It is no doubt possible, as always, to overstep the happy mean, and by absorption in and premature concern with future interests to lose the benefit and the training of this present life. But although we may rightly decide to live with full vigour in the present, and do our duty from moment to moment, yet in order to be full-flavoured and really intelligent beings—not merely with mechanical drift following the line of least resistance—we ought to be aware that there is a future,—a future determined to some extent by action in the present; and it is only reasonable that we should seek to ascertain, roughly and approximately, what sort of future it is likely to be.
Inquiry into survival, and into the kind of experience through which we shall all certainly have to go in a few years, is therefore eminently sane, and may be vitally significant. It may colour all our actions, and give a vivid meaning both to human history and to personal experience.
If death is not extinction, then on the other side of dissolution mental activity must continue, and must be interacting with other mental activity. For the fact of telepathy proves that bodily organs are not absolutely essential to communication of ideas. Mind turns out to be able to act directly on mind, and stimulate it into response by other than material means. Thought does not belong to the material region: although it is able to exert an influence on that region through mechanism provided by vitality. Yet the means whereby it accomplishes the feat are essentially unknown, and the fact that such interaction is possible would be strange and surprising if we were not too much accustomed to it. It is reasonable to suppose that the mind can be more at home, and more directly and more exuberantly active, where the need for such interaction between psychical and physical—or let us more safely and specifically say between mental and material—no longer exists, when the restraining influence of brain and nerve mechanism is removed, and when some of the limitations connected with bodily location in space are ended.
Experience must be our guide. To shut the door on actual observation and experiment in this particular region, because of preconceived ideas and obstinate prejudices, is an attitude common enough, even among scientific men; but it is an attitude markedly unscientific. Certain people have decided that inquiry into the activities of discarnate mind is futile; some few consider it impious; many, perhaps wisely mistrusting their own powers, shrink from entering on such an inquiry. But if there are any facts to be ascertained, it must be the duty of some volunteers to try to ascertain them: and for people having any acquaintance with scientific history to shut their eyes to facts when definitely announced, and to forbid investigation or report concerning them on pain of ostracism,—is to imitate a bygone theological attitude in a spirit of unintended flattery—a flattery which from every point of view is eccentric; and likewise to display an extraordinary lack of humour.
On the Possibility of Prognostication
I do not wish to complicate the issue at present by introducing the idea of prognostication or prevision, for I do not understand how anticipation of the future is possible. It is only known to be possible by one of two processes—
(a) Inference—i.e. deduction from a wide knowledge of the present;
(b) Planning—i.e. the carrying out of a prearranged scheme.
And these methods must be pressed to the utmost before admitting any other hypothesis.
As to the possibility of prevision in general, I do not dogmatise, nor have I a theory wherewith to explain every instance; but I keep an open mind and try to collate and contemplate the facts.