A few examples will illustrate this. Mr. Alfred Russell Wallace, the co-discoverer with Darwin of the theory of natural selection, has a name in the scientific world that places him among the leaders of scientific thought. For many years he has been convinced that spiritualism contains in itself truths that deserve careful investigation, and he for one is persuaded that the neglect of investigation of this subject, on the part of recent generations, is one of the most serious mistakes, from a purely scientific standpoint, that they have made. Sir William Crookes, whose brilliant theories with regard to the fourth stage of matter, radiant matter, would seem to have quite appropriately prepared him for the proper investigation of existences even beyond the domain of the attenuated substances with which he had been so much concerned, is another of the prominent scientists of the day who confesses to a belief in the truth of spiritualistic phenomena. He made his first publication on the subject more than a quarter of a century ago. When a score of years after this he was elected as the President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the most prominent scientific body in Great Britain, and, it may be said, in the [{383}] English-speaking world, he recurred in his Presidential address to the subject of spiritualism, and said that in the meantime he not only had not changed his mind with regard to the truth of certain spiritualistic phenomena, but had even become more convinced than he was originally.
These are prominent English scientists, and Englishmen are supposed to be more conservative, less likely to be influenced by personal motives, and less prone to be led astray by imaginative influences, than their colleagues on the Continent. Besides these two whom we have mentioned, there is a third one, of quite as great prominence, Sir Oliver Lodge, who is also a convert to belief in the reality of certain spiritual manifestations, and other names might readily be mentioned. Over in France, the most prominent of living physiologists, Professor Charles Richet, who is well known for investigating work of a high order and successful original research that has made his name familiar throughout the medical world at least, is another modern scientist who cannot but think that there is something in spiritualistic manifestations. The latest convert to these notions is an even more surprising addition to such a group of witnesses to the possibility of the interference of spirits with human affairs. This is no less a person than Lombroso, the well-known writer on criminology, who has recently confessed that certain tests made by him showed beyond all doubt that there were influences at work quite independent of human powers, and showing the existence of a world apart from matter. This immaterial world evidently interpenetrates, and may interfere with things in the material world as we know it.
In a word, it may be said that if a man wants to keep the spiritual side of things out of his purview of life, he may do so by refusing to investigate any evidence that would demonstrate the existence of spiritual forces in the world around him. The heavy price, however, that he pays for absolute certainty and peace of mind in this matter--is peremptory refusal to investigate. If he gives himself up to investigations, he comes inevitably to the conclusion that there is something in the belief in the existence of spirits all round us, and of the possibility of their interference in the ordinary affairs of life. It is true that after he has come to this conclusion he may not be able to demonstrate it to others. His conviction of it, however, will be none the less absolute because of this. His adhesion to the new belief may seem to many people absurd. He will accept this view of his state of mind quite calmly, and apparently enjoy the compensation of finding the absurdity to be in the other point of view. It matters not how distinguished a scientist he may be, he comes out of investigation of spiritual phenomena persuaded of the existence of a spiritual world.
This persuasion seems to come by some form of intuition not quite dependent on the ordinary processes of intelligence. It is as if spirit called to spirit across the abyss, from the immaterial to the material, as if somehow we obtained a conviction of the existence of spirits around us by the very sympathy of our natures and their relationship to the immaterial world, rather than by the ordinary avenues of intelligence. It is, in a word, a telepathy, the other agent in which is not material, but quite independent of matter, yet somehow is able to set up those vibrations in the ether which [{385}] affect brain cells, and thus bring about communications, as Sir William Crookes explains the curious phenomena in this line that occur between human beings. Such an explanation may easily be dismissed as highly imaginative and altogether theoretic. As a student of psychology now for many years, it has appealed to me, however, as the only possible hypothesis that gives any plausible explanation of the curious conversions which so inevitably result from sympathetic attempts at investigation of the possibility of spirit interference in mundane affairs.
How far this persuasion of spiritual interference in ordinary human affairs has gone, will not be realized except by those who are familiar with some of the literature which has been made in the last twenty years on the subject of psychical research. Not long since, a distinguished European professor of physical science went so far as to warn people of the dangers there might be in dismissing the opinion that other intelligences than those of men could interfere for the abrogation of certain natural laws. This may be scoffed at as the height of credulity, and may be received in sceptical mood by those who refuse to look into such matters, because they know a priori that they cannot be true! It is hard, however, to differentiate the attitude of mind of such persons from that which Galileo deprecated so much, in that letter of complaint to Kepler, in which he said so bitterly that they refused to look through his telescope and demolished, as they thought, his observations by logical conclusions from what they knew already. It is to be remarked that it was not ecclesiastics of whom he was talking at this time, but professors of science at the University of [{386}] Pisa, who were quite as unsympathetic towards certain of his astronomical discoveries as were any of the ecclesiastics of his time.
Alfred Russell Wallace has summed up this matter in a well-known chapter on psychic research, which he places among what he calls the failures of A Wonderful Century--the nineteenth. While personally viewing this matter from a very different standpoint to that from which it is viewed by Mr. Wallace, I cannot help but think that the position he occupies is much nearer the truth than the absolute refusal to credit stories of supra-natural or ultra-natural, if not supernatural interferences in human affairs. When Mr. Wallace has an opinion he is likely to express it very forcibly, and he has done so in this case. He does not hesitate to attribute a great many marvelous happenings to practically the same forces as the medieval people formulated for them, though they would disagree utterly in the purposes attributed to these events. Mr. Wallace says:
"The still more extraordinary phenomena--veridical hallucinations, warnings, detailed predictions of future events, phantoms, voices or knockings, visible or audible to numerous individuals, bell-ringing, the playing on musical instruments, stone-throwing and various movements of solid bodies, all without human contact or any discoverable physical cause, still occur among us as they have occurred in all ages. These are now being investigated, and slowly but surely are proved to be realities, although the majority of scientific men and of writers for the press still ignore the cumulative evidence and ridicule the inquirers. These phenomena being comparatively rare, are as yet known to but a limited number of persons; but the evidence for their reality is [{387}] also very extensive, and it is absolutely certain that during the coming century they too will be accepted as realities by all impartial students and by the majority of educated men and women."
Mr. Wallace has insisted further on the utterly unscientific position of many of those who refuse to look into the evidence for these phenomena, so plainly beyond the power of the ordinary forces of nature as we know them, or of the human intelligences in the body, that are immediately around us. He deprecates, as does Galileo, the method by which this subject has been kept from receiving its due meed of attention. He points out that it is because of intellectual intolerance that this subject has been relegated to the background of scientific attention. He even contends that a great lesson is to be learned from this neglect, and one which will help men to free themselves from that burden of overconservatism which, much more than religion or theology, has impeded the progress of knowledge and the advance of science. He says:
"The great lesson to be learnt from our review of this subject is, distrust of all a priori judgments as to facts; for the whole history of the progress of human knowledge, and especially of that department of knowledge now known as psychical research, renders it certain that whenever the scientific men or popular teachers of any age have denied, on a priori grounds of impossibility or opposition to the 'laws of nature,' the facts observed and recorded by numerous investigators of average honesty and intelligence, these deniers have always been wrong."
"Future ages will, I believe, be astonished at the vast amount of energy and ignorance displayed by so many [{388}] of the great men of this century in opposing unpalatable truths, and in supposing that a priori arguments, accusations of imposture or insanity, or personal abuse, were the proper means of determining matters of fact and of observation in any department of human knowledge."