It is difficult in the case, for instance, of “Katie King,” who, as already said, appeared hundreds of times during two or three years, or of Estella Martha, who appeared to her husband during five years and in 380 or more seances in connection with the medium Kate Fox,[[118]] not to believe that such figures are (as we should say) really the individuals they profess to be, and not mere thought-forms or images projected from the medium’s under-mind. But whichever view we take, it is obvious that they are centres in some degree, of intelligent force or vitality, centres which, though in their essence rare and tenuous as thought or feeling, succeed in clothing themselves with a certain grade of corporeality by the use of the materials at hand, and in so coming into visible manifestation. And this general view is confirmed by the fact, so often observed, that when the same figure appears repeatedly, it does, as time goes on, acquire skill and adroitness in carrying out the process of condensation or whatever it is, which is concerned, and consequently comes into manifestation and activity more quickly and decisively. Also, it may be noted, and has often been observed (as in the case of the said Estella Martha and many others), that by practice the figure attains the power of enduring strong light—that is, its state of condensation reaches a point of solidity almost comparable with that of our tissues, which are not as a rule disintegrated by light.
The radio-activity of the ‘inner being’ also helps to explain the extraordinary manifestations of sheer physical force in these connections. Some of these manifestations have been so astonishing, that the fact alone has caused them to be disbelieved; but though, of course, fraud has played a part in such phenomena, and has to be guarded against, it is now quite evident that in a multitude of cases fraud does not enter at all.
Eusapia Paladino, for instance—though capable of little fraudulences—was obviously the seat of extraordinary powers not to be explained by these. Mr. Carrington, who made a special study of this medium, and who (as I have said before) has also made a special study of fraudulent methods in so-called spiritualism, vouches most strongly for the great exhibitions of inexplicable force in her vicinity—especially perhaps in the way of levitations. He says:—“Every one who has studied Eusapia’s phenomena knows that practically every seance (for some reason) commences with table-levitations—this, whether they are wanted or not! It seems the necessary programme, and it is almost invariably carried out. Seeing them time after time, one can obtain a very fair idea of their nature and reality. And I may say that I now consider levitations as well established as any other physical facts. They are not open to the objection to which most psychical phenomena are subjected—that they cannot be repeated or induced and studied experimentally, as one would study other physical facts—for they can be induced and studied in just this laboratory manner. I have probably seen several hundreds of these levitations now, under every conceivable condition and in excellent light, and I consider them so far established that, as Count Solovovo said, “the burden of proof is now on the man who asserts that they are not real, not upon the man who asserts that they are.” These are pretty strong words, and by a very responsible observer! And then Mr. Carrington proceeds with a detailed account of these and other physical phenomena.[[119]]
Some years ago, the reports and accounts of such phenomena were generally at once dismissed as absurd and incredible; but by a remarkable coincidence the last few years have seen the wonderful development of the science of radio-activity—dating from the epoch-making experiments of Crookes, in 1879 and earlier. These experiments, curiously enough, were worked out during much of the same period as Crookes’ researches into spiritualistic phenomena, and have led to the shedding of much light upon the latter. For the new science developed from them, and already more or less popularized,[[120]] compels us to suppose that the most enormous forces lurk all around, within the very structure of the atom itself—which of course is totally invisible to our eyes. The new facts observed, with regard to radium and other such substances, seem to compel the supposition that each atom is composed of an immense number (say 100,000) of highly charged electrical particles moving each with huge velocity—a velocity at any rate comparable to that of light. The dissociation of such atoms and the liberation of their constituent particles develops a fabulous energy. When it is calculated that one gramme or fifteen grains of matter (say the weight of thirty postage stamps) moving with the speed of light, would have energy enough to lift the British Navy to the top of Ben Nevis (Crookes); or that one milligramme (say the sixty-sixth part of a grain of wheat) at the same speed would represent the energy of fifteen million foot-tons (Lodge); or when, according to J. J. Thomson, the combined speed and mass of the electrons within such a milligramme of matter would total up to the work represented by a hundred million kilogram-metres;[[121]] then we can at any rate see—whatever small variations there may be in the estimates—how immense are the potentialities of the tiniest points of matter; how each minutest atom comprehends, as Shelley says, “a world of loves and hatreds” (i.e. positive and negative electric charges); we realize that no manifestations of unexpected power are per se incredible; and we are indeed rather inclined to wonder how it is that these great inter-atomic energies do not more often force themselves on our attention!
It is evident that any such condition of being as we have supposed in the case of the ‘inner’ or ‘spiritual’ body, might afford means for the liberation—even from a single atom—of forces amply sufficient for the most ‘miraculous’ phenomena; and we are led to wonder and to ask whether it may not be the case that, after all, our gross bodies are really a hindrance rather than a help—whether it may not be true that the powers we could exert without them and independently of muscles and sinews and hands and feet would be far greater than those we actually do exert by means of these organs and appendages; whether, in fact, our gross bodies do not exercise a limiting effect, confining our activities to certain very clearly specified directions, and within certain very definite bounds? At any rate, this point of view is worth considering.
Certainly the well-established facts of telepathy, and the equally well-established facts of the projection of phantoms from persons dying, or passing through great danger, to friends even at a great distance, seem to show that the inner self of one person can send out rays or in some way impress itself on the inner self of another far-off person;[[122]] and this, under the theory of electrons moving at prodigious speed, seems not impossible. For though there is a difficulty in supposing ordinary physical vibrations or radiations to reach effectively from one person to another (say a thousand miles away) on account of the law of space itself, which makes such radiations diminish in intensity as the square of the distance increases, yet in the case of electrical radiations it seems possible to suppose two people related to each other as positive and negative poles—in which case the radiations of electric charges would pass along lines connecting the two, and with comparatively little loss of intensity. Our present rather crude and lumbering bodies probably impede these subtle exertions of force; and the fact (already noted once or twice) of the greater activity of people in the telepathic or phantasmogenetic directions, when they are themselves outwardly in a dying or exhausted condition, seems to point to a considerable liberation of these powers after death.
On the other hand, the well-established facts of perceptivity at a great distance, or without the mediation of the gross body and the usual end-organs, point in the same direction. Considerable investigations have been made in this subject; and not only is the evidence for occasional clairvoyance at a distance well established, but there are curious cases in which the faculty of sight or of hearing seems to be transferred from its natural organ to some other part of the body, as of seeing with the knee, or the stomach, or the finger-tips. Myers gives considerable attention to this subject, and thinks that Professor Fontan’s experiments[[123]] “cannot lightly be set aside”; while Lombroso quotes an hysterical patient of his own, a girl of fourteen, who lost the sight of her eyes, but was able to read perfectly with the lobe of her left ear! Later on, in the same patient, the sense of smell concentrated itself in the heel of her foot! Mrs. Piper, as is well known, commonly raises her hand for the sitter to speak into, as if it were her ear. And in cases of somnambulism the sleepwalker will sometimes move securely through difficult or dangerous places with eyes absolutely closed. All these things seem to point to an aboriginal power of perception independent of the end-organs. It is obvious that if in the course of evolution our present faculties of sight, hearing, and so forth have been developed from the diffused sensitivity of an amœba or some such creature, then those faculties must have existed, in their undifferentiated state, in the amœba; or, to put the matter another way, the faculty of sight clearly does not reside in the cornea of the eye, or in the crystalline lens, or even in the retina itself; which are merely an apparatus evolved for dealing with the details of the matter. The retina catches the light-disturbance, and the optic nerve conveys it to the brain, and the brain-cells are agitated by it; but where does sight come in? At some point, doubtless, the agitations of the brain-cells or of their internal molecules are seen and interpreted; but the being that sees and interprets them may (we had almost said must) be capable of directly seeing and interpreting similar agitations in the outer world—that is, it may or must by its nature be capable of seeing the events of the outer world without the mediation of the end-organs or the brain. Frederick Myers, dealing with this subject, says:—“I start from the thesis that the perceptive power within us precedes and is independent of the specialized sense-organs, which it has developed for earthly use. ‘It is the mind that sees and the mind that hears, the other things are blind and deaf.’”[[124]] He thinks that in the development or unfolding of life on our planet “certain sensibilities got themselves defined and stereotyped upon the organism by the evolution of end-organs. Others failed to get thus externalized; but may, for aught we know, persist nevertheless in the central organs.”[[125]] It is evident—however we may explain the matter—that activities and sensibilities do persist and manifest themselves in the human organism quite independent of the ordinary and stereotyped end-organs, and this fact must go far to persuade us, not only that there is an inner, a more subtle, and a more durable body than that which we usually recognize, but that in some respects this latter body is a limitation and a hindrance to the activity of the former, and to the swiftness and range of the perceptions of the soul.
What, then, it will naturally be asked, is the object or purpose or use of our incarnation in this grosser body?—why, if there is such an ethereal or spiritual frame within, should it thus tend to accrete denser particles upon itself and ultimately to clothe itself in a vesture of so opaque and material a nature? It would be rash to attempt to answer so profound a question offhand—off one’s own bat as it were; and still more rash perhaps to accept any of the ready-made answers which are offered in such profusion, and in so many different jargons and lingos, by the sects and schools, from the Gnostics and Theosophists to the most philistine of the chapels and churches. Yet if one may venture a suggestion, it would seem rather likely that the object and purpose and use of this process by which the soul is entangled in matter, and its operation and perception so strangely hampered and limited, is—limitation; that limitation itself and even hindrance are part and parcel of the great scheme of the soul’s deliverance. But the further consideration of this I will defer to a later chapter.[[126]]