits" say they are tired, especially in the transition from the body. The expression "choked" may be purely metaphorical, yet it hardly reinforces the argument for spiritism.
James says (Pr. XXIII, 13f.):
"The R. H. control suddenly wrote: 'Give ring to Margaret back to Margaret.' [Mrs. Lyman's name [pseudonym. Ed.] is not Margaret.] Miss P.: 'Who is Margaret?' R. H.: 'I was with her in summer.' Miss P.: 'All right, but the ring has not been found yet. Can you find out where it is?' R. H.: 'The undertaker got it....'"
"On January 24th, Mrs. Lyman had her first sitting. As soon as Hodgson appeared he wrote: 'The ring. You gave it me on my fiftieth birthday. When they asked I didn't want to say you gave it me.... Two palm-leaves joining each other—Greek. [Here followed an illegible word. The palms truly described the ring, which Mrs. Piper probably had seen; but it bore no Greek inscription....]' Mrs. L.: 'Yes, Dick, where is it now?' R. H.: '... They took it off my finger after I was gone.' Mrs. L.: 'No, they didn't find it on your finger.' R. H.: 'Pocket, it was in my pocket. I'll find it, you shall have it.'
"On January 29th, Mrs. L. had another sitting. The Hodgson control wrote: 'I have been trying to make clear about that ring. It is on my mind all the time. I thought if I could get Margaret B. to get it for me, I would get it to you through her, then no one would understand. I could not tell Miss Pope about you.' [Then a possible attempt to draw a symbol engraved on the ring.] 'No one living knows this but myself and yourself.' [Note the term 'living' as applied to himself. Ed.] Mrs. L.: 'That is true, but what was the motto in the ring?' R. H.: 'All will be clear to me in time. Do not ask me test questions now....'"
His failure to remember it is one of the most knock-down anti-evidential arguments, but it is equally anti-telepathic. His never speaking of the ring to other friends, the Jameses, and Mr. Dorr, seems very evidential.
Hodgson (or the control, if you prefer, whatever that may mean), kept worrying about the ring through several sittings, and got so far as to imagine that he had seen it on the finger of a man who stole it. It was eventually found in Hodgson's waistcoat pocket. James comments on the case:
"The whole incident lends itself easily to a naturalistic interpretation. Mrs. Piper or her trance-consciousness may possibly have suspected the source of the ring. Mrs. Lyman's manner may have confirmed the suspicion. The manner in which the first misleading reference to 'Margaret' was afterwards explained away may well have been the cunning of a 'control' trying plausibly to cover his tracks and justify his professed identity."
But, please, what is a "control"? And why does one want to be taken for somebody else? Is this explanation "naturalistic"? It seems to my poor wits to grant the whole case, and reminds me of the deniers of telepathy availing themselves of it to explain away spiritism. Or does James mean a control faked by Mrs. Piper? If he had not already grown past that, he gave indications that he had later. He continues:
"The description of the house and of the man to whom he ascribes its [the ring's. Ed.] present possession sounds like vague groping, characteristic also of control-cunning."
But why should there be "control-cunning"? Is it anything like commentator-cunning?
James proceeds without any "cunning:"
"On the other hand, if the hypothesis be seriously entertained that Hodgson's spirit was there in a confused state, using the permanent Piper automatic machinery to communicate through, the whole record is not only plausible but natural. It presents just that mixture of truth and groping which we ought to expect. Hodgson has the ring 'on his mind' just as Mrs. Lyman has. Like her, he wishes its source not to be bruited abroad. He describes it accurately enough, truly tells of his taking it to the fatal boat-club [He died while playing hand-ball there. Ed.], and of putting it into his waistcoat-pocket there, of the waistcoat being taken from the locker, and vaguely, but not quite erroneously, indicates its present position."
And why should it not be even "quite erroneously"? Nearly all the reasoning I have seen on these matters is vitiated by the entirely gratuitous traditional assumption that if a soul survives death, it enters at once into measureless wisdom. Hodgson (?) and the rest seem pretty much the same sort of people that they were here, and I for one am glad of it.
In the sittings of many others of Hodgson's friends the control showed a similar abundant knowledge of their experiences with Hodgson living, and, most important of all, it seems to me, all of Hodgson's exceptionally marked habits of thought and expression. We have room for but little more. James says (Pr. XXIII, 36):
"Hodgson was distinguished during life by great animal spirits. He was fond of argument, chaff, and repartee, a good deal of a gesticulator, and a great laugher.... Chaff and slang from a spirit have an undignified sound for the reader, but to the interlocutors of the R. H. control they seem invariably to have been elements of verisimilitude."
God save me from a heaven where there is no "chaff and slang"! I should fail to recognize some of my best friends among the loftiest souls who have escaped the flesh, Hodgson not the least. However intense the interest heretofore taken in a future world, I doubt if it has ever been thoroughly healthy, or ever will be before we get our conceptions of that world off stilts. James continues (pp. 37-8):
"This, however, did not exclude very serious talk with the same persons—quite the reverse sometimes, as when one sitter of this class notes: 'Then came words of kindness which were too intimate and personal to be recorded, but which left me so deeply moved that shortly afterwards, at the sitting's close, I fainted dead away—it had seemed as though he had in all reality been there and speaking to me.'"
If James ran any one of his virtues into the ground, perhaps it was his modesty concerning anything connected with himself. Instance the following introduction and what it introduces:
W. J.'s Sitting. (May 21st, 1906). (Pr. XXIII, 8of.)
"[J.] The evidence is so much the same sort of thing throughout, and makes such insipid reading, that I hesitate to print more of it in full. But I know that many critics insist on having the largest possible amount of verbatim material on which to base their conclusions, so I select a specimen of the R. H. control's utterances when he was less 'strong.' The reader, I fear, will find it long and tedious, but he can skip.
"(R. H. enters, saying:) 'Well, well, well, well! Well, well, well, that is—here I am. Good morning, good morning, Alice.' Mrs. W. J.:'Good morning, Mr. Hodgson.' R. H.: 'I am right here. Well, well, well! I am delighted!' W. J.: 'Hurrah! R. H.! Give us your hand!' R. H.: 'Hurrah, William! God bless you. How are you?' W. J.: 'First rate.' R. H.: 'Well, I am delighted to see you. Well, have you solved those problems yet?' W. J.: 'Which problems do you refer to?' R. H.: 'Did you get my messages?' W. J.: 'I got some messages about your going to convert me.' ... [R. H. had already sent me, through other sitters, messages about my little faith. W. J.] W. J.: 'Yes.' R. H.: 'Well, it has amounted to this,—that I have learned by experience that there is more truth than error in what I have been studying.' W. J.: 'Good!' R. H.: 'I am so delighted to see you to-day that words fail me.' W. J.: 'Well, Hodgson, take your time and don't be nervous.' R. H.: 'No. Well, I think I could ask the same of you! Well, now, tell me,—I am very much interested in what is going on in the society, and Myers and I are also interested in the society over here. You understand that we have to have a medium on this side, while you have a medium on your side, and through the two we communicate with you.' ... W. J.: 'You don't mean Rector?' R. H.: 'No, not at all. It is——do you remember a medium whom we called Prudens?' 'Yes.'"
From one point of view, his not naming G. P. or Rector gives food for skepticism. But why didn't Mrs. Piper do the job consistently, if it was she who did it?
"R. H.: 'What I want to know first of all is about the society. I am sorry that it could not go on.' W. J.: 'There was nobody to take your place....' R. H.: 'William, can't you see, don't you understand, and don't you remember how I used to walk up and down before that open fireplace trying to convince you of my experiments?' W. J.: 'Certainly, certainly.' R. H.: 'And you would stand with your hands in your trousers pockets. You got very impatient with me sometimes, and you would wonder if I was correct. I think you are very skeptical.' W. J.: 'Since you have been returning I am much more near to feeling as you felt than ever before.' R. H.: 'Good! Well, that is capital.' W. J.: 'Your "personality" is beginning to make me feel as you felt.' R. H.: 'If you can give up to it, William, and feel the influence of it and the reality of it, it will take away the sting of death.... Now tell me a little bit more about the Society. That will help me keep my thoughts clear. I think, William—are you standing?' W. J.: 'Yes, I am standing.' R. H.: 'Well, can't you sit?' W. J.: 'Yes.' R. H.: 'Well, sit. Let's have a nice talk.'..."
There is nothing "evidential" about the last couple of lines in the scientific sense, but there are several kinds of sense. James continues:
(Pr. XXIII, 109): "The following incident belongs to my wife's and Miss Putnam's sitting of June 12th, 1906:—Mrs. J. said: 'Do you remember what happened in our library one night when you were arguing with Margie [Mrs. J.'s sister]?'—'I had hardly said "remember,"' she notes, 'in asking this question, when the medium's arm was stretched out and the fist shaken threateningly,' then these words came:
"R. H.: 'Yes, I did this in her face. I couldn't help it. She was so impossible to move. It was wrong of me, but I couldn't help it.' [I myself well remember this fist-shaking incident, and how we others laughed over it after Hodgson had taken his leave. What had made him so angry was my sister-in-law's defense of some slate-writing she had seen in California.—W. J.]"
(Pr. XXIII, 112): "On Jan. 30, 1906, Mrs. M. had a sitting. Mrs. M. said:
"'Do you remember our last talk together, at N., and how, in coming home we talked about the work?' (R. H.): 'Yes, yes.' Mrs. M.: 'And I said if we had a hundred thousand dollars—'R. H.: 'Buying Billy!!' Mrs. M.: 'Yes, Dick, that was it—"buying Billy."' R. H.: 'Buying only Billy?' Mrs. M.: 'Oh no—I wanted Schiller too. How well you remember!'
"Mrs. M., before R. H.'s death, had had dreams of extending the American Branch's operations by getting an endowment, and possibly inducing Prof. Newbold (Billy) and Dr. Schiller to co-operate in work.
This buying Billy and Schiller brought Podmore squarely around, for the first time, I think, from his previous life-long fight against telepathy. He says (Newer Spiritualism, p. 222):
"It is impossible to doubt that we have here proof of a supernormal agency of some kind—either telepathy by the trance intelligence from the sitter or some kind of communication with the dead."
Two pages farther on, however, appears the advocatus diaboli (Op. Cit., p. 224):
"When asked to give the contents of any sealed letters written in his life-time for the express purpose of being read by him after death the two sentences were given: 'There is no death' and 'out of life into life eternal' (p. 102). Whatever Hodgson may have written, it was surely not quite so commonplace as that."
To my gullible apprehension, it seems eminently appropriate.
Among the interesting phenomena investigated by the S. P. R., have been the automatic, or I should prefer to say heteromatic, writing of Mrs. Verrall and Mrs. Holland, which were not made in trance. Vol. XX of the Proceedings is entirely given up to the consideration of it by Mrs. Verrall. She is the wife of a professor in Cambridge, and herself lecturer in Newnham College. The phenomena themselves are of moderate interest beside most of those described in these pages, but their evidential value is high, and their implications most important, and the treatment of them is pervaded by wide scholarship, and is charming. The experiences, however, do not connect with the main Moses—Piper—G. P.—Hodgson—Myers thread on which these brief extracts have naturally strung themselves, and I will not attenuate that thread to make room for this outside strand. I especially commend Mrs. Verrall's volume, however, to anybody who combines with an interest in Psychical Research, an interest in really "elegant letters."
The following scrap relating to Hodgson is from an account by Miss Johnson (Research officer of the S. P. R.) of Mrs. Holland (pseudonym) (Pr. XXI, 303f.):
"In February, 1905 ... Mrs. Holland found that the automatic writing was beginning to make her feel faint or sleepy. The condition was obviated at the time.... It now began to recur. [This sort of thing is noted in several places as preceding the advent of a new, and especially a strong control. Ed.]
"Mrs. Holland learned of Hodgson's death on January 2, 1906. Her script on Friday, February 9, 1906, 9 P. M., is as follows (Pr. XXI, 304):
"... S j d i b s e I p e h t p o—Only one letter further on—
18 8 9 15 3 4 8 7 1 19 18 15 4 14 — — "They are not haphazard figures read them as letters—....
| 18 | 8 |
| 9 | 15 |
| 3 | 4 |
| 8 | 7 |
| 1 | 19 |
| 18 | 15 |
| 4 | 14 |
| — | — |
Hodgson in life was very fond of these puzzles.
All this anticipates a scrap of explanation out of a much longer and more interesting manifestation. Mrs. Holland wrote to Miss Johnson (Pr. XXI, 171f.):
"Any automatic writing that comes to me is nearly always in verse, headed—
"'Believe in what thou canst not see,
Until the vision come to thee.'"The verses, though often childishly simple in wording and jingling in rhyme, are rarely trivial in subject. I once wrote down fourteen poems in little over an hour.... When I write original verse I do so slowly and carefully, with frequent erasures: automatic verse is always as if swiftly dictated and there are never any erasures. I am always fully conscious, but my hand moves so rapidly that I seldom know what words it is forming.
"... I copy one set of verses.... I wrote it down as quickly as it was possible for my hand to move, and was surprised afterwards to find that it had a definite form of its own. It is exactly as it came to me, not 'polished' or altered in the least.
"'I whom he loved, am a ghost,
Wandering weary and lost.
I dare not dawn on his sight,
(Windblown weary and white)
He would shudder in hopeless fright,
He who loved me the best.
I shun the paths he will go,
Because I should frighten him so.
(Weary and lacking rest).
Two stanzas are omitted from lack of space.
"'Should I beat on the window pane,
He would think it the wind and rain,
If he saw my pale face gleam
He would deem it a stray moonbeam
Or the waft of a passing dream.
No thought for the lonely dead,
Buried away out of sight.
And I go from him veiling my head,(1896)
Windblown weary and white.'"... Automatic verses do not deal much with facts, but once when I was staying in Italy, in an old palazzo I had never before seen, the day after my arrival, and before I had been into the garden, the impulse to write came on me, and I yielded to it, without however ceasing to take part in the conversation of two friends who were with me. One of them, who knew about my automatic writing, asked me to read what had come to me. I did so:—
"'Under the orange tree
Who is it lies?
Baby hair that is flaxen fair,
Shines when the dew on the grass is wet,
Under the iris and violet.
'Neath the orange tree
Where the dead leaves be,
Look at the dead child's eyes!'(1901)"'This is very curious,' said my friend, 'there is a tradition that a child is buried in the garden here, but I know you have never heard it.'"
These heteromatic poems appear to be but extreme illustrations of the "inspiration" that poets have generally claimed for themselves. The author's modest deprecations seem to me unjust to her own.
Mrs. Holland continues (p. 173f.):
"I have said that automatic verses do not deal much with facts, but once, when I was sensitive after illness, I experienced a new form of automatic writing, in the shape of letters which my hand insisted on writing to a newly-made acquaintance.
"The first of these letters began with a pet name I did not know, and was signed with the full name of someone I had never heard of, and who I afterwards learnt had been dead some years. It was clearly impressed upon me for whom the letter was intended, but thinking it due to some unhealthy fancy of my own, I destroyed it. Having done so I was punished by an agonizing headache, and the letter was repeated, till in self-defense I sent it and the succeeding ones to their destination."
This is perhaps the most "evidential" thing I know.
It has been natural to follow the career of Hodgson both incarnate and alleged post-carnate, without interrupting for the post-carnate career of Myers who had died in 1901, four years before Hodgson. Myers was perhaps the leading English spirit in the S. P. R., and everybody interested in Psychical Research—the skeptical as well as the credulous—was looking with great interest for manifestations professing to come from that spirit in a post-carnate state. As usual, they are a terrible jumble. Myers was not a demonstrative person. He had not, like Hodgson, salient characteristics of manner or expression. In that respect the communicating personality resembles him. His absorbing interests were the S. P. R., poetry, and classical literature. In those respects, too, the personality resembles him.
Mr. George Dorr of Boston got from the Myers control, through Mrs. Piper, a large mass of classical lore which Mr. Dorr asserts he never could have possessed himself, and which certainly Mrs. Piper never did (Pr. XXIV).
Myers' appearances, though of great interest to students, do not make as good general reading as G. P.'s and Hodgson's, and we will make space for only one.
On September 16, 1903, nearly three years after Myers' death and his first alleged appearance through Mrs. Thompson, there was apparently the first appearance of a Myers control through Mrs. Holland. Myers, as his control intimates later, wrote, like Hodgson, for evidential purposes in cryptic ways that the heteromatist probably never would have deliberately used. The writing was, says Miss Johnson (Pr. XXI, 178):
"On two sides of a half-sheet of paper; the first side begins with the initial 'F.,' and the second ends with the initial 'M.'; the whole passage is divided into four short sections, the first three ending respectively in '17/,' '/1' and '/01.' January 17th, 1901, was the date of Mr. Myers's death, mentioned in Human Personality; but the simple device of separating these initials and items from one another was completely effective in its apparent object. I read the passage a good many times before I saw what they meant and I found that the meaning had entirely escaped Mrs. Holland's notice."
This refers to the script containing the notorious stanza (Pr. XXI, 192) which excited the derision of the Philistine world of both continents, and disturbed not a small portion of the enlightened world:
"Friend while on earth with knowledge slight
I had the living power to write
Death tutored now in things of might
I yearn to you and cannot write."
Why the stanza excited so much adverse comment I cannot clearly make out: for what is it but a demonstration of what it claims, "I ... cannot write," unless it be also a demonstration that the tired shade, or befogged subliminal, or impotent group of world-soul elements, or what you please, could not criticise either?
It is worth remarking, by the way, that the Myers control, despite this and some other complaints of inefficiency, generally professed, as do the controls generally, to be in a condition of great happiness.
A word should be said of the very instructive and tedious subject of Cross-Correspondence, which has lately attracted more attention from the S. P. R. than any other topic.
If Mrs. Verrall in London and Mrs. Holland in India both, at about the same time, write heteromatically about a subject that they both understand, that is probably coincidence; but if both write about it when but one of them understands it, that is probably teloteropathy; and if both write about it when neither understands it, and each of their respective writings is apparently nonsense, but both make sense when put together, the only obvious hypothesis is that both were inspired by a third mind. The term Cross-Correspondence has been reserved for such a phenomenon. There are many famous ones—famous in a small circle, if that's not too Hibernian. The subject is entirely too complex for any treatment in our space. The reader is referred to Pr. XVIII, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIV and XXV.
The critics generally agree upon two points as the strongest against the spiritistic hypothesis. They were not enough for Myers, Hodgson and Sir Oliver Lodge, but they were strongest in suspending the judgment of James, Newbold and others of eminence.
The first is that Myers and Miss Wilde, of Holyoke, Mass., left sealed letters, the contents of which they purposed to announce should they be able to do so in a post-carnate life. The words ostensibly given by them through Mrs. Piper bore no relation to those found in the envelopes. Apologists offer in explanation that the memories are much confused by death, and means of communication at best very poor. There are many other cases where there is no apparent need of such apology: that there should be need of it in perhaps the most crucial cases of all, is itself suspicious. Farther, the apologists say that while it is well, and may be in the System of Things, that we should have enough communication with the world beyond to give souls aspiring that way, hope enough to keep their aspirations alive, it would not be well, and apparently is not in the System of Things, that we should have such certainty as to interfere with our living our lives here "for all we are worth"; and in support of this contention are cited the useless and worse than useless lives that, in spite of many cases far to the contrary, have been led in direct consequence of assumed certainty of a future life.
Hodgson was supposed to have left some sealed letters with intentions like those of Myers and Miss Wilde, but no such letters have been found. His control, however, gave some sentences alleged to be in them which are quoted some pages back.
The other hard nut in the S. P. R. records which resists the spiritistic hypothesis, is that Moses living told Myers that the Imperator gang gave certain well known names as borne by them on earth, and that Moses post-carnate (?) gave Professor Newbold an entirely different set of names for the same individualities. Of course the apologies for the envelope failures can be tried on this case, whether they fit it or not. And there is also the ampler, though perhaps less adequate one, that the whole Imperator business looks like a complex telepathic freak of the imaginations of Moses, Mrs. Piper, Professor Newbold, Hodgson and God knows how many others.
But a proof that the spiritistic hypothesis will not fit these cases, is no proof that it will not fit the cases of G. P., Hodgson, Gurney, Myers and hosts of others who were known to the witnesses, and whose post-carnate manifestations tally with their incarnate ones, and yet with occasional and, so far, unexplainable lapses and inconsistencies.
Perhaps the best opinion of the investigators who have not reached the faith of Myers, Hodgson and Lodge, is that while failure of the sealed letters, and the Moses inconsistencies, are unanswerable on the negative side, there are other circumstances equally unanswerable on the positive side—especially the cumulative weight of the evidence, and the dramatic renderings which apparently would be impossible from any source but the characters themselves; that the contradictions or paradoxes are merely like many others in the borderland of our knowledge: for instance, that between free will and determinism; and that the only rational attitude is a suspense of opinion until more evidence accumulates. This was the attitude of James, who served a term as President of the S. P. R., and contributed voluminously to its Proceedings.
But, however we may interpret the phenomena, or if we do not interpret them at all, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that they point to modes of Force and reaches of Mind vastly wider than before suspected, and promising well to repay farther investigation. To some they may also suggest a recovery from the scrap-heap of abandoned things, and an appropriation to new uses, of that sadly battered and misapplied old virtue known as Faith.
And now we will give the attitude of the latest of James' successors, so far as it can be conveyed by a few extracts from the inaugural address of Professor Bergson.
As to his estimate of the labors of the Society: in thanking them for the honor of his election, he said (Pr., Part LXVII, Vol. XXVI, 462-3):
Je ne connais que par des lectures les phénomènes dont la Société s'occupe; je n'ai rien vu, rien observé moi-même. Comment alors avez-vous pu venir me prendre, pour me faire succéder aux grands savants, aux penseurs éminents qui ont occupé tour à tour le fauteuil présidentiel.... Si j'osais plaisanter sur un pareil sujet, je dirais qu'il y a eu ici un effet de télépathie ou de clairvoyance, que vous avez senti de loin l'intérêt que je prenais à vos recherches, et que vous m'avez aperçu, à travers les quatre cents kilomètres qui nous séparaient, lisant attentivement vos comptes-rendus, suivant vos travaux avec une ardente curiosité. Ce que vous avez dépensé d'ingéniosité, de pénétration, de patience, de ténacité, à l'exploration de la terra incognita des phénomènes psychiques me paraît en effet admirable. Mais, plus encore ... j'admire le courage qu'il vous a fallu pendant les premières années surtout, pour lutter contre les préventions d'une bonne partie du monde savant et pour braver la raillerie, qui fait peur aux plus intrépides. C'est pourquoi je suis fier—plus fier que je ne saurais le dire—d'avoir été élu président de la Société de recherche psychique. J'ai lu quelque part l'histoire d'un officier subalterne que les hasards de la bataille, la disparition de ses chefs tués ou blessés, avaient appelé à l'honneur de commander le régiment: toute sa vie il y pensa, toute sa vie il en parla, et du souvenir de ces quelques heures son existence entière restait imprégnée. Je suis cet officier subalterne, et toujours je me féliciterai de la chance inattendue qui m'aura mis—non pas pour quelques heures, mais pour quelques mois—à la tête d'un régiment de braves.
He accounted for the indifference long shown by men of science to the phenomena studied by the S. P. R. by the fact that they do not square with the widely accepted theory of parallelism between mental action and brain function. This is of course especially the case with phenomena indicating the mind's survival of the body. He then proceeded to dispose of the doctrine of parallelism (Op. cit., 470-75):
Bref, l'hypothèse d'un parallélisme rigoureux entre le cérébral et le mental paraît éminemment scientifique. D'instinct, la philosophie et la science tendent à écarter ce qui contredirait cette hypothèse ou ce qui serait mal compatible avec elle. Et tel paraît être, à première vue, le cas des faits qui relèvent de la "recherche psychique,"—ou tout au moins le cas de bon nombre d'entre eux....
Pour une seule fonction de la pensée, en effet, l'expérience a pu faire croire qu'elle était localisée en un certain point du cerveau: je veux parler de la mémoire, et plus particulièrement de la mémoire des mots. Ni pour le jugement, ni pour le raisonnement, ni pour aucune autre faculté de la pensée proprement dite nous n'avons la moindre raison de supposer qu'elle soit attachée à tels ou tels processus cérébraux déterminés.... Si l'on examine de près tous les faits allégués en faveur d'une exacte correspondance et d'une espèce d'adhérence de la vie mentale à la vie cérébrale (je laisse de côté, cela va sans dire, les sensations et les mouvements, car le cerveau est certainement un organe sensori moteur), on voit que ces faits se réduisent aux phénomènes de mémoire, et que c'est la localisation des aphasies, et cette localisation seule, qui semble apporter à la doctrine paralléliste un commencement de preuve expérimentale.
He says that lesions in the place in the brain already alluded to
"rendent, en réalité, impossible ou difficile l'évocation des souvenirs; elles portent sur le mécanisme du rappel, et sur ce mécanisme seulement. Plus précisément, le rôle du cerveau est ici de faire que l'esprit, quand il a besoin de tel ou tel souvenir, puisse obtenir du corps une certaine attitude ou certains mouvements naissants, qui présentent au souvenir cherché un cadre approprié. Si le cadre est là, le souvenir viendra, de lui-même, s'y insérer. L'organe cérébral prépare le cadre, il ne fournit pas le souvenir.... Dans le travail de la pensée en général, comme dans l'opération de la mémoire, le cerveau nous apparaît comme chargé d'imprimer au corps les mouvements et les attitudes qui jouent ce que l'esprit pense ou ce que les circonstances l'invitent â penser.... Il en connaîtrait tout juste ce qui est exprimable en gestes, attitudes et mouvements du corps, ce que l'état d'âme contient d'action en voie d'accomplissement, ou simplement naissante: le reste lui échapperait.... Les phénomènes cérébraux sont en effet à la vie mentale ce que les gestes du chef d'orchestre sont à la symphonie: ils en dessinent les articulations motrices, ils ne font pas autre chose. On ne trouverait donc rien des opérations de l'esprit proprement dit à l'intérieur du cerveau....
Orienter notre pensée vers l'action, l'amener à préparer l'acte que les circonstances réclament, voilâ ce pour quoi notre cerveau est fait...."
Then he turns to the strange memories of the dream state, in ordinary sleep, hypnosis and trance:
Bien des faits semblent indiquer que le passé se conserve jusque dans ses moindres détails et qu'il n'y a pas d'oubli réel. Vous vous rappelez ce qu'on raconte des noyés et des pendus qui, revenus à la vie, déclarent avoir eu, en quelques secondes, la vision panoramique de la totalité de leur vie passée....
Mais ce que je dis de la mémoire serait aussi vrai de la perception. Je ne puis entrer ici dans le détail d'une démonstration que j'ai faite autrefois: qu'il me suffise de rappeler que tout devient obscur, et même incompréhensible, si l'on considère les centres cérébraux comme des organes capables de transformer en états conscients des ébranlements matériels, que tout s'éclaircit au contraire si l'on voit simplement dans ces centres (et dans les dispositifs sensoriels auxquels ils sont liés) des instruments de sélection chargés de choisir, dans le champ immense de nos perceptions virtuelles, celles qui devront s'actualiser.... J'estime que nous percevons virtuellement beaucoup plus de choses que nous n'en percevons actuellement, et qu'ici encore le rôle de notre corps est d'écarter du champ de notre conscience tout ce qui ne nous serait d'aucun intérêt pratique, tout ce qui ne se prête pas à notre action.
This implies what is more fully stated elsewhere in M. Bergson's works, and suggested by nearly all the philosophers, that mind pervades the universe, and flows through each organism, according to its constitution, as force and matter do.
He does not go into the paradox (perhaps another of those we have already alluded to) of individuality surviving as part of the universal mind, but contents himself with saying merely:
Mais si les faits, étudiés sans parti pris, nous amènent au contraire à considérer la vie mentale comme beaucoup plus vaste que la vie cérébrale, la survivance devient si probable que l'obligation de la preuve incombera à celui qui la nie, bien plutôt qu'à celui qui l'affirme; car, ainsi que je le disais ailleurs, "l'unique raison que nous puissions avoir de croire à une extinction de la conscience après la mort est que nous voyons le corps se désorganiser, et cette raison n'a plus de valeur si l'indépendance au moins partielle de la conscience à l'égard du corps est, elle aussi, un fait d'expérience."
Regarding telepathy, he made the following suggestions (Op. cit., 465, 466, 475-6):
Si la télépathie est un fait réel, c'est un fait susceptible de se répéter indéfiniment. Je vais plus loin: si la télépathie est un fait réel, il est fort possible qu'elle opère à chaque instant et chez tout le monde, mais avec trop peu d'intensité pour se faire remarquer, ou en présence d'obstacles qui neutralisent l'effet au moment même où il va se manifester. Nous produisons de l'électricité à tout moment, l'atmosphère est constamment électrisée, nous circulons parmi des courants magnétiques; et pourtant des millions d'hommes ont vécu pendant des milliers d'années sans soupçonner l'existence de l'électricité. Il pourrait en être de même de la télépathie. Mais peu importe. Un point est en tous cas incontestable, c'est que, si la télépathie est réelle, elle est naturelle, et que, le jour où nous en connaîtrions les conditions, il ne nous serait pas plus nécessaire, pour obtenir un effet télépathique, d'attendre une hallucination vraie, que nous n'avons besoin aujourd'hui, quand nous voulons voir l'étincelle électrique, d'attendre que le ciel veuille bien nous en donner le spectacle pendant une scène d'orage....
Pour ma part, quand je repasse dans ma mémoire les résultats de l'admirable enquête poursuivie continuellement par vous pendant plus de trente ans, quand je pense à toutes les précautions que vous avez prises pour éviter l'erreur, quand je vois comment, dans la plupart des cas que vous avez retenus, le récit de l'hallucination avait été fait à une ou plusieurs personnes, souvent même noté par écrit, avant que l'hallucination eût été reconnue véridique, quand je tiens compte du nombre énorme des faits et surtout de leur ressemblance entre eux, de leur air de famille, de la concordance de tant de témoignages indépendants les uns des autres, tous examinés, contrôlés, soumis à la critique,—je suis porté à croire à la télépathie de même que je crois, par exemple, à la défaite de l'Invincible Armada. Ce n'est pas la certitude mathématique que me donne la démonstration du théorème de Pythagore; ce n'est pas la certitude physique où je suis de la vérité de la loi de la chute des corps; c'est du moins toute la certitude qu'on obtient en matière historique ou judiciaire.
Nos corps sont extérieurs les uns aux autres dans l'espace; et nos consciences, en tant qu'attachées à ces corps, sont extérieures les unes aux autres aussi. Mais si elles ne tiennent au corps que par une partie d'elles-mêmes, on peut conjecturer que, pour le reste, elles ne sont pas aussi nettement séparées. Loin de moi la pensée de considérer la personnalité comme une simple apparence, ou comme une réalité éphémère, ou comme une dépendance de l'activité cérébrale! Mais il est fort possible qu'entre les diverses personnalités s'accomplissent sans cesse des échanges comparables aux phénomènes d'endosmose. Si cette endosmose existe, on peut prévoir que la nature aura pris toutes ses précautions pour en neutraliser l'effet, et que certains mécanismes devront être spécialement chargés de rejeter dans l'inconscient les représentations ainsi provoquées, car elles seraient fort embarrassantes dans la vie de tous les jours. Telle ou telle de ces représentations pourrait cependant, ici encore, passer en contrebande, surtout quand les mécanismes inhibitifs fonctionnent mal; et sur elles encore s'exercerait la "recherche psychique."