It may be interesting, in concluding this brief examination into one branch of the great subject of "Spiritualism," to bring together a few of the impressions produced on the minds of some of the leading investigators. It should not be forgotten that the branch of the subject which we have been studying may be looked upon as representing the lowest steps only of a great staircase which ascends, until, to our gaze, it is lost in unknown infinite heights. It is only the foot of a ladder, to use another simile, resting on the material earth, which we have been considering; at most the two or three lowest rungs. But to the eyes of some, even now and here, glimpses of angels ascending and descending are visible.
Five names stand out prominently before all others among the earlier investigators of the last thirty years—Sir William Crookes and Professor W. F. Barrett, who are still with us; and Professor Henry Sidgwick, Edmund Gurney, and F. W. H. Myers, who have gone. Sir William Crookes' work in other directions has been all-absorbing, so that all he has been able to tell us during the last few years, in relation to our present subject, is that he had nothing to add to, and nothing to retract from what he has said in the past. In his address as President of the British Association in 1898, Sir William Crookes said, after referring to his work of thirty years ago:—
"I think I see a little further now. I have glimpses of something like coherence among the strange elusive phenomena, of something like continuity between those unexplained forces, and laws already known.... Were I now introducing for the first time these inquiries to the world of science, I should choose a starting-point different from that of old. It would be well to begin with Telepathy; with the fundamental law, as I believe it to be, that thoughts and images may be transferred from one mind to another without the agency of the recognised organs of sense—that knowledge may enter the human mind without being communicated in any hitherto known or recognised ways."[72]
For Professor Barrett's present views the reader is referred to his address as President of the Society for Psychical Research delivered in January 1904.[73] It is full of interest, but is not easy to quote from. Speaking of "spiritualistic phenomena," he says: "We must all agree that indiscriminate condemnation on the one hand, and ignorant credulity on the other, are the two most mischievous elements with which we are confronted in connection with this subject. It is because we, as a Society, feel that in the fearless pursuit of truth, it is the paramount duty of science to lead the way, that the scornful attitude of the scientific world towards even the investigation of these phenomena is so much to be deprecated.... I suppose we are all apt to fancy our own power of discernment and of sound judgment to be somewhat better than our neighbours. But after all, is it not the common-sense, the care, the patience, and the amount of uninterrupted attention we bestow upon any psychical phenomena we are investigating, that gives value to the opinion at which we arrive, and not the particular cleverness or scepticism of the observer? The lesson we all need to learn is, that what even the humblest of men affirm, from their own experience, is always worth listening to, but what even the cleverest of men, in their ignorance, deny, is never worth a moment's attention."[74]
As regards Professor Sidgwick, the experimental work of the Society for Psychical Research soon convinced him that Thought-Transference, or Telepathy, was a fact. In an address in 1889, after speaking of the probabilities of testimony given being false, he says:—
"It is for this reason that I feel that a part of my grounds for believing in Telepathy, depending as it does on personal knowledge, cannot be communicated except in a weakened form to the ordinary reader of the printed statements which represent the evidence that has convinced me. Indeed I feel this so strongly that I have always made it my highest ambition as a psychical researcher to produce evidence which will drive my opponents to doubt my honesty or veracity; I think there are a very small minority who will not doubt them, and that if I can convince them I have done all that I can do: as regards the majority of my own acquaintances I should claim no more than an admission that they were considerably surprised to find me in the trick."[75]
I am not aware that Professor Sidgwick ever expressed any opinion as to the reality of the ordinary physical spiritualistic manifestations. It is clear that he believed a large proportion to have been fraudulently produced. As to some psychical phenomena, his convictions were very strong. For instance, in the final paragraph of the "Report on Hallucinations," which occupies the whole of the tenth volume of the Proceedings of the Society, and to which he appended his name, these two sentences occur: "Between deaths and apparitions of the dying person a connection exists which is not due to chance alone. This we hold as a proved fact."[76] And Professor Sidgwick speaks of this as corroborating the conclusion already drawn by Mr. Gurney nearly ten years earlier.
Mr. Edmund Gurney's name stands next. His earthly work came to a sudden termination in 1888. "Phantasms of the Living" is his enduring memorial. Although two other names are associated with his on the title-page, the greater part of the two volumes was written by him alone. For most of the views expressed Mr. Gurney is solely responsible. In a chapter devoted to "The Theory of Chance-Coincidence" as an explanation of the order of natural phenomena to which "Phantasms of the Living" belong, Mr. Gurney says:—
"Figures, one is sometimes told, can be made to prove anything; but I confess I should be curious to see the figures by which the theory of chance-coincidence could here be proved adequate to the facts. Whatever group of phenomena be selected, and whatever method of reckoning be adopted, probabilities are hopelessly and even ludicrously overpassed."[77]
This is the conclusion referred to above by Professor Sidgwick. With exclusively physical phenomena Mr. Gurney did not much concern himself.