If the hypothesis that the world as a whole, spiritual and material together, has in some way a systematic unity, be true—and that is the hypothesis accepted by a majority of thinking men at the present time—then the importance of collecting and recording and analyzing such facts as those presented to us in the present narrative cannot be overestimated.
The scientific demonstration of a future life may be one of the great triumphs reserved for the science of the twentieth century to win, and Hélène Smith and Prof. Flournoy may ultimately appear to have contributed largely to its accomplishment.
To those who still persist in asking Cui bono? in reference to such work as that which Prof. Flournoy has here so ably performed, I beg leave to quote further from Mr. Myers the following:
“The faith to which Science is sworn is a faith in the uniformity, the coherence, the intelligibility of, at any rate, the material universe. Science herself is but the practical development of this mighty postulate. And if any phenomenon on which she chances on her onward way seems arbitrary, or incoherent, or unintelligible, she does not therefore suppose that she has come upon an unravelled end in the texture of things; but rather takes for granted that a rational answer to the new problem must somewhere exist—an answer which will be all the more instructive because it will involve facts of which that first question must have failed to take due account.
“This faith in the uniformity of material Nature formulates itself in two great dogmas—for such they are;—the dogma of the Conservation of Matter and the dogma of the Conservation of Energy. Of the Conservation of Matter, within earthly limits, we are fairly well assured; but of the Conservation of Energy the proof is far less complete, simply because Energy is a conception which does not belong to the material world alone. Life is to us the most important of all forms of activity—of energy, I would say—except that we cannot transform other energies into Life, nor measure in foot-pounds that directive force which has changed the face of the world. Life comes we know not whence; it vanishes we know not whither; it is interlocked with a moving system vaster than that we know. To grasp the whole of its manifestation, we should have to follow it into an unseen world. Yet scientific faith bids us believe that there, too, there is continuity; and that the past and the future of that force which we discern for a moment are still subject to universal Law.
“Out of the long Stone Age our race is awakening into consciousness of itself. We stand in the dawn of history. Behind us lies a vast and unrecorded waste—the mighty struggle humanam condere gentem. Since the times of that ignorance we have not yet gone far; a few thousand years, a few hundred thinkers, have barely started the human mind upon the great æons of its onward way. It is not yet the hour to sit down in our studies and try to eke out Tradition with Intuition—as one might be forced to do in a planet’s senility, by the glimmer of a fading sun. Daphni, quid antiquos signorum suspicis ortus? The traditions, the intuitions of our race are themselves in their infancy; and before we abandon ourselves to brooding over them let us at least first try the upshot of a systematic search for actual facts. For what should hinder? If our inquiry lead us first through a jungle of fraud and folly, need that alarm us? As well might Columbus have yielded to the sailors’ panic when he was entangled in the Sargasso Sea. If our first clear facts about the Unseen World seem small and trivial, should that deter us from the quest? As well might Columbus have sailed home again, with America in the offing, on the ground that it was not worth while to discover a continent which manifested itself only by dead logs.”
It is deeply to be regretted that no appeals have availed to persuade Mlle. Smith to consent to the publication of her photograph, in connection with Prof. Flournoy’s account of the phenomena manifested by her.
She shrinks from the publicity which her possession of these strange powers has thrust upon her. She dislikes extremely the notoriety given to her mysterious faculties, and refuses to be interviewed concerning them, or to discuss Prof. Flournoy’s book.
The name Hélène Smith is, as the reader will doubtless guess, merely a pseudonym. The individuality designated by that name, however, is held in highest esteem—in veneration even—by a very large circle of friends and acquaintances in the city on the shores of Lake Leman, in which she has passed her life from infancy, for whose benefit she is always ready to exercise her mysterious gifts and to give her services freely to such as seek her aid, refusing always to accept any pecuniary compensation for her services. Attaching, as she does, a religious significance to her powers, she would deem it a sacrilege to traffic in them.
Daniel B. Vermilye.