Back Contact with The Other World

PART IV MISCELLANEOUS QUESTIONS
THE PHYSICAL PHENOMENA OF SPIRITUALISM
MODE OF LIFE AFTER DEATH
REVELATIONS OF THE OTHER WORLD
REINCARNATION
OBSESSION
MEDIUMSHIP
THE SUBCONSCIOUS
SPIRITUALISM, RELIGION AND SCIENCE
PSYCHOLOGY, RELIGION AND MEDICINE
PSYCHIC RESEARCH AND THE WAR
PSYCHICS AND POLITICS
SUMMARY AND REFLECTIONS

THE PHYSICAL PHENOMENA OF SPIRITUALISM

 THE alleged physical phenomena of spiritualism consist of several types of real or apparent exception to the ordinary laws of matter. One of the most striking is telekinesis, the alleged movement of physical objects without visible normal contact, and without the intervention of any physical medium or agent. Raps, or the production of sounds without contact, is a second type. Levitation is another, but this is only a form of telekinesis. The production of lights is another. Alteration of weight by supernormal means is still another but infrequent type. Materialization is another type; but the term is so confusing that the alleged phenomena require separate treatment.

 Stories of such events have been told from time immemorial and are plentiful, it seems, among all races. Familiarity with records not often mentioned by historians shows that among the Greeks and Romans there was as much of this sort of narrative as in modern times, awakening the same interest, though the resistance to belief was less obstinate then than now, because minds were not so saturated with the idea of fixed laws of nature as they are to-day. In modern times the interest broke out anew with the work of the Fox sisters. The missionary zeal of their movement centered attention on them and their phenomena; their spectacular career also helped greatly to emphasize the impression. But the phenomena were no different in kind from those known to the Greeks and Romans and to every race before and since their time. All this I have briefly touched upon in an earlier chapter. We are at present interested not in the history of such phenomena, but in their relation to the problem of psychic research.

 The extravagant interest in physical phenomena supposedly caused by spirits or some unknown force, would be strange were it not the natural heir to the traditional interest in miracles. The scientific man cannot see why spiritualists attach so much value to physical phenomena as evidence for the existence of spirits. But the point of view is not difficult to understand. To the ordinary man all mental phenomena are equally mysterious, and he is slow to realize the exceptional character of any mental fact. Since all phases of mental life are inexplicable, telepathy or clairvoyance is no more to be wondered at than a funny dream. But these minds can easily perceive that certain physical phenomena are exceptions to their experience. They are familiar with the general laws of motion, especially with the law of contact; and, as they regard as a miracle anything that represents a violation of the law of contact as the cause of motion, they easily refer supernormal physical phenomena to spirits as a cause. This is the natural tendency of a mind brought up to believe in miracles. In the psychological field, telepathy and other instances of the supernormal are not to be specially wondered at, as they are no more exceptional than other idiosyncrasies of mind. But it is otherwise with physical phenomena. The rising of a table without contact at once appears inexplicable by any ordinary laws of experience. Common minds can see the unusual character of such phenomena, and, being accustomed to find in Christian doctrine physical miracles cited as proof of divinity, they easily resort to the spiritualistic interpretation of levitation. They are not often nice in their application of explanations, and make anything mysterious a signal for the appeal to spirits.

 But they reckon ill with the problems of evidence. Levitation, raps, lights, and other physical phenomena are no more evidence for the existence of spirits than is the fall of a tree. The movement of a physical object through space without contact is in no way evidence for the existence and action of spirits. It may be accompanied by such evidence, but it is not itself this evidence. Proof of the existence of spirits requires not the mere occurrence of inexplicable phenomena, physical or mental, but facts of a supernormal character, evincing the continued personal identity of the dead. The phenomena must be explicable only as the acts of intelligence, indicating the presence and action of discarnate beings, as displayed in the transmission of messages or in the production of phenomena that show purpose. This indication of purposive intelligence, not the mechanical movement of objects, constitutes the evidence. There is no scientific excuse for the spiritualistic contention that physical phenomena prove the existence of spirits. Unaccompanied by mental phenomena they are useless. For telekinetic phenomena are among the most common in nature—magnetism, wireless telegraphy, and gravitation are illustrations. Intelligent scientific men will admit the possibility of telekinesis; it is merely a matter of evidence, not of a priori limitations to nature. But they can still maintain that, while the occurrence of supernormal physical phenomena may be entirely possible or even proved, these alone are not evidence for the existence of spirits.

 The case might be very different if there appeared also mental phenomena, especially such as are unmistakably supernormal and reflect the personality of the dead. If the levitation of a table, for instance, were accompanied by mental phenomena involving the personal action of some one dead, it would have some interest for the skeptic asked to believe in the power of spirits to cause motion in physical objects. But if it occurred without indication of intelligence, incarnate or discarnate, it would be only a curious event.

 It is in reality the ensemble of phenomena, the complex situation, that has impressed the spiritualist. This situation usually includes the presence of mental as well as physical phenomena: this association, not the Physical phenomenon, justifies the suspicion of spiritistic agency. Unfortunately most people appeal to the physical "miracle" instead of to the mental phenomena, which appear to be less miraculous. Though, taken alone, physical phenomena have no evidential import whatever, we have to discuss them, partly because tradition has associated them with spiritism, and partly because mental phenomena of much significance have often occurred in connection with alleged physical events of an inexplicable nature.

 If we should ever succeed in proving the existence of genuinely supernormal physical occurrences, definitely connected with supernormal mental occurrences, and so have reason to assign to both of them the same cause, we should have a result of very great cosmic interest. To find that extra-organic intelligence can move matter without the intervention of normal human agency, even though mediumship be usually associated with the movement, would be to raise the question of the relation of intelligence to all mechanical action. If we once establish the fact of telekinesis by intelligence alone—that is, the movement of inorganic objects by discarnate agencies, without contact, we open the way for considering the question of the priority of intelligence to all mechanical movement in the universe. The materialistic theory has so long accustomed us to think of physical movement as mechanically caused, and not as possibly caused directly by intelligence that we are not prepared to admit any but mechanical causes in the physical universe. This has been the tendency of philosophic thought from the time of the earliest thinkers of Greece. They sought to remove intelligence from cosmic action; and, though they sometimes admitted the existence of spirit or spirits, they relegated them to the intermundia, where they could exercise no influence on the course of physical events. But once let it be proved that the discarnate can be efficient to produce motion in inorganic objects, materialism will be forever dislodged from its stronghold. Consciousness will have been proved capable, in an extra-organic existence, of producing more or less direct effects on inorganic matter; and no one will be able to assign to this ability any limits save such as experience may define.

 This larger aspect of the question is the phase of real interest in the problem of telekinesis as associated with intelligence. But the prospect of accomplishing results that will illustrate or prove this larger view is very remote. We have hardly started on the way. We are still too doubtful of the occurrence of the phenomena in any form to begin drawing inferences from them. However, in the mental field, facts to prove the existence of spirits are multiplying; and, their existence once conceded, there will be more probability of our discovering that they are influential in determining events. We may therefore soon be on the road to solving the larger questions of telekinesis.

 The historical records in support of supernormal physical phenomena are not very impressive, unless we except those of Robert Hare and Sir William Crookes. Robert Hare was professor of chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania. His volume on his experiments and inquiries has been quoted by spiritualists as more or less conclusive in their favor. But his mere academic authority is all that spiritualists have emphasized; they have not been able to reproduce his alleged results. Moreover, examination of his work reveals the justice of Mr. Podmore's criticising it, at least of his accusation of defectiveness in the account of experiments and inquiries. Mr. Podmore, however, was so obsessed with his belief in fraud that he could recognize neither its limits nor the significance of hysteria and other abnormal mental states in honest subjects. No doubt Professor Hare erred in the opposite direction, though this error may be more apparent in his writings than in his actual investigations. Unfortunately the latter are so imperfectly described that the critic is free to make all sorts of accusations that cannot be refuted if false, nor proved if true. Some of the apparatus he invented was good, but we know far too little about the exact conditions of his experiments. He merely states in a description of his apparatus that he succeeded in registering a pressure of eighteen pounds under conditions, as he thought, that do not permit of normal explanation; but he does not describe insufficient detail the manner of experimenting. Like all investigators of that period—1850 to 1860—as soon as he was convinced of his theory he accepted all sorts of phenomena and mediumistic statements without any criticism. He went elaborately into the revelations of another life, as if the mere fact that these revelations came from spirits attested their credibility. But he shows us no reason to be assured that many of the statements had any transcendental source whatever. We may urge in his defence that at that time nothing was known about the subconscious. The most natural thing in the world, after being personally convinced of the honesty and veracity of the medium, was to take the communications at their face value, even though they might be unprovable and perplexing. He seems not to have thought of such a thing as careful sifting and criticism of the evidence for spirit existence, much less to have established any criteria for determining the validity of statements about the spiritual world. He cannot be quoted by any scientific or intelligent man in support either of the existence of spirits or, if they exist, of the truth of their communications.

One circumstance, however, which Mr. Podmore quotes with an apparent sneer, is not indefensible. Professor Hare invented an apparatus for spelling out messages, in which the dial and hand were so concealed that the observer, but not the medium, could see where the index pointed. He records that results were more difficult to obtain, and failures more frequent under these conditions. When the spirits were taken to task for these failures, they replied that, since the medium could not see the face of the dial and the index, the spirits had to see them through Dr. Hare's eyes. This reply Mr. Podmore evidently thought a preposterous subterfuge. But it is quite conceivable that the spirits must see what they are doing. It may be that they cannot always or easily see physical objects without the use of sensory organs.

 Strange as it may seem, I have some evidence that this claim is more or less justified. I have not proved it even to my own satisfaction. I have been too busy trying to get more important questions solved and to secure evidence of survival rather than evidence of the character of intercommunication between the physical and spiritual worlds. But I have noted some important facts bearing on this very question. Their significance is determined entirely by the fact that supernormal information justifying the spiritistic hypothesis was obtained in connection with the phenomena which I shall here detail.

 (1) At one time in my experiments with Mrs. Chenoweth I used a head­rest to support her head when she was in the trance. Her eyes were buried in the pillow. Once, when the automatic writing was going on and Dr. Hodgson was purporting to communicate, she turned her face over so that her eyes, though closed, were exposed to the light. The communicator, apparently not knowing what had happened, remarked that he could almost see. Supposedly the light penetrating the eye-lids had affected the communicator so that he could use the sense-organs. This incident, of course, is not conclusive, as we may explain it by supposing that the light passing through the eye-lids was appreciated by the subconscious impersonating the communicator. I do not dispute that explanation it is probably correct enough. But it does not stand in the way of supposing that the discarnate, if it exists and is capable of using the nervous organism of a living person may have perceptions as claimed. At any rate, the incident quoted is of a character to support that claim, if it were otherwise justified.

 (2) I have often noticed that one of the controls in the work of Mrs. Chenoweth, Jennie P., can always avoid superposing when communicating for herself; but, when she is trying to get messages from others, she has to be watched for this mistake, and I have to regulate the sheet of paper to prevent it. All the while, Mrs. Chenoweth is in the trance and her eyes are not only closed, but are often turned away from the paper. Superposition would probably occur if any normal person tried to write at the same time that he had his head turned away in order to listen to some one talking. If communication involves the visual interpretation of symbols used by the communicator to transmit his thoughts or messages to the control, we can realize how Jennie P. has to act under the circumstances.

 (3) More directly in support of the statement recorded by Dr. Hare is the following fact. Since the development of Mrs. Chenoweth's trance into what we may call either a deeper state or a further dissociation of the subconscious, I have frequently noticed that I must keep my eyes on the sheet of paper to prevent superposition. If I turn away to reach a new pad or to make notes, superposition is sure to begin; I may prevent it by keeping my eyes on the paper, even when I do not have to move the pad in order to prevent the occurrence. Apparently my own visual picture of the paper is immediately transferred to the control and he or she can regulate the writing accordingly.

 To prove this contention will require much more evidence than I have adduced. It is my purpose here only to state a problem and to note that Dr. Hare has recorded a statement of some interest, at which we need not sneer, though I should have done so myself if I had been in the same position as Mr. Podmore and thousands of others during the earlier stage of the investigations. With the practice of restraint and tolerance, we may some day find a satisfactory explanation of apparent absurdities in many statements that have long passed as genuine communications from a transcendental world, even though we do not accept the revelations at their superficial value.

The work of Sir William Crookes, is more impressive. He was not himself responsible for the form in which it was published in this country. He wrote only brief accounts in the "Quarterly journal of Science," in which he was conducting a controversy with critics of his paper, read before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and these brief accounts were reprinted in this country without his revision or authority. Enough, however, was included to give a fairly clear idea of part of his experiments; those connected with the movement of physical objects without contact and with increase of weight have never been satisfactorily explained. William Huggins, a scientist of no mean repute, witnessed some of the phenomena and attests them; but scientific men generally refused to accept the challenge to investigate with him. The reception of his report led Sir William Crookes to abandon the subject, though he has maintained the convictions which his work established, and reiterated them after more than thirty years.

 Strange to say, the incidents which spiritualists and the public love to quote most frequently, almost ignoring his best experiments, are those connected with alleged materialization. These, however, are poorly reported and their import depends solely on the authority of Sir William Crookes. While that must have weight, we should have had a detailed account of the experiments and results.

 The report on materialization is the least impressive in the whole work; but to the public it is interesting precisely in proportion to its incredibility. If emphasis had been laid on the experiments with D. D. Home, though suspension of judgment has to be applied to some of them, the work would have received a more respectful hearing. It is significant in this connection that many years afterward, Sir William Crookes in his presidential address before the Society for Psychical Research, confessed to the wish that he had studied the mental phenomena before he announced his conclusions. If he had done so, he might have found the clue to his materialization phenomena.

 This discussion offers the opportunity to explain the confusion connected with this term. When we say "materialization," meaning the alleged appearance of a spirit, the scientific man understands us to assert that a physical body has been created apparently out of nothing, or, as some spiritualists maintain, out of the surrounding matter. In either case the hypothesis is, that a physical body is formed without any apparent source for the substance and properties manifested. This conception is incredible. We have no precedent in scientific work for the sudden and apparently miraculous production of organic beings and their disappearance in a few moments like the "baseless fabric of a dream." The spiritualist may just as well admit the difficulties and not try to explain them by suppositions more far-fetched than the main theory.

 But I have observed many times that people in reporting materializations do not mean the creation of physical organisms. They even speak of apparitions as "materializations "; this usage shows what they really mean by the term. Apparitions are phantasms, not physical substance. They may be veridical, and prove quite as much as any materialization would prove, without the intellectual difficulties attaching to the materialization theory. If they are called phantasms or apparitions, though the description may be incomplete, it expresses a proved fact. Whatever other elements are present can then be the subject of further investigation. We should not ask the mind, especially the scientific mind, accustomed to employ its terms with great accuracy and clear definition, to believe in so improbable an event as the creation of matter out of nothing, or the formation of inorganic matter into organic and its disintegration, independent of the usual process of dissolution. I have known instances of apparitions thus appearing in the presence of mediums. They occurred during the presence of Mrs. Catherine Paine Sutton with Mrs. Piper. They occasionally occur with considerable vividness to Mrs. Chenoweth. They are a constant phenomenon with Mrs. Chenoweth when the pictographic process is employed for communication. But the phenomena are either mere mental pictures or veridical phantasms. The simplest course is to treat them as apparitions, acknowledging the possibility both of collective phantasms and of synesthetic apparitions. These, of course, are also hard to accept, but they conform to what we know of phantasms.

 When Sir William Crookes said that he wished that he had investigated the mental phenomena first, he admitted the possibility that the phenomena of Katie King might possibly be brought under that classification, and if so, would be more easily credible. But incredibility apparently attracts the average spiritualist, who, instead of fixing his attention on the best attested accounts of Sir William Crookes, concentrates his interest on the least probable of the phenomena. We may well admit that something unusual happened, without accepting the first explanation that comes to hand. We have a right to pause before accepting so incredible an occurrence as that described, especially as no detailed account of the facts accompanies the statement and as Sir William Crookes has himself publicly stated that he is not responsible for the book as published in this country.

 It is to be hoped that Sir William Crookes has recorded the facts in full, and that they may some day see the light. Meanwhile we have only the letters to the "Quarterly journal of Science." We can describe only one of his experiments here, and even that cannot be made as clear as the printed account, because the complex apparatus employed cannot be here represented. The purpose of this experiment was to get evidence of the existence of raps and of their objective nature, whatever their source. Raps are often said to occur without contact of the hands or other physical object. Sir William Crookes sought to demonstrate that they do occur in this manner and are really objective physical phenomena.

 The apparatus contained an elastic membrane on which was placed a small piece of graphite, which would be thrown upward by the slightest jar to the membrane. The psychic was brought into the room without having the nature or object of the experiment explained, and was asked to place her hands on a board, that contact with the elastic membranes might be prevented. Sir William Crookes held his hands on those of the medium, in order to detect any conscious or unconscious movement of her hands. Soon sharp, percussive raps occurred, and the piece of graphite was projected upward from the membrane about one-fiftieth of an inch. The apparatus contained also a lever so arranged that its point would register in curves the amount of mechanical energy employed.

 Perhaps physicists would find flaws in this experiment, and we should certainly want to be assured that tension of the lady's hands under those of Sir William Crookes on the board could not produce the effect. But this objection could not be urged against his experiment in adding to the weight of an object, which we cannot detail here. An experiment with D. D. Home and an accordion, even Dr. Hodgson found no means of explaining away. The accordion was held in one hand inside a wire basket, so that neither the hand nor foot of Home could touch the other end of the instrument, which moved and played music. There were other experiments equally puzzling.

 But I do not cite them as absolute proof. They are of a type to challenge attention and to require further investigation. The scientific man is entirely within his rights in demanding that they shall be repeated, and Sir William Crookes himself recognized this need. The fundamental condition of scientific proof is not merely a crucial experiment, but a large number of experiments, conducted by different people in different parts of the world. Hence we quote Sir William Crookes's experiences, not as final proof, but as a challenge to experiment on the subject, and not to reject phenomena as impossible because they are unusual and apparently inconsistent with ordinary experience. Copernican astronomy was inconsistent with preceding theories and with ordinary observation. The motion of the earth round the sun contradicts the most natural inference from sense­perception. Telekinesis, especially since it has analogues in magnetism, wireless telegraphy, and gravitation, should not be regarded as a priori impossible. At any rate Sir William Crookes has challenged the scientific world; and, as similar phenomena have been produced since his experiments, we are not in a position to ridicule his conclusions.

 Dr. W. J. Crawford, a man of some scientific standing and a lecturer in mechanical engineering in Queen's University at Belfast, Ireland, has performed a more recent series of experiments in levitation, under conditions and with results that make them of unusual interest. The description of his work has been published and is readily accessible. A family of spiritualists were conducting experiments in the levitation of a table and in communication with the dead by raps. Dr. Crawford learned of their efforts and was admitted to the circle. The room was sufficiently light for all persons sitting about the table to be seen, at least after a little time when the eyes had become accustomed to the dimness. The sitters held hands; all were at least eighteen inches away from the table. Without any contact, the table rose into the air and remained poised there for some time, often as high as one or two feet. The suspicion that some of the party, consciously or unconsciously, might have raised it by hands or feet was set aside by the following facts. (1) While the table was in the air, Dr. Crawford could walk all round it, except between it and the psychic. (2) He observed that she was not touching the table. Sir William Barrett, Fellow of the Royal Society and was professor of physics in the Royal College of Science in Dublin, reports his own observations on one occasion when he was permitted to be present. His statement is taken from his work on "The Threshold of the Unseen":

 "I was permitted to have an evening sitting with the family, Dr. Crawford accompanying me. We sat outside the small family circle; the room was illuminated with a bright gas flame burning in a lantern with a large red glass window, on the mantelpiece. The room was small, and, as our eyes got accustomed to the light, we could see all the sitters clearly. They sat round a small table with hands joined together, but no one touching the table. Very soon knocks came and messages were spelt out as one of us repeated the alphabet aloud. Suddenly the knocks increased in violence, and, being encouraged, a tremendous bang came which shook the room and resembled the blow of a sledge hammer on an anvil. A tin trumpet which had been placed below the table now poked out its smaller end close under the top of the table where I was sitting. I was allowed to try to catch it, but it dodged all my attempts in the most amusing way; the medium on the opposite side sat perfectly still, while at my request all held up their hands so that I could see no one was touching the trumpet, as it played peep-bo with me. Sounds like the sawing of wood, the bouncing of a ball and other noises occurred, which were inexplicable.

 "Then the table began to rise from the floor some eighteen inches and remained so suspended and quite level. I was allowed to go up to the table and saw clearly no one was touching it, a clear space separating the sitters from the table. I tried to press the table down, and though I exerted all my strength could not do so; then I climbed up on the table and sat on it, my feet off the floor, when I was swayed to and fro and finally tipped off. The table of its own accord now turned upside down, no one touching it, and I tried to lift it off the ground, but it could not be stirred, it appeared screwed down to the floor. At my request all the sitters' clasped hands had been kept raised above their heads, and I could see that no one was touching the table—when I desisted from trying to lift the inverted table from the floor, it righted itself again of its own accord, no one helping it."

 I am not concerned with any explanation of these facts. Let each reader apply his own hypothesis. But Dr. Crawford performed further important experiments which help to show the genuineness of the phenomena. He weighed the table and also the medium. Then he placed the medium on scales while the experiment with levitation was made. While the table was in the air, all of its weight, except two ounces, was transferred to the medium on the scales, though she was not touching the table. He then placed one of the other sitters, slightly psychic, on the scales, and accounted for the remaining two ounces. He then placed scales under the table; when they were under the center of the floating table, the scales registered appreciable weight, though the table was not touching them. He noted also that, when a light cloth was placed under the scales, 'hardly any levitation occurred. He put a dark cloth under the scales, and the levitation became normal. He found that he could throw light from a bull's-eye electric lamp upon the top of the table without disturbing the levitation; but, if he threw it under the table, the latter immediately fell to the floor. Hence in these experiments he found that light prevented the occurrence of the phenomena. I found this to be true also of the phenomena of Miss Burton. The most obvious explanation is, that the light prevented playing the trick; but the observer was able to see that no hands nor feet were in contact with the table.

 The transfer of the weight of the table to the medium would be quite in accord with well-known laws of mechanics if any visible energy extruded itself from the body of the medium and raised the table. This is the theory that Dr. Crawford, being convinced that there was no physical contact, advanced. The experiment should be repeated, before the scientific world can be impressed, but the authority for the facts is not to be summarily dismissed.

 A later and very important experiment was performed by Dr. Crawford. He made a table with four small wings attached by a hinge to a central piece and resting on springs which, when the hands of four persons pressed as much as two pounds upon them, would cause metallic contacts and the ringing of a bell. The whole was suspended three or four inches from the floor to scales attached to the ceiling. Under these conditions the scales registered as much as 26 1/2 pounds more than the weight of the table without the ringing of the bell. That is without a pressure of two pounds by the hands the table registered 26 1/2 pounds more than its own weight.

 The experiment is important as showing that unconscious muscular action will not account for the whole result. We may explain it as we please. The fact establishes limits to the explanation by unconscious muscular action in such cases, though it neither excludes it nor prevents the hypothesis that external influences may even affect unconscious muscular action.

 My own experience with physical phenomena has been limited to raps and lights. I had a very striking series of experiments with a young lady some years ago. She was not a professional. All that she could do at that time was to produce raps and spell out messages by means of raps, and, by the same means, answer "Yes" and "No" to questions.

 Her physician brought her to me at a city club where she had never been before. I first asked for raps on different sides of her chair; these were produced. Then I took her to a very large table, on which I had her place her hands. Very distinct raps were heard on the table, though no motion of her hands or fingers was observable. When I put my ear to the table, while still watching her hands, I could feel the vibration of the table as well as hear the raps. I then had her move her hands, one at a time, from the table, and saw that her feet did not touch it. The raps continued as before and the vibration in the table was perceptible. Having heard that she had made a piano-string ring, I took her to the piano. The piano was closed; she sat down near it as if to play, and in a few minutes loud raps were audible in the piano, making the string or wire ring. I then asked her to remove her hands one at a time and to put her feet back from the piano. She did so, having her feet as much as eight inches distant from the piano and her hands more than a foot. The raps and ringing of the string went on as before. All this was in broad daylight. There was nothing to hinder observation.

 I arranged to meet her again at her uncle's house, in order to try some further experiments. After getting raps under her feet, I had her stand on a very thick cushion. When she was standing on the cushion, which was at least six or eight inches thick, the raps occurred exactly as before, with the same quality of sound. If made by the joints, the raps would have been muffled when the feet were on the cushion. I then had her stand with a foot on each of my hands, which rested on the cushion, and the raps occurred apparently on the floor, with the same quality of sound as when her feet were on the floor. I then tried the steam radiator some distance away, and the rap had a metallic ring, as if on iron. I then tried the piano experiment again. This time I had her hold her hands on a large book of music, on which were a dozen or two dozen sheets of music. The piano was closed. The raps were very loud, and made the string ring so that the sound could be heard perhaps a hundred feet away. I again had her remove a hand at a time and stand away from the piano. Though not quite so loud, the raps continued as before.

 Though we might suppose that there was some apparatus on the body for making raps like those on the floor, we cannot so easily explain the ringing of the piano strings without any contact. I had no means of applying mechanical tests to the case. I needed apparatus for excluding the hypothesis of mechanical means concealed on the body. But in the absence of opportunity for such tests, I had to vary the experiment so that whatever hypothesis applied to one instance would not apply to another. The results favored the acceptance of the genuineness of the raps.

 I got raps with Miss Burton also, while she was holding both hands and feet away from the table. Moreover, some of the raps under these conditions were not on the table, but on the windowsills ten feet distant. On one occasion the raps sounded on the window-sill, which was about eight feet distant and in the light. I then stood near the window, within a foot, and the raps were repeated many times, while Miss Burton, in a trance, was six or eight feet distant, in the light, not moving her hands. Questions were intelligently answered by these raps; by them we were even directed how to manage the girl in the trance when one of the personalities accidentally got "locked up," as it were.

 I have given elsewhere a detailed account of the production of independent lights by Miss Burton. It is too long to here quote in full. After taking every precaution against her having apparatus about her person for making lights, and while holding her hands, I saw very large lights. They were of a kind that cannot be made by either phosphorus or electricity. The conditions excluded artificial methods. It is very probable that some, but not all of them occurred on the tips of her fingers. Some were six feet distant, as the illumination of a phonograph showed.

 Later I received messages by means of these lights. The messages were written in letters of fire on the air in pitch darkness and gave cross­references with other psychics. They had to be read sometimes a letter at a time, and repeated until I could be certain of them.

 Professor James reported an instance of physical phenomena in an article published in the "journal" of the American Society (Vol. III, pp. 109-113). He witnessed, in a private circle of people, a brass ring moved without the contact of any hand. The details cannot be given here. The case rests on the authority of Professor James.

 I have said nothing of the Palladino case and shall not quote it, as the public has long accepted the verdict of some investigators in this country, among them Professor Muensterberg, who condemned the case as fraud. I think they had no evidence of fraud; but I hold this opinion because I should treat the case from the standpoint of hysteria, which, though it furnishes a normal explanation, excludes fraud. Palladino should have been studied, as. Miss Burton was, from the point of view of abnormal psychology. In contradiction of the verdict in this country, the English Society obtained striking results in levitation, and other investigators found mental phenomena of some interest, with, in one or two cases, significant apparitions. Continental investigators also vouch for genuine physical phenomena in her case, though admitting that she sometimes practised fraud. I shall not defend the case here, in as much as public opinion generally accepts the verdict of trickery. I may say, however, that one of the men who signed the negative report did so under protest; another confessed to me that he had witnessed phenomena in the experiments not so easily explained; and one distinguished scientific man stated privately his personal conviction that some of the phenomena were genuine. The case, however, is too debatable to be used in evidence of supernormal physical phenomena.

I can only repeat in conclusion that physical phenomena taken alone are not evidence for the existence or the action of spirits. At best, when taken alone, they only disprove certain claims about the limitations of nature, or prove the possibility of motion without normal contact. The association of mental phenomena or intelligence with them, supernormal knowledge evidential of transcendental agencies, would give them value as evidence for spiritism, and would also suggest radical modification of our conception of the relation of intelligence to the physical world. But this is not the place to dwell longer on that aspect of the problem. We were obliged to consider physical phenomena because of their traditional connection with psychic phenomena and research. They have still to receive as much confirmation as the mental phenomena have obtained, and this confirmation will probably not be forthcoming until laboratory methods can be applied to them.
 

MODE OF LIFE AFTER DEATH

 THE general public has been led by psychic research to hope that we all survive death, and it has tolerated our laborious and tedious investigations with the expectation that we should soon announce our conclusions about the nature of another life. But no word has come from investigators to give assurance of anything except that we survive. It is the character of the future life, however, that interests most people far more than evidence of continued existence without any information as to what it is like. When the assertion is made that we live after death, the average man wants to know what that life offers in the way of enjoyment.

 But those who look at the subject in this way understand neither the scientific problem nor the difficulties in the way of satisfying their desires. The evidence which proves the fact may not reveal a single feature of its nature. We simply observe facts which cannot be accounted for by ordinary explanations. Supernormal knowledge obtainable only by the continued activity of deceased persons justifies the inference that consciousness continues, but does not reveal the nature of the life thus implied. The problem of determining this nature is very complex, and no hasty demands can be made upon the scientific man to satisfy the natural desire to know what the transcendental world really is.

 It is sense-perception that gives us a clear idea of what reality is or appears to be in normal experience. We react to physical stimuli affecting the sensory end-organs. These experiences attest for us the existence of an external physical world, even when they may not reveal its true nature. Whatever theories we may hold about sense-perception, it is the means of learning that we have to reckon with something else than ourselves and is the only means of intercommunication with one another. For all practical purposes, it serves to define the nature of reality, though by that nature we may mean no more than uniformity of effect on the sense-organs. Its constancy and our dependence on it for our adjustments in life make sense-perception the standard of our ideas, especially of such as can be communicated to other men. All conceptions that have no such reference are considered subjective or abstract. Ideas not expressible in terms of sense-perception are vague and not communicable to others. Most people, when listening to statements about a future life, must naturally try to conceive or picture it by means of sensory images, which make it intelligible to them. The Book of Revelation, for instance, which gives at least one form of the Christian conception, describes the spiritual world in terms of sensory pictures of physical realities. Even though we try to interpret the representation as symbolic, the details of the description are dependent on material analogies. The doctrine of the physical resurrection assumes that the spiritual world is like the physical. But the philosophic mind can never be made to believe this. To it the spiritual is the antithesis of the material. It even goes so far as to deprive spirit of every attribute of matter, leaving it a spaceless point of force. This theory is neither intelligible nor interesting to the average man, who conceives all reality by means of sensory images. A spiritual world that is not a "world" at all, but the absence of everything that constitutes what we call a world, does not appeal to him as worth either proving or having. That is to say, the tendency is to conceive the spiritual world as resembling the physical, even when we acknowledge that it is different in certain fundamental aspects.

 The paradox of the ordinary view of a spiritual world lies in definition of spirit as opposed to matter, while at the same time the spiritual world is described in terms of that very matter which has been excluded. Such a view offers a good butt for ridicule; often the accounts of life in a spiritual world include so complete a duplication of all that goes on in the physical world, when we are supposed to have been divested of the conditions that made such aids necessary, that the skeptic may be excused for his contempt. He takes the antithesis between matter and spirit in earnest, while the believer does not. When we are told that spirits wear clothes, partake of banquets, have the same vocations there as here, are teachers, artists, manufacturers, merchants, and perhaps farmers, we are listening only to the logical consequences of making the spiritual world exactly like our own. But such economic arrangements are superfluous when we are rid of the body. Why all the useless machinery of an earthly life when it serves no imaginable purpose in a "spiritual" world? The accounts on these points are not always consistent. Some deny the existence of any conditions such as I have mentioned, and others tell us that we can form no conception of the future life.

 We may say, however, that it is much easier to defend the physical view of the spiritual world from the standpoint of physical science than is at first apparent. Physical science with all its boasted dependence on sense­perception for its standard of reality pays no attention to this standard when it seeks explanations. It deals with supersensible realities quite as extensively as does theology or religion or spiritualism. Its atoms, ions, electrons, corpuscles, ether, X-rays, N-rays, and even the vibrations supposed to cause light, are as unrepresentable in sense-perception as spirit can possibly be to any one who refuses to conceive it in terms of sensory properties. The real physical world of the scientists, though it is called "matter," is quite as truly beyond sense-perception as spirit is. The original notion of matter is of a substance which affects the senses. Atoms, ions, and electrons are not sensible objects of knowledge. Why, then, are they called matter?

 The fact is that very soon in its development physical science extended its conception of matter to include supersensible forms. The atomists set up the atoms, the earlier thinkers set up elements which were only adumbration of the atoms. Though the atoms were no more the objects of sense than are spirits, yet because they were supposed to comprise complex sensible wholes, organic or inorganic, because they were regarded as the material cause of what we can see or feel, the "stuff" out of which these things were made, the term "physical" or "material" was applied to them. From that time on science had the ineradicable habit of including the supersensible in the conception of matter as well as of spirit, though it continued its hostility to the latter!

Now if there can be a supersensible world of matter why may there not also be a supersensible world of spirit? The very philosophers who thus extended the conception of matter held that spirit was itself a fine form of matter; they simply regarded it as a supersensible type of matter. It was much later that the difference between matter and spirit was developed into a complete antithesis.

 This antithesis was probably occasioned by the change in the definition of matter. The extension of the term to cover supersensible realities at the basis of the sensible made it necessary to abandon sensible qualities as part of the definition, for all but practical purposes. Hence to the modern physicist matter is that which manifests inertia, gravity and impenetrability. These properties are supposed to apply to its supersensible as well as its sensible forms. After this conception of matter was accepted, spirit lost its ancient meaning of a fine form of matter and was described by qualities that bear no resemblance to those of matter. In the conceptions of Leibnitz and Boscovitch it is spaceless and characterized only by intelligence or consciousness. This radical dualism, not characteristic of ancient thought, is what has made incredible the statements in which a spiritual world is given material characteristics and habits of action. The advocate of spirit is perhaps as much to blame as his opponents for this predicament. At any rate it arose, and involved the difficulty of believing any description of a transcendental world that is only matter disguised and yet is called "spiritual," when the spiritual supposedly has none of the qualities of the material. The mere acknowledgment of supersensible reality, therefore, does not imply the spiritual, if so extreme a conception of it be taken. Yet it opens such a vista of possibilities that scientific and materialistic dogmatism has no ground for assurance on its side. When matter can assume supersensible forms—that is, lose such properties as make it accessible to sense-perception—may it not further change its form so as to lose even those properties by which science now recognizes it even in its supersensible forms? May there not exist either a kind or a condition of matter in which it may lose inertia, gravity and impenetrability, or any one or two of these properties, and may manifest consciousness? I am far from believing this theory, as there is neither evidence for it nor justification in the mere desire to save spiritistic philosophies. But I am not so dogmatic as to say that it is impossible. We merely know that analogies to this transformation exist in physics and chemistry, and we may keep our minds open to such possibilities, if qualitative unity in nature be required. The fact is, however, that we do not require any such unity. We do not know the limits of the multiplicity of nature. It is only the desire for what is called monism that leads men to eliminate spirit from nature. But there is multiplicity enough within every system of monism, materialistic or otherwise, to include all that goes by the name of spirit.

 The conception of spirit by radical dualism as the opposite of matter, tends to make us think that matter and spirit cannot exist side by side nor interact. Even the ancients took this position, though perhaps for other reasons. The Epicureans, though materialists, admitted the existence of the gods, but placed them in the intermundia where they could exercise no influence nor causal action on the course of nature. The Epicurean theory of "material causes" eliminated mind as a cause of anything, cosmic or individual. Other philosophers placed mind back of the cosmic order, but postulated an eternal substance besides mind. The materialists who admitted the existence of mind or soul, gave it neither causal action on the body nor survival after death. How they could compass its destruction consistently with their theory of the permanence of other things is not easy to understand.

 Modern materialism cut the Gordian knot by abandoning the existence of soul and explaining its apparent activities as functions of the brain. But it gives no further definition of consciousness; it does nothing to reduce it to physical types; it leaves its nature as mysterious as before. There are, then, at least two and perhaps three considerations which may be urged upon physical science to show the possibility of a spiritual world like the physical world we know, though not wholly described in terms of our sensory life.

There is, first, the concession of a supersensible world even of matter.

 There is, second, the fact that even materialism has to admit the existence of consciousness as an irreducible phenomenon, though only as a function of matter, and thus assumes that something different from matter can exist side by side with it. It concedes that matter can be known by consciousness and yet not participate in its nature; that is, not have the properties by which matter is known.

 A third and more important point of view is the following: If we have evidence enough to justify the belief that consciousness survives death, we prove at the same time that consciousness or the soul existed side by side with matter before death. That is, the physical world is not incompatible with the presence of a soul whether defined as a fine form of matter or as the absolute antithesis to matter.

 Now in the present discussion the existence and survival of a soul is taken as scientifically proved. We need not determine its nature in relation to matter. The fact remains that consciousness is not a function of the brain, that spiritual realities exist in the present physical order. Death then may be only the separation of the spiritual form from the sensory form of the physical, or the sensory manifestation of the physical, and the soul's environment after death may be the same physical world in its supersensible aspects. That is, the spiritual world may be like the physical with out being any more accessible to sense-perception than the supersensible world of physical science is now.

 Now we come to the experiences which at least appear to point in just this direction. These are of two types: (1) apparitions, and (2) mediumistic communications. Apparitions represent spirit in the spatial form of physical reality. They probably gave rise to the Epicurean doctrine of the "ethereal organism" and the Pauline "spiritual body," and the "astral body" of the theosophists, though this last term is sometimes given a more technical meaning. But they imply a reality in certain respects like matter, though not visible to normal sense-perception. The natural interpretation is, that we see spirits when we see apparitions. If we accept that interpretation, there at least seems to be a decided resemblance of the spiritual world to the physical, even in the very nature and form of spirit itself. In support of this theory are frequent statements through mediums, which may not be conclusive, but have weight and make it imperative that we should investigate their meaning fully. Both of these sources imply that the spiritual world is like the physical, at least in its form and appearance, though it may differ from the physical world as known to the senses, as much as the supersensible physical world differs from the sensible. It may thus be a world in which the supersensible is without inertia, gravity and impenetrability, and yet has the apparent form of matter.

 The only difficulty in urging this view is that many apparitions are simply phantasms produced either by telepathy between the living or by telepathy between the dead and the living. Mediumistic communications, whether conclusive or not, are more cogent as evidence. But when we consider that a pictographic process is the frequent or constant method of communication from a transcendental world, and that the interpretation of the mental pictures by the subconscious minds of the mediums may distort their Significance as representations of spiritual realities, we may have to suspend judgment.

 But phantasms and appearances represented in mediumistic messages, regardless of supposed distortion in their transmission to us, may still correctly represent the nature of a spiritual world, as the image on a photograph plate or the retina represents the object producing it.

 I am far from regarding all this argument as proof of the doctrine, but it clears away the perplexities which attend the radically dualistic theory. If apparitions and mediumistic communications attest the existence of spirit, and if we are willing to recognize the possibility that the apparitions correctly represent reality, we may then have recourse to other methods for ascertaining how far the resemblance to the physical world extends. We raise no questions whether spirit is material or immaterial. We decide first that it can exist independently of matter as we know it sensibly, or even supersensibly, and then investigate in other ways its further nature. For all that we know, therefore, the next world or life may be very like the present one, despite apparently very radical differences. No man is in a position scientifically to deny such a possibility. The scientific evidence for the existence of spirit establishes such a, world, whether we chose to regard it as objectively similar or dissimilar to our physical world.

 We may conceive the next life, then, as having the same physical cosmos to deal with, but as not perceiving it in the same way. The spiritual world may be simply the supersensible side of what is now sensible to us. How we may be related to it as we are to matter in our physical embodiment is not conjecturable, as facts to indicate the relation have not yet been discovered. But it is entirely conceivable that it should be the same world and yet not appear to be the same, since the stimulus on spirit after death may be very different from present stimuli on the physical sense-organs. It may be the same world even without our directly knowing it at all, though existing in it; for only one aspect of it appears to us now. The soul's activities may be more active or creative in the spiritual than in the terrestrial life. But we do not know. There are many possibilities which await further investigation.

 But there is one more important objection or difficulty with which we have to deal: the contradictions in the messages descriptive of the future life. Though they speak of it as if it were the same physical world as that known to sense, hardly any two writers or communicators represent it in the same way. One may tell us that spirits wear clothes and another may modify this statement by saying that the clothes are "creations of thought." One represents the dead as living in houses, and others deny that they do so, while still others mediate between these two extremes by making the houses products of thought or purely imaginary. Some tell us that we could not understand any statement about the spiritual world. All these contradictions imply either differences of opinion about the other life or the distortion of messages by the subconscious of the medium, or perhaps both combined. In any case, the statements are so different and apparently so contradictory that we cannot unreservedly trust any communication as correctly des scribing the nature of that life.

 But there is a way to establish unity in this apparent chaos of inconsistencies. We have found by experience that subconscious states produce a far more distinct appearance of reality than does normal imagination. The subconscious, in dreams, delirium, hallucinations, and hypnosis, gives apparent physical reality to its objects. Mental creations appear to be physical or objective realities. Now as such creations are often independent of normal physical stimuli, we may suppose that these functions are those that survive bodily death; and, if this be true, they would often produce apparent physical realities, just as they do in our subconscious. If they did so, and we could not introspect nor analyze any more than we can in sleep or hypnosis, we should take them for reality. If some spirits should continue the exercise of subconscious activities, whatever the cause, temporary or permanent, they might take the result to be real; but, even if they did not, the transmission of pictures to the living through subconscious functions might stimulate reality. We should then find the statements about the spiritual world as various as the experiences and opinions of the communicators. At least a part of the after life may be mental, a subjective creation, though taken as physically real either by the spirit or by the medium through which the messages come.

 Perhaps the matter can be somewhat clarified by approaching it through what every one knows of normal mental action. Our knowledge or experience is divided into two types, both perfectly familiar to every one. The first is sensation, the response to physical stimuli. The second is reflection or self-consciousness, the inner mental states, so to speak. These may not be representable in terms of external things, but are as clearly known as sensations. Their peculiarity is that they have a degree of independence of sensory states and of external stimuli or physical objects. We can think when we are not having sensations and we can always think about sensations. These acts of mind go on whether we are responding to external physical impressions or not. In fact these inner states, especially the emotions, are the representatives of value in experience, and appear to us to be the most important. Sensory phenomena are important only as signals in our relation to the physical world. If we could free ourselves from this relation, we might go on with the inner life without reference to an external world. When death destroys the sensory functions it may leave the reflective functions to continue their action; that is, it may simply make them more independent of matter than they are in the bodily life.

 A further support of this view comes from study of the subconscious activities of the mind. These are manifestly more nearly independent of normal stimuli than is ordinary self-consciousness. They are going on all the time. We have evidence that sleep does not suspend them in the least and that the dreams we know are but fragments of the images produced in sleep. In healthy conditions they are concealed from us altogether, and only when some derangement is present do they invade normal activities and cause all sorts of hysterias and dissociations. They produce images that are taken for realities—for instance, hallucinations. Often a dream is so vivid that the subject can easily and clearly distinguish between it and ordinary dreams, which are more like the products of imagination, known to be unreal. Assuming, as did Mr. Myers, that the subconscious functions, freed from sense domination, adumbrate the nature of the future life and themselves survive in independence of sensory stimuli, we have a theory that explains all the contradictions in the revelations of the next life. Different persons have different interests and tastes, and these interests are preserved with their personal identity. If they continue to use the functions represented in subliminal activities, creating apparent reality as in dreams, somnambulism, hallucinations, and hypnosis, they will differ as much as men differ now in their thoughts and ideals. When in contact with living psychics, these states will be transferred as pictographic images, consciously or unconsciously, by the communicator and accepted by the psychic as representing at least a quasi-physical reality. In such a situation all sorts of confusion might arise. The earth-bound, Who are those mostly interested in the memories and experiences of a physical life, would reflect states that belonged to their past sensory lives, and, in the course of communication by the pictographic process, create the impression that the spiritual life simply duplicates the physical.

 A life of mere thinking and dreaming may not appear very inviting to most people, but I am not concerned with what we like or dislike. Science has to accept the universe as it is, and to find out what it is doing, not necessarily to gratify human desires. If the next life consists of day-dreaming, we shall have to accept it whether we like it or not. But I am not sure that this conception rightly represents the facts. We have not evidence enough to show what the transcendental world is in its entirety. I have already said that it may be only the other side of our own world, with a little more subjective or creative independence than normal consciousness now has. We discover in the confused statements about it, especially the paradoxical assertions of the earth-bound and the occasional explanation of their mental states as illusions and hallucinations in the frequent admission that thought and creative influences are more dominant there than here; in the views of Swedenborg, which anticipated all that the pictographic process reveals—in all these we discover traces of a mental world which has much more freedom for activity than when it is hampered by bodily wants and subjected to physical influences. It is certain, if a future life has been proved or rendered probable at all, that, at least in the first period of life after death for many people, the creative functions of consciousness play a part in the representation of the spiritual world. Only the knowledge that subconscious influences in the living media of transmission may distort the message or make it fragmentary will induce us to state the conditions cautiously and with the reservation that the point of view above taken is at most a tentative and partial account of the facts.

 To quote the evidence in support of this contention would require a volume or two. Much of the material could not be regarded as satisfactory evidence. Only sporadic and unconscious remarks in the course of discussion of other problems indicate to us a mental world analogous to that of dreams, except that it is more rational and systematic. Even on the other side, irrationality may be met with often enough in those unadjusted to their environment or obsessed with sensory memories and desire.

 I am willing to admit that the expression "mental world" will not convey much information or be clear to most people, and I do not pretend that it indicates very much even to me. It is a barren phrase to most people and hardly less so to myself. But it affords a point of contact with philosophic idealism, and it also enables us to make a psychological approach to the problem through the subliminal processes and the inner life of reflection, which do not wholly depend upon sense-experience for their meaning. That is, those functions of mind that exhibit activities other than sensory may be the basis for conceiving the initial stages of a transcendental world independent of sense-perception. Hence "mental world" expresses the group of activities that may constitute a life a little more independent of stimuli than is life in our physical embodiment.

 As I have already indicated, the next world may only be the supersensible form of the physical world, and we may react to it as we do to the present, with something corresponding to sensation. But the conception of spirit as independent of the senses' is better represented by the subjective functions of the mind. The severance of our connection with the physical world as known to sense, may leave us nothing to start with except the inner functions of the mind, memories and subliminal faculties, which will have to create their own realities or apparent realities, as in dreams, poetizing, reverie, and day-dreaming, at least until some power at present unknown may enable us to respond to the new environment. This response may come sooner or later in our development on the other side. With some it may be instantaneous or not even interrupted by death, and with others much intervening time may elapse. The failure to have any but terrestrial memories to live upon, with their attachment to sensuous interests, gives rise to what is called the earth-bound condition, a state in which, as in delirium and dreams, we take our own mental states for physical realities. We may have to pass beyond this stage in order to become adjusted to our environment; the eradication of purely terrestrial memories may be necessary before we can feel and appreciate the nature of a spiritual world just as purely sensuous activities here have to be restrained., if we are to realize what is called spiritual life within us.

 The various contradictions about the next life make scientific and intelligent people doubt the assertions so frequently made about it. It is human nature to suppose that, if we accept messages as proof of continued personal identity, we should also accept the statements made about the future life. It is not, however, the veracity of communicators that secures the belief in their existence, but the evidence we have among the living that their statements are true.

No message is accepted because it claims a transcendental origin, but only because we have proof that the psychic through whom it came was ignorant of the facts announced, and because we can verify it on the testimony of the living. We do not assume the veracity of a spirit until it has been proved by the same methods as those used among the living to justify trust in their statements. Even if proved to be honestly meant, the communications may not be true. They may be the result of mistaken judgment. More than honesty is required to guarantee truth. Intelligence is quite as important as veracity. The consequence is that we can accept nothing purporting to come from spirits except what we can prove. This statement is especially important in this connection because the conditions for communicating are not the same as those between the living. They are much more complex, so complex that we have to reckon with liabilities of error, even though both the veracity and the intelligence of the communicator have been established. The distortion of messages in transmission is an important factor in the result; and when we recognize also the likelihood of error in the impersonations, we may well doubt statements concerning the nature of the next life.

 The contradictions are so numerous that it is hopeless to try to accept a superficial interpretation of the phenomena. One set of communicators—it makes no difference whether they are real or merely subconscious personalities—tells us that life in the spiritual world duplicates the physical life exactly, including food, dress, trade, art, "cigar manufactories," "whiskey sodas," and the whole gamut of objects and employments that we indulge in. Another set totally denies this and tells us that we cannot conceive what the world is like. Some tell us that reincarnation is true; others deny it. Some teach orthodox religious views, others the opposite. Some believe in God and some do not. Some claim to live in houses and others do not. There is no sort of unity in such claims except on the theory that the after life, as Swedenborg maintained, is one of mental states. Every one is free to think as he desires; and, if he can create his own world, as is constantly asserted in communications, that world will take as many forms as there are variant minds to create it, just as the subjective existences of living people differ. Landing in the spiritual world with personal identity and the memories of a terrestrial life, most of them sensory, and with the inherent tendency of the subliminal functions to produce the appearance of physical reality, spirits might well give discrepant accounts of the life. The conception of a world of mental states brings a certain consistency into the phenomena, to which we may hold while we pursue investigations, until we have positive evidence of the nature of the environment that constitutes objective life in the spiritual world.
 

REVELATIONS OF THE OTHER WORLD

 THE discussion in the previous chapter prepares the way for what is to be said on this present subject. If it be difficult to tell what the nature of a transcendental life is, it will be equally different to say what the spiritual world itself is. But there have been bold enough attempts to describe it. St. John's Book of Revelation was perhaps the first after Greek mythology. In modern times, the works of Emanuel Swedenborg and later of Andrew Jackson Davis, have perhaps exercised more influence than any others. Swedenborg described the spiritual world rather minutely, but his symbolic diction was not always understood and his theory of mental states was never appreciated as highly by the laity as by scholars. The laity too often interpreted it literally, though he specifically corrected this misconception. Andrew Jackson Davis frankly described the spiritual world in sensory terms and developed no theory of mental states nor any doctrine of idealism.

 Before saying anything about the value of revelations I should perhaps give examples of them. They intermingle descriptive accounts of the spiritual world and its life with philosophy and admonitions or precepts.

 I am not going to raise or decide the question whether the mediums through whom the revelations came are honest or fraudulent. For our purpose here it makes no difference. We are discussing not the source, but the validity of the messages. The conditions determining the source of messages are one thing and the conditions determining validity are another, even though ultimately we must know something of the source when considering the validity of messages purporting to describe a transcendental world. But even then their validity will depend not upon the fact that they are spiritistic, but upon the articulation and correlation of the total mass of material into a consistent whole and perhaps upon some relation to the known in the physical world. I do not care at present to decide this question of source. The authors from whom I quote the statements believed the messages to come from a spiritual world. We are studying the relation of these accounts to existing knowledge and to each other. It makes no difference whether they came from frauds or from honest people. If we knew enough of the transcendental world to accept statements upon the proved veracity of the communicators it might suffice to be assured of the honesty of the source. But veracity is only one requirement when we have to learn from spirit sources the nature of the next world and its life. Competency to report is just as necessary as veracity. If there are degrees of intelligence and different planes of existence, the testimonies of various communicators will not have the same value, and a given communication may not represent the whole of transcendental existence. Furthermore, with competency proved, we have to reckon with the limitations of the medium, which may so modify and color the messages as wholly transform them on the way. All these, and perhaps more, considerations enter into the evaluation of the messages; but we have no space to detail them. We are only illustrating the "revelations" purporting to give accounts of the spiritual world, disregarding their source and the influence of the living mind upon their transmission. We have here to deal with them superficially as they come to us.

 I shall first quote a passage from Dr. Hare's work. It purports to come from a spirit that died as a very little child and now reports what it had much later learned.

"My life here has been a charmed one, enrapturing scenes of beauty being constantly presented to view, like the ever varying landscapes delineated on the canvas by a skilful artist. Now is seen a beautiful silvery lake on whose translucent bosom floats the graceful swan, bending his pliant neck, as if proudly conscious of his surpassing beauty; and anon, among the hills of this lake, which appear like gems on a virgin brow, shoots a tiny barque, freighted with angelic children. Then is presented a bolder view, of towering mountains and wide­extended plains, with the accompanying characteristics of hill and dell.

"There are gardens there of inconceivable beauty, filled with the choicest and most aromatic herbs and flowers, and birds with every conceivable variety of plumage. The parks are of great magnitude, and abound with the most beautiful animals. The swift antelope, the wild gazelle, and the graceful deer are seen ranging over the flowery plains. There the lion and the lamb lie down together in peaceful innocence. There are congregated millions of spirits, who are associated together like a harmonious and happy family. The vales are vocal with celestial melody, and the air is redolent with the perfume of flowers."

 Men may differ as to the spirituality of this heaven. Some would regard it as purely materialistic, but I am sure that most of them would enjoy it nevertheless.

In regard to the employments of spirits the following passage is of especial interest, particularly as one statement in it may throw light upon the whole subject of the transcendental life.

 "Our scientific researches and investigations are extended to all that pertains to the phenomena of universal nature; to all the wonders of the heavens and the earth, and to whatever the mind of man is capable of conceiving: all of which exercise our faculties, and form a considerable part of our enjoyments. The noble and sublime sciences of astronomy, chemistry, and mathematics, engage a considerable portion of our attention, and afford us an inexhaustible subject for study and reflection.

"We do not study those practical arts, which are so essential to the earth-life, such as mechanics, etc.; for we do not stand in need of their applications; our studies being wholly of a mental character, we attend to the fundamental principles only. All the more intellectual branches of the arts and sciences are cultivated in a much more perfect manner than that to which we have been accustomed upon earth."

 Like the previous passage, this regards the spiritual world as a perfect replica of the physical universe, with certain exceptions, which the careful reader will note. The thing to be specially remarked is the denial of the existence of the practical arts and the emphasis upon "mental" occupations.

Either this is evidence of a subconscious revolt against the complete reproduction of a physical existence, or it is a tacit admission of radical differences between that world and this. The allusion to mental occupations implies Swedenborg's view; namely, that the spiritual world is mental and creative, and that the appearance of the physical is therefore an illusion. If we accept the pictographic process of intercommunication between minds, we can interpret the above descriptions as pertaining to a dream life of some kind, whether rational or otherwise. But I am not concerned here with deciding such a question. The main point is to notice that we have either to reckon with subconscious imaginings of the medium or with a conception very different from the literal meaning of the report. After being taught by the Cartesian philosophy and much Christian speculation that the spiritual world is not material and that it can have no resemblance to the present life, we are confronted with a description of it as exactly like our own, except for the absence of evil. Only a careful scrutiny of the accounts reveals sporadic but significant statements completely altering the conception that hasty reading creates.

I shall next quote a passage from the work of judge Edmunds. But I must first remind the reader that he must be on the lookout for symbolic meaning in the description. The tone of the account is realistic, and we should not ordinarily suspect that it had any other import. Before the experiment the persons present had been told that a vision would come to Dr. Dexter, the medium in the case. After following instructions, the party waited, and there came the following vision. It is descriptive of some features of the next life.

 "Away off in the regions of space, as if in the midst of the starry firmament, I saw a bright and majestic spirit sitting in a sort of throne, which was placed on a fleecy, white cloud. A. few feet above his head reposed a wreath of flowers, from whence flowed rays of light to his head, forming, as it were, a crown of light and flowers. He had on a loose garment, beautifully variegated with blue and pink, and ornamented with purple velvet, which sparkled as with diamonds. His left hand rested on a globe, on the arm of his seat, from which radiated a golden light, indicative of affection. On the right arm of his chair was a similar globe radiating a silver light, indicating wisdom. His right arm was raised, and he pointed me to a distant view. He was evidently of a higher command in the execution of God's laws than I had yet seen. Far beneath him were innumerable stars of all sizes careering through space, and apparently gamboling in the exuberance of their joy. At first the scene seemed to me one of great disorder; but as I gazed I saw how all was order and harmony. I saw many spirits coming to and going from him, as if with messages—coming as from distant stars, and vanishing in space with inconceivable rapidity.

"While I gazed, I saw a very bright light, most gorgeous, like a blazing sun, approaching him from behind, and forming a background to him. The rays of it were ever shooting out from its center various hues, yet it seemed formed of numberless concentric rings of different colors. I can convey no idea of its glorious splendor.

"That light was the central sun of all these systems of worlds I saw beneath his feet, and he was the high and holy intelligence that governed their action in obedience to the laws of God.

"He arose from his seat, and leaning on it with one arm, he pointed me with the other off to his right. There I saw a bright and dazzling spirit, with no clothing upon him, but shining like burnished silver. He was floating in the blue ethereal, and seemed a great storehouse of dazzling light, which he was scattering from him in all directions.

"I saw that he was superior to the other spirit, yet I felt as if there was a sense of solitude about him, and that he had no, companions. He replied to my thought by spreading out his hands and saying, 'These worlds are my companions; my solitude is peopled by myriads of shining intelligences.'

"He pointed me to other systems of worlds far off in the illimitable distance, and immense in number. He seemed to be the apex of a cone; spreading out and beneath him were the worlds which he governed, whose guide and director he was. He pointed me to one still higher than himself, his superior in power and wisdom. Of that one I saw only the head."

Now we have only to look carefully at this description to see that it is symbolical. The figures said to represent affection and wisdom are the first clear intimation of the way the vision is to be interpreted. The latter part carries its own suggestion. But as if suggestion were not enough, the author adds the following as a part of the message conveyed by the vision:

 "The great lesson taught by these scenes is the occupation of spirits, one above another, in their career of progression—each greater than the other, and executing God's laws on a larger scale and in a higher sphere."

 The whole elaborate imagery is therefore symbolic, as those familiar with the pictographic process will readily recognize, while we have also to reckon with the fact that the language of the description is Dr. Dexter's. The picture does not carry with it its own language nor its own interpretation. Whether this last comes from the mind of Dr. Dexter, or from the transcendental world, makes no difference. The narrative continues with the following passage by automatic writing through Dr. Dexter's hand:

"This is one process of development. Watch and see his form rising from that brilliant cloud of lambent flame. This personifies truth as developed to minds prepared to receive it. You never, perhaps, may see anything so brilliant and gorgeous again. Let the circle be particularly silent and let their minds turn to this subject."

Note that this passage is explanatory of the meaning of the vision up to this point. The phrase, "Personifying truth" for "minds prepared to receive it" is an indication that the apparently sensuous description is really concerned with abstract ideas. The vision continues:

 There arose up from beneath this bodiless spirit a beautiful rose-colored light. It was indeed a glorious sight, which language is inadequate to describe.

"The temple was surrounded by a great number of spirits, with musical instruments in their hands, and from them arose a flood of music, far surpassing anything ever heard by mortal ears. The building had a Doric roof, and stood high up from its base. It was ascended by a flight of many steps, extending across the whole front. There were three rows of columns on each side, of infinite variety of colors; they were not Doric in form, but tall and slender, and somewhat of the Ionic order. This temple was open at its sides, and its pavement and columns shone with a brilliant sparkling gleam amid that rose-colored atmosphere.

"On each side of the building was a glorious garden, variegated with water, shrubbery, and flowers, equally dazzling in their brilliancy. The leaves of the flowers and plants were transparent, yet shone with a glitter like the ice-plant, or as if covered with frost in the morning sun. The water was now a calm and placid pool, now a bubbling stream, now a jet, and anon a tumbling fall. The flowers were of all possible colors, and I could see their perfume arise from them and mingle with the atmosphere. At the same time I could see the plants drinking in, through their leaves, the life-principle from the atmosphere, and giving it out sublimated and refined as a perfume. Those plants were in all stages of development, so that it seemed as if spring and summer, conjoined, reigned there forever. There was every variety of foliage and shady trees, now dense, dark and cool, and now sparse and transparent. The water was full of fishes, gamboling in the joyousness of life in such pure waters and the air was full of birds, rendering it beautiful with their plumage, and vocal with their song. One bird I noticed in particular: he was brown and plain in look, and as he reposed on a limb of one of the trees, he sent up his joyous song, ringing clear over all other sounds—its notes like the softest flute, expressive of happiness, and imparting a feeling of gladness to all around.,"

 We must not forget that the description is Dr. Dexter's own, and that he has before him a panorama of pictures, pictographic imagery, with here and there a note of symbolism. Such phrases as seeing the perfume rising, and the plants "drinking in the life-principle and giving it out subliminated and refined as a perfume," are natural symbolic expressions for speculative truth, represented as apparent fact. All this will become clearer in some later comments. The narrative goes on:

 "The basement of the temple, I saw, was prepared and fitted up for a room in which public meetings were to be held. At one end of it was the seat of the presiding spirit. It was the precise, tomb-like monument of myself that I had seen once before, on which was recorded my age when I died. Back of that, on the wall, was a picture of that cross in the sky, which I had seen with its attendant spirit and its scrolls. Beneath that picture was my new seal painted, and on each side two other seals; they consisted of shields and emblazonry. One had a cross­bar running diagonally, above which was the scene of the good Samaritan; and below a bright spirit, who was lifting a slave from the ground and knocking off his chains. The scroll beneath the shield contained these words: 'Love conquers all things."'

This was Dr. Dexter's coat of arms; the other was Mr. Warren's. It was quartered by bars crossing each other at right angles. In one quarter was a shepherd surrounded by his flock; he was reclining under a tree, and examining the starry firmament. In the second quarter was a man far down in a deep pit, examining the formation of the rock and earth. In the third, was a man reading; and in the fourth, one with crucibles and other chemical apparatus. The inscription was, "Knowledge is Progressive."

 The description continues for nearly two pages, but we have seen enough to understand the character of the whole. We are concerned here only with that part which contains internal evidence of being symbolic. The symbolic meaning is unconsciously revealed in the very contents of the message. For instance, Dr. Dexter's monument, inscribed with his epitaph, is not a vision of present reality, but a premonition. The shield and other figures are also symbolic. More especially we note a prediction of the downfall of slavery, which was not an established fact at the time of this vision, in 1853. The vision, therefore, was not of actual facts, but consisted of images signifying future events. It matters not what the source of these pictures may be; we are assuming their spiritistic origin here only to indicate that the symbolic character of the pictures is not affected thereby, while it is taken for granted on any other theory of their source. That part which is obviously symbolic suggests the same interpretation for the rest.

We could go through the literature of spiritualism and find many examples of symbolic vision. As the pictographic process of communication is so common, even when the personal identity of the discarnate is being proved, when we cannot for a moment suppose that real things are seen, we have to bear in mind in considering such narratives, the conditions of that process with its inherent symbolism. This point can be brought out in another way.

 Strictly scientific language is inadequate to interpret art. We cannot directly convey the impressions and emotions we experience in the enjoyment of works of art. We have to describe the product in terms that carry with them certain emotional values; and, unless the recipient has had experience enough to read into the language what the communicator has in mind, he fails to get the meaning. The descriptions contain words signifying certain emotional effects; and, as we can communicate with each other only in terms of sense-perception, of pictorial imagery of some kind, a criticism may often enough seem absurd to the stickler for scientific accuracy, though perfectly intelligible to the man who appreciates art and the emotional reactions to beauty.

 We can apply the psychology of art to our present problem. If the spiritual world be dominantly a world to be described appreciatively, not scientifically, we may well understand how descriptive accounts have a symbolic meaning which should be interpreted in terms of emotion. Many of the revelations of the spiritual world characterize it as dominantly emotional and affectional. Mere knowledge is secondary among its interests. Just as we use sensuous imagery in interpreting any work of art, so the pictographic process, recognizing the difficulties of describing a spiritual world, uses such pictures as will carry with them emotions characteristic of the spiritual life wherever found. In the attempt to describe a piece of music, the critic or artist endeavors to make a body of sound intelligible in terms of visual imagery. A musician may call his composition "A Rose," meaning that his musical work gives rise to the same emotion as that produced by a rose. The writer who speaks of "a symphony of color" is using musical terms to describe a visual effect. The language cannot be taken literally; the appreciative mind must construe the meaning in terms of emotional reactions. The same principle may apply to the accounts of the spiritual world. The pictographic process must represent it in pictorial images, but the mind must see in them the emotional meaning of the representations, and ignore the literal import.

 The work of Andrew Jackson Davis has proved attractive to most people because it contains more description and philosophy than most similar productions, and because the author maintains that he had read little or nothing on the subject. His "Summer Land" is as complete a description as was ever given of the other world in terms of sense. This characteristic arouses at once the skepticism of the more intelligent and the enthusiasm of the ignorant. There can be no doubt that his work is remarkable as a case for the psychologist; but its literal truth is another matter.

 Since we have had no experience of the transcendental world it requires scrutiny and discrimination to determine what reports are acceptable and what are not. The veracity of the communicator does not guarantee the truth of his statements. We need to know two things in addition to his veracity. (1) We must know his competency or the intelligence of his judgment in making his observations. (2) We must know that he is reporting more than his individual impressions. When these two conditions are fulfilled we may be able to accept reports about the next world.

 Now when we add to the difficulties just mentioned the further complications (1) that the accounts of the spiritual world do not agree in their details, and (2) that the reactions of different spirits may vary as widely as do the esthetic judgments of the living, we shall have abundant reason to exercise caution before accepting accounts of the spiritual world at their face value. If the descriptions are highly symbolic and if they are determined by the degree of development of the individual spirit, we could hardly expect them to be identical or even consistent. The differences between the spiritual and the physical world make it difficult to give a satisfactory account of the former. Just in proportion as it is different from this life, spirits must be unable to describe it in the only terms by which it can be made intelligible to most people. just in proportion as it is like the physical world the stories about it will be credible to the ordinary person and at the same time will excite the skepticism of the man who does not think altogether in terms of sensory images. The contradictions in the accounts make it easy to understand why the intelligent man hesitates to accept the revelations, though the average man simply selects what pleases him and ignores the rest. The conflict lies between different criteria of truth, the untrained mind accepting at its face value every narrative couched in sensory terms, and the scientific mind doubting everything that pretends to describe a spiritual world in physical terms. The reconciliation lies in the belief in a supersensible physical universe saturated with, spirit, whatever view of spirit we take, and in the belief in spiritual activities of a dominantly emotional type, which have to be translated into sensory terms when they are described to the living. But we have still to prove the existence of such a state of affairs.

 Contradictions in the statements are due partly to the same causes which make the living differ in their opinions, and partly to differences in the conditions under which spirits exist. There are what we call the earth­bound spirits who live in their sensory memories and desires. Their communications must reflect their own mental condition and would naturally contain just such stories as those which offend the scientific intelligence. Then there is the crank, who still insists on teaching us his doctrine whenever he can find a channel, through which to express it. It is probable that the earth-bound and the cranks can communicate more easily than can the more highly developed, and that they would be more persistent in their efforts. Death does not make radical changes in our natures. We retain the same characters; if we have resisted progress here we may do so in the spiritual world. Moreover, many messages are compounds formed by two or more minds acting at the same time. It is probable that this condition exercises a more distorting influence on results than do the messages of the earth-bound. But we have to reckon with so many obstacles to the intelligibility of the messages, including their frequently symbolic nature, that we have to be exceedingly wary in the acceptance of any revelation.

 The manifold difficulties which I have discussed above will always stare us in the face, though we may be forced to admit that there is some basis of truth in the revelations. Only the common elements in the total mass of conflicting accounts can be accepted, and even these only on the assurance that they are not reflections of normal ideas and imaginings. We must be sure that the mind which delivers them has not known any of the ideas and theories of spiritualism, if we are to exclude the influence of conscious and subconscious knowledge on the statements. To secure an adequate conception of the spiritual world by such a process of sifting will require many years of investigation and study. We are in no position at present to provide the scientific mind with a clear conception of the transcendental world nor with any simple criterion of validity for the communications concerning that world.
 

REINCARNATION

 THE doctrine of reincarnation is one form of belief in survival after death. We meet with it in early Buddhism, in early Greek philosophy, among the physicists or so-called materialists of the Pre-Socratic period and again in Plato. The early materialists are represented as believers in survival in any form only by the more exhaustive historians of the period; and even they mention the belief merely for the sake of completeness, as if it were an irrelevant detail of the system. But it was too important an element in the philosophy of Plato to be ignored. He seems to have been the only prominent philosopher of Greece in the intellectual period who had the hardihood to defend it. The theosophists of modern times have advocated it; most of them derive their belief from Buddhism. The idea prevailed in other religious and philosophic sects of India, either growing out of Buddhism or out of the systems that preceded Buddhism.

I do not intend here to go into the history of the doctrine. I mention its antiquity primarily to show that it is not the result of modern scientific progress. But its value must rest on facts and not on antiquity or authority. I have discussed it in another work, "The Borderland of Psychic Research." I shall here take up only additional matters, which have become important through the revival of interest in the doctrine by the theosophists.

In general, reincarnation means that the soul after death comes back again to the earthly life in another physical body. It assumes that the materialistic theory of consciousness is not true; either taking the existence of a soul for granted, or adducing the facts of normal consciousness and experience as sufficient to justify the belief in the existence of a soul. Its doctrine of re-embodiment or transmigration as a form of survival, differs in certain details from the Christian and other similar views. It does not accept the bodily resurrection; perhaps advanced Christianity does not do so any longer, though many Christians still cling to it. This theory implies that the soul retains its identity when it re-occupies a body, either the old one resurrected or a new one created for the purpose. But reincarnation does not assume any resurrection. It assumes that the soul, without memory of the past, comes back and occupies a body created by ordinary sexual union. This denial of memory is the fundamental characteristic of the doctrine, as held by most theosophists to-day and in the past. If faced with the disadvantages of the loss of memory, theosophists maintain that after various reincarnations this memory of all past experiences is recovered. It is lost as a consequence of the individual's mistake and sins, and is restored when his "karma" or probationary discipline is complete; after his various transmigrations.

 Now it must be said that this belief rests on metaphysics alone. It has no scientific foundation whatever. Some venture to adduce facts to support it, but these will not bear the slightest examination as evidence. For instance, some will tell us that they can remember a previous existence. But they do not reckon with illusions of memory. We sometimes recall something which we locate in a certain time and place, but find later that this location was wrong. When the total experience is recalled we find that we are dealing with two events connected only by similarity. We confused them because of the imperfection of the recall. This imperfect recall will explain most of the alleged instances of recollection of a prenatal past.

 Other facts adduced in support of reincarnation can be explained as mediumistic phenomena. That is, discarnate personalities may produce in the minds of psychics the feeling of long past time or of previous existence by the transmission, telepathically perhaps, of their own feelings and states of mind. These would naturally enough be interpreted as evidence of reincarnation. But when we find that they are memories transmitted from the discarnate to the living mind, their claims as evidence are nullified. The sense of recognizing a place which we are seeing for the first time is another type of fact like the one just considered, except that it involves space instead of time. It too can be explained either as an illusion of memory or as clairvoyance. Either hypothesis nullifies the value of the facts as evidence for reincarnation.

 I allude thus briefly to the alleged evidence for transmigration, in order to show that it has no scientific standing. Its metaphysical character is another matter; I have eliminated its scientific claims in order to show that it is only a metaphysical theory. It may be true or false, but it cannot be assumed to be true without evidence: for metaphysical theories are to-day discredited unless they can produce evidence in their support. They are legitimate enough as imaginary possibilities, but woe unto the man who asserts them to be facts. What it is that can recommend the doctrine of reincarnation to its believers is difficult to understand. It contains nothing desirable and nothing ethical. To be sure, its desirability or undesirability has nothing to do with its truth or falsity. It might be true, though very undesirable, and it might be false, though very desirable. But as it is a metaphysical theory, we have a right to test its relation to practical life and the native instincts of man, when we cannot find scientific evidence to prove it.

 Reincarnation is not desirable, because it does not satisfy the only instinct that makes survival of any kind interesting, namely, the instinct to preserve the consciousness of personal identity. This is denied to the process until its end and that is never in sight! Moreover, assertion of even this return of memory is purely arbitrary. Man's only interest in survival is for the persistence of his personal identity. It is a form of the impulse towards self-preservation, which is fundamental to all the acquisitions of experience and character in this life. A future life must be the continuity of this consciousness or it is not a life to us at all.

Moreover, there is nothing ethical in the doctrine. The absolutely fundamental condition of all ethics is memory and the retention of personal identity, and memory and personal identity are excluded from the process of reincarnation. That you cannot maintain a theory of responsibility in any existence without memory is a truism in ethics and even in our civil courts. If our personal identity were changed, we could not be held responsible for anything we did. If we lost our memory every five minutes we should be regarded as insane, and crime could not be ascribed to us. In cases of alternating personality, punishment might be meted out to the personality performing the act, but this restraint could not apply to the other personality. The result is that cases of dissociation and change of personality are subjects for the physician and not the police.

The doctrine of reincarnation has to face this large question. We cannot apply to any future life the categories of the present, unless personal identity be assumed. Memory from one stage to another is necessary to the continuance of existence. "Karma" without memory is retribution minus all grounds for it, abstracting everything that makes it rational.

 How then did such a doctrine originate? What could have given rise to such a theory? Plato may be forgiven because we know his poetic and literary instincts. But there was some reason for the maintenance of the belief, and we may well ask what this reason was. Even fantastic views, when persistently and seriously held, have some reason for their existence; and the doctrine of reincarnation is too old and too insistent not to have had some reason for its origin.

 If the doctrine could be defined as meaning the survival of consciousness in the spiritual body, it would be consistent not only with some forms of spiritualism, but also with Christianity. But usually its advocates deny this view. Some of them are as much opposed to spiritistic theories as are the skeptics, though many regard psychic research as a stepping stone to their own philosophy. They often admit the existence of a spiritual body, but do not conceive the relation of personality or consciousness to it as one of transmigration. If they could conceive that relation as the transfer of the present consciousness to a spiritual body there would be no logical, no ethical, and no scientific difficulties in the way of that conception. But this would be giving up their denial that memory endures throughout the process of reincarnation; and few, if any, theosophists will admit the conception just defined.

 It was this idea with which Professor James was playing when he tried to defend the possibility of immortality by the doctrine of transmissive functions of the brain. He did not call his theory reincarnation, for to do so would at once have discredited his view in the minds of scientists, if only because of associations and implications which he did not admit and which the theosophists hold. Professor James, instead of using the results of psychic research to prove survival after death, confined himself to physiological and psychological arguments, maintaining the materialistic view of the nature of consciousness. He admitted, with the materialist, that consciousness is a function of the brain. But, in order to avoid the materialist's conclusion he tried to distinguish between what he called transmissive and productive functions of the brain. He did not make the distinction very clear or tenable in relation to facts, but he used the idea consistently enough. By productive functions of the brain he meant such as are so organically connected with it that they perish when the body dies. He imagined that consciousness, however, might be a function that could be transmitted from the brain to some other structure, whether the transmission be conceived as reincarnation with or without the retention of personal identity. He said nothing about transmigration of the soul to other human bodies, and he probably would not have tolerated the idea. Neither did he say anything about the question whether any "spiritual," "astral," or ethereal organisms existed without any connection with a body. He left us to infer that they might be formed or created for the transmitted consciousness after death. But the notion of transmission is not necessary to spiritism. Consciousness either is now a function of the "spiritual body," whether spatial or spaceless, or is so closely associated with such an organism that it goes with it at death, without the need of "transmission." But to assume "transmission," as Professor James did, is to assume that the "ethereal organism" is not now associated with consciousness, but awaits the reception of it when it has left the brain.

 This view has the merit of forcing the materialist to argue the case from his own premises, but it is totally without evidence. It is quite as a priori as any mediaeval theology, and therefore is inconsistent with the "radical empiricism" which was the fundamental belief of Professor James.

 When, in the light of psychic research, we examine the early theories of animism and the doctrine of reincarnation as held among the early Greek philosophers, even the materialists Empedocles and Democritus, we may discover how the theory of reincarnation originated. Primitive animism was bound up with the belief in reincarnation, but it was not clearly worked out into a logical and consistent philosophy. We find in animism only the seeds of the doctrine, in the naive ideas of ignorant people with a penchant for explaining things. But when we recognize undeveloped spiritualism in this primitive animism, we find a clue to the origin of the theory of reincarnation.

 Spiritualism based upon communication with the dead assumes the return of the discarnate spirit to the earthly life; and its temporary occupation of a human body in order to effect the communication. This return might be called an incarnation. Communicators have often said that their return is like getting into the living body and living over again in that organism. Unphilosophic ages might develop this circumstance into a theory of reincarnation, after they had forgotten the, conditions which gave rise to the original meaning of the term. Such development is very frequent in the history of religious and philosophic beliefs. For instance., we cannot read the 'New Testament in the light of psychic research and the meaning of Greek and Hebrew words, without noting that the resurrection was originally only a theory of survival based upon apparitions. Long before Christianity arose, anastasis, the Greek word for resurrection, in one of its meanings, signified the appearance of apparitions. The doctrine had been discussed between the Sadducees and the Pharisees before Christ was said to have risen. The Greeks had been long familiar with the idea, which developed into the doctrine of the bodily resurrection only after the facts on which it was based were discarded or forgotten, perhaps partly because of the confusion attending, on the one hand, the conceptions of matter and spirit, and, on the other, the real meaning of the "spiritual body" of St. Paul. A similar development is apparent in the doctrine of the Trinity. It meant something intelligible with reference to the Greek conception of personality as simply a representation of characteristics in a subject, not the subject itself. When this meaning was lost and the terminology retained as a dogma, philosophers and theologians felt the necessity of trying to explain it by concocting preposterous arguments to bolster up a phrase that had lost its primitive significance.

 In some such way we can conceive the origin of the doctrine of reincarnation, without supposing that it was fabricated by the imagination without any facts whatever upon which to work. Both mediumistic phenomena and the statements of communicators suggest something like reincarnation, though they do not support the developed system. They show that returning to communicate involves something like the old relation of the soul to the body, which for them might be called "reincarnation," though not as a mode of "karma" or punishment.

 This latter doctrine, a concomitant of reincarnation, may have arisen from certain phenomena associated with what are called earth-bound spirits. These are persons so obsessed with their earthly life that it is often difficult for them to get away from their former interests. It is represented in some communications that this condition may be remedied by bringing earth-bound spirits into contact with living organisms, especially psychics, in order to remove the fixed ideas and the attachment to earthly memories and experiences. In this way they work out their salvation, so to speak; and any mention of this state of affairs in communications would call to mind the doctrine of expiation and punishment.

 But until reincarnation can adduce scientific facts in its support, it cannot rival psychic research. Scientific doctrines always produce evidence, and do not extend their theories or explanations beyond facts. Metaphysical speculations are possible; and are the delight of certain types of mind, but they are not substitutes for facts. All that scientific men ask of the reincarnationist is that he produce satisfactory evidence for transmigration; until he does so, the theory cannot claim to be based on fact. It is only fair to give it a hearing in this connection and to eliminate all suspicion of prejudice against it, I can only say that, if proper evidence be adduced for it, I shall admit it, though I should have to regard the cosmos as irrational. The probable origin of the theory of reincarnation explains the element of truth which it contains. But the survival of personal identity, adequately supported by facts, contradicts the main doctrine of the reincarnationist.

It is true that communications, or what purport to be communications, from the dead assert the doctrine of reincarnation. But we must remember that there is no agreement in communications of the dead about their life. The disagreement is as great as it is about philosophic views among the living. Perhaps there is no literature in which contradictory conceptions of spiritual existence are more numerous than in the real or alleged descriptions in spiritualistic records. This inconsistency prevents our uncritical acceptance of these records as final on any point. It goes to prove that we are receiving only statements of opinion, not facts, from communicators, if we accept the statements as communications from a transcendental world. Some communicators deny the reincarnation. Consequently, when we consider that the retention of personal identity includes retention of the views that we held when living, especially if we remain earth-bound and unadjusted to the new environment for a time; when we consider subconscious distortion and coloring of messages by the medium, especially if he normally believes in reincarnation: when we allow for misinterpretation of both facts and messages, and when we recognize the fragmentary character of all messages and the limitations of the medium, we shall quite understand that communications from the dead, whether for or against reincarnation, are not to be accepted at their superficial value. The contradictions require us either to distrust all communications on this subject or to reconstruct the messages in the light of an extensive study of all the recorded statements.
 

OBSESSION

 THE Christian church should be' as familiar with obsession as it is with the divinity of Christ, miracles, the immaculate conception, inspiration, baptism, and other doctrines: for the existence of evil spirits affecting the living is as clearly taught in the New Testament, and implied in the Old Testament, as any doctrine there expounded. But the church has repudiated belief in "witchcraft," which it cannot escape save by accepting the verdict of science instead of revelation. It has reduced the Biblical cases of obsession to hysteria, epilepsy, paranoia and similar maladies, thus disposing of facts which we might easily believe by its own doctrine of the "communion of the saints": for we can hardly admit that evil spirits do not know the method of communication which the "saints" practice. So we should have no difficulty in forcing all believers in the New Testament to believe in obsession and to set about mastering what it implies.

 Nevertheless, obsession is not lightly to be believed. It is quite as conceivable as ordinary communication with the dead, but it is not so easily proved. In our search for scientific proof of survival we have been dealing with honest personalities, ready to make concessions and to supply evidence of their identity. But experience has shown that mischievous personalities are desirous of concealing instead of revealing their identity. In default of evidence to the contrary, we should have to accept the orthodox verdict of medicine and psychiatry, which explain obsessions as cases of dual or multiple personality, hysteria, or some form of insanity. It required ten years of investigation, after I had admitted the existence of spirits is credible, to convince me of the possibility of obsession; then followed some years of work to accumulate the facts which make it scientifically probable.

 Most people are familiar with the campaign of the church and the law against belief in witchcraft throughout the Western world; the medical explanation was sufficient, if not to eliminate the phenomena, at least to eradicate the belief in obsession. But, in reporting on some of the investigations in the Piper case, Professor James said that, though hesitating to accept the spiritistic theory, he was certain that belief in demoniac possession would have its innings again. He lived long enough to see the report on the Thompson-Gifford case published in the American Proceedings; it was that case which overcame my resistance to the idea of obsession, though I felt and said that it alone was hardly adequate evidence.

 There can be no a priori argument against obsession after the existence of discarnate spirits in any form has been proved or even shown to be possible or probable. The process employed to establish the personal identity of spirits may well be used by mischievous or ignorant personalities in order to disturb the normal life of the living. It is not at all likely that sane and intelligent spirits are the only ones to exert influence from a transcendental world. If they can act on the living there is no reason why others cannot do so as well. The process in either case would be the same; we should have to possess adequate proof that nature puts more restrictions upon ignorance and evil in the next life than in this, in order to establish the certainty that mischievous personalities do not or cannot perform nefarious deeds. The objection that such a doctrine makes the world seem evil applies equally to the situation in the present life.

 Obsession, a term used by psychiatry to denote fixed ideas, is employed by psychic researchers to denote the abnormal influence of spirits on the living. It does not mean ordinary mediumship, which either may occur without disturbing normal life or may be a merely temporary interruption of that normal life. It represents a dissociation (if functions, varying from the slightest disturbance of normal personality to complete displacement. But in all cases it represents an influence foreign to the organism instead of within it, due to the action of a discarnate spirit or spirits, whether the influence be voluntary or involuntary. The process by which this influence is exercised may be the same as that which is employed to communicate desirable messages, but it is conducted either with a very different purpose or as the result of laws which happen to involve ignorant spirits in toils from which they sometimes cannot easily escape.

 The phenomena which I have ultimately come to think are due to foreign action, do not appear to be evidence of any such invasions. They are not like the facts which we have been accustomed to regard as evidence of the existence of spirits or of supernormal knowledge. They appear to be morbid states of the subject afflicted. Many cases of hysteria, of dementia precox, of paranoia, of manic depressive insanity, and of dual or multiple personality do not show any superficial indications of spirit invasion. The psychiatrist has been quite right in refusing to diagnose them as obsessions. Cases of dual and multiple personality immediately suggest obsessions, because of the dissociation between the personalities. But the lack of evidence of supernormal knowledge and of the identity of the spirits in some, if not in all, of these cases, at first prevented the application of a spiritistic explanation to them.

 But I found a way to supply this evidence by the method of cross­reference. I take the patient to a psychic under conditions that exclude from the psychic all normal knowledge of the situation, and see what happens. If the same phenomena that occur in the patient are repeated through the medium; if I am able to establish the identity of the personalities affecting the patient; or if I can obtain indubitably supernormal information connecting the patient with the statements made through the psychic, I have reason to regard the mental phenomena observed in the patient as of external origin. While the experiences of the patient may not in themselves be evidence of the supernormal or of foreign invasion, the repetition of the same experiences through the psychic, who is ignorant of them, establishes their supernormal character without question. In a number of cases, persons whose condition would ordinarily be described as due to hysteria, dual, or multiple personality, dementia precox, paranoia, or some other form of mental disturbance, showed unmistakable indications of invasion by foreign and discarnate agencies.

 It is not necessary to suppose that these invasions were the primary cause of the trouble. Organic lesions sometimes open the way to all sorts of other disorders. Functional disturbances may be due to invasions of the discarnate, but in some instances these influences were preceded by organic derangements or by accidents. The hypothesis of obsession does not set aside physiological causes. It designates only a concomitant cause or disturbance in the situation, unless in certain types of purely functional trouble the discarnate be primary and sufficient cause. Obsession is not incompatible with hysteria, dual or multiple personality, and the like. It only adds to the complications of the phenomena and may lead to the consideration of more causes than have hitherto been recognized.

 We do not need accept the spiritistic hypothesis in order to admit the possibility of obsession. If we believe in telepathy, we believe in a process which makes possible the invasion of personality by some one at a distance. Telepathy not only involves the transmission of thoughts from one person to another, but very distinctly implies that these thoughts can exercise a causal influence on the percipient. Psychology assumes that only physical stimuli, through the intermediation of the body, can affect the mind. But telepathy assumes that one mind affects another. This very supposition contains the possibility of all that we observe in obsession, if it be proved to exist. Consequently there is no need of insisting that spirits are the sole agents in obsession. We might point out that there would be no hope for a cure if telepathy caused the obsession, as we might never be able to find the personality guilty of producing the effect on the patient, and so would not be in a position to exorcize him or to teach him to avoid using his influence. Telepathy thus used would be Mrs. Eddy's "malicious animal magnetism," which is only obsession disguised so as not to imply the spiritistic theory, which she once believed and later rejected. But such an explanation represents the malady as incurable, since on this hypothesis we cannot get at the causes. On the spiritistic theory it is possible to find the causes and to deal with them.

 But examination of the actual facts will show not only that telepathy is wholly irrelevant to the problem, but also that only spiritistic agencies rationally explain the phenomena, while the admission of the existence of spirits on other evidence prepares the way, more definitely than does telepathy, for acceptance of the possibility of obsession. The whole case will rest upon the special nature of the facts obtainable in support of the hypothesis.

 If we could interpret every case of psychic invasion as obsession, the case would be won in all instances where the supernormal is discoverable. It would make the term synonymous with mediumship; perhaps in principle they really are the same. But the term has usually been confined to those cases which do not show the usual type of evidence for spirit invasion. The term denominates abnormal cases, in which the dissociation and disintegration of normal life has been so great as thoroughly to demoralize it. This is not true of what may be called normal mediumship. There is no hard and fast line between the two types, except the application of the term obsession to cases that do not in themselves contain evidence for the supernormal and that are characterized by clear and distinct evidence of the abnormal.

 Now as the supernormal is not superficially apparent in these cases, we cannot assume them to be instances of obsession unless we can produce evidence that the ordinary medical diagnosis is either incorrect or imperfect. Mrs. Piper, Mrs. Smead, Mrs. Chenoweth, Mrs. Verrall, Mrs. Holland and others gave unmistakable evidence for the supernormal, which could be proved by very simple methods. All we had to do was to take strangers to them and record the subsequent events. But cases of hysteria and of dual or multiple personality furnished no such revelations of the personal identity of the dead. Hence we had either to contrive a new method of experiment or to surrender the diagnosis to psychiatry.

 The method of experiment adopted, when the influence of discarnate spirits was suspected, was that of cross-reference. If the same phenomena that had occurred in the patient were repeated through the psychic, and if this repetition was accompanied by unmistakable evidence of supernormal knowledge relevant to the case, there would be reason at least to raise the question of obsession. If the same personalities as those constituting the dual or multiple personalities were manifest in a trained psychic, we should have strong evidence that they were not in the first instance merely subjective creations. This sort of experiment was tried for the purpose of seeing whether we could secure evidence of external personality in what seemed to be merely an abnormal state in the patient. We have tried this experiment in a number of cases with the same result; a similar result never manifested itself when normal persons were the sitters or subjects of experiment.

The case which first suggested obsession to me was that of Mr. Thompson. The invading agent was Mr. Gifford. Mr. Thompson, after a period in which he felt compelled to paint in Gifford's style, was unable to resume his profession as a silversmith. It nauseated him. This indicated to me that the invasion had brought about some sort of organic alteration in his interests and physiological habits. The persistent invasion of Gifford to accomplish his purpose and the organic alteration of the man's habits and tastes suggested, though it did not prove, obsession. It made me resolve to investigate similar cases until I should have ascertained what was going on. In the experiences of Mr. Thompson there was no evidence that would convince the scientific man, especially the student of abnormal psychology, that he was the subject of discarnate invasion. Indeed two physicians diagnosed the case as paranoia, and one of them, without offering to cure it, expressed a desire to watch the progress of the malady. But cross-reference proved very clearly that the spirit of Mr. Gifford, whatever the motive, was behind the phenomena; and the abnormality of the effect on the profession of Mr. Thompson suggested that something more than mediumship was manifested.

 Soon afterwards I came across three other cases which every psychiatrist would diagnose as hysteria, two of them perhaps as incipient paranoia. One of these persons was writing stories purporting to come from a well­known author who had died some years before and about whom the automatist knew very little. Another was engaged in musical composition both for the piano and the opera. There were decided symptoms of hysteria in her case. The third case showed no disagreeable indications of dissociation, but was doing automatic writing purporting to come from Emma Abbott and was singing under the same inspiration. All three were taken to Mrs. Chenoweth under conditions that excluded all normal knowledge of the persons and the facts. The personalities purporting to direct the subjects claimed to communicate through Mrs. Chenoweth and so to be the instigators of the phenomena observed. None of the three cases was the victim of serious dissociation save the first, who was rendered incapable of earning her living. When the work with the psychic had been done, however, she recovered her balance. None of them had reached a stage in which physicians would have assigned them to an asylum. They were not cases that would pass for victims of obsession, in the sense of constant persecution by transcendental agencies. Such persecution is the distinguishing characteristic of cases that demand special treatment.

 Another case, that of a young girl just entering womanhood, was diagnosed by two physicians as dementia precox or paranoia. There were no apparent symptoms of physical degeneration: but she became perfectly stupid, so that she could not always rationally answer questions of the simplest kind. When a narrative of the child's experiences came to my attention I at once saw possibilities that I should not have suspected until I had observed and proved what was happening in the several cases outlined above: and I resolved to try the experiment of investigation with the child. I soon found that the phenomena were instigated from without and got into contact with a personality whose influence on the child can be discussed only in a medical work. I tried two psychics, with the same general result. We had not the means to continue the work until we obtained a perfect cure. But there was unmistakable evidence that the phenomena were of foreign instigation, though affected by the subconsciousness of the child. There was no superficial evidence of foreign stimuli until cross-reference was applied to the case.

 The next case, that of Doris Fischer, is most important; but the summary of it must be preceded by a brief account of the celebrated case of Sally Beauchamp, treated by Dr. Morton Prince of Boston. Doris Fischer had one personality so like the mischievous personality of Sally Beauchamp that a comparison between the two is necessary.

 Sally Beauchamp manifested four chief personalities; that is, there appeared to be four different persons inhabiting the one body. These were designated as B. I, B. II, B. III or Sally, and B. IV.

None of them knew anything about the others, except that Sally knew the other three, knowing B. IV only partly. There was no connection of memory between them except that Sally knew and remembered what the others thought and did as well as what she herself knew and did; she knew what B. IV thought but not what B. IV did. These are the complications; but the important point is that she was mischievous, like one of the main personalities in Doris Fischer. The Beauchamp case was never tested for evidence of spirit agencies. All that we can say is that Sally showed four characteristics that we find in controls of mediums: (1) she claimed to be a spirit; (2) she did automatic writing; (3) she was always conscious; (4) she had no perception of time. These characteristics seem not to have marked the chief secondary personality in the case of Doris Fischer.

 When a child of three and a half years, Doris Fischer was picked up by her drunken father and thrown down on the floor so violently that her head was injured; from that time on she suffered from dissociation or dual personality until the death of her mother when Doris was seventeen years of age. Until the death of her mother there were but two personalities manifested, the normal Doris and a secondary personality who called herself Margaret. The shock of her mother's death increased the number of personalities to five. The addition to the family, so to speak, consisted of personalities called Sick Doris, Sick Real Doris and Sleeping Margaret. This last never appeared except in sleep. Margaret might appear at any time and stayed for a short or a long time apparently according to caprice. She was mischievous, like Sally Beauchamp. Sally would play all sorts of pranks on the other personalities. B. I was the especial object of her enmity. Sally would take control and go out to the country on the last street car and then leave the girl; that is, let the normal self come in, and the girl would have to walk back home, arriving exhausted. Or Sally would put into a box spiders, toads, or other animals of which the normal self had a horror, and leave them on the bureau so that when the normal self opened the box she would have a severe fright. She would take or lose money belonging to the normal self and thus embarrass the girl when she found that her money was gone. Margaret in the Doris Fischer case would play similar tricks on Doris, the normal self. She would steal aprons or candies from places where Doris was working, so that Doris would be blamed for the theft. That is, Margaret would come—she was not discoverable by strangers, since the child would go on with her work as if normal—and steal and hide what she wanted. The normal self, knowing nothing about it, had to take the blame. Margaret would hide the child's books at school so that the normal self could not study her lessons. She had a bureau drawer at home into which Doris, the normal self, was not allowed to look. There Margaret would keep things she wanted or had stolen, and if Doris accidentally went to it and found something of her own or Margaret's, Margaret would scratch the body until it bled all over, and the normal self would have to endure the pains and sores. Margaret would come in and eat the candy that Doris had bought for herself. Margaret would take horses from the livery stable and ride them into the country, but would return them after her ride. She would rush down to the river and take swims with all the child's clothes on; the river was very dirty at its best, with much of the filth of a large city floating on its surface. The normal self had no memory of the acts, and could not understand the effects.

 Margaret did not claim to be a spirit, as did Sally in the Beauchamp case; neither did she manifest other qualities of a control, such as ignorance of time, continuous consciousness, and automatic writing. She seemed to be only a dissociated group of the mental states of Doris. Sleeping Margaret, however, after claiming not to be a spirit, at last came to believe and to insist that she was. But she could give no evidence of her claim. Sick Doris was very stupid; when she was in control the girl seemed to be very ill, but when the personality changed she would be instantly perfectly well without a feeling or appearance of illness. The transformation was astonishing.

 In all these manifestations there was not the slightest trace of spirits. Margaret occasionally exhibited telepathic powers; but as soon as Dr. Walter H. Prince, who had adopted her to effect a cure, began to experiment with the telepathy, Margaret ceased to show what she could do. Sleeping Margaret directed the cure of the child and the removal of Margaret in a manner that suggested supernormal knowledge. Her knowledge usually, however, was limited to the normal memories and knowledge of Doris, and, when you tested her on matters that spirits ought to know, she wholly disappointed you. She could not tell what spirits should tell. Consequently there was no apparent reason to classify Doris Fischer with the mediumistic type or to treat her personalities as anything but dissociated groups of memories of the girl herself. Whatever the explanation, each personality had to be treated as a group or series of mental states separated from the other group or series by amnesia. There was no evidence of such personal identity as we have to insist upon finding when we test the claims of communicating spirits. Whether the "split" was between different groups of mental states or between different brain cells, the phenomena showed slight indication of being due to foreign personalities. They were just mysteriously separated groups of mental states simulating real individuals in their memories and behavior.

 I had resolved on experiment with the case as soon as Dr. Walter H. Prince had succeeded in his treatment of the girl sufficiently for me to bring her from California to Boston. Nothing had ever been published about the case and even the community in which he lived did not know that the girl was an invalid of the type above described. I brought her all the way from California and had her stay in the country some eighteen or twenty miles from Boston, coming in each morning for the experiments for a few weeks; I then kept her for a time at my own home in New York while the experiments continued, and then took her again to Boston for more immediate contact with the psychic; finally I allowed her to return to California while I continued experiments for some months more. As usual, I did not allow Mrs. Chenoweth to see the patient at any time. The detailed record shows for itself the results, of which we can give only a very brief summary here.

 The mother of Doris, who had been dead eight years, first communicated. She did excellent work to prove her identity, by trivial incidents which were unusually good for the purpose. It is not necessary to summarize them here; but they, together with the evidence of supernormal knowledge, establish the presumption that what she said about the condition of Doris at least has to be reckoned with in the solution of the problem. The mother, however, seems not to have suspected that her daughter was obsessed by mischievous discarnate personalities. The first hint of obsession came from Dr. Hodgson, who came to communicate; he compared the case to that of Sally Beauchamp and remarked that it was as "important as any that Morton Prince ever had." Dr. Hodgson had seen and experimented with Miss Beauchamp when he was living and knew Dr. Morton Prince personally. I had undertaken the experiments partly to see if any comparison with the Beauchamp case could be made; but when he had made the comparison he went on to indicate that Doris's malady was a case of obsession, saying that we should have to reckon with a little Indian in connection with the case. After her cure, Doris developed automatic writing with the planchette. The personality instigating this writing purported to be a guide for the girl and told a few things that had happened in the development of the case, which I was able to verify in California. Then came the little Indian personality to whom Dr. Hodgson had referred; she gave the name Minnehaha or Laughing Water. This name is too well known to be significant, and her identity could not be proved. But the record shows that she was well acquainted with incidents in Doris Fischer's life. She described what had gone on and defined the nature of obsession very well in what she said of the vicious personalities associated with it.

 As Sleeping Margaret had claimed to be a spirit, I tried to verify her statement. Margaret made no such claims. But in my first series of experiments no trace of either of them appeared. I then took Doris to New York and had a seance with Sleeping Margaret to know why she had not communicated in Boston. Her answer was that she did not get a chance, as there were so many others there. I then asked her to come to Boston while Doris remained in New York, and to communicate with me. She said that she could not do it; that she could not go so far away from Doris. But she promised to try, if I took her back to Boston. I did so, but I received no trace of Sleeping Margaret as a communicator. I then resolved on a new experiment. Dr. Hodgson had said that Starlight, a little Indian control of Mrs. Chenoweth, had discovered Minnehaha, and I thought I might find out whether she could get into contact with Sleeping Margaret, if the latter was a spirit at all. I arranged the experiment so that Mrs. Chenoweth would not know that I was dealing with the same case and so that she would seem to be sitting for some stranger. Again I did not allow Mrs. Chenoweth to see Doris. As the experiment had to be carried out when Doris was asleep I had her go to bed and be asleep when I admitted Mrs. Chenoweth. I had the face, hands and body of Doris covered up so that she could not be seen. As soon as Mrs. Chenoweth went into the trance, Starlight saw Minnehaha and tried to give her name, but did not succeed. She got "water lily" and then said, in accordance with the pictographic process: "I see, like a waterfall, just like water falling over and whether it is Water Fall or—something like that." Then she remarked: "She laughs after she shows me the water." Readers will remark that the name was actually given in this description; but it is strange that the subliminal could not do better when the name had been given before clearly enough, and was presumably already known, according to skeptical theories, by the subliminal. But Starlight saw no one else except the mother and "the spirit of the girl herself," partly out of the body and partly in, as she stated, remarking that, if she would go out farther she could communicate with the dead. Sleeping Margaret had not shown herself able to do this; I had thus been unable to prove her a spirit. On the contrary Starlight insisted that she was "the spirit of the girl" herself, and later the work made this interpretation clearer. When I resumed my regular work at the next sitting, Minnehaha came; she named both the Margarets and indicated that Sleeping Margaret was what Starlight had said. Then Margaret was put to work to "confess" what she had done to the child. Margaret told a number of the tricks and pranks she had played on the girl and then followed a number of other personalities said to have been concerned in the phenomena observed and reported by Dr. Walter F. Prince. Various events in the life of Doris which thus came out indicated that Margaret was a spirit, though there was no evidence to that effect in the experiences of Doris. Minnehaha terminated the experiments by recounting a large number of facts which had occurred in California after Doris returned home. They do not directly bear upon the subject of obsession, but in so far as evidence of supernormal knowledge enables us to assign limits to subliminal influence, they are consonant with the evidence for obsession.

 I have known three other instances, none of which have been reported, which show the same kind of evidence that foreign agencies can perform a great deal of mischief, when they get access to the mind or body of a living person. I cannot summarize these cases here. Suffice it to say that they add to the number of cases in which we have to reckon with an influence that has not yet been admitted to the archives of psychiatry.

 It is important to remark at the outset of the explanation of obsession that I do not mean this idea to be a substitute for hysteria, dementia precox, paranoia or other maladies, nor is it a rival explanation. Even the controls stated through Mrs. Chenoweth that obsession might itself be caused by disease or accident, thus conceding that lesions might give rise to it and hence that we are not to set aside organic and functional troubles in body and mind when acknowledging that obsession by spirits is an accompaniment of the trouble. It is quite conceivable that any disturbance to healthy functions, bodily or mental, might create conditions in which accidental connections with the discarnate would be established and would open the way to all sorts of voluntary and involuntary invasions. At least that is the theory of the spirits themselves, and the facts tend to support the contention.

 It must therefore be thoroughly understood that we are not controverting physiological or psychiatrical explanations. The only revolution that we wish to introduce into medicine is the denial of the limits ordinarily assigned to causes of disease and methods of treatment. The terms hysteria, dementia precox, paranoia, manic depressive insanity, and epilepsy are largely descriptive; the causes are revealed only by the autopsy and other such methods. Obsession does not displace other causes, but adds to them another factor. It is a cause, not a mere description, because it implies that an external agency produces the phenomena. A foreign influence is .added to the subjective conditions.

We cannot as yet say exactly how these foreign influences act. All that we contend is, that the facts are evidence that they do act; it remains for the future to determine how. This will be no easy task. We have but touched the surface in this problem, and we may have to experiment with a thousand cases in order to fix upon any generalization about the results or to determine rules of procedure and therapeutics. At any rate, we cannot generalize from the few cases that have yielded to investigation. We have still to experiment and to develop methods of healing.

 As to how obsession takes place, we can resort only to speculation. We have little data to go upon at present in this limitless field. I have alluded to telepathy as making possible the influence of mind upon mind independently of normal methods of causation, and said that we need not adopt a spiritistic hypothesis to explain the facts. But one cannot examine these facts and be impressed with telepathic explanations. When the existence of discarnate spirits is once admitted, we have to assume some sort of transcendental process as the method of obsession. Whatever the process is in telepathy, it is conceivably applicable to obsession. But the means are not the first thing to be determined. The frequency of occurrence is more important at present than the cause. We can hope to understand obsession if we can get at the reason for its frequency.

 Many features in the ordinary communications between the dead and the living suggest where we must look if we are to understand the phenomena, even though we have not as yet brought them under experimental control. In the first place, even in cases of mediumship, in which the process of communication is probably the same as in obsession, though under the control of more intelligent personalities, it is clear that many messages are involuntary. The communicator cannot always determine what he shall send. If the spirit present does not know his business, he may cause evils of all sorts without knowing what he is doing. If he knows what he is doing, the result will depend on his character. In addition to these factors, proximity of a spirit to an impressionable subject may expose the latter to either intentional or unintentional influences from the transcendental world. Obsession may be accidental rather than purposive; but, when once invaded, the subject is an open door for the transmission of anything that comes his way.

 For all that we know consciousness is a form of energy with its own laws of transmission and inhibition. If it be such, we can well surmise how the way might often be accidentally opened to the reception of foreign influences which may lead to disastrous results. But these influences are as often purposive and malicious as accidental; the problem is to ascertain how we may practically deal with such cases. The orderly or disorderly impingement of the spiritual world upon the embodied soul in the physical world depends on a combination of circumstances which we have not yet exactly determined. The influence may be found to have analogies with mechanical forces; its benevolent or malevolent operation may depend on our ability to regulate the conditions that make the influence possible, or to guide the agencies into a course of action that will not interfere with the normal life of men. That is no easy task. The cures effected have required much time and patience, the use of psychotherapeutics of an unusual kind, and the employment of psychics to get into contact with the obsessing agents and thus to release the hold which such agents have, or to educate them to voluntary abandonment of their persecutions.

 This is not the place for details of this question. All that I desire to do in this discussion is to suggest the wide application of the hypothesis in the treatment of cases regarded as incurably insane. It is the consequence to the theories and therapeutics of insanity that is important here. Dr. Meyer Solomon of Chicago, when reviewing the case of Doris Fischer, said that if our explanation of that case be true, we should have "to apply it to all hysteria, dementia precox, paranoia, manic-depressive insanity, and genius." I am not yet prepared to generalize or to determine extensions of the hypothesis. But we have proved enough to suggest the possibilities; and any physician who recognizes them and the facts will open his mind to revolutionary possibilities in the diagnosis and cure of cases usually regarded as hopelessly insane. Doris Fischer was so regarded by the physicians who saw her. Dr. Walter Prince, however, cured her by care and suggestion; until she became so healthy and rational that she was able to manage a chicken farm of large dimensions, to serve as Vice President of the Poultry Association in her home county, and to preside at meetings with tact and control. One case that I myself cured by hypnotic suggestion in three days has been perfectly well for five or six years, earning his living with his violin on the stage. He was sent to Bellevue Hospital in the belief that he was incurable.

I repeat that I am not prepared to make generalizations on the subject, either with reference to diagnosis or cure. But I do know that every single case of dissociation and paranoia to which I have applied cross-reference has yielded to the method and proved the existence of foreign agencies complicated with the symptoms of mental or physical deterioration. It is high time to prosecute experiments on a large scale in a field that promises to have as much practical value as any application of the scalpel and the microscope.

MEDIUMSHIP

MANY people would like to know what mediumship is, or by what marks we can discover and recognize it. The briefest answer to such a query is, either that we do not know what the marks are; or that they are phenomena which can be proved to be genuinely supernormal, representing a communication between different minds. But we can hardly dismiss the subject with so summary an account.

Usually in telling what a thing is, we have to give it a place in a known class, with some distinguishing mark that defines it as a special type in that class. There is also a descriptive definition which names the various marks or properties by which the term defined may be known. There are no distinguishing marks of the physical kind to describe mediums, or to mark them off from other people; the only mark is the ability to give supernormal information about the discarnate world, though the term is loosely applied to a person who can give any supernormal manifestation, since spiritualists explain all such phenomena due to the intervention of spirits. Etymologically the term is derived from the Latin word "medium," which denotes the "middle" or the intermediary between two things, the way to reach them, the means of communication. It was hence adopted to denote the agency which intervenes between the physical and the transcendental world. The ordinary analogy is to an electric wire, which is the "medium" of communication in telegraphy, whereby the agent transmits messages from one point to another. But the analogy is not exact, as the processes involve no known resemblances to electrical action. The only means of communicating with the dead has been found to be a living organism capable of connecting the two worlds.

But this definition of mediumship depends wholly upon the phenomena in question and does not enable us to point out any marks or characteristics other than the very facts to be proved; whereas what every one desires to know is what particular characteristic enables the medium to do what is claimed. I do not know of any physical characteristics whatever that might lead us to designate a medium without testing her for supernormal phenomena. One Frenchman thought he had discovered a spot in the eye that indicated mediumship. But I see no evidence of the truth of this discovery and find nothing in my experience to confirm it. So far as I know, the only mental characteristic is hysteria. But the application of the term "hysteria," apart from a consideration of the circumstances, cannot be indiscriminately made. All depends on the definition of hysteria. In the older meaning of the term, which described a nervous and excitable person who could not exercise self-control, hysteria is certainly no mark of mediumship. That type is seldom or never marked by psychic abilities. But in later times the term "hysteria" has come to mean more technically, and at the same time more inclusively, the presence of automatism or subconscious action, in the form of dissociation. The terms "hysteria" and "dissociation" are largely synonymous, or at least denote the same general phenomena. Liability to what is called automatism is in many, if not all, cases a symptom of hysteria.

 Now it is probable that dissociation and automatism characterize all mediums, though there are types that betray no evidence of these conditions, except the production of certain results. There are instances within my own observation in which the subject himself discovered the mediumship or psychic abilities only by the occurrence of supernormal coincidences in his experience, without any apparent alteration of the normal conditions of body or mind. But it is true that automatism is characteristic of all well-developed mediumship that has come within my own observation. This means that automatic writing, automatic visions, or automatic voices occur, and may be regarded as a fundamental characteristic of mediumship. It is true that automatism and dissociation often occur without any traces of the supernormal or of mediumship in its narrower import of communication with the dead. But their presence in developed mediums suggests that the instances which exhibit no supernormal capacities are simply undeveloped cases; that perhaps the automatism and dissociation are absolutely necessary to mediumship, but that the development of them into sources of supernormal knowledge depends on the establishing of rapport with the transcendental world instead of confining it to the physical world. That has been largely my own experience, and only the fact that this experience has not been extensive enough to justify generalization prevents me from stating that as a law. It is a good hypothesis on which to work, and we may ultimately find that the instances of supernormal coincidence which do not superficially betray dissociation nevertheless contain it in a latent form so adjusted to the normal life that its existence is not easily detected.

 At any rate it is fairly certain that cases of dissociation and automatism are worth investigating for the development of mediumship or psychic powers of some kind. This means that we may regard automatism and dissociation as fundamental marks of mediumship, though they do not constitute all that is necessary to achieve the desired result. Rapport with a transcendental world either of other living minds or of discarnate personalities, may be the further characteristic necessary to make the mediumship complete.

 It will probably require a long time accurately to determine the nature and limits of mediumship. There has been, so far, no effort to define it save by the presence of the supernormal. Critics and skeptics, especially in the fields of medicine and psychology, have tried often enough to discredit mediumship by calling it hysteria or dissociation. Hysteria at best is but a descriptive term. It is not in the least explanatory, and does not carry with it any clear implications of the cause. The skeptic wants us to conceive hysteria and dissociation as explanations of phenomena which at least superficially appear to be supernormal. But I am going here to insist that hysteria, dissociation, and automatism are in no respect rivals or contradictories of mediumship. They are conditions of its existence, at least apparently and in most cases. The only legitimate factor of the skeptic's contention is, that if nothing more than automatism is present, we are without evidence of actual mediumship, in so far as mediumship implies the supernormal. We have neither explained the automatism nor succeeded in setting up a conception that displaces genuine mediumship, whose distinguishing mark is facts exhibiting evidence of supernormal knowledge, no matter what the physiological and psychological condition of the subject. The question is, whether there is a connection between the mental phenomena of the hysteric, automatist, insane patient, or other person, and some event foreign to this subject's knowledge. The psychic researcher can admit, if the facts require it, that all supernormal phenomena are accompanied by abnormal mental states in the subject. The crucial question is, first, whether the phenomena are referable to subjective causes or to causes external to the mind affected; and second, whether the external cause, if it exist, is an ordinary physical stimulus or is independent of normal sense­perception. We are insisting only that supernormal phenomena cannot be classified under hysteria, automatism, dissociation, secondary personality, or insanity as phenomena of a purely subjective nature.

 The first question as to the nature of mediumship is not its cause in the sense of its initiation or production, but its occurrence and classification. If certain phenomena bear no evidence of the supernormal, but are accompanied by hysteria, automatism, etc., we may well describe them by these latter terms and admit that their cause is either functional derangement of the mind or some ordinary physical stimulus. But if the phenomena show an undoubted relation to some external event not known to the subject and thus outside the range of normal sense-perception, we can safely refuse to classify them with phenomena that are provably connected with normal causes. We can seek for causes other than physical stimuli, when we have determined whether the facts are included in the normal and abnormal field or are excluded from it. We name them supernormal when they are thus excluded.

 There is overwhelming evidence for the existence of supernormal experience, whether manifested in telepathy, clairvoyance, or communication with the dead. It is certain that there is a vast field of facts not explained by hysteria, automatism, dissociation, secondary personality, or insanity. These facts suffice to indicate some acceptable meaning for mediumship.

 So much for the existence and the nature of mediumship. The explanation of it may await the future. What most people wish to know is some practical criterion for telling when it is present and what to do with it. This is perhaps the most important aspect of the present question.

 From what I have said about its nature and the marks which distinguish it, it is perhaps clear that we have no final assurance of its presence until we actually prove the presence of supernormal phenomena. Prior to that stage of its development we may have to be content with hysteria, automatism, dissociation, and secondary personality, which are limiting ideas, so to speak, or terms indicating that evidence of the supernormal is lacking. No doubt there are many supernormal experiences besides those that are evidential; but, in the present stage of the investigation, we have to be careful about accepting these. The nature of evidence of the supernormal has been fully explained in the chapter on "Problems of Evidence"; it includes both the negative characteristic of excluding fraud, the subconscious, chance coincidence and guessing, and the positive characteristic of a connection with some event not known by the subject. The criterion just defined applies to individual cases of mediumship. It requires that each incident shall at least be explicable by a foreign and transcendental stimulus; the multiplication of these individual test cases will prove the existence of the supernormal. But there are many non­evidential incidents and statements. They may refer to alleged events in a transcendental world, which no living person can verify. The primary test of genuine supernormality cannot apply to them. But if we can make a large number of records of similar statements issuing from real or alleged mediums who were not in communication with each other, their collective unity will have some value. If they all agree as to the nature of the transcendental world, and we can prove that the mediums had never read about the subject and were not familiar with any of the ideas expressed, the consistency of such records would have at least some suggestive value.

 Further than these suggestions, we know little of the conditions for mediumship, and there are at present no facilities for investigating them. The remaining question is how to cultivate the faculty. On this point also we can give very few definite instructions and certainly no dogmatic rules. We as yet know too little to do more than ask for adequate investigation, which will require the careful study of all possible cases that may come to us. This is not possible as yet; the cases have been too few to justify wide and confident generalizations. At one time, from my experience with a dozen instances, I felt secure in saying that there is no danger in the cultivation of mediumship; but, after the discovery of obsession, I felt more cautious in giving assurance that there are no risks. I do not mean to assert or imply that it is generally dangerous, for it seems not to be; often even in the cases which seem most alarming. But we know too little to say that it is either dangerous or not dangerous. I am only certain that in many cases it has not only not been dangerous but has been beneficial, physically and mentally, to the subjects. There are also cases where the reverse is true. Hence it remains to determine the risks in each individual instance.

 The circumstances under which mediumship develops are various. It appears not to be the consequence of weak-mindedness, but may be induced by illness or accident. It is probable that the main condition of its development is passivity of will. This is compatible with any degree of intelligence, even of strong will. If the individual can voluntarily suppress his will, be may develop mediumistic qualities, though they are less likely to occur under these circumstances than in cases of natural passivity. It is probable that the relation of illness and accident to mediumship is due to the effect of such conditions in making the will passive at least until the mediumship has developed; it may then become a fixed feature of the constitution. If it be due to natural passivity of will, the prevention of its harmful forms may be more difficult; but if the passivity is voluntary, the prevention of danger lies largely with the subject.

 The first thing to keep in mind regarding incipient mediumship is that it cannot easily be prevented. One cannot kill it by disregarding it. It betokens the existence of physiological and psychological conditions which the will did not produce; whether the psychic power is a casual product of temperament or the effect of outside agencies, it cannot be created at will. If desired, the condition might develop in time, but it will not come at command. One who finds that it suddenly manifests itself when he becomes interested in the subject may rest assured that it was latent all the while. I have seen many cases in which the subject was wholly unaware of his power until either the ouija board or automatic writing was tried, when the faculty was at once manifest, though perhaps not developed to the point of doing systematic scientific work. On the other hand I have seen it in an incipient stage, with automatic writing quite fluent and easy; and yet years of practice did not improve it. We cannot tell beforehand what will take place in any given instance.

The proper manner of dealing with mediumship when observed is to treat it seriously. If it is not fully developed, treating it as a joke or using it for mere amusement exposes the subject to various kinds of danger. If spiritistic agencies are concerned, treating mediumship as a joke will only attract those on the other side whose temperaments make them look at it in the same way, and the subject will be exposed to the risk of unwelcome obsessions. I do not mean that it need be treated too solemnly, but that its phenomena should be seriously investigated, and not made an occasion for horse-fun. Intelligent spirits will not waste time in producing phenomena with fools.

 High motives and the persistent purpose to make good use of the faculty will protect the subject, at least in most cases, from the dangers of which I spoke. Probably the power can be protected by those on the other side; and, if the medium insists on making a serious use of the ability, he will soon be under the protection of the better type of personality, and unpleasant obsessions will not occur. Unpleasant phenomena may occur even under the best of protection, but they do not last long and are less likely to occur at all.

 In the early stages of development often there will appear wandering personalities, persons who have recently died and are seeking expression or communication through the psychic, or are put there to help in the preliminary development of the medium. The law involved in this occurrence we do not yet know, but it is frequent enough to be reckoned with, and to justify the stopping of such intrusions only when experience shows that their presence is neither normal nor helpful in the development of the psychic.

Those chance comers seldom appear in fully developed psychics and then usually with the express permission of the guides or controls for various purposes. Among them the most frequent is the purpose to help some spirit from an earth-bound condition, or to help some living friend of the wanderer. If the situation is rightly managed, there is apparently no risk in admitting such a person. But one must firmly insist that the reason for his presence be known, and while the correctness of the reason given cannot be proved, if it is clearly possible or not unreasonable, it is advisable to experiment until the effect is proved to be good or bad.

 The only danger, so far as I can see, is that of obsession. This can usually be prevented either by the use of a strong will against any disposition to disturb one's normal life, or by insisting that nothing but serious objects in the work shall be admitted. Weakness of will is dangerous, and the individual must learn to cultivate his own individuality and to insist that this shall not be invaded except for good purposes. The good person does not always prevent the bad spirit from coming nor does the bad person prevent the good spirit from coming. The attitude of will has more to do with the result than anything else. If the subject is intellectually and morally passive, or does not insist on evidence that any special presence is good, then any kind of determined foreign will can take control. The subject should be as critical as the unconvinced sitter. In this way obsessions can be prevented.

 The first thing to demand is that the alleged spirit either prove his own identity or help in proving that of others. The proof of identity will be most satisfactory when the facts are wholly unknown to the medium; indeed it would require an immense number of coordinated facts, if known by the medium, to constitute adequate evidence. The proper thing to do is patiently and tolerantly to insist that incidents be given which the psychic does not know, preferably facts which the sitter also does not know but can verify.

 The greatest patience should be exercised. Often the personalities will leave if roughly addressed. The subconscious of the psychic must be made to feel that the sitter is serious and patient with the difficulties; the cooperation of the subconscious is a necessary condition in securing evidence. If distrust be aroused in the medium, no matter how genuine he may be, good evidence cannot be obtained. The very first condition of success is to keep on good terms with the subconscious, by being serious and by exercising patience and tact. Opinions of the phenomena may be formed afterwards, but unfavorable judgments should not be revealed at the time.

 The real or alleged communicators should have as much time as may be necessary for their expression. The sitter may calmly and firmly insist that he cannot believe until the proper evidence is forthcoming, but he should be a spectator rather than a director of the phenomena, though judgment may be exercised as to the amount of time granted. The appearance of a mischievous personality should be received tolerantly and the nature of the work explained, with the insistence that he conform to that aim. If he does not, the sitter can insist as firmly upon his leaving, and the best way to accomplish this is to stop the work. When the work becomes systematically developed, such invaders either will not appear or can be controlled by the guides.

 No matter what the sitter may think of the phenomena, he should treat them as if they were really spiritistic and keep his opinions to himself when experimenting. The conditions for successful communication with others, living or dead, by supernormal means are very delicate. Everything must be done to encourage favorable states of mind in both medium and communicator. For this reason laymen often get better results than scientific men. At any rate the above method should be tried before any other.

 These are only general suggestions and not at all hard and fast rules. Much depends on the experience and good judgment of the experimenter. There may be further important conditions to be learned, either subordinate or in addition to these. But they will have to be ascertained by investigation in the future. My own experience is not large enough to enable me to dictate to others, or to say that such directions need not be revised. They are tentative rules, whose application should be determined in the individual case by intelligent experience. They at least show the complexity of the situation, which is the first and most important fact to be learned by experimenters. The phenomena appear, superficially, to be very simple, but no greater delusion can be harbored. Superficially the circumstances seem to resemble the conversation of one person with another, with nothing intervening to hinder. This notion, however, is a mistake. Not only may there be two or more personalities between the communicator and the experimenter, but there may be a dozen spirits cooperating. The conditions for obtaining messages are not what they are usually assumed to be. The laws regulating conversation between the living do not apply. All that we perceive is the automatic writing, or the automatic voice, or other phenomenon; we do not see the complex machinery which makes the manifestation possible. Inter-mundane and intra-organic difficulties, perhaps of very large dimensions, may be present. We do not know their extent, but we have abundant reason to believe that they are there, and the intelligent experimenter will reckon with their existence.

The medium herself, when possible, and certainly those surrounding her, should make, so far as possible, a verbatim record of what occurs, with as much stress on what those present say, as on what the alleged communicator says. Only in this way can we learn to understand and to regulate the phenomena. Everything should be recorded in chronological order and reported to some scientific body that will preserve the record for comparison with similar cases. In the past history of mankind everything of the sort, if not recorded, has died with the persons who knew the facts; and nearly as often the record, when made, finds its way into the waste­basket, either during the life of the persons interested or very soon after they have died. This should not be. In every other department of activity, whether of business or science, we keep careful records; any other course means that each generation has to begin afresh. Most of our science, however, is concerned with the physical world; and the spiritual side of man receives scant recognition. But it is the whole of nature that concerns us and affects the larger interests of personality, and we have no excuse for the evasion of these larger interests.
 

THE SUBCONSCIOUS

THE explanation of certain experiences as due to the action of the subconscious plays a very prominent part in modern psychological discussions, and in none more than in discussions of psychic research. For only a little more than a century has anything been definitely known about subconsciousness. Leibnitz seems to have been the first who distinctly recognized it, though he gave it no technical name beyond that of "insensible perceptions." Sir William Hamilton first called attention to it in England in his doctrine of "latent mental modifications." He was followed by Carpenter with the theory of "unconscious cerebration." In Germany, Schopenhauer gave the idea currency as an important influence on human actions; he was followed by Hartmann, who was inclined to explain everything by the action of the unconscious. But the term was not accurately defined, though there could be no doubt of the existence of mental processes below the threshold of normal consciousness.

I shall not go at length into a very large and complex problem. Indeed I should not have to allude to the subconscious, but for the use which has been made of it as an alternative explanation to the spiritistic interpretation of certain phenomena.

There are three terms more or less synonymous in this connection. They are the "unconscious," the "subconscious," and the "subliminal." For the general purposes of psychical research they all denote the same thing. There is sometimes need of a distinction between the "unconscious" and the "subconscious," but there is no real difference between the "subliminal" and the "subconscious," and for our present purpose there is no need to insist upon technical differences. Occurrences whose cause lies within the subject of the experiences, and which show no satisfactory evidence of the activity of spirits, may be said to be caused by the subconscious mind of the subject.

Though the three terms are practically synonymous, they are more or less equivocal. In their relation to normal consciousness the terms indicate every function of the mind and body that is excluded from the ken of normal consciousness. In a positive sense they denote certain mental states for which we have indirect evidence, and which may have characteristics much like those of conscious processes. Normal consciousness includes those mental states of which we have direct knowledge, such as sensation, self-consciousness, reasoning, emotion, pleasure and pain, and volition. Hence, in a negative sense, the terms "subliminal," "subconsciousness" and often the "unconscious" refer merely to experiences that are not subject to direct introspection. In the widest import of such a negative meaning, intelligence would be wholly excluded from subconscious phenomena. Harmoniously with this view many persons actually maintained for a long time that such phenomena were wholly mechanical or non-intelligent. But they were confronted by the fact that certain phenomena not within the ken of normal introspection show all the characteristics of intelligent ability except that of being directly known. In other words, there is overwhelming evidence of intelligent action beyond the compass of introspection. That sufficed to give standing to the use of such terms as "subconscious" and "subliminal" mentality.

 While we may regard them as purely negative terms—that is, as denoting the mental states of which we are not conscious, we cannot deny that the processes thus included have the characteristics of intelligent action, which is so fundamental an element in self-consciousness. Hence it becomes necessary in the discussion of the psychological problem to define the term more accurately than by its purely negative import.

 Some people regard the subconscious as equivalent to a "secondary personality," something apart from and independent of the subject. These people suppose that secondary personality is like a spirit foreign to the body in which the phenomena manifest themselves. This is a natural view for those who think of it as excluded from the normal personality and yet as having an intelligence of its own. But only untrained minds take this view. For psychologists the subconscious or subliminal comprises mental processes occurring in the same organism with those normally introspected, but not within the ken of consciousness. That is, they are dissociated from normal consciousness. "Split consciousness," "dissociation," "alternating personal­ity...secondary or multiple personality," and similar terms denote that portion of the mental life that is not directly known to the subject. But these states are mental functions like the normal in all respects save that of accessibility to introspection.

 The subconscious, therefore, is a name for mental phenomena dissociated from those directly or introspectively known. It does not denote separate or new functions of the mind, but the same functions or activities as those of normal consciousness. That is to say, the mind is one, though its processes are many. We have not yet distinctly defined the area of this subconscious. We know that it extends beyond the scope of normal action, but where it ceases we do not know. I do not mean by this that it is unlimited, for there is evidence enough to the contrary. In fact, it shows evidence of being at least as limited as normal consciousness in its reach, though it performs feats impossible to the normal mind.

 That the subconscious or subliminal exists is clearly proved by somnambulism and hypnosis. In these conditions a man acts exactly as if normal; but, in his normal state, he remembers nothing that he has done while asleep, unless the somnambulism or hypnosis is very light. This state is probably similar to that of dreaming. We are aware of our ordinary dreams, which evidently occur in a transitional state between normal consciousness and true sleep or total unconsciousness. But we have evidence through the study both of somnambulism and hypnosis and of instances of dissociation that some mental activities do not emerge either in dreams or in normal consciousness. They are true subliminal activities.

 In the margin of normal consciousness we may find traces of the subconsciousness, for example in abstraction and reverie. In these states we narrow the field of direct attention so that, though the mind may be distinctly aware of some objects or events in the narrower field of attention, it may not notice other incidents, even while it acts on the supposition of their presence and influence. Here the fields of normal and subliminal consciousness interpenetrate.

If we read a book and become absorbed in it, any excitement of the mind will produce effects in the hand holding a pencil, though the reader may be unaware of any motion in the hand. Freud has shown that our dreams may reflect long-lost memories in symbolic forms, though we cannot ourselves explain their meaning or recall the facts until the psycho-analyst deciphers them and reminds us of them. In cases of secondary personality, like those of Ansel Bourne, Charles Brewin, and Doris Fischer, there is a perfect simulation of real and distinct personalities, of which the normal self knows nothing. They may be caused by foreign influences, but there is no internal evidence of such a source.

 The recognition of the subconscious is important as a limitation to the application of spiritistic explanations. Before the discovery of subliminal activities, philosophers and laymen alike sought the explanation of phenomena not known to normal consciousness in causes outside the mind. The Cartesian philosophy regarded consciousness as the necessary property or function of the mind, and any fact not known by it was regarded as caused by something else than the mind. Hence this system offered good excuse for appealing to the spiritistic explanation wherever intelligent activity was manifested, which could not be referred to the normal consciousness of the subject. But the discovery of subconscious mental activities made it necessary to limit the number of cases in which the hypothesis of foreign influences was needed to explain the phenomena. The theory of the subconscious was, therefore, a very useful and convenient means for restraining hasty speculation. It explained phenomena which the untrained mind had been accustomed either to make more mysterious than they were or to refer to foreign intelligences, when their meaning or content was to be found within the experience of the organism in which they appeared.

 But having once found a way to avoid resorting to explanation of the facts as due to spirits, many minds began unduly to extend the meaning of the subconscious. It was endowed with powers for which there was either very inadequate evidence or no evidence at all. The term lost much of its definiteness in the extension and became a catch-all of explanation for people who refused to believe in the existence of spirits. It is not a universal explanation. There is one thing about it on which all scientific psychologists are agreed—its content is acquired either through the normal channels of sense or through stimuli that act in the same way as known stimuli, though they may not be immediately known. Only a few writers like Mr. Myers ascribe supernormal "faculties" to the subconscious, and regard it is in rapport with a transcendental world by virtue of those faculties. While this theory contains a germ of truth, it involves what the psychologist does not admit; namely, new and transcendent "faculties" which are conceived as wholly independent of any stimulus. For the orthodox psychologist, the subconscious is simply the mind acting without awareness of the stimulus, and supernormal "faculties" or functions are denied or ignored. But those who wished to limit or eliminate the appeal to spirits ascribe supernormal functions to the subconscious, by which it is endowed with ability directly to perceive the transcendental.

 As a result of the discussion, we shall probably find that the subconscious or subliminal includes the same functions of the mind as those of normal consciousness, acting in response to a different kind of stimulus. For instance, Mr. Myers ascribed telaesthesia and telepathy to supernormal functions of the mind. But the psychologist will probably come to believe that the functions are normal, although the stimuli are different. He will then discriminate among the facts with reference to their evidential or non-evidential value in support of any special explanation. This view can be taken, perhaps, without setting aside what Mr. Myers and his colleagues really had in mind. The term "faculties" may be more elastic than at first appears; but it is an unfortunate term. In order to avoid confusion, the present writer thinks that it might be cast aside in favor of the theory that the subconscious is identical with normal consciousness in function, though its contents may not be identical with those of the normal mind. This theory conceives it as having definite limits, such as we now apply to normal intelligence. We have now only to ascertain what stimuli affect the normal consciousness and what stimuli affect the subliminal. In this way the whole problem of estimating the supernormal becomes one of rapport, and not of new "faculties." That is, normal rapport with the physical world gives us purely physical knowledge, while rapport with a transcendental world gives us transcendental knowledge. The difference between the two is merely that between kinds of stimulus and not between endowments of the mind, though the two points of view may ultimately be unified or reconciled. What I want here to emphasize is the importance of the living mind in determining the form of the knowledge which is derived from either type of stimulus.

 The value of this conception of the subconscious is, that it reconciles subconscious activity with spirit agencies while it admits that the evidence for the action of spirits is limited. The ordinary view of the subliminal is that it is necessarily a substitute for spirits as an explanation. The two hypotheses are supposed to be mutually exclusive, though, in the opinion of the present writer, both may be applicable to the phenomena. The subliminal functions of the mind may be absolutely necessary for securing messages from spirits, instead of vitiating the reality of such messages. That, at least, is the view taken by the present writer. He fully recognizes that many phenomena by the subconscious are not evidence of the influence of spirits, but may be traced to subjective sources, or to ordinary physical stimuli not normally perceived; but he also insists that the subconscious may be the instrument for the receipt and transmission of foreign, transcendental stimuli. That is to say, the hypothesis of the subconscious does not deny the reality of spirits, but only limits the kind of facts which may be taken as evidence of their action.

 This theory assumes a closer relation with a transcendental world than the orthodox view of the subconscious implies, and at the same time provides the means for distinguishing between the functions of the subconscious and its contents. In the first place, I have explained that its functions are those of the normal mind; in my conception of its relation to the transcendental world, I assume that its functions remain the same, and that its objects of knowledge differ only as the stimulus differs from that of normal impressions. Our normal isolation from a transcendental world is only the inability to be stimulated by it; and a psychic is simply a person who can overcome that isolation and come into rapport with a transcendental stimulus. Then, in accordance with well known laws of normal experience, this transcendental stimulus will be represented in the reaction of the living mind according to its nature and habits. Hence the influence of the subconscious on the form of the messages. We do not yet know the nature of that foreign stimulus. If it be instigative, it is like any physical stimulus which merely sets mental functions in operation, and the result will be determined by the nature or experience of the subject affected. For instance, a blow on the head will make us see "stars." Normally visual reactions take the form of responses to luminous stimuli; but when the stimulus is tactual and the reaction or response is visual, there is an abnormal phenomenon or a reaction, as we would say, inappropriate to the stimulus. An overloaded stomach produces nightmare or hallucinations in sleep. In these cases the stimulus is only instigative. But a transmissive stimulus produces results less symbolical. The thought of the foreign agent seems to be transferred intact and literally. In some cases the form may be symbolical, but the transmission may nevertheless be direct. At any rate the transmission often seems to be exactly like that of the telephone or telegraph, in which the very language of the communicator is reported. In such cases the subconscious seems to have no part in the process.

 But the fact is, that the subconscious is still the vehicle of transmission. Its functions are employed, while its contents, normal knowledge and expression, are suppressed or inhibited. It becomes a more or less passive instrument for the conveyance of knowledge rather than an agent for the interpretation of stimuli or the expression of its own reaction aroused by an instigative stimulus. In this way we keep the subliminal as a necessary means of intercommunication between the two worlds, while we provide an explanation for the variety in the products of the connection.

 This conception is not simple. The part played by the subliminal should be consistent with the actual complexity of the phenomena, and the view just taken of it provides that very desideratum. It shows the complexities to consist in the variety of connections made between the two worlds, and at the same time relates these realms in a manner suggested by the law of continuity in evolution, which shows that many things are more closely related than is at first apparent. The slightest examination of the facts will show that the dividing line between normal and supernormal experience is often hard to draw; it is in that borderland that we should seek to discover the causes which will explain the experiences, though we must demand a radically different type of phenomena as definitive evidence of those agencies. Thus, for instance, the evidence to prove the existence of telepathy must be facts clearly exceptional in their nature; that is, obviously inexplicable by ordinary causes. But the explanation of such facts must be found in processes that will at least articulate with known causes. These known causes will be such as lie on the borderland of the totally new, and the totally new must find some point of contact with the old, before it can be satisfactorily explained. Hence while evidence must be found in the new, explanation must be found in the already known.

 Now the subconscious lies on the border between the normal and the supernormal realms, and may serve to bridge what seems to many people to be an impassable chasm; namely, that between normal and supernormal experience. Its functions, so far as a transcendental world is concerned, are latent, like the body and mind of the infant before it is born, developed in a prenatal condition for action in a postnatal life. With powers of appreciating stimuli that the grosser senses do not perceive, it may, on favorable occasions, be percipient of stimuli from a spiritual world, whether that world be constituted by individual minds or by a general reality capable of making impressions, like matter, on delicate sense­organs. The subconscious is thus intermediate between a purely physical and a purely spiritual existence.

 We must not suppose that the recognition of the subliminal deprives us of the right to consider the spiritistic hypothesis in its proper place. The concept of the subconscious legitimately enough limits the nature of the evidence for the activity of spirits; but, like telepathy, it does not define the character of the explanation to be accepted. Indeed, if we regard the subconscious after the analogy above mentioned—namely, as latent functions waiting for expression after the dissolution of the body, we may find in it a clue to what the spiritual life after death may be. The functions of the body are foreshadowed by conditions latent before birth; so the subconscious, with its present activities in dreams, delirium, hallucinations, and even normal imagination, may forecast the larger exercise of the same functions after death in the creation of apparent reality.

But it is not necessary to introduce speculation into a purely scientific discussion of the place of the subliminal. All that we require for the present is a clear recognition that the subconscious is not a rival explanation of facts, except in a limited field, and that it, may be the connecting link between the transcendental and the physical worlds. The recognition of this connection will remove half the objections commonly raised against belief in a spiritual existence. We can believe that the subconscious is such a medium without fully understanding its nature, while the attempt to make of it an explanation excluding the influence of spirits makes it necessary to enlarge the conception of its powers to such stupendous proportions that it becomes more difficult to believe in it than in the spirits themselves. The conception of subliminal activity cannot supplant the spiritistic hypothesis, in cases which furnish undoubted proof of the supernormal.
 

SPIRITUALISM, RELIGION AND SCIENCE

MANY people of the last generation had the extraordinary notion that spiritualism began with the performances of the Fox sisters at Hydeville, N. Y. But we should bear in mind, as earlier discussion showed, that every aspect of it can be traced to the belief of savages and is found in the folklore of most nations. The extraordinary impetus which spiritualism received at the hands of the Fox sisters, and perhaps of Judge Edmunds and Andrew Jackson Davis, between 1848 and 1860, has only given it a prominence which otherwise it might not have had. Probably the new interest in the subject was due less to the Fox sisters than to the outbreak among the common people of skepticism regarding the Christian doctrine of immortality. Most intelligent people had come to feel that Christian beliefs required proof, and they were ready for any evidence of survival after death, whose attractiveness to mankind had probably been a stronger influence in creating belief than had the testimony of traditional Christianity.

The form of the Fox phenomena was calculated to appeal to untrained minds, under the influence of the Christian apologists. For generations, upholders of Christianity had defended miracles; one could hardly pick up a volume of "Evidences of Christianity" without being impressed by the stress laid upon the physical phenomena of the New Testament as the most conclusive evidence in favor of Christian teaching. The force of the argument rested on the assurance that the stories of such miracles were true. The average Christian believer was not skeptical nor critical; but when science began to discredit the narratives of the New Testament, public opinion, in so far as it Was affected by science, also began to question such miracles. Laymen generally were not disposed to deny miracles which they personally saw, having been inoculated for ages with the conviction that they were possible; they only applied the teaching of orthodox Christianity when they attached great value to the raps and knockings of the Fox sisters. These were not evidence for the conclusions drawn, but neither are the physical miracles of the New Testament evidence of the divine. The occurrences might, if true, transcend the accepted limitations of natural action, but they are not indicative of any great intelligence. This circumstance, apparent in the Fox phenomena, together with the rising influence of scientific discrimination, evoked skepticism of spiritualism; various other objections were due sometimes to prejudice, scientific or religious, more often to the offense to esthetic and refinement given by the people and phenomena concerned.

 The effect of the public performances accompanied by an organized effort to substitute demonstrations for the worship and services of the orthodox churches, was to perpetuate the method known as spiritualism. As the term had been dropped from philosophic usage since the time of Immanuel Kant, it assumed the implications and associations which the vulgarity of the performances often justified. An illiterate person talking twaddle for gospel, without any of the intellectual and esthetic equipment of the educated man, only presented an unfavorable contrast to the accepted methods of teaching and preaching. The sect did too little to expose fraud, and indeed often tolerated it, when the utmost intolerance should have been practiced. It upheld performances without discrimination between frauds and honest people; and it showed none of the ethical or religious interest of those who make immortality the key to a spiritual life. Spiritualism endeavored to protect its work by claiming to be a religion when it got into trouble with the police, although it failed to exhibit the religious qualities of reverence and spiritual seriousness.

 It is true that Christianity had a humble origin in the same kind of phenomena, and the record shows that it had its contest with frauds and sorcerers. It was not a religion of intellectual snobs and esthetes. Christians have no reason to look down on humble origins. But in the course of time they imbibed the tastes and habits of the intellectual and esthetic classes and could not recognize their own cousins among the spiritualists. There is no sin in good taste and the cultivation of refinement, but to frown upon alleged evidence for survival because its appearance is not esthetically inviting is a mistake, if not a sin. Respectability has much in its favor, but neither esthetics nor respectability can be a substitute for ethics or truth.

 The spiritualists were right in their general conception of what would prove existence after death. They did not use a scientific method, but they realized that dogma and authority could not retain their influence in an age of freedom of thought, and that we require facts, not philosophical or theological theories, to support doctrines. They at least dimly saw the problem as scientific. But they did not organize their investigations. They were bent on satisfying curiosity and on calling their performances religion. Consequently they brought their facts and their methods into contempt among people of intelligence and good taste.

 On the other hand, the orthodox religious bodies, whatever faults they had, did have respect for decency and culture and were inclined to insist upon suitable methods of investigation. They demanded the practical application of belief to the spiritual habits of the individual, while many spiritualists lent a receptive ear to the teaching and practice of men like Moses Hull, who should have been cast out of their society. They assumed an attitude of hostility towards Christianity, although claiming that it had originated in spiritualism. If they had realized the strength of the religious mind, whatever its foibles, they might have made their peace with it and conquered it. But they persisted in warfare, manifesting none of its virtues while asking for a hearing from it.

Enthusiasm, on the one hand, and the need of protection against the police, on the other, impelled spiritualists to claim that their performances constituted a religion. They thus invited comparison with the other religious bodies of the world, especially Christianity, as the central doctrine of both is immortality. But the people first attracted to spiritualism were free-thinkers, usually of the type that is either opposed to Christianity and religion altogether or wants its comforts and consolations without its dogmas. In the concentration of interest on the experimental evidence for existence after death, the ethical and spiritual achievements of religion in the life of the individual were disregarded. Interest was centered on communication with another world, and the larger ethical meaning of the cosmos and the personal duties of the individual were ignored. The whole emphasis of Christianity was so evidently reversed that the system made an excellent target for Christian attack. The opportunity was not lost. Neither side could see that both were right. Religion had lost the realization that evidence was necessary for its dogmas, and spiritualism had no interest in the ethical and spiritual aims of religion. Christianity had forgotten that its system primarily emphasized conduct and our mental attitude towards our neighbors. It stressed philosophical beliefs and dogmas, not, it is true, without some attention to humanitarianism, but with the tacit acknowledgment that this was incidental. The spiritualists forgot that Christ had deplored the interest of the people in his miracles or psychic phenomena, and had urged the promulgation of the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount as the object of his coming. They insisted on miracles and mediumistic performances to the neglect of the spiritual life. No wonder they came into conflict with the rising tendency of religion to reform its attitude on dogmas and to restore the emphasis to life and conduct.

The one hope of the church lies in the revision of its creeds and the concentration of its interest on practical life. This was its original mission, which was later supplemented by its emphasis on the belief in immortality. It has met with such hostility from science and reason, and has lost so many battles for its dogmas, that it is beginning to realize that it can save itself only by reverting to its primitive impulse. It must make its peace with science. Many of the institutions which arose from Christian impulses have assumed secular form and have even forgotten their origin. Charities, hospitals, protection of children, chivalry, and the rights of women have all been derived from Christian ideas. The spiritualists did not realize this. They were intent on "miracles," most of them exhibitions of vulgarity which the developed refinement of most people could not endure. Their performances might be very suggestive to those interested in facts, but not to those who considered good taste important. The ethical and spiritual impulses of religion were discarded in behalf of "demonstrations" of communication with the dead, many of them either pure conjuring and fraud, or incapable of being distinguished from these. No confidence could be established in their alleged facts. The practical application of belief in a future life had no interest for them; and there is no reason for concerning ourselves with immortality unless it has an influence on ethical life. Spiritualism shows no interest in either science or religion. Unless it reforms its methods it is doomed to extinction. Its first duty is to take part in the world's ethical redemption. If it will organize charities and hospital work, young men's and young women's social and ethical institutions, and in general reproduce the practical services of the church, it can expect to survive. If it had done these things from the start, instead of conducting demonstrations which should have been left to scientists, it might have conquered the church and the world fifty years ago.

Science, however, is beginning to take up the subject. It will conduct the proof or demonstrations with decency and order and will enter into sympathy with the primary and most important impulses of religion. The best indication of the doom which awaits spiritualism is seen in the final results to some of its best credited representatives. The confession of one of the Fox sisters made it impossible to have confidence in their performances, even though some or many of the phenomena may have been genuine. The last days of Slade show what comes to those who cannot preserve moral character while proving the supernormal. He is said to have made and spent two fortunes, and then to have ended his days in poverty, giving sittings at ten cents each. His methods and conduct were such that not only was his private life impeached, but no one can defend any of his claims or those of his supporters. He is almost totally forgotten. Even Zoellner's experiments with him have been discredited; and whatever of the genuine may have been included in some of his performances is nullified by proved fraud. The same is true of hundreds of similar but less conspicuous mediums and deceivers. Spiritualism, with such a history, can never attract intelligent people; the growing demand that scientific method with its discriminating procedure shall take up the subject will leave the spiritualists without either religious or scientific support. Men usually form their conception of a religion, a sect, or a society by its most manifest characteristics. If it is ethical and practical, they respect it. If it is a mere show, they regard it with amusement, as most people regard spiritualism. All that most people can see in it is a vaudeville performance, and one not well conducted at that. Illiterate mediums talk platitudes or twaddle to the audience, deliver messages which either are not understood or are without evidential value and are so trivial and vulgar as to carry no inspiration to intelligent minds. They should not then expect the intellectual world to admire and wonder.

 It is possible to charge the other side, however, with the opposite faults. Many of the religious type are too much influenced by esthetics, and many skeptics are too dogmatic in their denials to deserve any tolerance from really scientific minds. Having followed science in the judgment that spiritualism is either fraud or delusion, religious minds are content with forms and consolatory faith and pass by on the other side, though facts have stared them in the face ever since the time of the apostles. On the other hand, science, content, without thorough inquiry, to confine its investigations to the physical world in which it has achieved so much, will not open its eyes to anomalies in the realm of mind and nature, and so degenerates into a dogmatism exactly like that of theology. Spiritualism is thus ground to pieces between the upper and nether millstones of these two points of view. It can redeem itself only by making its peace with both, by submitting its claims to the judgment of science and returning to the ethical work of the church.

 Science, in its contrast to theology, resorts to present experience, or facts immediately verifiable, instead of to faith in authority and tradition. It may insist that this was also the original attitude of religion, and that Christianity was a scientific movement which appealed to facts instead of authority for its belief in survival. This is indeed true; and for this reason science may well demand the use of its method to verify or to refute the claims of the past. In its relation to spiritualism, science insists not only on strict determination of conditions, but also on cumulative and collective, not merely individual, results. The scientific man knows full well that the honesty of the subject is not a sufficient guarantee of results, though it is important. Anyone is likely to make false observations and mistakes of judgment, which can be eliminated only by the collection of a sufficiently large number of genuine and thoroughly accredited facts to eliminate unconscious error. This condition the spiritualists have wholly neglected. They have no scientific records, and their "demonstrations" depend on faith for even so much interest as would suggest investigation. They prove nothing scientifically. Their work is often striking enough to arouse attention and challenge investigation, and has perhaps served to keep interest in the subject alive. But science must work by laboratory methods, which can control the conditions and produce trustworthy results. It must multiply the facts indefinitely and be able to offer some rational explanation of their complications in order to obtain any consensus of opinion in favor of the supernormal. If spiritualists would only recognize this necessity and then devote themselves to the natural correlate of immortality, namely, the ethical regeneration of a world saturated with materialism, they not only would bring their cause into better repute, but also would refute most of the objections directed against them.

 Psychic researchers have had to coin the term "spiritism" in Older to avoid the bad associations of the term "spiritualism." Both words refer to the same type of facts; but spiritism implies that these facts have been examined more carefully than spiritualism demands. If there is any difference at all between spiritism and spiritualism it lies only in this: that spiritism is supported by facts much better accredited than most of the data of the spiritualists.

 I make this statement because I am well aware of both the advantages and disadvantages of names. Most people think only in words, in the meaning which ordinary experience gives them. If they are spectators of a public spiritualistic performance and find it an offense against good taste and intelligence, they form their entire conception of the term "spiritualism" from the appearance of that performance. Hence it is often necessary to coin new words, since it is hard to divest the traditional terms of their associations. To avoid misunderstanding from those who are inclined to ridicule instead of to argue, it may be necessary to indicate a distinction by a new word and then to force men to recognize the real identity of the new and the old terms. But the facts are the same, whatever the words used to express them. The intelligent man will concentrate his attention on judging these facts, and will not allow critics to discredit them by the mere use of names.
 

PSYCHOLOGY, RELIGION AND MEDICINE

VERY few would deny the eclipse of religion in this age, especially when measured by the conception of it which the past has afforded. They might save a discouraging view by changing their conception of it, as most people have done and perhaps always will do with any force so perennial as that which has embodied itself under that term. It would seem far more doubtful to affirm the eclipse of medicine in the age when it seems to be in the very midst of its triumphs and to promise still more wonderful achievements. Medicine would be claimed by the physician as the very last department of human endeavor to be overshadowed. The university man devoted to psychology also would not accept the intimation that his subject is under a shadow. But his contention would not be so clear as the physician's. He cannot point to any such achievements as the physiologist can summon in his defence. Besides, one indisputable fact shows its subordinate place among the successful sciences. Once it was much like philosophy, the queen of the sciences. Indeed it was itself the very basis of philosophy. But with the partition of that great dominion it was reduced in rank and the physical usurped the place of the mental in the reflective world. "Philosophy," says Lotze, "is a mother wounded by the ingratitude of her children. Once she was all in all. Mathematics and Astronomy, Physics and Physiology, no less than Ethics and Politics, sprang from her loins. But the offspring soon set up establishments of their own, each the earlier as it made vigorous progress under the influence of parental authority. Then conscious of what they had created by their own endeavors they turned against the comprehensive scope of philosophy, which could not follow them into the details of this new lift, and became weary of the everlasting 'repetitions without progress which had characterized the parental career. At last, when each suckling had attained its independence, it left philosophy in undisputed possession of the insoluble problems of the universe. With this ancient portion she still sits reflecting on the old riddles with the hope of holding fast to the central interest of human knowledge."

 Psychology has had to share in the decline, partly because she sought independence and partly because she had no general mission for the world, and to-day she depends mainly on the traditional place she has had in the curriculum of human knowledge. Psychology has divested itself of all interest in the existence of a soul and, to save an open defence of materialism, employs the term "mind" to denote mental states whose basis it will not discuss. It is a technical study for neophytes and idlers, unless, perchance, it can detect crime or claim importance in pedagogy, for which it has done little or nothing up to date. It has no message for common life, as had the doctrines of Plato and Christianity. It is a kind of learned amusement, or a Brodwissenschaft for those who cannot otherwise earn bread. It lives on the momentum of its traditional importance, and would have been cast out of education long ago but for fear of the consequences of materialism, which all hold but will not avow. It is not a propaedeutic to other knowledge but the refuge of those who either get their wisdom by looking into their navels or escape a dirt-philosophy only by refusing to soil their hands.

 Medicine, however, will claim exemption from this verdict. As already remarked, its practical achievements are second only to those of physics and chemistry. It will vehemently deny any accusation of retrogression. It will passionately resent the charge that the shadows are falling on its course. But in spite of all this I shall insist that it is under an eclipse. We do not see it because we have become accustomed to the darkness. The achievements it has effected, no one will dispute; but their importance is to be measured solely according to our standards of value. If our philosophy, whether intuitive or reasoned, conscious or unconscious, be materialistic we shall see no eclipse. We shall rejoice in the darkness and not be aware of the light. We shall be living like the blind fish in Mammoth Cave. We deny the existence of light because we refuse to look at it. It is man's satisfaction with existence as he finds it that prevents his looking for anything further, especially if he feels the weight of evidence to be against the existence of more than presents itself to superficial vision. When we insist on remaining at the surface we do not see below it. This is what materialism does. It confines man to the external plane of existence. And we are materialists when we take physical science as our measure of reality.

 Men, individually and collectively, are governed by their conceptions of the cosmos. They may not always be clearly aware of these conceptions, or at least of their origin in tradition or environment. But however they have acquired it, all have some conception of a relation to things in general, and this conception determines their conduct. If man adopts the doctrine that matter is the prius and limit of reality he makes himself the subject of what he must forever estimate as inferior to himself. Matter he regards as inert and unintelligent, though he admits that in the fortuitous combinations of its elements intelligence escapes as an accident. But he regards matter as the womb and the grave of all that he prizes. He will not worship what he has to conquer in order to live. A. universe that offers no permanent development for intelligence and morality in the individual must encourage pessimism and despair. We may conceal all this from ourselves in the pleasures of outwitting the power that will extinguish us if we do not conquer it. Material satisfactions—the freedom that wealth may bring from the hardship of toil and suffering—may hide from us for a while the ugly Medusa-head of nature, but when we come to pay our bonds we are confronted with the terrific oracle of Oedipus: "May'st thou ne'er know the truth of what thou art." Only a spiritual conception of reality will rescue idealism from the clutches of a dark fate. The stability of nature and the preservation of peaceful societies hide the gulfs over which we live. But when nature reverts to chaos, in tornado or earthquake, we discover the frailty of all human power. "The earth, green as she looks, rests everywhere on dread foundations were we further down, and Pan to whose music the nymphs dance has a cry in him that can drive all men distracted." Famine and disease will make the stoutest hearts quail unless education and courage have trained them to accept the issue in defiance. No religious faith teaches the worship of impersonal forces. Reverence is reserved for something else than' matter. Unless the divine can be found somewhere in the mysterious labyrinths of nature, man accepts battle with nature's forces with the assurance only of death and with no hope of salvation. He grits his teeth and plunges into the war without expectation of either giving or receiving quarter. While obedience to the laws of nature may bring him much, it is the obedience of prudence, not of reverence. It requires another philosophy to subdue the hostility of the mind to forces that have the power to crush, but neither the intelligence nor the mercy to save. Materialism can only exalt the remorseless sway of force, the pitiless juggernaut of Time crushing its own worshipers. Wise men, of course, will not whine over tasks that cannot be done or hopes that cannot be realized, but they would be happier if the cosmos offered something for idealism to cherish. Materialism is a good antidote for superstition and ignorance, and it is the philosophy which forces attention to the fixed uniformity of nature; but personality can find no ideals in impersonality, and it is here that this philosophy fails to satisfy the desires of man. Hence he is impelled to penetrate the veil into the inner sanctuary of nature in the hope of finding a satisfaction that materialism cannot give.

 Among savages, religion and medicine were the same thing. When Greece shook off the incubus of polytheism, medicine was frankly materialistic, having discarded religion. It was left to Plato to revive interest in the mind and in such religion as philosophy could support at that time. In Christianity all three joined 'hands. Psychology offered a philosophic defence for the existence and immortality of the soul, and medicine took care of the body in the interest of the soul. After the revival of science, each went its own way, medicine into materialism and psychology into idealism or spiritualism. But materialism triumphed and even subjugated psychology to its own services, and left religion without sympathy or protection. The great ethical ideals that made the mind more important than the body have now retired into the limbo of illusion, and a full stomach is considered a greater desideratum than any amount of penance or piety. Materialism, whether avowed or denied, has absorbed every form of activity and has extended its influence over every institution. Religion lives only upon traditions. The great belief in a soul and in its survival of bodily death has crumbled into ashes, except for that faithful class which either stops thinking or turns to science for its hopes. Medicine has taken charge of all that is worth living for, and those who have money and leisure may worship in soft pews and listen to the ritual, or to desperate efforts to adjust worn-out creeds to a philosophy which is incompatible with them.

 But the last twenty-five years have developed a movement which is now like only a small cloud on the horizon but which bids fair soon to change the whole scientific and philosophic tendency of the age. Just at the moment when religion seemed to be dying the new movement came into sight, and yet religion turned away its face. It, too, has become saturated with materialism and goes stumbling about, blindly groping for light and protection, while its erstwhile enemy, medicine, wears the crown of victory. The primary object of religion was to save the soul; that of medicine to save the body. As long as psychology could maintain that there was a soul and that its preservation was more important than that of the body, religion reigned supreme and medicine occupied a secondary place. The coffers of mankind were poured into the church. Money and salvation went together. But materialism has turned the tables. Medicine is now more lucrative than priestcraft. We do not believe we have any souls, but we are sure of our bodies, pace the good Bishop Berkeley and the Christian Scientists. Medical science is organized to save the body and does not care what becomes of the soul, if there be any. Its business is not with another world. It has a business syndicate's grip on the passion to live. It has availed itself of this advantage and but for competition and a code of ethics not yet extinct would have no better reputation than Shylock. Christianity has always taught that salvation is free; it supported the priest by wages paid collectively, and thus socialized religion. Salvation was not individually paid for until the sale of indulgences, and this terminated the abuses associated with the more mercenary tendencies of religion.

 In all this period, however, medicine was not socialized. The individual paid for his services. Saving the body was not free, it had to be paid for. As soon as materialism triumphed it decreased the interest in another life and intensified the passion for this one. This situation has yielded a harvest for medicine, and medicine has availed itself of its opportunities. In fact, medicine is not wholly exempt from the charge of extortion. The salvation of the body is the primary thing. Indeed there is nothing else to save. Psychology offers us no soul in which to be interested, and physiology has undertaken to correct or prevent the ravages of disease and the brutalities of accident. In the meantime discovery and invention have multiplied the comforts of life and justified materialism of her children. Our wealth goes into saving the body; and such attention as the soul gets, where it is assumed at all, is perfunctory and ritualistic. In the Middle Ages men built cathedrals and worshipped God, living like Simeon Stylites; in the present age we build hospitals and worship our bellies, living like princes. Materialism has commercialized everything, and medicine, despite its charities, has not escaped the general tendency. The university was founded to defend religion and has developed into a forum for science. Only the denominational college remains to protect religion. The non-sectarian institution has to cultivate Laodiceanism in order to attract students and Mr. Carnegie's pensions in order to save paying its teachers duly for their services. Psychology, which might have saved the soul for ethics and religion, has gone off into "empiricism" or materialism; and medicine, no longer having to cope with mental phenomena, has a free field for materialistic therapeutics. Mind no longer counts either as a cause or a prize. The body is everything, and the resources of civilization are employed in protecting private property from the hungry maws of the masses, who were once taught by Christianity that they were our brothers and were deserving of the right to live When medicine cannot exploit the poor, it refers them to the almshouse and buries them in Potter's Field. The physician may not save the epicure's body, but he may get his money. No religion comes in to make it imperative to consider man's soul. Only his body deserves or receives attention, and that only when he can pay for it or when we wish to evade the appearance of inhumanity.

Charity is the remnant of the religion which materialism has displaced, and, in the light of evolution, with its struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest or strongest, even charity threatens to become an extinct virtue.

 'Religion managed to get into a hostile attitude towards science. At the inception of Christianity they were allied except for the contest with the Epicureans and their materialism. Even there the argument was ad hominem [argued to emotions and not to reason]. The Epicurean admitted the existence of a soul but denied its immortality; and when confronted with alleged evidence of survival, instead of acknowledging defeat, he changed his ground and continued in his denial. He gave up the existence of the soul rather than admit its mortality and accept a reconciliation with religion. Otherwise religion quickly seized upon philosophy and science for its support and directed its hostility to art. Idolatry, as the embodiment of art and of a purely esthetic conception of the divine, was the bete noir [bugbear] of Christianity. The early Christian could not distinguish between the symbolism and the reality of polytheism, and, taking offense, rightly I think, at the sensuous conception of the divine as nothing but sublimated matter, established a conflict with art and an alliance with science. Science, at least when it based its explanations on atoms and similar realities, rested as much on the supersensible as religion had done, and hence had in that respect a natural affinity with religion. So long as religion could enlist philosophy and science in its defense it was assured of protection. But as soon as it began a dalliance with art its decay began, with the rise of materialism in the church. When pictures and cathedrals became necessary for religion, the protection of philosophy was no longer necessary, or it required too strenuous use of the intellect to justify the labor. So physical science began a career independent of religion and soon attacked its fundamental claims. Physical science won in all its battles until religion now crouches in terror before the loss of all its traditions. Psychology and philosophy are no longer its handmaids, but have gone off into the service of the intellectual curiosity shop. Medicine has appropriated all that had belonged to its rival or master and has assumed a determined hostility to everything spiritual.

 Psychic research, with its facts to suggest or to prove the existence of a soul and its survival, had neither a scientific nor a therapeutic interest for medicine. Professing to be devoted to a scientific view of man, the moment that any promise of sustaining the value of personality appeared on the horizon, medicine and academic psychology began either to take to cover or to ridicule what had been the real object of psychological science in the beginning. Medicine had founded its claims on materialism, and psychology dared not oppose medicine for fear of losing its bread. Both ridiculed what they had not the courage to face nor the knowledge to understand.

 But medicine did yield to the influence of Christian Science! It pretended to investigate it, but there was nothing scientific in the verdict, though it was correct enough in all probability. It laughed at mesmerism until mesmerism was revived under the term hypnotism and then, accepted the facts and their utility; but the moment that hypnotism approached the confines of the supernormal it was to be neglected. Christian Science followed. The system was one half spiritualism and one half a scheme to make money. Neuropathic patients whom the regular physicians could not cure went in multitudes to the new "Science" and were cured. The demonstration that drugs were not always necessary for successful cures was a challenge to the whole system of medicine, which rested on chemistry alone. Mind was not a factor in the pharmacopoeia. Psychology made no such claim as Christian Science did, and if it had done so, materialistic medicine would have laughed the claim out of court. It was content simply to attack the cures of Christian Science on the evidential side. It was an easy victory to show that Christian Science was not scientific. But the fact remained that sufferers sought and found relief or health in a system which did its work in defiance of physiological orthodoxy. This fact would not down, and it was not the exclusive property of Christian Science. Mental healing had been successful long before Mrs. Eddy gave it notoriety. Hypnotic suggestion had been scientifically applied by Charcot, Bernheim, Janet, Baron von Schrenck-Notzing and a host of predecessors. But its methods were too esoteric for the average practitioner to use or to learn and the confidence in drugs rose in proportion to the assurance that materialism was the true philosophy.

What medicine should have done was to seize the first indication of any unusual mental phenomena and investigate them scientifically, and then, by a just verdict, make an end of the matter. But what did it do with mesmerism? It appointed a committee which reported much charlatanry and some important facts in the claims of Mesmer and his followers; and then refused to accept this verdict, packed a committee to condemn it, and published the later report, shelving the first. Orthodoxy and dogmatism, bigotry and intolerance are not confined to religion and their results are not felt there alone. Science can destroy its own authority as easily as did religion. Why science should have neglected the investigation of hypnotism and taken alarm at Christian Science is explainable only by the ease with which it could divest the latter of its claims; but even there "McClure's Magazine" did more and better work than the medical profession.

 There is no escaping the fact that mind as well as matter is a causal factor in the world. But materialism, though it might have conceded this fact, has stubbornly refused to recognize it. Though the physician knew that the mental condition of his patient was a factor in therapeutics, he refused to give it the place in practice that it merited. He was too much absorbed in brain centers, about which there has been written as much unprovable metaphysics as about the unseen. Matter was the prius of everything and that was the end of investigation. However, the slow and steady accumulation of facts by psychic research, if it has not been able scientifically to establish the causal influence of mind on matter, has opened the densest materialistic mind to something besides brain centers. To introduce a soul into the investigations of biology and physiology is to revolutionize them. Psychology might have shared the honors of this result, but it chose to run away, preferring either materialism or intellectual snobbery. But psychology and medicine have only postponed the day of judgment which is coming to rob the old authorities of their prestige and power. The stone which was despised of the builders is to become the head of the corner. Mind will take a place among the causal agencies of nature. This position will be won either by the study of suggestion and mental healing or by the evidence for survival after death. Medicine will have to give up the exclusive use of drugs and admit the influence of mental states on the condition of the body. The more gracefully it does this the better for its own influence. Its hostility to Christian Science was at least excusable, and the 'writer thinks justified, by the equally one-sided views which that system takes. Mind is one of the causal agents in the world, but it is not the only one. However, the writer freely concedes that without the evidence of psychic research, the materialist has the best of the case. The facts and the argument are on his side, if the supernormal is to be debarred from consideration.

 The cowardice about this question is astonishing when we consider how alert the scientific mind is in other provinces. The most useless inquiries in physics or chemistry, will engage hundreds of men and unlimited resources, if only fame or curiosity can be satisfied. North Pole expeditions are organized at enormous expense with nothing of importance as a result, and the public goes wild about them. But when one offers to prove that man has a soul or that the mind may be a factor in therapeutics, he meets only ridicule. The momentum of materialistic science is so great that the most important of all problems has to wait for half a century to win attention.

 The present writer thinks that the main contention in this field has been sustained and that it is only stupidity and prejudice that stand in the way of its wider acceptance. He will no longer make any concession to a skepticism that refuses to investigate.

The one great change which the proof of the causal influence of mind will bring to medicine will be the placing of ethics in a more important position in therapeutics. Materialism with its drug methods was based upon the assumption that medicine could cure the effects of vice and sin. Physicians knew better, but the patient wanted to believe this and it was not always convenient or profitable to disillusion him on this point. The achievements in the use of materia medica in lieu of spiritus medicus tended to sustain confidence in the possibility of escaping the consequences of sin, and man went to his physician instead of the priest for relief. The time was when he went to the priest first and afterward to the doctor. But this procedure has been reversed. Materialism taught us to believe that, if we only had good enough doctors, we could sin as we pleased. We consulted the physician and took his drugs instead of buying indulgences. The fact is that the one is no better than the other for buying release from moral responsibility. If chemistry can relieve us from the consequences of sin, why give ethics any place at all? So thought materialism in its attempt to evade the facts of morality. But to put mind among the therapeutic agents is to turn the tide the other way. It will not set aside the achievements of the materia medica, but it will add a new force to healing. The physician will have to become a psychologist and a moralist. He has already found, in spite of his materialism, that drugs will not do everything, and he squints cautiously towards mind-cure without realizing the extent of the changes that must come from any dalliance with it. But to it he must come, if he is to be scientific at all, instead of resting in traditions and dogmatism no less fatal to progress than mediaeval theology. But physician and patient alike must learn that ethics are the best and the cheapest therapeutic, and that mind is the primary factor in healing. We cannot substitute drugs for conscience, except to secure more fees and fewer cures. What is needed is the organization of the medical profession on the same basis as the priesthood. Disinterestedness and humanity must be the primary motives of its work, or at least the mercenary interest must be minimized. As it is to-day, the clergyman receives on the average scarcely a living wage, and this is right enough if there be no soul to save. The rewards should all go to the physician if the body is all in all. But when we are assured that there is a soul and that it survives in another and invisible environment, the physician must either adjust his practice to the demands of ethics or retire from the field.

 The physician may endeavor to heal without raising the question of ultimate causes, but he cannot effect a permanent cure until his patient is spiritually sound. The individual is not always the sinner and hence the physician cannot always throw the blame on the victim. He must cure, if he can, regardless of the relation between individual and social sin. No doubt each man must accept responsibility for his error, but too often the sin is that of society and the individual has to bear the suffering vicariously. The happiness of the successful is often more or less at the expense of the unsuccessful. Hospitals and asylums are embodiments of this idea, and the only question is, how far the principle shall be applied. The passion to live is so strong that if man is without any belief that better times are reserved for him beyond the grave, he will give all he has, to prolong consciousness. The physician's advantage in the situation is tremendous. If he does not possess character he may make the suffering of the patient a thumbscrew for extorting good fees.

 Half the applause heaped on medicine is from those who rejoice at the ability to escape the results of sin and to outwit nature or Providence. Since medicine is so near religion, it must be socialized and brought to recognize that the morality of patients is more important than life. That condition can be secured only by changing the relative position assigned the body in the scheme of values that we cherish. Materialism, on its own premises, of course, is justified in its estimate, but only because it does not recognize the existence and the superior importance of the soul. The consequences, however, of the estimate, like all those of materialism, are proving disastrous. If the materialist wants to debauch either in philosophy or life he can get it; for nature will not interfere with our choice. It will silently weave about it a set of consequences which ultimately correct the error, and we can escape only by retracing our steps.

 Therapeutics, no less than ethics, require a soul and the physician will never effect the best results until he accepts that point of view. He cannot do it, of course, with the methods of normal psychology. It is the residual phenomena of nature that establish the widest conclusions. They have to be unified with the whole, and in doing this we discover new agents. Forced by the facts to recognize mental states as causal agents in therapeutic processes, however limited the field of their activity, medicine admits an entering wedge into its scheme of things and sooner or later it must submit to the restoration of the ethical and religious point of view, divested of the mass of illusions and errors that have gathered about it like barnacles. Curing diseases without curing sin only multiplies the cases with which we have to deal, and present-day medicine is no help in the ethical regeneration of man. We seek at enormous expense the means for escaping pain, but we will not give a cent to ascertain whether we have a soul and what its duties are. Liberty and irresponsibility are what we desire, and not an ideal that looks beyond an Epicurean paradise.

 And yet there is always progress. We take present satisfaction as an index of the right condition of things. It is this that makes all conservatism. But nature never rests. She will have change at all costs. If we' resist it we pay the heavier penalty. We may cry as much as we please over the crumbling of the past into ashes, with all those institutions which we have learned to prize, but we would not do so could we see in the change a sure harbinger of a greater paradise. It is the darkness of the future that makes us lament the loss of the past. Give us a beacon light into the future and we can endure much. Ethical ideals beyond sense can find their justification only in a non-sensuous philosophy; and ethical ideals point to the future. They are ideals for that reason. Psychology does nothing for us unless it supplies them, and medicine can effect no permanent cures without accepting as imperative and primary the need of ethical adjustments. It will have to make mind the cause and effect, to speak paradoxically, of all that it does accomplish, if it expects to achieve its best conquests. Indeed religion and medicine will have to join partnership again and they can do this only by one of them abandoning materialism and the other accepting science as its guide. The one should be no more a commercial business than the other, but commercial they must both be, when materialism is our only philosophy.

 Public opinion has accepted materialism without knowing what it means, and it pays its servants according to their power and willingness to pander to its wants. Education and religion are organized for catering to materialism and no scientific truth is sought, except such as may come from the accidents of that organization or from the necessity of supplying material wants. Respectability is on the side of materialism, and spiritualism, which had ruled eighteen centuries of civilization, badly enough, it is true, but with more success than either Greece or Rome achieved, is forsaken and forlorn and left to foster its faith without evidence. Fortunately it is rapidly gaining a position from which it may issue with "grim fire-eyed defiance" to challenge any dispute of its claims. It will then dictate terms to religion and medicine, to the one without disturbing its faith and to the other without disturbing its science, and psychology will come again to serve them both, recovering its rightful domain in cultivating the wider interests of man.

 Man first placed the golden age in the dim vistas of the past, but philosophy and science soon showed that it was only mythological. Christian idealism, accepting the legend of paradise and man's fallen estate, making the present carnal life one of sin and suffering, placed its golden age in the future where it seemed safer from attack. Legend may be assaulted by history, but imagination can only be ignored or ridiculed. Faith proved a stronger fortress than tradition, which dissolves in the light of science like a morning mist before the sun. Yet science with its materialism and redoubtable energies came again to conquer the world from illusion and in doing so left nothing but darkness. But mariners will not sail the seas without a harbor in which to anchor and something to requite their toil. There is no commerce with the unknown, and hence it will devolve upon science either to submit to some other source of knowledge and governance or to give us a religion that shall be stronger than faith and more adventurous than doubt. "Science," says Lord Morley, who was saturated with the philosophy of the Encyclopedists, "when she has accomplished all her triumphs in her own order, will still have to go back, when the time comes, to assist in building up a new creed by which man may live." That time has come, and recreant or cowardly is the man who does not seize the opportunity to shield the ideals that may bring a "little sheen of inspiration out of the surrounding eternity to color with its own hues man's little islet of time." All action has its fruition in the future and we must see the prospect before we can act rationally. Only he who has hope can be moved to any ventures that have idealism for their motive or progress for their rational end.

 For my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die.

 It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles And see the great Achilles whom we knew.

 But in the travail of that voyage the light of science and hope may reveal, in the cross section of evolution which we study, some vision of eternal life, and the final moments which the gloomy fears instigated by materialism have saddened, may be cheered by a greater outlook, and man, chastened by toil and pain, may be happy yet.
 

PSYCHIC RESEARCH AND THE WAR

 THIS age is so practical that men engaged in any work are expected to defend it by showing its relation to the problems with which the world is immediately concerned. We cannot get a hearing unless we satisfy the public that we can contribute to its ends. Each science tries to vindicate itself by declaring what it does for the general welfare or for the solution of the problems confronting civilization. Most of the sciences have a direct relation to practical problems. Many, therefore, will ask whether psychic research can help to solve the world problems of the day. Those who are interested in the question whether we live after death will have no difficulty in answering the question. But those who are absorbed in material affairs may ridicule or neglect the remote issues of a problem like psychic research. To most people it seems a vain endeavor to lift the veil of existence. Their assumption is that Isis must always remain veiled and that man's business is only with the world of sense. Like the ancient Greeks, who thought that the gods lived in an intermundane world where they could exercise no influence on terrestrial events, they disconnect spirit from earthly affairs and await in sullen or happy indifference the end of life and the world.

But the psychic researcher has a problem of more immediate interest than the skeptic and the Philistine dream of. We are not seeking to establish remote relationships when we assert that psychic research bears directly on the problems of war. People easily see that wheat, turnips, and pig iron affect the issues of civilization, but they less clearly realize the place of psychic phenomena in determining history.

If psychic research were occupied merely with a few oddities of mental experience it might well be said to have no connection with the war. If it were exclusively concerned with phenomena like telepathy or mind-reading, or with coincidental dreams, or with the mysteries of the diving-rod, a man would be foolhardy who essayed to speak of its importance in the problems of war, unless he could show its direct connection with the one consideration that makes war a nightmare to the better members of the human race. We may explore the marginal phenomena of the mind all we please and find no practical interest in them, until we find their relation to the one pivotal interest of human reflection; namely, the immortality of the soul. We may criticize human nature, justly or unjustly, for its obsession with this idea. We may contend that man is too much concerned with the other world and too little concerned with his daily duties in this world. But this criticism does not alter the facts. The practical problem is to deal with facts as they are and to consider what effect a belief has, whether or not it is justifiable. Hence in any preliminary discussion of this problem we are concerned not with what is ideally preferable, but with the actual state of mind that determines human conduct. Psychic research would have little interest for most people, if it did not bear upon this large question of the nature and destiny of the human mind. Its subsidiary phenomena might otherwise interest only men who seek to amuse themselves with abnormalities. But the scientific study of the relation between matter and mind shows many of the phenomena of psychic research to be crucial in determining the meaning of all mental facts. There are marginal phenomena which suggest that consciousness and personality are not bubbles on the ocean, soon lost in its engulfing embrace. Apparitions, mediumistic communications with the dead, and suggestions of a transcendental world that reveal an infinite scope for the mind give the subject an interest and importance scarcely equaled since the speculations of Plato and the teachings of Christ.

 How does the belief in immortality affect the problems of war? What are the problems of war? The answers to these questions are not simple. But the one element that enters into both answers is the problem of death. If war were a pugilistic encounter, in which both combatants come out alive, psychic research would have nothing to do with the issue. But the central interests in war are human ideals and death. In war death comes to the strongest of the race and comes without the ordinary calculations and risks of life. In the normal conditions of existence, the healthy man has no time or interest to spend in thinking about death. The attainment of our ideals is the object of action and when these preoccupy attention the prospect of death fades into the margin of consciousness. If we cannot achieve our aims and are attacked by disease, we lose interest in life and calmly await the end. It is true that human kind cannot be classified in this hard and fast way. For there are large numbers that can never lose sight of the grave in their thought and action. But the majority of men are Stoics' if not in virtue, in the habit of taking things as they come and wasting as little energy as possible on the fear of death. Lack of time, or fear of losing the game, keeps the dread spectre below the horizon. But when war confronts us, it brings certainties and risks that we do not have to meet in the regular course of normal life. The one thing that hovers always in the field of consciousness is the prospect of losing life and ideals at one stroke; the question for the man who values his present existence is whether the sacrifice is worth while. Death or maiming for life confronts the soldier every day of his career, and he will feel the tragedy of the situation in proportion to the value which he places on life.

 If we asserted that a belief in immortality is essential to the making of good soldiers, that unqualified statement would meet with instant denial. There are instances in which the belief has favorably affected the character and the courage of soldiers. All will agree that the courage of the Japanese in the war against Russia was increased by their belief in survival and a future meeting with their ancestors. The Crusaders also were influenced by their belief in immortality. And we could perhaps find many races profoundly influenced in their martial life and ideals by this belief. But it is far from universal. Whole races in the past either did not have the belief at all, or held it in a form that did not connect it with martial valor. Savages are usually little influenced by it.

 The Greeks and Romans, especially the latter, were not primarily affected in military affairs by the belief in immortality. Other motives were substituted for it. The Roman race was essentially Stoic in temperament, long before the philosophy of that name organized reasons for its view of life. Roman citizens died for the state and did not expect to reap a reward in another world for their heroism, though we can find among them individual exceptions. It was Christianity that gave the doctrine of the immortality of the soul an important place in the philosophy of conduct. Christianity emphasized the belief so strongly and merged other interests in it in such a manner that it became the pivotal doctrine of the system. The belief in immortality is certainly not essential to the formation of the heroic virtues of the soldier, and it would be folly for any man to insist that it always has this effect on life and character. All depends on the place it occupies in the social and individual scheme of life. Its importance will depend entirely on its relation to the rest of our beliefs.

 I said above that the influence of the belief on conduct will depend on the value which we attach to the present life. If we do not value this life, we are not likely to place any high value on life after death. Emphasis on the importance of death is proportionate to interest in present living. When it is not mere desire of living that determines our actions, but some principle, such as patriotism, the family, science, literature, or success, we are apt to put the idea of survival in a secondary place among motives. But if we regard the joys of physical life either as above all others or as the only joys we are sure of, we thus emphasize the importance of death as the termination of them. Now the materialistic philosophy emphasizes the idea that death is the end of all things and assures us that we are not certain of any other happiness than what we can attain in the present. It thus cuts off the unsuccessful from any hope of realizing natural ambitions and assures all persons that the shortening of life is so much unrequited sacrifice. In an age of little comfort and hard living, the passions of luxury and avarice have no place; and when happiness is hardly attainable on any terms, the sacrifice of life is easy. The comforts and luxuries which science and invention have brought to modern life make life so attractive that death, if not feared, is at least hated. When in doubt about a future life man tries to prolong consciousness in present conditions and endeavors to stave off the fatal day of death, because he feels no assurance that there is anything for his personality beyond the grave. What he can achieve here he is certain of. What the future holds in store for him is unknown, and the unknown is no incentive to action. But if he is sure that death is not the end of all things and that it only brings a change of environment; that it only continues life, and that it brings a reward for deeds well done, he meets it cheerfully and giving up this life is no sacrifice to him.

 Lucretius, the Roman materialist, regarded the fear of death as the greatest evil man has to face, and St. Paul accepted the same view of it. But each had a different solution of the problem. Lucretius thought to overcome this fear by teaching man the doctrine of annihilation. St. Paul endeavored to overcome it by teaching immortality. But in the present state of human opinion no man can expect to dispel this evil by denying immortality. Survival after death may not be a fact; but annihilation is none the less dreaded. If the existence and prolongation of consciousness can be proved to be evil, men may logically be taught that it should be destroyed. But the average healthy man will not be influenced by the doctrine that suicide is his duty or his salvation!

 The view of life after death as somewhat like the Hades of ancient superstitions or the sulphurous hell of some later ages, makes the fear of death natural. It was possibly such a conception that aroused the hostility of Epicurus and Lucretius. A life after death which only brought more suffering might well suggest the desirability of annihilation. The materialism of Lucretius was a moral protest against an absurd and unjust hell rather than against the prolongation of consciousness. St. Paul saw the problem in a clearer light, and distinguished between survival and suffering. Christianity emphasized salvation quite as much as immortality. St. Paul saw that the fear of death could not be eradicated from the normal man by a doctrine of eternal sleep. If man looks on consciousness as a good, he is not likely to ask for its termination as the great desideratum. He will want to prolong it.

 Now in opposition to materialism Christianity taught the infinite value of the soul and of consciousness. It emphasized life and not death as the highest good. It regarded suffering as a punishment for immoral conduct, not as the caprices of fortune, and so kept a possibility of permanent happiness before the imagination. In this way it established a love of life which, owing to the precarious fortunes of war and the suffering prevalent in some ancient civilizations, hitherto had little opportunity for expression and cultivation. Then with its assurance of life after death, it could face the future with hope; and hope is always the foundation of rational endeavor. It organized civilization on this basis for many centuries and fixed in the human mind expectations which the materialist could not support. When modern materialism came forward with a doctrine of annihilation, it opposed the established ideals of man. It does not degrade or impeach the pleasures of living. It places all man's hopes in the prudent and intelligent pursuit of material good. It places a value on life and yet has to admit that death ends it. It discourages the soldier by asking him to make all the sacrifices while the survivors of war enjoy all the rewards. It laughs at the vicarious atonement taught by religion and yet asks the soldier to perform it. It expects a man to give up all that is dear to him without hope of reward, though it estimates value only in terms of wages and profits. On the theory of materialism man can act only on self-interest in peace and only on self-sacrifice in war. A philosophy which cannot observe the same maxims in peace as in war is destined to easy refutation. But when the doctrine of self-interest is adopted, it dominates the whole attitude towards death. Good soldiers cannot be made from men who measure life by its rewards and yet are asked to relinquish all reward in facing a death that offers them only annihilation.

 In this age, therefore, a belief in immortality will help to produce soldierly qualities. I shall agree at the outset, however, that many persons are not influenced by such a faith. Their sense of right and justice is sufficient to make them disregard desire of reward in another life, and, like the Roman Stoics, they sacrifice life without thinking of any future. Their willingness to act without hope or expectation of reward shows a character which is perhaps more highly respected by the community than if they sought a reward for their action. Some will serve the right, though the heavens fall, and ask no rewards here or hereafter. Even theman who acts from passion may disregard consequences. The old Roman Stoic philosophers took a very uncompromising attitude toward all emotional considerations in conduct, and thought a man a sentimentalist, a weakling, who allowed undue grief, or even any grief, to affect him under the loss of friends or loved ones. They demanded the complete sacrifice of emotion as the sign of virtue 'or manliness. But, as Mr. Lecky finely remarks, this philosophy will not successfully lead men who are not Stoics. The majority of men and women act from motives very different from those enjoined by philosophers. Whether weak or strong, these men have to be reckoned with in the problems of life, individual and social. Most men are governed by some expectation of reward in their lives; indeed in all ordinary affairs any other course is irrational. The man who has amassed a large fortune may work for nothing, but he has already satisfied his ambition for independence. Like all others he expected profits as the wages and reward for action, often wholly disproportionate to the amount of labor performed. In such a world we can not afford to disregard the practical consideration of rewards or consequences. With this consideration dominating most men, whether it be the highest motive of action or not, a belief in survival may be reckoned with as an incentive. It can be used to influence those who would otherwise be cowards in the struggle for right. Much cowardice comes from the love of life. Many of our pacifists are too cowardly to admit that it is want of moral courage that determines their pacifism. They disguise it under the name of conscientious scruples against war. Conscientiousness is regarded as a virtue, and if the coward can deceive the public by assuming the garb of conscientiousness, and thus disguising his cowardice, he may keep the respect of the public or at least ward off its contempt.

 The resentment against the draft was probably in large measure due to exaltation of the love of life above devotion to the principle of sacrifice for justice and for posterity. Under a volunteer system the belief in immortality has less influence than under a draft system. The volunteer has moral character to start with, whether due to a belief in survival or not. He sees his duty and will make any sacrifice to perform it. But the man who will not volunteer, must see some reward in view beyond this life, to make him a good soldier. He has become so habituated to the utilitarian view of life that he must be made to see that he loses nothing by giving his life for an unpersonal ideal of country, family, or justice. If men are convinced that death brings no cessation of their development, they will be good soldiers in peace or war. For soldierly qualities are as important in peace as in war. Courage is not exclusively the virtue of the fighter. It is as necessary in social as in martial life.

 The pragmatist in philosophy cannot escape the view here defended. He measures all truth, especially ethical truth, by consequences. He cannot be a Stoic on the subject of a future life. He must estimate the truth and value of the doctrine by its consequences on the will of men. In this age, saturated as it is with materialistic ideals, he must recognize that immortality is calculated to reclaim the coward. If we are to sacrifice life without regard to consequences, we can reject pragmatism in favor of another philosophy.

 Christ made an interesting statement which seems paradoxical, when he said that he who would have his life must lose it. No saying was ever better justified than this. But it is true only when we understand the spiritual sense in which it is to be taken. No doubt there is a verbal contradiction if we take the term "life" in the same sense in both parts of the sentence. But if the teaching means that the man who voluntarily gives up his life for an ideal loses nothing in the economy of the cosmos, it furnishes an effective basis for the ethics of both peace and war. In fact, no man ever attains salvation in any other way. The mother and father who are tormented by the fear that a son will be killed in the war, forget that his sacrifice, if voluntary, is his salvation. His life in peace might have been anything but his salvation. But when he resolves to be a man and to stand for right in the world, and is willing to give up his life for that service, he is saved. Most Christians worship their Savior because he sacrificed his life on the cross for their redemption, but they do not want their sons to follow his example! They accept the vicarious atonement, but are not willing to make it.

 If psychic research can assure men of a life beyond death, it will put the materialistic love of physical life to shame. There can be no doubt that the materialist is right, if he can show that no life after death is possible. Man must then make the most of the present and perform as few sacrifices as possible to attain his ends. But if it is certain that consciousness and personality continue beyond the grave, it will be much easier to surrender the present and to live the heroic virtues. Indeed they will even be less "heroic." We admire the hero for the sacrifice he makes; but if losing one's life is gaining it, nature requires no such sacrifices of us as the Stoic demands. Sacrifice is not ultimately sacrifice. We make it such only by our false theories. In fact, we might say that our admiration is directly proportioned to our unwillingness to be heroes ourselves. It is the coward who most admires courage. The soldier does not think of his virtues nor of his right to the respect of his fellows. He is not actuated by the desire to be thought heroic; so much the more, then, he needs to be led away from the temptation to value his life according to the pleasures he can secure if he refuses sacrifice in behalf of his country or justice. Psychic research, at least as a part of its service, can administer a benefit to the world, if it can remove all temptation to disregard the appeal to duty and to higher ideals.

 Selfishness is the only sin. It has many ramifications; but all other sins can be interpreted as forms of selfishness and all virtues as self-sacrifice. This maxim once seized, the path of duty is clear to every man. The soldier may commit mistakes of judgment; he may fight on the wrong side; but if his will is right he will not suffer the consequences of bad character. He will have made self-sacrifice the center to which all other forms of virtue gravitate. Any maxim, once adopted, determines of the place of all others in the system of conduct, and serves as the test for their adoption or rejection. Supreme devotion to duty at the sacrifice of life is the one revolutionary decision for every man to make; his life then conforms to the order of the cosmos and his salvation is assured. It is assured because his life goes on, and his compensation is the permanent consciousness of having done the right thing and paid the price. In such a system the continuity of life assures the compensation and shows just what estimate nature puts upon the present life. Materialistic systems make present advantage only standard of value. But ideals can be realized only in the future. No act of will takes place without having future consequences as the determinant of its moral value. That is why belief in survival is a condition of the highest ethical life, even though humanity has not always made the best use of it as a motive.

 Salvation is a state of mind, not any external achievement. We may fail in business or in any other effort to which we devote life; but if we have the right state of mind, we gain a success worth more than the accumulation of material goods. This state of mind will constitute the source of happiness in another world and will serve as the condition for proper adjustment to the future life, as it is also in the present existence, if we would only see it. Hence the sacrifices that the soldier makes help to fix his character and to save him from the epicurean temptations of ordinary life.

 Peace may be a worse state of civilization than war. It often gives an opportunity for the vice and revelry that affect character more harmfully than war can do. To be sure, war is not always good; it is never right on the part of the deliberate aggressor, though it is right on the part of the defender against wanton aggression. Its value is determined by the motives and ideals of the parties involved. War is better than peace when it is waged for ideals better than those of peace. The argument against war is its unnecessary waste and loss in promoting civilization. Devotion to the cause of human brotherhood and reason might effect the same result without the destruction involved in war. Peace, however, may cultivate vices and sins worse than those of war, and fatal to the spiritual development of man. If peace bred the sacrifices and virtues of war, then war would not be necessary. But war is only the natural consequence of the vices which we mistake for civilization. In peace we lie and cheat, in war we kill; and salvation can be obtained by neither course.

 If we can scientifically guarantee a future life we shall have shown that nature values personality or consciousness more highly than physical life, and we shall be in a position to urge the realization of human brotherhood with tenfold force. If any message from the spiritual world can be accepted because of its frequent repetition, it is that human brotherhood, human love, alone guarantees salvation. If that attitude, the conduct inspired by it, were established as the basis of social life, wars would cease and peace would not breed the sins that inevitably lead to war.

Many of the psychic phenomena of interest to the public in connection with the present war have not been sufficiently accredited to be valuable as evidence. The stories of the apparitions at Mons have not been scientifically verified. The newspaper story of Mr. Machen, which innocently gave rise to one of the most important legends, though written with no intention of misleading readers, was believed by thousands. When the author saw how it was being taken, he publicly announced that it was fiction. Probably "The White Comrade" is genuine, and possibly there have been many apparitions seen by individual soldiers, as we might expect in any case. But intelligent men will be cautious about using these for evidence of survival or of spirit intervention. Even when they occur and are more than ordinary hallucinations, they may not be what the popular mind supposes. Visions of Joan of Arc or of Napoleon might be veridical without actually representing these personalities. Veridical hallucinations are not representative, but symbolic. They may be externally and spiritually instigated, but subjectively formed. Our own memories and ideals may give form to the apparition even when it is caused by a spirit. There is overwhelming evidence that messages from a transcendental world are modified by the mind that receives them. Our organic habits give them their shape, so that the utmost that we can affirm is that they indicate foreign causes, subjectively interpreted. Hence the whole subject of the apparitions recorded in current stories, must be left to much more careful investigation than has yet been possible. The evidence of survival and of spirit intervention must be of a different kind. What these psychic experiences show is the place that psychic research may have in helping to solve world problems. It transfigures life, or at least the possibilities of life, in a way impossible to materialistic science.
 

PSYCHICS AND POLITICS

 WALTER BAGEHOT chose "Physics and Politics" as the title of one of his books, though he did not discuss in it the influence of physical science upon social and political life. What he did consider was the influence of heredity on the body politic. This study might have led him to look much deeper and to see the far larger, though latent, influence of the modern interest in physical science upon the tendencies of politics. At any rate, Mr. Bagehot's juxtaposition of the two terms suggests a contrast between the physical and the spiritual conceptions of life and their ultimate influence on ethical, social, and political affairs. The clearly developed opposition between mind and matter, which finally issued in the definite dualism of Descartes, gathered about each term the appropriate associations. Under different auspices the development might have taken another course, but the antithesis between the Epicurean conception of nature and life and the sternly moralistic Christian idea of the soul created opposing centers of gravity for men's beliefs. History records the varying fortunes of their warfare.

Physical science is occupied with the observation and study of the material world, and teaches that the external forces of the universe move relentlessly over every aspiration cherished by the religious mind. Psychology, or the study of the soul, has always sought in the inner life some justification of the belief in another life when the grave has closed over all we know, a hope that would at least set aside the apparent indifference of the universe to the ideals which arise in the creatures of its own activity. At one stage of human reflection the opposition between the two points of view was not so marked; but the predisposition to uncompromising separation of interests and to the organization of these interests into opposing groups, has given matter and mind, physics and psychics, opposite meanings. Ideas once accepted by large bodies of men are not easily set aside. They either become identified with the institutions that serve as their defence, or habit gives them a force which they might not have. Consequently, regardless of their intrinsic merits, they give rise to parties and prejudices which cannot be overthrown except by the prolonged efforts of criticism and the gradual adjustment of the mind to new ideas.

 I have said, or implied, that physical science has exercised a profound influence upon modern social and political life. This influence may be illustrated in a thousand ways. I need not call attention at present to the initial impulse of the movement, which began with the renaissance as a reaction against the excessive occupation of men's minds with the other world. To contrast the civilizations of the Middle Ages and the present would be to bring out into strong relief the two different tendencies and would clearly exhibit the influences which have gradually resulted in the domination of physical science over the life of man. If we compare the meager comforts and enjoyments of the first fifteen centuries of the Christian era with the multiplied resources for pleasure which we now possess, and consider the reluctance of the material universe to concede any favors not extorted from it, we shall form some conception of the power of physical science. The railway, the telegraph, the telephone, ocean travel, the mechanical inventions that cheapen labor and multiply products, cheap printing, and a thousand forms of satisfaction and comfort that ancient and mediaeval societies would not have dreamed of, are now the commonplaces of the poor. They are all due to physical science, which had to win its way against the stubborn opposition of more conservative beliefs and habits. They are all indications of the effect of physics on our institutions.

 The economic ideal, which is only another term for the physical conception of society and human action, is now dominant, and wealth is the standard of success and social recognition. This standard has been accepted even by the religious institutions of the age; and we have so far departed from the spiritual conception of life as to neglect all features of it except intellectual culture, which is valued more for its efficiency in the economic and social world than for the development of the soul. Such are the triumphs of physical science and the ideals fostered by it. Its utility is demonstrated by its success in supplying the comforts which seem to us both a pleasure in themselves and a protection against the cruelties of nature. The older religious ideals, which despised these comforts as "carnal" and turned the imagination toward another world, the "Elysian fields where joy forever reigns," as contrasted with this life of pain and suffering, have lost the basis on which they rested. We have found physical and economic salvation in the conquest of nature, instead of despising its power and living in penury and contemplative asceticism. Physics has determined and dominated all the ideals of our life and must affect our ethics in proportion as it has supplanted the spiritual conceptions of another philosophy. How far this influence will extend depends upon the degree to which it takes possession of the lower strata of society.

 The rejuvenation of the social order and of civilization fell to Christianity after the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. The one central tenet of Christianity is its association of the immortality of the soul with the brotherhood of man. It did not begin in a system of philosophy or theology. A reasoned theism was no part of its primary impulse, however closely it might be related to such a system. The divine supervision of the world was not its fundamental belief, though it might be accepted as a corollary of the primary doctrine. The belief in a future life was its initial doctrine, and received its credentials from an appeal to real or alleged facts. The view that immortality can be accepted as the corollary of a theistic interpretation of nature was a later conception, arising when Christianity was so far removed from its origin that its miracles and traditions were objects of suspicion. This first inspiration was received from the direct observation of facts, or alleged facts, which directly challenged the prevailing materialism. The Epicureans had denied the possibility of survival after death, and their philosophy dominated Rome in its declining days and the most important political sect in Palestine, the Sadducees. Judaism was no longer under the direction of its older religious conceptions, which had indeed never made belief in the immortality of the soul a social influence. Such a belief could not become important to social institutions until it was used to enforce certain ethical maxims. What gave the immortality of the soul its ethical and political value was its association with the brotherhood of man in the doctrine of salvation. Neither Judaistic nor Greek civilization attached any special importance to the doctrine as a means of enjoining the virtues that would lead to happiness beyond the grave. The doctrine of probation for a future life had not yet developed. It was latent in the religions of Greece and Rome and was perhaps an unconscious factor in the ethical position of some Hebrews, though it was not sufficiently active in that religious system to obtain any definite recognition. In Greco-Roman literature a doctrine of probation as an encouragement of virtue is apparent. We all know it in the works of Plato and Vergil, and they but reflected, in this respect, the popular religion, so that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul as held by them already foreshadowed the later view of salvation. It did not, however, take on the fire and enthusiasm of a religion until social and political life began to break up and men felt that there was no hope of realizing their ideals in a world that offered so much resistance to their struggles. Physics and politics were against them, the one making creature comforts, the other social freedom impossible to obtain. In this condition of things it was natural to turn the eyes to some future world either as a reward for following duty or as a punishment for transgression. In this way the thought of immortality began to encourage the performance of duties hitherto sanctioned only by society; and the happiness which a decaying world could not grant in this life was hoped for in another. The organization of virtue and happiness around the concept of a future life gave it the power to influence ethics and politics. The assertion of the persistence of personality was important to the individual, and the association of the idea with human brotherhood gave it an influence on political institutions.

 In the present age, which represents a reaction against the extreme other­worldliness of the mediaeval period, there are many who will question the value of belief in immortality. They will point to the superior civilization which has been the result of the conquests of physical science. While I shall not gainsay much that is urged in support of this contention, I may call attention to two facts. The first is, that all this conquest of nature was rendered possible by the firm establishment in men's minds of the virtues which gave stability to the social order and so made possible the continuity of scientific progress. The second is, that we are too closely attached to a materialistic order as yet to see its tendencies and consequences, except as they are beginning to reveal themselves in the decadence of the virtues that protected the advance of physical science itself. Moreover the materialist may not be in a position to estimate rightly the nature of the order which he denies. His victories over the physical world, in subordinating it to his desires, may blind him to the value of what he lost by turning his view from the spiritual conception of man and life. The distortion of this conception in the past has concealed from us the better aspects of the spiritual ideal; and, while we are forced by our nature to make concessions to the demands of the physical world, it is just as easy to overestimate the value of the physical as of the spiritual. We may therefore turn a scrutinizing and skeptical eye toward the confident worship of physical science which is trying to supplant the conceptions that have made us rise above nature while we conquered it.

 However, we may disregard the question of ethical value and limit our consideration to the efficacy of the spiritual view as an agent in the determination of human institutions. The Middle Ages are proof of the power of belief in a future life to affect civil institutions. That influence may have been good or bad. But its effectiveness as a motive is well authenticated by twenty centuries of history. What I wish to show is that all general ideas inevitably affect ethical and political institutions in proportion to their success in organizing about them the various customs and duties which they are made to protect. If other general ideas are thus effective, we may establish a presumption that the belief of immortality is of similar character. This conception, with its relation to important ethical ideas, will hardly fall short of others in the power to mold human life and institutions. Let us illustrate by reference to beliefs which have no ethical implications.

 The effect of a general conception on human conduct may be illustrated by the influence of monotheism in religion and monism in philosophy on the tendencies of Greek politics. In the earlier stages of her development Greece was under the domination of polytheism in religion and of provincialism in politics. Indeed they were one and the same thing. The influence of local divinities was as noticeable as it was during the struggle of Judaism for Jehovah against foreign gods. Polytheism was itself the expression of local independence, and nothing could incite the Grecian states to any unity of action except threatened invasion by Persia. The warfare of the gods both expressed or perpetuated the same state of affairs in the Achaean peninsula. In the colder region of philosophy the same idea was expressed in the conception of Chaos followed by a multiple of elements always in the process of union and disruption. The religious and philosophic ideas ran parallel and had their influence on political action, which consisted of perpetual war and preparation for war. Brotherhood and the arts of peace were hardly possible when the gods set no ethical example and when nature was conceived as a chaos of elements struggling into a casual and transient order.

 But Xenophanes, the philosopher, came forward to express in one conception the unity of nature and of the Divine. He insisted, against both anthropomorphism and polytheism, that there was but one God and that he was not human in character. The philosophers, who were the educators of the statesmen, urged this view; and, with the rise of skepticism concerning the character of the gods, it gained possession of all thinking minds. Instead of a chaos of warring elements, the world was conceived as a cosmos, an orderly arrangement of harmonious elements. Hardly had philosophy achieved this triumph when Alexander the Great undertook to extend the area of empire. We must not forget that he was educated by Aristotle, the greatest of philosophers, and, as Dante called him, the "master of those who know." Aristotle may not have approved of the military conquests of his ward; but that conception of unity and order expressed in the Demiourgos of Plato, the Nous of Anaxagoras, and the primum mobile of Aristotle, was the precursor of the empires of Alexander the Great and of Julius Caesar. It brought forth directly in the Stoics the anticipation of Christianity expressed in their conception of the brother hood of man. Whether because of indolence or social corruption and decay, they did not put their doctrine into practical effect, and the traditions of war kept back human redemption until another civilization could revive it under the wings of theism and the belief of immortality, when the "wars and commotions that had revolved through long tracts of time had terminated in one immense dominion and the troubled elements of human society sank into universal calm. The spirit of war, wearied by perpetual carnage, had seemed willing to enjoy a moment's slumber or was hushed into silence by the advent of the Prince of Peace."

 The brotherhood of man came first as the ideal of a philosophy unable to contend against the decadence of the social system that Plato had tried to preserve. But belief in the unity of nature extended the conception of government and left to all posterity the ideal of a state that shall realize universal empire without conquest, an ideal that arbitration and the Court of The Hague are now attempting to bring about.

 Let me take, as another instance of the influence of a concept on conduct and politics, Copernican astronomy. Until the sixteenth century it was the universal belief that the sun went around the earth. The earth was conceived as the center of the universe toward which all heavy matter moved unless sustained by some mysterious power. There was no theory of gravity to explain this motion. The earth was supposed to be flat, and, without adequate means of navigation, there was no way to refute this hypothesis. The ignorance and superstition of the age prevented the exercise of that adventurous spirit which later surmounted so many obstacles. The known limits of the earth were very narrow, and, with no unifying conception like gravitation to explain the cosmos and the relations of its parts, the mind was left free to believe in all sorts of capricious powers or beings as explanation of such unity as was actually found.

 But the Ptolemaic system had its anomalies which appeared confusing to Copernicus. He simply asked whether the hypothesis that the earth moves about the sun would not satisfy all the demands of an explanation and eliminate the perplexities which had to be solved in the Ptolemaic system by suppositions as disturbing as the primary assumption. Copernicus saw that this new theory fitted, and so clear were its consequences that the priests thought to overthrow it by asserting that, if it were true, the planets would show phases as does the moon. Galileo accepted the challenge and pointed out the phases of Venus. From that time on the triumph of Copernican astronomy was assured. This discovery may be said to have given the initial impulse to the Protestant Reformation. It was not so felt, nor was it a part of any conscious revolt against the political and ecclesiastical institutions of the Middle Ages, but it was a decisive triumph over accepted ideas. The stupidity of the church had given the incipient scientific spirit an opportunity to display its power. That stupidity consisted in having linked religious beliefs too closely with the fortunes of a cosmic theory that was not true. At first Christianity was concerned only with the immortality of the soul and the brotherhood of man and the worship of God, without concern for any speculations about the nature of the world. But in becoming the heir to the Roman Empire as an agent for the reorganization of society, the church appropriated the domain of physical knowledge and associated it so closely with its scheme of salvation that the least break in its wall would threaten it with destruction. Its power frightened every inquirer away from the study of nature, and kept men respectfully silent concerning everything but the prevailing conceptions in politics and religion, and in these fields expression had to be obsequious and flattering. The church had complete control of knowledge and behavior.

This coalition of science and religion was both a strength and a weakness. If religious belief had been placed upon a basis unaffected by the vicissitudes of physical science; no change in the constitution of that knowledge would have affected the fortunes of the church. It might have gone on in blissful peace, unharmed by physical discoveries. But the tendency was to associate religion with science, to identify it with cosmic views. The ancient toleration of all religions, the result of the politician's indifference to them and his exclusive interest in economic questions, had kept religion more or less free from concern with physical knowledge. Religious people were taxed, not educated. But Christianity set a new example. Man was to be saved, and taxation became a secondary interest. The church set about the unifying of human opinion. With the machinery of the Roman Empire in its hands, it could use force as well as reason to achieve this unity; and it used these resources with relentless energy. It was impossible to avoid appropriating physical science, such as it was, to this end, and after Paul had set the example of conceiving man's salvation as a part of the cosmic system, it was only natural that the church, which was at the same time the state, should monopolize all knowledge and determine the right to believe or not to believe. From the tolerance of all religious beliefs which had characterized Pagan policy it went to the opposite extreme of tolerating none but its own, and thus claimed the keys to all knowledge physical and spiritual, holding the scepter of political power to enforce its claims.

 It will be apparent that the whole system was thus delicately balanced. The effectual disturbance of any part of It involved the whole in ruin, though it would take as many ages to effect the dissolution as it would take to educate the whole mass of believers. Copernican astronomy established the falsity of one of the fundamental tenets of the church. Confidence in its authority and wisdom was irretrievably shaken by the proof that the Ptolemaic conception of celestial action was false. To yield without resistance and to reconstruct its position in accordance with the new point of view was as much the policy of wisdom as it was of allegiance to the truth. But the church would have none of this policy. It forced Copernicus to recant and threatened Galileo with the stake. It clearly saw the consequences of the new knowledge and thought to controvert its influence. No doubt there were sporadic and perhaps frequent cases of skepticism throughout this period, but the skeptic is not usually a missionary and is adept in the prudences which center about self­preservation; besides, the power of those in authority was so great as to make any other course than prudence appear foolhardy. Only when a man had the courage of a martyr would he venture to question the integrity of the system under which he lived.

 It is to be remarked that those who sought to correct the scientific beliefs of the time still sincerely adhered to the religious doctrines of the church. But the ecclesiastical tribunal insisted that physical science was intimately bound up with its scheme of salvation and spiritual philosophy. It was determined that the new view of the cosmos should not prevail, and thus exposed itself to the tremendous consequences of Galileo's telescope, which gave actual sensible proof of what the priests themselves had said should follow from the claims of Copernicus. No more effective mode of silencing opposition could have been devised. It took time to effect the final overthrow of ecclesiastical domination, but the coming destruction was evident in this one incident in the career of scholasticism. There followed Kepler's theory that the planetary orbits were ellipses, and both Galileo and Kepler prepared the way for Newton's theory of universal gravitation. Then came the theory of evolution, which did for time what Newton and Copernicus had done for space, unifying cosmic causal action in both spheres, in direct antagonism to the dogmas of the church.

 On its practical side, this new astronomy gave impetus to the curiosity which led to the theory of Columbus that land should be found on the opposite side of the earth. The next inevitable step was to penetrate beyond the limitations of vision which the sea placed upon human knowledge. To establish a reason for undertaking such a journey, Columbus had to use the difference between the specific gravity of water and of solid matter to prove that there must be land at the antipodes to balance the protrusion of the European continent from the ocean. Step by step the whole system of knowledge and economic interest led to this issue. America opened up to the imagination and cupidity of Europe such a field of adventure and exploitation as made the Crusades appear worthless in comparison. But all was done in the name and under the protection of religion. Neither an avowed nor a concealed attack on that system was involved. The new opportunity for adventure and for the acquisition of wealth could easily claim and receive the patronage of the church. The ultimate influence of the new discoveries on religious belief was not apparent. But the discovery of the new world was only another result of the initial conception of Copernicus.

 The next step was a direct assault on the authority of the Pope and an attack on the church in its central position. The Protestant Reformation simply marked the growth of the skepticism which had been encouraged by the triumph of Galileo when he exhibited to every human eye the phases of Venus. Physical science had by this time established its claim to a hearing, more or less regardless of the consequences to traditional dogma. Its votaries, however, still claimed allegiance to the church and tried to enlist the new knowledge in its defence. But the Reformation emancipated thought sufficiently to free it from any need of defending itself by obsequiousness, and physical science soon took a course which placed it in antagonism to religion. The freedom of conscience was only a corollary to the freedom of the intellect, which was established beyond the right of cavil by the death-blow dealt by Copernicus to the Ptolemaic system of astronomy.

 No better illustration of the influence of an idea, worked out into its logical consequences, on the common conceptions of mankind could be imagined. If astronomy had been a matter of interest to only a small clique of philosophers, its influence would have extended no farther. But the sense-perception of men was so identified with the Ptolemaic system that a direct and intelligent assault upon it was necessary to show the senses their error. Proof of the fallibility of those who had been the depositors of all knowledge disturbed the general confidence and established a new source of knowledge and a new standard for scientific discovery and advancement. The supremacy of the church was doomed from that moment, though it took many centuries to complete its downfall, aided by the inventions that, under the direction of physical science, have so cheapened the spread of knowledge that it comes within the reach of the multitude. The printing press and the invention of paper made this dissemination possible; but they would hardly have had permission so to extend knowledge but for the weakness of the church after the enforced surrender of its old authority as the protector of all human beliefs. The keystone of its arch was its cosmogony; and, when Copernicus removed this, it fell into ruins, though it took time to relax the cohesiveness of its parts. The whole of modern history was determined by this one revolution in thought. The same development might indeed have occurred without these specific discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo; but these were crucial events in the actual series that constitute history. It is certain that the break in the wall was actually accomplished by Copernicus, no matter how many before him may have seen or felt its weakness. The initial impulse to revolution was given by his conception of the cosmos, though it might not have proved effective but for the sympathy and aid that he received from the intellectual preparation prevalent among his contemporaries. This one idea was the rallying point for reconstruction, and must have the credit of starting human knowledge upon the course of its subsequent development.

 No one can directly trace the effect of this scientific revolution upon politics, but it is nevertheless a remote consequence of Copernican astronomy that our political institutions are what they are. No political freedom is possible until men have obtained intellectual freedom, and no one had this intellectual freedom until the progress of physical science and discovery had shown that the church held false views of the universe. Church and state were so closely associated that the slightest disturbance of their union was sure to make itself felt throughout the whole organism. The Reformation recognized this relation, and, after trying to obtain its freedom without a break with the papal system, Germany obtained it only by the use of political power. England soon followed under Henry VIII, and the papal power began to weaken. Gradually Europe threw off the shackles and the papal supremacy remained intact only in Italy and Spain, until at last Italy confined the political dominion of the papacy to the Vatican. But states could not throw off the yoke of the church without teaching their subjects the same rebellious spirit. Men had already learned to distrust the authority of the priest, first in science and finally in religion. But gradually the spirit which had led men to resist authority on scientific questions expressed itself in opposition to the arbitrary powers of government, and representative institutions were the consequence. Political freedom is thus traceable to the work of Copernicus in disputing the Ptolemaic astronomy. I shall not venture to assert that this one early astronomic discovery was the only force leading to the final result, but it is entitled to precedence in the estimation of causes.

 We see, therefore, in the history of conceptions, those of the unity of the world and of the Copernican astronomy, the ultimate influence of ideas on social and political institutions. Both were scientific doctrines, yet they affected such remote concerns as constitutions and governments.

 We are all familiar with the influence of the theory of evolution on modern ideas of nature and man, and with its destructive effect on the older ethical ideas and institutions. It has given impetus to the materialistic tendencies of the age, initiated by the physical discoveries of the past, and its influence has not yet reached its climax. But I shall not work out the details of this last agency in modifying our conceptions of nature and man. It suffices to have shown the social and political effects of two great physical doctrines, and then to ask whether any special conception of man and his destiny can have a similar effect on human institutions.

 One does not have to go beyond Gibbon to know what influence on history the doctrine of man's immortality has exercised. It produced this effect without applying the brotherhood of man in connection with the doctrine of immortality, as it had been taught by the founder of Christianity. The concept of human brotherhood was as much a reaction against the narrow policy of Judaism as it was the logical consequence of Greek monism in philosophy. Judaism had drawn very sharply the distinction between the "stranger" or Gentile and its own race, and the former was almost entirely outside the pale of the law and the sanctuary. But when the better spirits of that race saw the defects of this narrow conception of God and man, even in the time of the prophets, they, like the Stoics, recognized the wider duties of human relationship, though without expressing them in civil institutions. The subjugation of Palestine by the Roman legions, however, brought home the lesson. In the dissolution of the ancient religion and the political institutions of the Jews, the utter desolation of both their sanctuary and their law, there came the sense of human brotherhood that never had appealed to the national consciousness in the days of its triumphs. The mind was prepared by its afflictions and the loss of its national hopes to listen to another gospel that suddenly appeared on the horizon—a belief that had not been characteristic of Judaism, namely, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. It arose in opposition to the materialism of the Epicureans that had dominated the later periods of Greco-Roman history and that had come to infect the sects of Judaism. It established a new point of view for the interpretation of the world and of man. With its spiritual conception of God, this new doctrine availed to give the spiritual conception of things the primary place in determining the meaning of the cosmos and human institutions. The ultimate reality of matter was denied, and spirit was regarded as the cause instead of the effect of matter. The whole of mediaeval philosophy and theology was based upon this conception. The whole material universe was supposed to have been created by spirit and subordinated to the interests of man and his salvation.

 Apart from comparison and contrast of the Greek with the Judaistic movement, the important point is the place which the idea of the immortality of the soul held in the reconstruction of political institutions that had crumbled into ruin on account of the ravages of materialism. What it kept in the forefront of human thought was the value of the individual man, the permanent importance of his personality, showing that it was this and not the glories of the state that survived the ravages of time. Ancient civilization had no such conception of the relation between the state and the individual citizen as we hold. Man existed for the institutions, political and religious, that prevailed. He was a servant, not a master, of the social order. He paid his tribute and gave his life to it without being able to exact any but the most meager service from it. The state had all the rights and the citizen none, and on critical examination the state turned out to be embodied in certain favored individuals with irresponsible power to rule the citizen as they pleased. But to adopt the immortality of the soul as the center of human interest and to conceive the cosmos as an order subordinate to man's development and salvation wrought a profound change. It brought forward, not only the value of the individual, but also a conception of his relation to things which opposed his subordination to political masters and made even nature a servant to his ends. In this way the immortality of the soul involved human brotherhood; and this latter idea attained a practical importance, instead of a purely speculative interest.

 When the attempt to put into practice the brotherhood of man by its early communistic system had failed, Christianity concentrated its interest on the realization of its kingdom of God in a life beyond the grave; and, with an ascetic view of life and a pessimistic view of nature, it set about reorganizing ethical and religious institutions around the idea of personal salvation. The radical character of its theistic conception, which made no concessions to materialism, and the enthusiasm for a future life resulted in fifteen centuries of uninterrupted triumph for the Christian view of life and social relations. The traditions of government, combined with other influences, made it impossible or inconvenient to carry out the communism implied in the notion of human brotherhood, and the mediaeval period had to be content with charity as the embodiment of its social feeling; and even this was regarded as a means of personal salvation rather than as the expression of altruistic feeling. But two ideas remained dominant in the minds of men: the immortality of the soul and the attainment of that immortality by human service. These ideas implied the subordination of the state to the welfare of the subject, even though government continued to use its power for arbitrary and selfish ends. Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar sought to establish universal dominion for the sake of the glories of political power and conquest; Christianity in the Middle Ages sought the same end, at least nominally and ostensibly, for the salvation of the citizen. The early Christian's "Kingdom of God," Augustine's "Civitas Dei," and the "Utopia" of Sir Thomas More could not have been conceived on any other basis, and they lacked only the will of men in order to become effective.

 The placing of man's hopes in another life tempted him to buy his salvation with perfunctory works. He also showed a contempt for physical nature hardly compatible with his view of the relation of Providence to its creation. The reaction against the debaucheries of Epicurean materialism carried him into an "otherworldliness" scarcely less objectionable than the previous worldliness. The belief that matter is essentially evil in its nature led only to the fixing of human vision on an imaginary world that was less carnal only because it could not be made the subject of personal experience here and now. Such a statement, of course, is qualified by the presence, in many minds, of purer conceptions of duty and of the hereafter. But even Dante's and Milton's works were founded on a more literal interpretation of Christianity than the idealistic theories that came after. The very necessity of adapting its ideals to the understanding of the multitude for whose salvation every individual was responsible was an influence to keep religious conceptions upon the plane of the sensory imagination. Protestantism, with its vindication of individual judgment, put the priest at the mercy of those whom he had previously been privileged to direct, and inevitably the standard of sense-perception again became the measure of truth even in the strongholds of the church. With the revival of this point of view, the ascetic conception of life was sure to meet criticism. The renaissance, on the one hand, with its revival of interest in Greek ideals, and the reinstatement of the study of nature in astronomy, physics, and chemistry, on the other, brought into being the materialistic attitude that has dominated the subsequent centuries.

 But, if the priority of spiritual interests resulted only in their overthrow by physical science, we shall be asked why we attempt to reinstate an idea that has been tried and found wanting. When so much progress has been effected by modern science, why endeavor to turn its wheel backward?

 The first answer is that we have only been stating history, not adopting an ideal. I have been mainly interested in the efficacy of the spiritual ideal to produce a civilization and to sustain it much longer than Greece and Rome were able to maintain their institutions. If duration of success is a measure of value, the Christian conception of life has won the approval of time, and it yet remains for physical science to accomplish a similar result.

 A second reply is simply to call attention to the consequences of the materialism in which we live. One need not question the importance of the revival of physical science; and this concession is not grudgingly made. The religious mind had forfeited the confidence of most intelligent men by its departure from fact, as well as by its alliance with corrupt political institutions, and it had become so petrified in external works and ceremonies that the really ethical mind could not accept its hypocrisies, even when it conceded the value of ritualism to some temperaments. When physical science had once proved its ability to explain the universe, or at least to show that the order of nature had not been accurately described by the theologians, the way was opened for the system which could make the world appear reasonable. The confidence in priestcraft was impaired and in its place came the enthusiasm for nature and for those who could understand its processes and use its agencies in the service of human comfort.

 The triumph of physical science has given us what may be called the economic age, an age in which the accumulation of wealth is greater than at any other period of history. We enjoy advantages which antiquity never dreamed of. We have multiplied the forces of invention and machinery, which increase production a hundredfold and, in thus increasing the supply of goods, similarly increase the demand. The production due to machinery has far outstripped the actual needs of even the larger population; but it has been matched by a similarly greater consumption. This satisfaction of an increased number of desires leads directly to the estimation of life by physical instead of intellectual and spiritual standards. Political freedom followed the emancipation of the intellect by science and created preconceptions on which the average mind measures the claims of any belief, while the reign of comfort compared with the struggle for existence in the Middle Ages makes most minds inaccessible to spiritual appeals. Ethics has to wait on economics, for when the latter gets the first hearing there is no time nor inclination for the former. The theater is preferred to the church. We doubt the reality of any life hereafter to make sacrifices for, and we "make hay while the sun shines," that is, we expend all our labor in the accumulation of the means for physical enjoyment. Travel and amusement offer more pleasure than does worship, and, as nature is not to be feared but appropriated to the making of money, there are no terrors to blast our hopes. If we can make our satisfactions of the sensuous sort sufficiently intense, we may be so spiritually benumbed as not to fear death any more. We face it, not as Stoics, whose maxims pay an involuntary tribute to hopes that they do not share, but as Epicureans, who have got all they want until their satiated senses no longer feel the love of life. We expect the sacrifices we make to be repaid with interest, and we place our political power in the hands of the "business" man who knows how to play the part of a sophist while he rifles our pockets. The standards of success are those of the money maker, not those of the moralist. The measure of social standing is wealth, not intellect nor conscience. We are unable to accomplish anything without money, and common labor is a disgrace. All the duties of the world rest on the poor and all the liberties are with the rich.

 It is scarcely possible to overestimate the influence of this materialism. We all know its power, but ignore its tendencies. Our philosophy does not protect us against the insidious encroachments of this materialism, which is as triumphant in speculation as in practice. We think Idealism is no protection against it, for in fact there is no difference between them in their practical working, except that one prizes intellectual accomplishments and the other financial success and sensuous enjoyments; neither acts on the supposition that we have a soul that survives death. The first great philosophical assault on Christian theology was the doctrine of the indestructibility of matter. Christianity affirmed the secondary and created nature of matter in all its forms, both sensible and supersensible. Plato had maintained that the function of Providence was only to arrange the cosmic elements in their order. Anaxagoras had held the same view of his Reason or Nous. Aristotle had his primum mobile start the universe and then sit back in contemplative bliss to watch it go. The Epicureans had taught that chance coincidence brought together the eternal elements or atoms and that the whole creation was brought about by these chance combinations of imperishable atoms. But Christianity assaulted this central position of the indestructibility of matter and took spirit to be the permanent reality. But the scientific proof of the indestructibility of matter and later of the conservation of energy exposed the error of this position, and the main philosophic fortress of Christianity was captured. The inevitable effect was to give matter the priority in speculative interest and to subordinate spirit to it. Spirit, from being the substance of reality, became its phenomenon, a transient accompaniment of it in some of its manifold organic forms. This view was soon supported by the discoveries of physiology, in which consciousness seemed to be the victimized creature of brain functions, not the ruler of a material organism. All the phenomena which the older view had regarded as proving the existence of a soul came to be regarded as mere incidents in the casual development of material bodies. Materialism became triumphant and the human mind, liberated from the speculative and political shackles of the mediaeval period, began to enjoy its freedom in gradually breaking away from all the restraints that had developed and sustained the social, political, and religious conscience for so many centuries. We are still living in the period of rapid decline of the ethical impulse, and nothing but the possibility of reinstating a spiritual view of nature and life can restrain the progress of that retrograde movement.

 The effect upon politics was felt as soon as the spiritual view of nature and life had lost the confidence of the public. Materialism relaxed the force of conscience while it opened the physical world to unlimited exploitation. All our laws are judged by those in power according to their relation to "business" or the accumulation of wealth, and the politician is as conscienceless as was the tax-gatherer in the Roman Empire. He has no ideals of human welfare, but only the desire to make the citizen pay tribute to his avaricious ambitions. If he can manipulate the laws he will save himself the trouble of work. The common citizen becomes saturated with the same ideals, and society is a struggle for wealth instead of for character. Science is on the side of materialism and all intelligence is against the church. But on all the issues that concern the correction of materialism the church itself is divided and is hopelessly implicated in the same ideals as our political system. In order to hold itself together the church has been obliged to resort to everything except the appeal to intelligence and may soon be reduced to mumbling a ritual over the cerements of its past. Materialism governs the thought and action of the common laborer, who was once under the influence of religion, and of the highest officers of state, who were once proud to serve the public, but now have only a predatory interest in the service which they can extort from the helpless citizens. We are following the path of Greco-Roman civilization in the days of its decadence, because the same economic and social forces are operative now as then, under the loss of the ethical ideals and beliefs of the preceding religious period. The laboring classes have abandoned their religion, and are struggling with the capitalists for a share in the profits of production. Their philosophy and ideals are the same as those of the capitalist; they too are straining their efforts only to secure a larger share of materialistic reward.

 I am not questioning the right to insist on economic justice nor even the importance of more nearly equal distribution of the world's goods. But the value of this larger share will depend wholly upon the use to which it is put when it has been acquired. Money is power, and like all power it should receive respect only in proportion to its furtherance of ethical ideals. Materialism offers no ideals but those of sense to the majority of men; the few who follow the intellectual life make it an otiose escape from toil. The ultimate value of this culture and of the inner life is not indicated. It is to end in the grave and nothing is to be left to our children but the short memory of it. The redemption that we seek is from poverty, not from sin. The joys of life are those of the table, the holiday, and the theater.

 This is a dark picture, and there are not wanting exceptions to whom such a judgment does not apply. I have no doubt that more than five can be found to save our modern Sodom and Gomorrah. There is always a sufficient leaven to protect the whole from final destruction; but it is the part of a discussion like this to point out the tendencies that might reduce the saving influences to impotency. We need above all to revive the spiritual meaning of existence. I do not mean that we shall return to the beliefs of the past, nor that we have to subordinate the material universe to spirit in the same sense as before. Certain discoveries of physical science with their implications must remain a permanent acquisition of knowledge and practice. They have taught us to acknowledge that inflexible order of nature which is quite as important to our ethics as any revelation of its limitations. A part of man's salvation lies in the humility which a fixed order makes necessary; only false pride can come from feeling that he has nature always at his command. A limitation on the will is quite as important as freedom, and a materialism which imposes inexorable limits to human arrogance is quite as ethical an influence as any view which makes man despise nature. But materialism may be as one-sided as spiritualism; we need to restore the importance of consciousness and duty in the world, and this restoration depends on the proof that there is a soul and a future life instead of mental phenomena that are mere incidental functions of the brain.

 If psychic research promises anything to the world it holds out hope of throwing light upon the nature and destiny of the soul, and of doing this by the scientific method instead of by pure speculation or faith. If belief in immortality carries the same assurance that we have of Copernican astronomy, Newtonian gravitation, and Darwinian evolution, it will have an efficacy that can never attach to a belief not so assured.

 The revival of the importance of spirit in nature will have the same power to uphold moral agencies in the world that it had in the past. The value that the doctrine gives to human personality enables the teacher of mankind to enforce his ideals of morality. We have seen what a subordinate place the individual had in the politics of antiquity, when the social system took no account of the importance of personality and of our duty to save it. No sense of responsibility for the salvation of our neighbor was inculcated in the ancient religion or politics. Those in power were at liberty to exploit the rest of mankind as they pleased. But Christianity created a new social standard, based upon the importance of the individual soul and our responsibility for its salvation. The materialistic reaction has threatened this conception with extinction, as is apparent in the new imperialism that has arisen and in the contempt for other races that has followed. We no longer feel the racial sympathy that the missionary felt or the sense of the unity of the human race created by the obligation to extend the influence of Christianity. We have adopted morals that threaten our own race with extinction and then despise or fear those races that promise to take our place. That our social conduct might injure a soul's life after death does not enter into our calculations. But if we can prove that the materialistic theory of consciousness is false and that man has a more important end than the satisfaction of his bodily wants and his merely earthly happiness we shall have established a new fulcrum for the moralist.

It is not the mere fact that we survive death that will affect the conduct of individuals and societies, but its place in the organic system of ideas of the body politic. It was not the mere belief in immortality that gave Christianity its efficacy, but its doctrine of limited probation that enabled it to carry out both its ecclesiastical and political policies. But that doctrine of probation would have had no meaning at all without belief in a future life. It is clear that belief in a future life is the best fortification for all the duties which have a relation to an existence beyond the present. If we can organize in association with that belief a stronger sense of human brotherhood it must ultimately influence our political institutions as profoundly as did the fifteen centuries of Christian supremacy, though it may take as long to attain that end. But this time it has scientific method and authority instead of mere faith and opinion to support it. If science can furnish men a creed by which they are to live for some end other than the present life, the reconciliation between science and religion, which has been so long sought, may easily be attained.

I have not appealed to the sentimental value of the belief in anything that I have said of its importance. I have emphasized only the intellectual place which it may bold in supporting or reconstructing the foundations of ethics and moral idealism. Its influence on the griefs and sufferings of mankind is scarcely less great than the influence of medicine, and is capable of being made greater. On that feature of its value I shall not dwell. If the theory of evolution can modify all the maxims which prevented men from modelling their attitude toward their neighbors after the standards of nature, we may well imagine what a defence of humanitarianism may be based upon the proof of survival after death, especially if we find, as we may, that the destiny of every man is affected by the character of his physical life quite as much as by the habits of his soul. It is at least certain that a new measure of human value will come into use if we find nature to be as careful of personality as she is of the elements. The certainty of the survival of personality will put a stop to all those skeptical discussions which postpone the acceptance of ethical standards founded on immortality until the proof of survival is presented. It will give the idealists a chance to reanimate that estimate of life from which spring both poetry and religion, and with these that sense of human relationship which may do more to reconstruct politics than all other intellectual forces.
 

SUMMARY AND REFLECTIONS

 THE facts reported in this volume are but samples from a thousand-fold larger mass, whose meaning is apparent. Whatever skepticism prevails regarding them is due to various influences. Sometimes it is mere prejudice, sometimes it is ignorance both of the problem and of the facts; and there is much opposition that is based on neither prejudice nor ignorance, but on mere intellectual obstinacy and pride. It is easy to oppose any belief if you are so disposed. Reasons can always be given, whether rational or not, against a theory, if one chooses to give them. The "will to disbelieve" is quite as prevalent as the "will to believe," and is no more creditable. Much prejudice and ignorance are excusable, when we consider how powerfully environment acts on our beliefs. Unanimity of opinion is essential to any social order. We keep out of perpetual war only by agreeing on something. Our interests are so bound up with the opinion of the community that it is not safe for us to take the part of rebels. Hence we accept the ideas in which we are born and bred. Childhood trusts, and our beliefs are largely made in childhood. The line of least resistance is to follow the ideas of the community. Prejudice is, therefore, more or less unavoidable, at least on matters about which we have little or no opportunity to work out systematic beliefs. Ignorance is but an accompaniment of these influences and is more excusable than prejudice, because the latter has a tendency to include influences from the desire and the will.

Hostility, however, based upon intellectual pride and obstinacy has no such excuse. It is irrefutable except by ridicule and the resistance of public opinion. It infects all minds sophisticated by knowledge and tending to defend preexisting ideas. It causes a sort of obsession which has become fixed partly by personal interests and partly by the extent to which this knowledge represents accepted scientific truth. Nevertheless, all intelligent people are called upon to keep preconceptions in abeyance in the presence of new facts. No doubt the discoverer of new truth may exhibit too much haste to revolutionize things, but this fault is not any worse than an inflexible conservatism in a changing and progressing world. Truth is always dependent on facts enough to make it clear that it represents some sort of law in the world. Even if facts are exceptional, they must be compatible with the unity in nature. Frequency of occurrence is the evidence of law and of articulation with the cosmic order. This fact explains, and at least half justifies, the cautiousness of the average man in weighing every claim that comes along for the supernormal. But history has shown us that caution has its limits. Such an influence might be invoked, as it was by the church, against any change of our ideas whatever. But no such habit should characterize the scientific mind. The very essence of science is the understanding of change as well as of the constancies of nature. The scientist has always insisted that we relax religious obstinacy and prejudice in the consideration of hypotheses that might seem to conflict with preestablished ideas. It therefore becomes obligatory upon him to practice his own preaching in the consideration of supernormal phenomena.

 The course suggested, however, has not often been taken. From no one has psychic research met more opposition than from the scientific man. His attitude is explicable, but not always excusable. The conquests of physical science are supposed to have eliminated the "supernatural" from human belief, and most scientific men think that psychic research threatens to restore that beast to power. But there is no danger that past conceptions will again find currency, and no serious consequences can happen from giving the term "supernatural" as clear a meaning as that of "nature." Those who reduce everything to "nature" can hardly give an intelligible account of what they mean by the term save as the order of frequently observed facts. And yet this is made an idol for a worship as extravagant as that of a savage for his fetish.

 The emphasis, however, upon regularity is important. The systematic and rational behavior of life depends upon the constancies of the cosmos. If it were as changeable as the super naturalist assumes it to be, there would be little opportunity for any ethical development and perhaps none for the slow evolution of human life and its functions. It is the constancy of "nature" that makes possible human character and development. The scientific skeptic of the "supernatural" has in his hands the answer to the question cui bono, if only he will use it instead of merely making the concept of nature serve as the basis of a new dogmatism and a new intolerance. But in order to defend regularity, he sacrifices all the benefits that come from a spiritual conception of the world's order. His opponent insists as strenuously on a conception that invokes caprice against law. Why are not both law and caprice as reconcilable with nature as with the supernatural? Why should either of them be regarded either as necessary or as antagonistic to one or the other of these conceptions? It is certain that both exist, whatever view we take of either nature or the supernatural. What we want is facts; we can then decide whether they are natural or supernatural.

 It is wearisome to insist on the meaning of such facts as I have cited in this volume. Their import is clear. They certainly make a spiritistic hypothesis acceptable. The illustrations quoted may not suffice to demonstrate the existence of a future life, if taken alone or regarded as the total evidence in favor of such a theory, and I do not quote them with the expectation that they alone will settle the issue. They are but examples of phenomena as old as history and as extensive and constant as any other phenomenon of nature. But they are better accredited than most instances and so make it imperative for them to be investigated.

 The only difficulty the spiritistic hypothesis faces is the ignorance and prejudice of the public. That ignorance and prejudice may be excusable; but they are obstacles, and the only obstacles, to the belief in immortality. The objections based upon the triviality of the facts, the fragmentary and confused nature of the communications, and the absurdity of the revelations are beside the mark. They betray total ignorance of the problem and of the process involved in getting the data. The problem of the proof of personal identity is crucial, and nothing but trivial facts will satisfy the conditions of such proof. The fragmentary nature of the messages and the apparent absurdities of revelations about the other world are caused by the process of communicating and by the difficulties of representing a different world in terms of our own. Untrained readers assume too readily that the conditions of intercourse between the two worlds are either like our own or so nearly like them as not to affect the contents of the messages. The spiritistic hypothesis is not itself a revelation, but an explanation. Its development and ramifications await future work. At present it is necessary as a means of making the main facts intelligible. It maintains only that there is scientific evidence of the survival of personal consciousness, and not that we know all about the nature and conditions of a transcendental world. It establishes the main point, and leaves the accessories of the hypothesis to be determined.

 Personally I regard the fact of survival after death as scientifically proved. I agree that this opinion is not upheld in scientific quarters. But this is neither our fault nor that of the facts. Evolution was not believed until long after it was proved. The fault lay with those who were too ignorant or too stubborn to accept the facts. History shows that every intelligent man who has gone into this investigation, if he gave it adequate examination at all, has come out believing in spirits; this circumstance places the burden of proof on the shoulders of the skeptic.

 The present war and the manner in which it is making multitudes think of the meaning of life and death will do more than a hundred years of academic talk to awaken interest in the problem. Thousands who suffer losses and ask what they mean, would not think of the matter so keenly in the ordinary vicissitudes of life. The person suffering the pangs of grief or asking for a solution of the enigma of existence, and not afraid of his neighbors, will think for himself; and, even if he does appear to have an emotional bias, he will see facts more clearly than the man who boasts of his exemption from the influence of personal interest, but who, in reality, is only under the domination of another interest equally strong and more dangerous because the man has the illusion that he is free from it. Those who have to face the realities, both economical and moral, will not trust their salvation to sophists or to men who do not enter into the real problems of the world. They will go straight to the solution that fits the facts, and as usual the academic sophist will lose his hold on the forces of civilization. Insight has more to do with the problem and its solution than much learning. The public will go straight to the heart of the matter, and those who assume academic authority without scientific knowledge of the facts will find themselves shorn of power. Those who should have led will have to follow. If they do not see their opportunity, we can only repeat the warning of the prophet: Israel is joined to his idols, let him alone.

 The circumstance that gives so much power to skepticism is the uninterrupted triumph of physical science, based on the easy observation and reproduction of its phenomena. It has relied upon sense-perception for its data and especially for such data as it can easily verify in human experience. The more elusive phenomena of nature it either ignores or questions, and thus has established a criterion of reality that makes the claims of supersensible facts difficult to establish. Very early it excluded spiritual reality from the causes of the world, even when it admitted its existence. The earlier and later materialists in Greek philosophy were at one on this point. They all agreed that the gods existed, but they gave them no causal influence in the world. They were assigned to a place in the intermundia where they were harmless and inefficient, where they were equally unable to cause evil or to do good. Their position might be envied by those who suffer from the pains of unremitting toil, but it would offer no delightful prospect to those who abhor idleness. They could not assuage grief and pain nor exercise any benevolent force in the universe. They could only live in an idleness that is as irksome to the ethical man as it is envied by the unethical. They are

 The Gods who haunt

The lucid interspace of world and world, Where never creeps a cloud, or moves a wind, Nor ever falls the least white star of snow, Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans, Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar Their sacred everlasting calm.
 
Beings that only watch things go will never be objects either of fear or reverence, nor appear as ideals for moral character, But whatever we believe about immortality to-day, we cannot question the causal influence of consciousness on the stream of physical phenomena. If we once grant the existence of spirit, incarnate or discarnate, we must admit it to a place among the causes in nature; indeed we shall hardly discover its existence save through its effects. But we do not question its causal power in the series of physical and mental phenomena that come to our attention, and we do not accept the a priori theories that defined the nature and limits of mind in the Epicurean and other forms of materialism. All that we do is to insist on evidence; and only the prejudices for a theory that relies as much on tradition as do the orthodoxies of religion, now stand in the way of a ready belief in the existence of discarnate spirit. The evidences of its causal influence in the physical world are so plentiful that they are almost self-evident. We have therefore only to prove that it survives death, to prove that its causal action extends beyond the grave, as there is no proof of survival which does not carry with it the implication of some influence on the living as the condition of that proof.

 The phenomena of spiritual healing and of obsession well illustrate the extent of the causal action of discarnate consciousness. The symptoms of hysteria, of secondary personality, of some maladies diagnosed as dementia precox and paranoia, and perhaps others, assure us of an immense field for the practical application of psychic research, which will be recognized as soon as the world accepts the fact of survival. In the recurrence of spiritual healing, primitive Christianity will be revived. A new meaning will be put into the New Testament and the work of Christ.

 Moreover, the ethical value of the belief in survival can hardly be measured. An age that has had to give it up because of materialism and the lack of evidence pretends not to be interested in it. It assumes the garb of courage and of Stoicism, parading in self-righteousness what is but the virtue of necessity. It is hardly to be blamed. Our duty always is to make the best of a bad bargain, But why insist that life is a bad bargain? "All is well that ends well," even if we have spilled the milk. Nature may not be a Medusa-head after all. Many of her rougher actions and inflictions of pain are but the just discipline for our own vices. The great fog-bank into which materialism sails is more easily penetrated than it surmises. It conceals a beautiful sun-lit sea and the happy isles, and psychic research ventures on embarking where the philosophy of Immanuel Kant only warned the sailor against rocky shoals and disaster. Mythology was sound in its psychology and its ethics when, after allowing the escape of all the evils in the world, it left Hope at the bottom of Pandora's box.

 No one can act rationally in life without hope. It is essential to every desire we have and to every volition we exercise. There is no rationality in any act save as we can hope for its fruition as the fulfillment of our wishes. If personality has any value in nature, we must appraise it as nature does. If consciousness perishes at death it is clear that hope has no application beyond the grave. If personality extends beyond the grave, hope has a wider sphere of meaning, and so has life. Personality takes the chief place in the estimation of values and both our individual and our social ethics may be based upon it. The disposition to prolong consciousness and to value the higher intellectual and emotional expressions of it above the lower is so much testimony to that evaluation.

 It is not necessary to take an optimistic view of the world in dealing with the question. The scientific problem is to guarantee survival, whether it is desirable or not, whether the next world is ideal or unpleasantly real. In saying a word for hope in the scheme of things, we may not offer assurance of satisfaction for every specific desire we cultivate or indulge. It will be enough to show that nature ensures the survival of personal identity; and then, whatever curtailment of our selfish expectations may follow, we still have the opportunity of correction. Annihilation will allow neither progress nor correction of the past. Desire and volition have no meaning except with reference to a future; and, with no prospect of attainment of our aims, we can have little reverence for an order that allows no genuine achievement, and only keeps us at the eternal task of Sisyphus.

 I do not forget that the belief in immortality may be abused. It is as easy to be too "other-worldly" as to be too worldly. The truth is beneficial or harmful according to the character of the man who accepts it. Guns and gunpowder are exceedingly useful in the hands of the right man, but a dangerous evil in the wrong hands. We prize liberty, but there is no conception which cannot be abused more than this. There is probably not a single truth which human nature cannot pervert. A belief in a future life is no exception. But the fact that it was abused in the Middle Ages, or that it may be too much stressed by some minds, is no reason for ignoring the doctrine. Some tell us that nature or Providence does not intend for us to know about a future life. But the same type of mind told us that we should not inquire into the processes of nature. While maintaining that nature is a product of the Divine and while enjoying the fruit of scientific conquests over it, they counselled neglecting its revelations! There is no truth that can be made more helpful to man than a belief in survival. It will all depend on his balance of mind. Disregarding it leads to emphasis on the materialism that has nearly wrecked civilization in the greatest war of history. We do not want the belief established in order to concentrate interest again on the hereafter, but to fix a balance in human endeavor. If nature values the inner life, what man has called the "spiritual" life, the virtues of reflection, gentility, unselfishness and all the attitudes of mind and will that take him away from an exclusively sensuous life, it is time that we have a philosophy and an outlook that helps to sustain the higher ideals of consciousness. It is for its reflex influence on the ethics of the present life that it is important, not for its power to make us ignore the imperative duties of the present.

 We are told that the interest in immortality is a selfish one. It is probable that the belief can be used as selfishly as any other, but he who lays too much stress on this aspect of it does not know human nature. While I see many that have only a personal interest in it and only desire to gain a further surplus from nature after having an undue share of this world's goods, the most important feeling, in my experience and observation, is the altruism which lies at the basis of the most poignant grief. I find that those who suffer most from the doubt of immortality, do not care so much for survival for themselves as they do for their departed friends. They desire that their loved ones shall "still hae a stake" in the clash of the world's forces. With them it is an altruistic, not an egoistic hope, an unselfish, not a selfish desire. The bitterest pain and perplexity come where the affection is the strongest. In such situations it is quite as important to assuage grief as it is to satisfy appetites. When a man has lived the properly ethical life it is natural for him to feel disturbed at the thought of the interruption of life. He must seek in some belief a means of interpreting nature consistently with his moral ideals. He must find the clue to her purposes that he may be reconciled to the temporary appearance of in harmony in the world's ethical order. He wants to see far beyond in the future the trend of events which may sustain his faith in an ethical order while it keeps the torch of hope before him.
 
'Tis not for self we feet the glow

Of passion for continued life,

But love for those whose passage mars The growth of soul and all its aims. For death, in his remorseless path,

Leaves here no evidence for hope,

And we must seek its guerdon there Where chance may bring a cheering word From out the gates of grief and pain. But when we bridge the sombre gulf Twixt life and death, and learn that love Still waits upon the shining shores Of time and fate to meet us there, We watch forever and forever The distant purposes of God,

We may say that this is an emotional attitude of mind, and I do not question the statement. I only say that emotion has quite as legitimate a place in the world as intellect. It is the basis of all the ethics we possess, and intelligence is only a secondary acquirement in the cosmos. Science shows us that the chief function of intelligence is to enable us to occupy a better place in the struggle for existence; it is usually a thousand-fold more egoistic than emotions.

 The neglect or hostility which the subject receives is one of the curious problems of psychology. If a new engine for an aeroplane is announced the inventor is acclaimed a benefactor of the world. If some new substance to take the place of gasoline is discovered, all the capitalists in the country tumble over each other to get the control of it. A new element in chemistry is announced with all the fervor of a miracle. Anything that will fill the human belly with the husks that the swine do eat, is considered the greatest thing in the world. But if a man offers evidence that he has a soul and that he may expect to live after death, he is called insane, though he may prove the prolongation of consciousness, which is the one aspiration of every effort a man makes in life! No better indication of the utter materialism of the age could be adduced. But at last the consequences of war, bearing the fruits of materialism in the ugly spectacle of death and grief, are forcing attention on the subject.

 The belief in immortality is the keystone to the arch of history, or the pivotal point about which move the intellectual, the ethical, and the political forces of all time. If science cannot protect our ethical ideals it will have to succumb to the same corrosion that has worn away the church. Something must put an end to doubt. There are many situations in life that call for heroic measures, and skepticism on the outcome of life offers no inducement to the heroic virtues.

 Poetry has probably done more than philosophy to redeem the human race. It sees more than naked facts. These last we must see and respect, with all the clearness that will prevent their discoloration from interest and emotion. But if we suppose that knowledge achieves its ends without feeling, we shall miss the main opportunities of life. Neither one nor the other is the whole object of existence. They supplement each other. Plato's myth of the chariot drawn by the two steeds of passion and impulse, without the guidance of reason, illustrate the consequences of unadjusted energies.
 
Wisdom and passion Playing for place, Whichever winneth Loses its grace.

When the two, peaceful, Mingle and kiss, Then cometh sweetly Power and bliss.
 
The Stoic, on the one hand, and the Epicurean, on the other, equally miss the meaning of life. The via media has always been the path of sanity and common sense, and neither knowledge nor emotion alone will give intellectual and moral health. Their functions must be adjusted to each other; only on that condition will a man be saved the ravages of skepticism and the consequences of libertinism.

 The age is in the throes of a search for certitude, and it is not limited, in that search, to the problem of immortality. The belief in immortality, which had been made important for many centuries, was doomed to decay unless assurance could be given the human mind regarding it. It had been so closely related to ethics that its decay threatened the destruction of all ethical and spiritual endeavor. We take what is certain, if it is only the sensuous life, but if we find that nature assigns this a secondary place and means to preserve the inner spiritual life for further cultivation the sacrifice of the physical and the sensuous is rendered more easy and even when it has a place in our spiritual development, it will not have the intensity of interest that it possesses when we have the prospect of nothing else.

 It is easy for the man who has the comforts of life and who has stored up much goods, who has been successful in the struggle of existence, to congratulate himself on this security and to neglect Lazarus lying at his gates. He may thank God that he is not as other men are. But he should not blame the unsuccessful for taking a less optimistic view of nature. If the world has any claims to be regarded as good to its Creatures, we should find the evidence of it in its outcome. We may endure temporary inequalities and suffering, if all ends well. But when the misfortunes of life are not equally distributed, we must not wonder that the victims of pain and disappointment are rebels. We may become reconciled to pain, if it results in a healing discipline, but if the chance for redemption and amelioration be forever cut off, the ugly spectre of death will give the final touch of despair to human ideals and hopes. We need to be in a position to see beyond the horizon, if the conflicts of the present life are to be met with patience and endurance. The wider outlook will soothe many a pain or give it a spiritual significance.

The sadder moments of a wearied hope Find on their fringe a dream of better days, And while their aura holds the leash of pain, That keenly throbs about one's passing joys, The bitter sweet will fuse its mingled shades Into the calm majestic life of God.

Were we mere animals without ideals or hopes, we might be indifferent to the course of nature. We might live in the present moment without doing any violence to the moral laws. But if ideals encourage in us a life above the sensual we need assurance that nature will compensate us for the present loss; and if we find that survival is a part of her scheme, the bitterness that would haunt us if we were without hope will be less poignant. I do not emphasize the joys of such a hope or of its fruition. But we need an interpretation of the world which will do something to mitigate suffering, if we cannot escape it, or to excuse it, if we find it a means to an end. The sadness of sunset is only sublime pathos when we are assured of another dawn.

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