bennet, ernest - apollonius; or, the present and future of psychical research (19--_)

7/30/2019 Bennet, Ernest - Apollonius; Or, The Present and Future of Psychical Research (19--_)

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APOLLONIUSOR THE FUTUREOF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

K N. BENNETT


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APOLLONIUSOR THE

PRESENT AND FUTUREOF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH


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TO-DAY AND TO-MORROWFor a full list of this Series see the end

of this Book


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APOLLONIUSOR

The Present and Future ofPsychical Research

BY\KN. BENNETT, M.A.Late Felloiv of Hertford College, Oxford

&v eft; p-fre iriffretieiv /fj'/re diriffTe?v TraffivPhil. Vit. A poll. II, 45

LONDONKEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER &Co., LTD.NEW YORK: E. P, DUTTON & Co.


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Made and Printed in Great Britain byM F. Robinson & Co., Ltd., at The Library Press, Lowestoi


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APOLLONIUSOR THE

PRESENT AND FUTUREOF PSYCHICAL RESEARCHPsychical research has in the last

twenty-five years lived down theobloquy and suspicion which sur-rounded its earlier days, and secured anassured position as a recognized branchof scientific study. In nearly everyEuropean country and in the UnitedStates of America men of acknow-ledged eminence in their professions

philosophers, scientists, doctors,literary men have devoted themselvesto the earnest study of those obscureand baffling phenomena which formthe subject matter of psychical research,though this field of scientific endeavourholds at present few allurements in the

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APOLLONIUSshape of personal advantage or reward ;no appreciable endowments exist tofacilitate such research, no professorialchairs are reserved for its devotees.The patient and unselfish toil of thosemen, who have given to psychicalresearch years which otherwise mighthave brought them rich material gains,is based on their deep and abidinginterest in the subject, and their frankendorsement of Schopenhauer's words :

" The phenomena under discussionare, at least from a philosophical stand-point, of all the facts presented to usby the whole of experience withoutcomparison the most important : it istherefore the duty of every educatedman to make himself thoroughlyacquainted with them."

Nevertheless, in spite of the recentemergence of psychical research intothe clearer light of scientific toleranceand even encouragement, it must beadmitted that its literary output has

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHwithin recent years, as far as theEnglish-speaking races are concerned,fallen far behind the brilliant and yetsubstantial work of its earlier pioneers.Few, if any, of our modern researchersin Great Britain have reached the highlevel attained by the works of, say,Myers, Gurney, Podmore, Professorand Mrs Sidgwick, and Professor Jamesof Harvard. Nor again has any ade-quate progress been maintained in theexperimental work which characterizedthe earlier history of the Society forPsychical Research. Our main evidencefor telepathy is still the careful workof the Sidgwick group at Brighton, andlittle has been accomplished in theinvestigation of " physical phenomena "since the perplexities and disappoint-ments of the Palladino experiments.In America the glory has indeed de-parted from a movement which wasformerly illumined by the splendidwork of William James, Hyslop,Hodgson, and Prince.


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APOLLONIUSOn the other hand, if in Great

Britain the earlier branches of experi-ment have to some extent beenneglected, a vast amount of usefulwork has been accomplished since thedeath of Myers in the new field of" cross correspondences 'V which, inthe opinion of some, may well proveto be the most productive of all ourareas of research. On the Continenttoo experimental work of a high orderhas been developed during recent years,more especially in France and inGermany, the results of which havebeen given to the world in the writingsof such men as Richet, Osty, Schrenck-Notzing, Tischner, Dessoir, Driesch,and others. The happy selection thisyear of Dr Driesch as President of the

1 i.e. two mediums sitting widely apart,sometimes even in different countries, receivedifferent messages alleged to come from the samediscarnate personality. When taken separatelysuch messages may be obscure and meaningless ;when read in conjunction they present a clearand intelligible meaning.

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHS.P.R. is a tribute to the fine work ofhimself and his countrymen. No betterfuture could indeed be desired forpsychical research than that it shouldoccupy the serious attention of Germanscholars and be treated in accordancewith the painstaking and efficientmethods of German science.But while the advance of psychical

research on strictly scientific lines hasto some extent fallen short of the hopesof our pioneers, an unprecedenteddevelopment has taken place in thecruder and less critical forms of whatis popularly known as " Spiritualism ".This increased interest in spiritualisticphenomena has been followed by a vastoutput of books devoted to the accept-ance of the spiritist theory and gener-ally characterized by the absence ofscientific spirit or critical investigation.Thousands of persons who fully admittheir acceptance of the " facts ofspiritualism " and allege that they findin the teachings of the spiritualist


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APOLLONIUScreed guidance in life and consolationin death appear to be satisfied with aminimum of reason for the faith whichis in them. Popular enthusiasm foroccult experiences has produced nocorresponding increase in the numberof serious students. The valuablematerial accumulated with immensecare in the Proceedings of the PsychicalResearch Society is to a large extentunknown to and unexplored by themodern spiritualist, who professes tobase his claims, if called upon to do so,on uncritical data derived from pro-fessional clairvoyants or his own auto-matic script. The result has been averitable flood of alleged messagesfrom another world which, in somecases, have been supplied to theSunday newspapers by discarnatc andobliging intelligences with the regu-larity of an editorial leader. The recog-nized spiritualist churches, " Lyceums"and similar organizations in GreatBritain, 610 in number apart from

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHindependent societies and groups, pos-sess a membership of at least 54,000 ;and, despite the honourable efforts ofmany educated and enlightened spirit-ualists who are determined enemies ofmediumistic fraud, a steady increasehas taken place in the ranks of thosepseudo-mediums who trade on thecredulity of the public.At first sight this strange develop-ment might appear to be wholly out ofkeeping with the spirit of an age whichmay reasonably be described as mater-ialistic. The appalling failure of or-ganized Christianity to avert or shortenthe War, the diseased growths whichhave fastened upon our music, art, anddrama, the waste and extravagance inour social life, the cruel self-seeking ofour international conduct these andother influences of the War-period andits aftermath have provided a fittinginspiration for large sections of ourpopulation which appear to have littletaste for much beyond the life-purpose


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APOLLONIUSof Mr. Wells' hero

"to put one's handson the dibs, and have a good time."But history has demonstrated in the

case of individuals and nations alikethat material and even intellectualprogress does not necessarily eliminatesuperstition. The sceptical Julius Caesarcrawled up the steps of the Capitol toavert the jealous wrath of the gods ;the Renaissance was responsible fortwo centuries of witch-burning. Andso we find that side by side with theweakening of moral and religious sanc-tions a widespread spirit of credulousand uncritical belief pervades the com-munity. The vast developments in thecirculation of cheap newspapers whileadding enormously to the informationof the public on current events, hasalso led our less educated citizens ingeneral to accept what they see inprint. During the War-fever even menof recognized position whose trainingmight, one would think, have instilledinto them some measure of intellectual

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHcaution, have exhibited amazing credu-lity. The late Bishop of Carlisle, andthe Editor of Punch are typical ofthousands of our fellow-citizens, clericaland lay alike, who accepted withoutquestion such grotesque fabrications asthe German " Corpse Factory " or the" Crucified Canadian ". Stories em-bodied in the Bryce Report and similarpublications were received without anymisgiving or discrimination by ninety-nine per cent, of our population. Thenebulous story of the singularly in-efficient " Angels of Mons " formed thetext of lay and ecclesiastical addresses.The national mind, carefully tutoredby the fraud or stupidity of controlledjournalism, was ready when the Warceased to exchange the material horrorsof this world for the spiritual excite-ments of the next.The most powerful impulse, however,behind the new spiritualism has comefrom the staggering loss of human life

in the Great War. Never before in the


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APOLLONIUSworld's history has the cry of humanbereavement been so loud and bitter,for the vast majority of the millionswho perished in the conflict were youngmen leaving behind them a heritage ofsorrow incomparably greater than thatwhich follows from the loss of the old,who in far greater numbers die everyyear in the ordinary course of nature.Nor has the poignancy of their grieffor the loss of sons and brothers beenlessened for those among the survivorswho have reached the conviction thatthese vast armies of the world wereled to the slaughter on false pretences,and that the soldiers died not, as mostof them honestly believed, to promotejustice, peace, and freedom, but tosubserve the same vile motives ofimperialist and commercial greed whichhave promoted every other modern war.In earlier ages the Christian religiondid indubitably inspire in the minds ofits adherents a genuine conviction ofa life beyond the grave and a future


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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHrecognition of those lost awhile. ButProtestantism in its violent rejectionof earlier tenets has so far attenuatedthe doctrine of a future existence thatits harsh interdicts on prayers for thedead and its vague and inconsistentbeliefs as to the state of the departedhave to a large extent ceased either toattract or convince. At Omdurmanthe writer saw thousands of menadvancing against the most terrific fireof the century's warfare with the nameof God upon their lips and real con-viction of a future life in their hearts

but these men were not Christians.The carelessness, timidity, or corruptionof the Churches have served to devital-ize not only the ethical precepts oftheir Master but also that immortalitywhich He brought to light. But,although the old springs of comforthave to a large extent ceased to flow,the needs of the human heart remain,and are turned to those fresh sourcesof assurance and consolation which

[153


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APOLLONIUSare so lavishly offered by modernSpiritualism.*****Those who undertake the scientificconsideration of psychic phenomenamust realize the existence of certaininitial difficulties specially attached tothis branch of research. No form ofscientific work is more exposed thanthis to the dangerous influence of the" personal equation " in the researcher.An astronomer might conceivably beprejudiced in his work on Mars by somea priori tendency to regard that planetas the home of sentient beings, but theinfluence of such personal factors inscientific research may generally beregarded as almost negligible. When,however, we find ourselves in contactwith psychic phenomena which indi-cate intelligence, it is often difficult todissociate our conclusions as to thesource of such intelligence from ourother beliefs or disbeliefs. On anoccasion famous in the annals of the

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHSociety for Psychical Research a sealedenvelope containing a written state-ment by the late F. W. Myers wasopened in order to test the accuracy ofMrs Verrall's automatic ' Myers' script,which had previously claimed to revealthe words of the sealed message. I shallnever forget the look of cruel dis-appointment which appeared on thefaces of some of those present whenthe two messages were found to bedissimilar. On the other hand one ofthe party, a persistent opponent of thespiritist hypothesis, received the resultwith obvious satisfaction.That such preconceived hopes or

opinions colour the general attitude ofthe devotees of popular and uncriticalspiritualism is obvious. Given a darkroom, a professional medium in-adequately controlled or uncontrolled,and a cardboard trumpet, the voicewhich comes through the trumpet is,to a large extent, accepted as that of adiscarnate friend because the sitters

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APOLLONIUSare already convinced of a survival orearnestly desire to be so convinced.Even in the later work of psychicalresearchers of a higher order, men ofintellectual eminence and scientifictraining, a certain relaxation of criticalrigidity is sometimes noticeable. Inthese cases the lapse from earlierstandards of evidence is no doubt dueto the absolute conviction secured bylong and critical investigations at someprevious period. When already con-vinced intellectually by earlier experi-ences of the reality of the phenomenaunder investigation, even men of themental calibre of a Sir William Crookesmay almost insensibly deviate in sub-sequent discussions from the evidentialstandard of the investigations fromwhich they derived their earlier con-clusions.There exists another weakness of thehuman mind against which the psychical

researcher must always be on his guard.Those perverse tendencies which are[18]


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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHcovered by the term ' megalomania 'form a sinister factor which serves con-tinually to warp the judgment and even,in some cases, the moral sense of thosewho lay claim to the possession ofsupernormal powers. It is doubtfulwhether this form of mental perversity,appearing often as a kind of kink inotherwise normal and regular minds,has ever been adequately recognizedby those whose task it has been tocollate the facts and estimate thevalidity of alleged psychic phenomena.Megalomaniac impulses, indeed, wouldappear to provide at any rate a partialexplanation of many declarations aboutstrange and startling occurrences out-side the actual area of the seance room.The writer, from personal experiencesin several modern wars, including thelast, and a careful study of warpsychology and war-literature, has cometo the conclusion that of the largenumber of atrocities which are allegedto disfigure the record of all civilized

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APOLLONIUSarmies only a very small percentageever occur at all. Some of thesestories are certainly invented byPropaganda Departments, civil andmilitary, whose members, in someinstances, do not scruple to disseminatefalsehoods in order to blacken the goodname of an enemy people and soincrease the ferocity and fightingefficiency of their own troops. Butthe bulk of these atrocity tales are dueto the megalomaniac desire on the partof soldiers or civilians to recountthrilling and terrible events or pose asthe actual participants in some grue-some episode. A civilian refugee or awounded soldier in hospital (a normallytruthful person) will sometimes inventin detail an atrocity story in order toimpress an interrogator or a nurse andso secure for himself an amount ofmegalomaniac satisfaction. It is pre-sumably the same curious impulsewhich brings to famous criminals inthe dock offers of marriage from

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHordinarily decent and respectablewomen, or leads an obscure tourist tocarve his initials on the Parthenon, orstimulates people to frenzied socialeffort in order to shake the hand of aroyal personage, however commonplacehis character or feeble his achievement.But if this form of mental perversion

finds so many outlets in the course ofeveryday life, we may well expect it toflourish even more abundantly in theenvironment of psychic happenings.After all, what ordinary experience,however desirable, could vie in valueand interest with the power to receiveor convey actual messages from thedead ? What ordinary scientific achieve-ment could equal the exercise of apower which could secure the passageof matter through matter, bring aboutthe levitation of a table withoutpersonal contact in defiance of thelaws of gravitation, or cause the appear-ance of a materialized hand or even afull-length figure ?

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APOLLONIUSThe professional mediums who everySunday, sometimes more frequently,conduct the spiritualist services in ourtowns are obviously regarded as persons

of great importance and authority bytheir large audiences, and the conscious-ness of this, apart altogether from thefact of their fees, may stimulate themto supplement, if need be, the outputof possibly genuine phenomena by anever-ready supply of pseudo-messagesand haphazard " delineations ". Thehumbler mediums, usually unpaid, whoform the centre of thousands of" circles " in our working-class homesare invested with an importance andfeel a mental exaltation quite foreignto the drabness of their ordinarysurroundings and occupations. Andhere again if genuine powers ofclairvoyance are inadequate or non-existent, this special form of spiritualpride will still provide a satisfactoryflow of messages from the deceased


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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHbuccaneer or Indian chief who acts asthe " control ".

It is difficult indeed to assign anylimits to the intrusion of this singularinfluence in the domain of psychicalresearch. In one remarkable instance aLondon barrister of recognized standingand enjoying a large income from hisprofession posed for some time inprivate circles as a physical medium.He claimed inter alia the power ofcausing the partial levitation of a tableby placing his hands on the top. Yetat a sitting conducted by members ofthe S.P.R. this gentleman was easilydetected in the childish trick of havinginserted inside his cuffs two smallpieces of wood, which were thusintroduced under the table's edge !On another occasion I found during theinvestigation of a case in Hampshirethat a maidservant, possibly in collusionwith her mistress, was producing lumin-ous crosses by rubbing moistened

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APOLLONIUSmatches on the furniture and walls

there being no conceivable motivefor this transparent deception beyondthe desire to be regarded as a successful" medium ". Much, if not all of thestory of the Rev. Stainton Moses' careercan probably best be explained as anamazing example of spiritual megalo-mania. Such a theory cf course in-volves the disagreeable conclusion thata clergyman and a public-school master,endowed with a kindly and generousdisposition, must have spent years ofhis life in the systematic deception ofhis most intimate friends and, lateron, of the public at large. Nevertheless,all said and done, the moral miraclein this astonishing case is, as MrPodmore suggested, more easy thanthe physical one.The extraordinary poltergeist cases

cases by no means infrequent andwidely distributed in which furnitureis violently moved, windows andcrockery smashed, and pictures thrown

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHdown, can usually be traced to thefurtive trickery of little boys, or morecommonly little girls, who do notscruple to destroy their parents' pro-perty and peace of mind in order tosecure for themselves the secret satis-faction of some megalomaniac impulse.Apart from the deliberate imposture,due more often than we suspect to the

megalomaniac impulses referred toabove, there is some ground for believ-ing in the existence of a still moresubtle form of apparent fraud. It isfrequently asserted by mediums ofrepute that they are unable to dojustice to themselves or exercise theirgifts to good purpose because of theunsatisfactory influence of one or moresitters of an aggressively sceptical type,a curious parallel be it said in allreverence to the strange remark ofthe Evangelist that the miracles ofOur Lord were sometimes actuallyprevented by the disbelief of Hishearers.

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APOLLONIUSBut may the disbelieving sitters, insome instances, go further than a mere

hindrance of genuine phenomena andactually cause the production of trick-ery and fraud on the part of themedium ? Given a medium susceptibleto telepathic suggestion, and one ormore sitters suspecting or convinced inadvance that all they will witness atthe seance will be an exhibition oftrickery, it is easy to see that tele-pathic suggestion of fraud, consciousor unconscious, from the minds ofthese sceptics may result in trickerywhich is primarily due not to themedium but to themselves. This riskis obviously accentuated when themedium falls (as, for example, in MrsPiper's case) into a cataleptic conditionor some form of ordinary hypnosis.In any case it is confidently assertedby psychical researchers of capacity andexperience that the same medium maybe fraudulent at one moment andgenuine at another. Such a thesis is

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHdoubtless hard of acceptance to ordinarymen or women, however disposed theymay be to an unprejudiced considera-tion of psychic phenomena ; and it was,in fact, rejected by the original foundersof the Psychical Research Society, whodefinitely refused to include within thearea of their investigations the allegedphenomena of any medium once de-tected in the perpetration of fraud.Further experience, however, hasapparently modified this once inflexibleattitude, and at any rate a majorityof the Council of the S.P.R. are nowwilling to hold experimental seanceswith mediums against whom fraud hasbeen openly alleged or actually proved.The writer shares the view of thismajority, for, as far as he can judgefrom personal experience or the definitetestimony of others, a medium likeEusapia Palladino was, sometimes, in-dubitably guilty of patent and childishtrickery (which she would subsequentlyadmit quite shamelessly), and at other

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APOLLONIUStimes produced valid phenomena ofamazing interest under the strictesttest-conditions.We need not devote much time tothe deliberate fraud and trickery whichhave always been admittedly associatedwith certain manifestations of medium-ship and have frequently inspired suchdisgust and contempt in the minds ofwould-be investigators that they haveabandoned the quest altogether. Thosewho have persevered in spite of dis-couragement know what it is to findoneself in uncomfortable and ill-ventilated rooms, holding the hands ofunknown persons in the dark, torturedby the metallic music of a cheap gramo-phone, or compelled to join in dis-cordant renderings of revivalist hymnsor dreadful ditties like " Where isnow the prophet Daniel ? " And onerealizes all the time that the music ismeant to drown the noise caused by afraudulent medium in wrapping himselfin muslin or adjusting a false beard, and

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHfurther that one will have to pay aguinea for this wretched exhibition !What researcher, again, has not ex-perienced the boredom of public orprivate sittings for " delineations ",when a medium, after a few spasmodictwitchings, " passes under control "and proceeds to describe the appear-ance of the deceased relatives andfriends of the members of a credulousaudience, which will subsequently con-tribute to the " silver collection " ?Who, too, has not reflected withamazement upon the staggeringcredulity of men and women whoaccept the delineated " old gentlemanwith white hair

"or the

"old lady withgrey hair parted in the middle " as

unquestionably their late father ormother; or, in a materializing seance,believe that the same piece of buttermuslin waved in one direction is a lostgrandparent and waved in anotherdirection is a little child? Such weari-some and sordid experiences form the

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APOLLONIUSvia dolorosa of researchers, who areprepared to seek for gold even in themuddiest streams, and sometimes findit ; for, even if ninety-five per cent,of the alleged phenomena are explicableby trickery or deception, the remainingfive may defy all such explanations.The student of psychical research isconfronted at the outset by a consider-able volume of reasoned and unreasonedopposition. Persons who in otherdirections are entirely opposed to eachother's points of view combine for acommon assault : uncompromisingmaterialists and devout evangelicalChristians form a strange allianceagainst what they vaguely describeas " spiritualism ". An even morecurious dislike comes from large massesof our population who, without anydeep convictions or reasoned argumentsfor their

hostility,are irritated by amovement which appears to upset theeven tenour of their mental conserva-

tism. Even cultured people are not[30]


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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHproof against this prejudice : at manydinner tables any sustained reference tothe alleged phenomena of mediumshipwould be regarded as " bad form " andthoroughly objectionable. When thewriter entered the House of Commonshe was informed by the chairman ofhis Liberal Association that his member-ship of the Psychical Research Societywould "do him harm in the con-stituency ". This unintelligent aversionto spiritual novelties, which almostwrecked the Salvation Army in itsinfancy, secured the triumph of theDayton " fundamentalists ", and now,though happily with diminishing force,assails the study of clairvoyance ortelepathy, seems analogous to thatprimitive instinct which impels wildbirds to combine for the destruction ofan exotic parrot which has escapedfrom its cage.Even as regards the more seriousof his opponents, the apologist ofpsychical research is entitled to object


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APOLLONIUSat the start that comparatively few ofthese are adequately equipped for theirtask. It is lamentable that our hostilecritics have for the most part scarcelytaken the trouble to understand ourposition or furnish themselves withmore than a quite superficial knowledgeof the facts. What a sorry figure wouldbe cut by most of our lay and ecclesiasti-cal opponents were they set an examina-tion paper on the evidences accumu-lated by the Psychical Research Society,to go no further ! One of the bestknown opponents of the phenomena ofmediumship has admitted that he hasnever made any personal investigationof the claims of any prominent medium,British or foreign, and a brochure dis-tributed to his audience exhibits anamazing ignorance of the subject matteragainst which his platform diatribesare directed. There is another reasonfor popular hostility. Much of thefraud which admittedly exists is of apeculiarly heartless character, for its

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHexponents derive their resources largelyfrom bereaved men and women whofly to spiritualism for tidings of theirlost ones and for solace in their grief.The natural indignation felt againstsuch traffickers in human sorrow un-doubtedly predisposes many superficialcritics to assume in their haste that allpublic mediumship is fraudulent.Apart from the more or less un-

intelligent prejudices of the publicgenerally, the scientific investigation ofthe phenomena of mediumship ishampered by the professional an-tagonisms of the Church and the Law.The menace of legal proceedings, whilea terror to the fraudulent, is also adeterrent to the supply of genuinephenomena. Mediums are usuallypersons of a very sensitive and nervoustemperament, and the fact that at anymoment a Mrs Leonard is liable to thesame legal procedure and the sameconviction as the most insignificantfortune-teller is not conducive to the

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APOLLONIUSregular supply of those supernormalfacts which form the subject-matter ofscientific psychical research. Fromtime to time, and apparently by con-certed action, legal proceedings are seton foot by the authorities against publicmediums. The requisite evidence isfurnished by detectives or journalistswho have secured sittings with thedefendants, and the prosecution takesplace under an Act of George IV,directed against

"vagabonds

" and" fortune-tellers ". Our magistratesusually maintain on these occasionsthat the essential part of the legaloffence is the medium's claim to" foretell the future ", and this isapparently accentuated and aggravatedby the " intention to deceive " or theacceptance of money or reward. Duringan epidemic of legal medium-baiting in1917, men and women were sentencedto heavy fines, up to 50, or imprison-ment, because of their claims to foretellthe future. Yet a little reflection might

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHhave caused our magistrates to remem-ber that all the official representativesof organized religion are regularlyengaged in foretelling the future andare paid and quite rightly for theirservices in this respect. The so-called"sport

"of the race-course is as manyof us know to our cost built upon an

elaborate and extensive system ofprophecy for payment whether theforecasts are made in the columns ofthe most respectable newspapers or inthe circulars of professional tipsters.Nor, indeed, can one wholly dissociatethose manifold pledges which disfigureour political elections from the samesuspicion ; for these prophetic anticipa-tions are made in order to win votesand so secure the social and pecuniaryrewards which result from electoralsuccess.Some of the magistrates who triedand condemned these mediums dis-

played a pitiable ignorance of the wholesubject of psychic phenomena. Almost

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APOLLONIUSanybody indeed appears to be con-sidered competent to dogmatize abouttheological or psychic matters withoutany credentials in the shape of adequatestudy or experience. The followingextract from the well known " Brock-way

" case serves to illustrate themental equipment of a magistrate fora trial of this character :

" The Rev. G. H. St. John Mildmay statedthat he had had two sittings with the defendantand was amazed that she could tell him namesthat he had written in a paper which was thenfolded up and held in her hand ... he wasconvinced that she was perfectly genuine.Magistrate : You have, I suppose, seen con-

jurors taking cards out of people'shair and such things ? (Laughter).Witness : There was nothing resembling

that."A subsequent reference by one of thewitnesses to the possible influence of"lying spirits" was followed by thisedifying dialogue :Mr Barker (prosecuting Counsel) : I object tosuch ridiculous questions.Mr Wild (for the defence] asked the magistrateto rule whether such a question was ridiculous.

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHThe Magistrate (with emphasis) : I certainlythink it is ridiculous.Mr Wild then said with justice that it was

evidently waste of time to go on, and left theCourt."

The antagonism of the ChristianChurches, a damnosa hereditas from theunspeakable records of past centuries,is now a waning force, chiefly confinedto the ranks of what the late DeanRashdall rather roughly called

"theinferior clergy ". There are some

exceptions. The distinguished Deanof St Paul's, a devoted student of theobsolete fantasies of Neoplatonic phil-osophy, seems quite unable to dissociatethe serious study of psychic phenomenafrom the fraudulent banging of tam-bourines or the wearing of false wigs.He is ready to consider the unsupportedassertions of Plotinus, that that third-century mystic on one occasion enjoyedsome form of beatific vision in the" contemplation of the One " ; but onthe other hand the more recent and


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APOLLONIUSinfinitely better supported testimony ofa Lombroso, Crookes, or William Jamesas to the occurrence of a physical orclairvoyant phenomenon is contemptu-ously ignored. Now and again sincererepresentatives of medieval Christianitylike Lord Hugh Cecil are to be foundwho ban the seance-room because theyare convinced that clairvoyance is aform of necromancy and ' controls 'like Mrs Piper's " Phinuit " or MrsLeonard's " Feda" demoniacal agenciestotally unfit for Christian intercourse.The more general and more enlightenedattitude of at any rate the AnglicanChurch is embodied in the Report ofthe bishops at the Lambeth Conferenceof 1920 :

' ' We say without hesitation that we welcomescientific investigation : we recognise thepatience and the skill with which members ofthe Psychical Research Society examine themass of evidence of all kinds submitted to them,and above all the unmistakable desire to safe-

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHguard the inquiry against illusion or fraud, toarrive at truths, and to interpret scientific factscorrectly."

Yet side by side with this moderateand reasonable resolution we find thatthe Conference registered a very strongwarning against " the habit of recourseto seances and mediums ". Here againis revealed once more the ignorance ofmany well-meaning and able critics whopossess a merely superficial acquain-tance with the subject. How, forexample, can we study scientificallythe phenomena of clairvoyance withoutrecourse to clairvoyant mediums ? Suchan embargo would to go no furtherhave robbed us of the profoundlyinteresting records of Mrs Piper's trance-mediumship, or the striking resultscontained in Dr Osty's volumes. Onemight almost as well approve of thescientific study of anatomy and forbidrecourse to the dissecting-room.


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APOLLONIUSAt this point, and in view of theadmitted imperfections which mark the

course of our inquiry into supernormalphenomena the fraud and credulityand malobservation which so easilybeset our work the question mayfairly be asked : " Has psychicalresearch really any future ? "To such a query I have no hesitationin giving an emphatic " Yes ". Onemay go further and say that at noperiod since the subject was seriouslystudied have we had better reasons forsuch an answer. Within the last fewyears a veritable revolution has occurredin the general attitude of sciencetowards the phenomena of the universe.In the light of Einstein's discoveriesthe dogmatism of the materialist hasbecome obsolete. The old scientificoutlook has been undermined andsuperseded by scientists themselves.Atoms and electrons are no longerregarded as ultimate realities. Accord-ing to Professor Eddington, " there is

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHnothing to prevent the assemblage ofatoms forming the brain from beingitself a thinking machine in virtue ofthat nature which physics leaves un-determined and undeterminable." Notonly the

'

laws of Nature'

but spaceand time and the great globe itself mayconceivably be mental phenomena,themselves the creations of mind. Andso it has come to pass that such anutterance as Professor Clifford's :" The Universe is made of ether andatoms and there is no room for ghosts "remains only as a fragment of anoutworn scientific creed. The divisionof the external world into a materialworld and a spiritual world is now heldby scientists to be superficial. Noinherent impossibility rules out ofcourt the possible manifestations ofother minds than ours, functioningapart from our own brains and bodies." We may doubt ", says ProfessorEddington, " whether there is anybranch of knowledge from which exact


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APOLLONIUSscience is excluded " : there is " roomfor ghosts ", and room for other super-normal phenomena hitherto ignored ordenied by scientists in general. Thefact of telepathy indicates the existenceof other methods of mental communionoutside the recognized channels ofsense, and for that reason is rejecteda priori by some of the more conserva-tive representatives of science. " Sucha direct transmission of ideas from onemind to another ", writes Dr Jodl," without any perceptible physicalmethod of communication would in-dicate the presence of a crack in thevery foundations of all our views onnature, and, if proved, would lead usto a complete revision of fundamentalprinciples." Dr Henning declares that" psycho-physics, yes, even psychology,as a science, must be utterly wreckedbefore we have recourse to telepathy."How different in tone is the statementof one of the most acute among ouryounger thinkers, Professor Broad of

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHCambridge 1 , who not only toleratesthe existence of a spiritual world butpostulates the actual necessity of a' psychic factor ' in order to provide acoherent explanation of the universeand ourselves.Since the advent, then, of a newscientific revelation the field lies openfor further work and further advancesin psychical research. No longer deniedaccess to the precincts of orthodoxscience or received with a dubiouswelcome, the professed student ofsupernormal phenomena can claim andreceive a definite status as the represent-ative of an acknowledged branch ofscientific study. But in realizing this,he must realize too the responsibilitiesof a position so assured. Two objectsmust be permanently kept in viewthe accumulation of fresh facts, andthe exercise of rigid control andaccuracy in our experiments.

1 The Mind and its Place in Nature, 1925.


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APOLLONIUSIn the

discoveryof new material we

are, of course, faced by the irritatingand disappointing character of thephenomena with which we deal. Theyare often spasmodic, sporadic, irregular.They do not occur in any fixed sequencenor can they be predicted. Even whenour experiments yield obvious success,we are ignorant of what the conditionsof such success may be : no satisfactoryexperimental control of these waywardphenomena seems at present feasible.If they are reached through the channelsof mediumship, we are again exposedto the varying and uncertain influencesexercised by the physical or mentalcondition of the medium at the moment.It is quite clear that these ' sensitives 'are in almost all cases persons of adefinitely neurotic or hysterical tem-perament ; indeed, if we can everestablish the actual connection betweenthese pathological conditions and theproduction of supernormal phenomenawe shall have gone a long way in

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHunravelling the tangled skeins of psychi-cal research. The discovery andclassification of fresh psychic facts maymean the expenditure of long andtedious hours, but without the renewedexercise of " recherche lente, perseverante,obstinee " we cannot hope to convinceourselves or to speak with our enemiesin the gate. In this department ofresearch more than all others our factssoon become more or less obsolete, orat any rate lose their compelling force.No one now alludes to the carefulmechanical safeguards against frauddevised by Sir William Crooks in theeighties. Our generation has almostforgotten the convincing experimentsin telepathy carried out by the Sidg-wicks and Professor Barrett, and nolonger quotes the Stainton Mosesphenomena which Myers accepted. Thecall is for the production of fresh datacollected by our own contemporaries.Without therefore troubling ourselvesunduly for the time being with explana-


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APOLLONIUStions and theories about the facts,without intruding into the work thewill to believe or disbelieve, let usdevote ourselves to experiment andempirical facts. Surely among thethousand members of the Society forPsychical Research, to go no further,enough recruits could be found tosupplement adequately by their ownunselfish efforts the splendid work ofour own pioneers in Great Britain andAmerica.Further, in the process of accumulat-ing and systematizing our facts wemust accept as an axiom of un-questioned validity that natural andnormal causes must be eliminatedbefore we have recourse to the super-natural or supernormal. In otherwords, we must regard it as primafacie more probable that the medium isconsciously or unconsciously fraudulentor that the sitters are the victims ofcredulity or malobservation than thatmen and women possess a capacity for

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHacquiring knowledge or influencingmatter which transcends the recognizedfacts of ordinary experience. Ourcourse then as psychical researchersis clear. We must exercise such drasticand complete control over the wholecourse of our experiments as to renderdeception an unthinkable hypothesis.That such methods of control exist andcan be applied is indubitable : thatthey are occasionally absent fromseances conducted by scientific andeducated persons must equally beadmitted.Podmore revealed several defects in

the alleged safeguards against fraudaccepted in certain experiments withFlorence Cook and even D. D. Home ;and quotes a serious instance of care-less description in the record of thefamous experience of the London Dia-lectical Society with the latter medium :where the statement that "the room wasillumined by moonlight " is shewnfrom the calendar (as in the parallel

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APOLLONIUSof Sir John Moore's burial) to havebeen incorrect. In more recent timesthe conditions observed in Warsawand in Paris with the mediums Kluskiand Gujik have been sometimes un-satisfactory. Nor can any impartialcritic, in view of the surprisingly laxconditions which prevailed, necessarilyaccept the widely recorded successesof Professor Gilbert Murray in thought-transference as manifestations of any-thing abnormal or unusual. In thecase of any less distinguished per-former it would have been difficult toregard such experiments, in the ab-sence of any repetition of them undertest conditions, as worth the seriousconsideration of a scientific body.The collection of fresh facts is, to alarge extent, conditioned by the supplyof sensitives and by the provision ofadequate funds for such research. Apartfrom the existing opportunities pro-vided by University chairs of MentalScience, Mental Philosophy and the

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHlike, which have already contributedlargely to this study when held by menlike McDougall, James, Schiller, andBroad in Great Britain and America,private generosity will always ap-parently be ready to assist in somemeasure the experimental work ofpsychical research. The most seriousobstacle arises not from the absence ofmonetary assistance but from the factthat the feelings entertained towardsone another by the warring sects ofreligion are reflected in the rivalriesand disputes of the societies engaged inthe study of psychic phenomena. Thatregular supply of sensitives which isrequired for an adequate collection ofempirical facts is seriously hindered bythe violent animosities of leaders whofight over the bodies of well-knownmediums and sometimes tempt them,like football professionals, by thedangerous offer of a higher fee.*****

If we accept the view that psychical


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APOLLONIUSresearch holds ample promise of auseful future, we may next consider thevarious lines of our advance.Any serious study of psychical re-

search demands as its first essentiala knowledge of the results secured froma careful consideration of telepathicphenomena. Many researchers would,indeed, maintain that their investiga-tions need not extend beyond theselimits. They regard telepathy, oncescientifically established, as a workinghypothesis which will cover the wholefield of those abnormal phenomenawhich form our subject-matter. Fromthis point of view, apparitions, clairvoy-ance, crystal-visions, even the physicalphenomena of the seance-Toom theseand other abnormal happenings can beexplained by the exercise in one shapeor another of the transference of humanthought and volition outside theordinary channels of sense.Those who hold that thought-trans-ference is the solvent of all our


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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHperplexities in psychical research maypoint to the fact that down the centuriesone marvel after another appears tohave been directly attributable to thiscause. A useful monograph might bewritten on this fascinating theme. Togo no farther, it is easy to see how themiracles recorded in Biblical and ecclesi-astical literature, and the amazingrecords of witchcraft and sorcery, mayto a large extent be brought within thecompass of the telepathic solution.No serious attempts to investigatethe conditions or results of thought-transference appear to have been under-taken before the middle of last century.It was not indeed until 1876 that SirWilliam Barrett really initiated thecareful and scientific study of telepathicphenomena which has been continuedby the Society for Psychical Researchin England and on the Continent byBoirac, Osty, Tischner, and manyother distinguished savants. Theresults obtained have been, it is true,


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APOLLONIUSquestioned and criticized at every turnby certain scientists who deny thattelepathy is either proven or indeedpossible. Professor Jodl (quoted byTischner) goes so far as to say : " Sucha direct transmission of ideas from onemind to another, without any per-ceptible physical method of communica-tion, would indicate the presence of acrack in the very foundations of all ourviews on Nature." " Psycho-physics ",writes Dr Henning, " yes, even psycho-logy as a science must be utterlywrecked before we have recourse totelepathy." It is, however, useless toindulge in mere a priori refutations or,in the case of telepathic experiments,to concentrate on the failures and ignorethe successes It is of course impossiblewithin the very narrow space-limits ofthis little book to furnish any detailedreference to such experiments. Sufficeit to say that evidence varied, cumula-tive and irresistible now exists which hasestablished telepathy as a scientific fact.


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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHThe study of telepathic phenomenasuggests the interesting questionwhether telepathy is a psychic factor

of permanent and regular character orwhether it represents merely the dyingembers of a once more active force.Can the transference of human thoughtapart from physical media be developedand systematized on such a scale as tosuggest immense possibilities in thehuman relationships of the future ?Or will such development be inevitablyretarded by the fact that telepathy isa dying sense to be classed with variousobscure eccentricities of the humanbody which serve merely as vestigiallandmarks in the long history of therace ? Despite the alluring possibilitiesof the first suggestion, indicationscertainly exist which lend colour to thepathetic belief that research has onlydiscovered this force in the evening ofits existence.

This view of telepathy as a " rudi-mentary survival " seems to be


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APOLLONIUSstrengthened by the admitted fact thatmanifestations of telepathy are farmore certain and more striking whenthe percipient is under hypnotic sugges-tion ; for, if it be the subliminal selfwhich rises above the threshold inhypnotic slumber and obeys thesuggestion of the agent's mind, this isitself in all probability a manifestationof race-experience rather than that ofthe individual. The everyday self, theproduct of normal experience, is in-fluenced to a much slighter degree byhypnotic suggestion than that mysteri-ous entity, the secondary self, trailingits clouds of precarnate existence.

In the dim recesses of our race-history our pithecoid ancestors in de-fault of language may well havepossessed telepathic powers for thecommunication of their simple ideas,which powers have gradually beenrendered less necessary as languagedeveloped, and may ultimately, unlessstimulated and exercised, finally perish

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from atrophy. Such a theory would beillustrated by those stories which arefurnished by reliable travellers andmissionaries with reference to the amaz-ing transmission of news which at timesappears to take place amongst nativeraces of a low level of civilization undercircumstances which preclude anyopportunity for normal methods ofcommunication.

Nor, again, is it easy to avoid theconclusion that some form of telepathyexists among various forms of animallife. The " homing instinct " of thecat and the pigeon, and bewilderingfacts connected with the flight of birdsof passage, inexplicable from anyordinary laws of experience, may con-ceivably be examples of a form oftelepathy infinitely more regular andefficient than the fitful manifestationson the part of homo sapiens whichengage the attention of psychical re-searchers. It is not easy to find anyordinary explanation for the immediate

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APOLLONIUSrush of a scattered herd of cattle toany available shelter, when one oftheir number has been struck by thenoiseless warble-fly. Or when I watchthe curving flight of the beautiful ruffsand reeves round a Norwegian lakethe absolutely simultaneous rise, theinstantaneous wheel of the whole flockin the fraction of a second or, again,when I see hundreds of starlings risetogether and afterwards return to theirtrees in complete unison, I find itdifficult to regard these charmingincidents as due to normal or evenabnormal sight or hearing, and wonderwhether here again some rudimentarybut efficient form of telepathy may notbe at work.Can we go further, and suggest thatsome of the baffling phenomena of

heredity and instinct may ultimatelyfind their origin in the telepathictransference of thought ? We acceptthe word ' instinct ' as an adequateexplanation of the habits of sentient

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHcreatures, but it explains nothing.Every manifestation of instinct isobviously due to volition, howeverrudimentary is, in other words, amental as distinct (so far as suchdistinction goes) from a physicalphenomenon. It is difficult to tracean " instinctive " movement to materialspermatozoa or germ-cells. " The burntchild dreads the fire " as the result ofits own experience, but no experiencetaught the baby how to use its lips atits first meal, any more than it taughtthe chicken how to escape from theeggshell. The " collective experienceof the race ", the alleged source ofthese phenomena, may sooner or laterbe recognized as the telepathic trans-ference from the mind of the parentsof concepts derived from the previoustelepathy of successive generations.It may appear at first sight fantastic tosuggest that the mechanically exacthabits of a mother-wasp may be theresult of mental telepathy, but after

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APOLLONIUSall this seems a better vera causa thanthe wasp's-egg, a minute fraction ofmatter which can explain nothing inthe realms of thought or of volition.

Charcot's telepathic suggestion of ahot iron by the application of a woodenruler elicited a cry of agony, andproduced a blister filled with lymph onthe percipient's arm ; other experi-ments at the Salpetriere and elsewhereraised weals and other stigmata onhuman bodies. Can it be that thissame mysterious and powerful forcemay come to be accepted as at any ratea partial solution of the vexed questionof heredity ? A baby is born withmarked physical characteristics of itsfather or mother. During its prenatalexistence you have two main factors :the minds of the parents on the oneside, on the other the mind of theunborn child. The future of the littlebeing lying under her heart forms theconstant thought of the expectantmother. She thinks of it as reproducing

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHcertain characteristics of herself or ofthe husband she loves ; the husbandapplies his thoughts in the samedirection : and such concentratedsuggestion, consciously or unconsciouslyconveyed, may serve to shape thechild's body as well as its mind, inaccordance with the maternal orpaternal hopes and desires.Well established as it is in the simplerforms of direct communication betweenagent and percipient, telepathy issometimes called upon to explain thewhole series of phenomena which aregrouped under such heads as clairvoy-ance, psychometry, crystal-gazing,automatic writing, etc. The more orless public exhibitions of allegedclairvoyance which form the centralfeature of innumerable spiritualistservices in this and other countries donot, as a rule, furnish convincingindications of supernormal activity.I have never myself seen any public" trance-speaker " who, despite the


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APOLLONIUSconventional twitchings and contortionswhich herald the ingress of the RedIndian or other spirit-control, did notappear to be in complete possession ofhis or her normal consciousness. Butthe prolonged and careful investiga-tions of Mrs Piper's mediumship andthose more recently undertaken withcontinental clairvoyants by DrsTischner, Osty, and others, stand on avery different footing. In the face ofthe accumulated evidence furnishedby such research, those who rely ontelepathy as the universal solvent ofpsychic difficulties must often falterwhere they firmly stood. Leaving forthe moment all the concrete evidencederived from experiments with theBritish Mrs Leonard or continentalmediums like " Mrs van B.", orMademoiselle de Berly, the records ofthe Piper seances form a rich store ofevidential facts. Amid all the variousdeceptions and failures of the quaint" Dr Phinuit " or the more precise

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCH"George Pelham ", detailed andaccurate messages are found, some ofwhich appear inexplicable by any con-

ceivable exercise of telepathy betweenliving persons.Nor again can the agency of livingminds always furnish a satisfactoryexplanation in the rare but indubitablecases of prevision or precognition ex-hibited by clairvoyants. From whatsource come those precise statementsmade from time to time by trustworthymediums, under strict test-conditions,with respect to certain articles placedin their hands ? Clairvoyance of thistype, often called psychometry, mightalmost suggest the validity of Fech-ner's theory of "odylic" influences,which may appear less fantastic in anage when the dividing line betweenmatter and mind is becoming theoreti-cally obsolete. Moreover, to psycho-metry, once accepted as a scientificfact, an interesting corollary wouldattach ; for, if mere contact with a


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APOLLONIUSman's cravat can produce from themedium a detailed and accurate accountof the suicide of an unhappy prisonerwho had worn the cravat, masonry andwoodwork might in the same inscrut-able fashion be responsible for suggest-ing the auditory and visual phenomenaof a " haunted house ". Some well-attested cases exist in which alterationof structure in a house has beenfollowed by the cessation of the" hauntings ".

If telepathy from the living breaksdown when called upon to explain allthe facts of clairvoyance, there existsanother explanation which has receivedthe enthusiastic support of those in-vestigators who, while they rejecttransference between normal minds,point enthusiastically to the allegedefficiency of the " secondary " or" subliminal " self. Fascinating des-criptions are given of this " mysteriousMr Hyde which lurks in each of us ",this subconscious mind working in the

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHinner sanctum, as director and con-troller, while the normal work-a-dayself transacts the conventional businessof life in the open shop. The amazingperformances of a " calculating boy ",the sudden conversion of a Bunyan ora Paul, the supreme genius of a Shake-speare or a Handel, are alike referredto that comprehensive source of allthings supernormal, the secondaryself ! This subliminal self can, we areassured, furnish a sensitive with in-formation which otherwise could notpossibly be possessed by any otherliving person. It can not only explorethe dim recesses of past experience butforetell with accuracy the events of thefuture. Driven from the outer trenchesof telepathic defence, some modernprotagonists of psychical research find,as they think, an impregnable strong-hold in the limitless efficiency of thesubliminal self. The soi-disant GeorgePelham may convince his friends that heis what he claims to be, but he is onlv


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APOLLONIUSa manifestation of Mrs Piper's sub-conscious self in other words, GeorgePelham is Mrs Piper. If a mediumannounces in England the death inbattle of an officer hours before thebad news has even reached hisbattalion's base, this (if not a ' happyshot ') is merely a striking instance ofthose abnormal powers of cognitionpossessed by the medium's subliminalconsciousness.Can this hypothesis bear the heavy

strain put upon it ? After all thephrase " subliminal self ", " uncon-scious mind " call it what you willembodies nothing at all beyond ahypothesis. Nobody has yet demon-strated the existence of such a divisionof the mind attached to each livingpersonality, or denned its qualities orcapacities. There are indubitablycertain depths in the human mindwhich may be reached by the processesof psycho-analysis, but in these casesthere appears to be no compelling

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHreason for any bewildering thesis oftwo or more distinct minds attachedto the same human organism. Theremay be diversities of mental operation,but the same mind : the 0e


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APOLLONIUSor controlled mediums, table tiltings,planchette, ouija boards, etc., presenta bewildering congeries of good senseand stupidity, relevancy and irrelev-ancy, truth and falsehood, sobrietyand flippancy. Such communicationspossess two marked characteristics.They display intelligence, however lowthe level of that intelligence may sink ;and they invariably claim to proceedfrom the surviving minds of dead menand women, or at any rate from dis-carnate beings or " spirits ".

These messages fall into two classes ;in the first place, the most importantof them, those which offer evidentialmatter either spontaneously or incompliance with a sitter's request. Insuch dark and unaccustomed paths thethoughtful researcher must walk warilyand form his judgments dispassionately.Suffice it to say that persons of realability and calm judgment are to befound who are intellectually convinced


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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHthat in certain instances the agencieswhich have communicated with themthrough mediums are actually whatthey claim to be, the surviving person-alities of dead friends or relatives.I found it difficult during some sittingsunder an assumed name with Mrs Piperto resist the belief that I was beingaddressed by two lost friends, soamazing was the relevancy of a singlemessage in the one case, and the forceof accumulated details in the other.Of a communication through the samemedium given to his sister-in-law fortransmission to himself ProfessorWilliam James of Harvard writes asfollows :

" The point is that the message is anallusion to a matter known (so personalis it to ntyself) to no other individualin the world but me not possiblyeither to the medium or to my sister-in-law ; and an allusion so pertinentand intimate, and tender and helpful,


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APOLLONIUSearthly knowledge on anyone's part,that it quite astounds as well as deeplytouches me. If the subject of themessage had been conceivably in mysister-in-law's mind, it would havebeen an interesting but not infrequentcase of telepathy ; but as I say itcould not possibly have been, and sheonly transmits it to me after the factnot even understanding it."The second group of messages possess

little or no evidential value withregard to the personal survival ofindividuals, though they too alwaysclaim to proceed from " spirits " ofsome kind. Trivial, vulgar, and un-worthy as they often are, these com-munications cannot be ignored by thestudent of psychical research. Whenwe have eliminated trickery, collusionand self-deception from these ex-periments, there remains a residuumof communications more or less in-telligent which obviously do not proceedfrom the normal consciousness of either


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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHsitter or medium

;in most cases,indeed, there is no medium employed,

for the messages are spelt out throughmovements of a table or an instrumentof the planchette type.Many of these messages are of aperplexing character. Some show in-

dications of a rather colourless goodwill,others are freakish and deceptive witha flavour of feeble practical joking.Occasionally they are blasphemous orindecent. A very common feature isthe giving of addresses connected withthe sitter or with the former life ofthe alleged spirit-communicator. Fullnames of individuals, the names ofstreets and the numbers of houses arefreely given. Nevertheless, in nearlyevery instance it is found that the factsas given are partially or entirelyinaccurate. The whole procedure isbaffling and obscure. If on the onehand the false information is due tothe conscious action of any of the


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APOLLONIUSsitters, why does not the person inquestion take the trouble to providea more complete deception ? How easyit would be for such devotees oftrickery to equip themselves with astock-in-trade of really accurate namesand addresses from any list of obituarynotices contemporary or of older date.If these tiresome and misleading state-ments proceed from the subliminalconsciousness of the sitter or medium,it is obvious that this entity is unableto secure various simple items of currentinformation ; and in that case, again,what is the motive of such transparentdeception ?

Nor, indeed, if the subliminal con-sciousness be accepted as the source ofsuch perplexing messages, can we feelaltogether happy in the possessionof a secondary self or subconsciousmind which is admittedly guilty inmany instances of trickery, evasion,flippancy, deliberate and often cruel

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHdeception. Any clouds of glory thatsuch a self may have trailed behind itare at times sadly tarnished, nor is theconviction either agreeable or inspiringthat we harbour within us a forcecapable of preternatural knowledgeand amazing achievement and yetcharacterized at times by conductwhich the ordinary mind of any decentperson would utterly condemn ; forsuch a secondary self is frequentlyexhibited as " repressed, conative,infantile, unreasoning, predominantlysexual " and, one may add, sometimesfraudulent and usually non-moral. Somany difficulties, indeed, appear to beinvolved in connecting these messageswith any conscious activity that someinvestigators take refuge in the viewthat they consist only of the " stuffthat dreams are made of ", proceed-ing from the lumber-room of themind, and no more fraudulent orimmoral than the elusive vagaries


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APOLLONIUSand incongruities of some fantasticdream.One other source of the perplexing

messages under discussion remains forour consideration. There is, as wehave said, a feature common to themall : they invariably claim to proceedfrom disembodied personalities.

If the devotees of the ' subliminalself ' hypothesis persist in bringingthese agencies also within the broadcompass of the human mind, consciousor unconscious, it may, I suppose, beurged that the claim to discarnateexistence put forward by theseanimulae vagulae, blandulae, is adelusion which is built upon theaccumulated mental experience of thehuman race, always believing, or striv-ing to believe in a life beyond thegrave. From the dim recesses of ourracial history this pathetic protestagainst annihilation has, as it were,become a stereotyped portion of the

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHhuman mind, and so it comes to passthat while the normal self may rejecta personal survival, faint and fleetingechoes of the primaeval faith still risefrom the depths of the unconscious self.

If it really be the case, however, assuggested above, that no activity ofthe human mind, whether normal orsubliminal, can furnish an adequateexplanation of the communications inquestion, we are left to face the factsand ask ourselves whether, after all,the claim put forward by the agenciesinvolved may not be a valid one, viz.,that they are what they invariablyallege themselves to be, the productof discarnate intelligences. It is easyfor those unacquainted with theaccumulated phenomena of automaticwriting, the planchette and ouijaboards, and so on, to sneer at such aninterpretation of the facts. But sneershave often dogged the earlier footstepsof scientific enterprise, and in any case


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APOLLONIUSsneers or no sneers the scientific

researcher must, if he can, provide asolution of the phenomena which inthis department of his work are soabundant and so easily repeated, thatnothing else is needed beyond a carefulsifting of the material, and above all,a mind as free as possible from anyconscious bias towards either a normalor supernormal explanation. Once itis accepted that modern science doesnot necessarily preclude the existenceof intelligences independent of thoseassociated with the functions of thehuman brain, we may frankly admitthat the theory of spirit-agencies in thecase of these erratic messages does atleast fit the facts. The existence wouldseem to be suggested of those allegedunseen entities, sometimes described as'

elementals ', an order of low-gradespirits, able and apparently eager tocommunicate with us. The presence ofsuch beings around us has, in earlier

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHcenturies, been widely accepted by averitable consensus gentium ; and thegeneral characteristics of the com-munications in many a table-tilting orplanchette experiment would seem tocorrespond closely to those of thefairies, efrits, demons, gnomes, " littlefolk ", et hoc genus omne an inter-mixture of good humour and mischiefcoupled with a limited intelligence andthe almost complete absence of anymoral standard.

Before leaving the subject of tele-pathy, one more reference to this forceas the origin of psychic phenomenamust be briefly considered. The well-known " Census of hallucinations "conducted by the Society for PsychicalResearch revealed the fact that(a) 9.9 per cent, of the 17,000 personsquestioned declared that they had atone time or another seen an appari-tion, (b) that very few recognizablephantasms were seen after the lapse of


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APOLLONIUSone year from the day of death, (c) thatof the veridical cases the vast majoritycoincided more or less accurately withthe moment of death. Modern researchhas also revealed a fact never beforeestablished, that phantasms of theliving are far more frequent and gener-ally far better attested than those of thedead. In summary, it may be claimedthat men and women with sound mindsin sound bodies do occasionally seephantasms of both living and deadpersons under circumstances whichentirely preclude malobservation ordeception. No fact could, indeed, bebetter established than that ghosts areseen now as they have been seen alldown the ages. What, however, is newin respect to this interesting phenome-non is the modern explanation that aghost is a subjective impression con-veyed to the mind of A by a consciousor unconscious suggestion from themind of B. Deeply interesting as are


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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHthe well-established and comparativelynumerous telepathic images conveyedfrom the living to the living, these donot lead us outside the range of ordinarytelepathic activity :

" There needs no ghost, my lord, comefrom the graveTo shew us this."But what are we to say to similarphantasms when the person theyrepresent has passed through thegates of Death ? With the special signi-ficance of these cases we shall deallater.

It seems clear, then, that the studentof psychic phenomena will find manypromising lines of research in theample field covered by telepathy,clairvoyance, and the varied activitiesof motor automatism. Fresh factsmust be accumulated and sifted, freshefforts made to co-ordinate such factsand discover the laws through which


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APOLLONIUSthey work. Nevertheless, there re-mains another area of supernormalactivities which cannot be neglected

the physical phenomena alleged tooccur from time to time, almost in-variably in the presence and apparentlythrough the mediumship of certainindividuals. In this obscure region,however, the opportunities for fraudhave been so great, the detection oftrickery so frequent, and the generalcharacter of the mediums often soindifferent, that, even with the ex-periences of a quarter of a centurybehind them, many careful and ableresearchers find it difficult to giveany definite opinion either for oragainst the existence of such startlingphenomena as " materialization "," ectoplastic " extrusions from thebody, or the movement of materialobjects without physical contact(telekinesis). The only excuse foroffering my own personal views is the


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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHfact that I have over a long period ofyears had sittings with some of theworld's best known ' physical ' mediumsincluding Mrs Corner (nee FlorenceCook), Eusapia Palladino, Eva C.(Marthe Beraud) and Willi Schneider,and a considerable number of less knownsensitives, and I am unable to endorsethe opinion recently suggested by abody of able and experienced Germaninvestigators, Drs Gulat-Wellenburgand Rosenbusch and Graf v. Klinckow-stroen, that no scientific evidence existsfor the occurrence of physical phenom-ena. On one occasion I have witnessedthe production of a complete, visibleand tangible figure which certainly wasnot the medium herself : that it wasa confederate the only other normalpossibility was ruled out by elaborateand convincing precautions. Despitethe open readiness of Eusapia Palladinoto cheat when left without control,many of the positive results secured'


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APOLLONIUSthrough the mediumship of this Nea-politan peasant-woman under test-con-ditions appear to defy any normalexplanation. The sceptic has still toexplain how after a searching examina-tion, medical and otherwise, Eva C.under stringent conditions of controland observation was able to exude fromher body solid and fluid masses of so-called ectoplasm, the existence of whichwas duly recorded by photography.No reliable evidence exists to disprovethe claim made on behalf of D. D.Home, that he was never detected inany kind of mediumistic fraud, andmuch of the evidence resulting from thepersonal experiences of cultured andeducated persons with this medium isstaggering in its completeness. " Onthat very hearthrug where you arestanding ", said the late Sir WilliamCrooks, F.R.S., to me, " I saw Homeraised eighteen inches from the groundin broad daylight and verified the

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHphenomenon visu et tactu ". "I donot say ", remarked this same greatscientist on another occasion, " thatthese things are possible I only saythey happened."

Telekinesis (the movement of materialobjects without personal contact) in fulllight has been attested by men ofunimpeachable honesty and acknow-ledged ability like Professors WilliamJames, Lombroso, Schiaparelli, andRichet . Mr Dingwall quotes two axiomsof the professional conjurer Nevertell your audience beforehand what youare going to do, and Never perform thesame trick twice on the same evening.But Mdlle Tomczyk of Warsaw re-peated the same form of telekinesismore or less continuously for sixyears. Is it conceivable that through-out that period various groupsof educated and experienced investi-gators should have utterly failed todetect the use, say, of threads or


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APOLLONIUSfilaments however fine ? It is childishand unscientific to ignore soundtestimony and regard every accountwhich comes to hand of supernormalphysical phenomena as little elsethan the tale of an idiot signifyingnothing.

There is indeed ample work in thisdark and dubious region for those whohave time, patience, and opportunityfor the investigation of the rare casesof well attested physical mediumship.In view, however, of the more im-mediate results of real value which maybe secured from a study of the sub-jective phenomena of psychical researchit is obvious that, unless a physicalmedium is willing sooner or later tosubmit himself frankly and honestlyto every reasonable test proposed bythe best scientific minds, it is com-paratively useless for a researcher tospend his limited time in inconclusive

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHsittings for the alleged marvels oftelekinesis or materialization.

We have sketched the main linesupon which the psychic student ofto-day is working, and the questionwhich remains is simply Cui bono ?What is the practical, or even thetheoretical value of our research ?Several adequate replies may, I think,be given.The results secured by psychic re-search in Great Britain and variousother countries possess, first of all, areal historical value. The attestedphenomena of telepathy, clairvoyance,and physical mediumship throw aclear light upon many dark corners ofthe past.The Sibylline and other oraclesuttered by the entranced priestesses of

of old, and many of the features of[83]


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APOLLONIUSmedieval magic, have their unmistak-able counterparts in the experiences ofmodern mediumship. The appallingrecords of the most devilish machineryever devised for the torture of mankind,the witchcraft persecutions (not of theDark Ages but of the Renaissance),possess an added horror when onerealizes that the offences allegedagainst the nine million persons burntto death in two centuries were to alarge extent the outcome of psychicforces and conditions whose characterwas totally unknown to either thevictims or their tormentors.The sacred books of Christianity andother religions speak of visible and

audible phenomena of supernormalcharacter which have their obviousanalogues in the psychic experiences ofour own days. The messages revealedin the shining Urim and Thummim,the quaint telepathy of Jacob's sheep-farming, the phantasm and the voice

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHat Endor these things appear nolonger as the isolated happenings ofa remote and dissimilar past or ofa special dispensation. In the pagesof the New Testament, too, the heal-ing touch for the sick, the rescueof the possessed, the experiences ofthe first Eastertide on the way toEmmaus or on the Galilean beach,the testimony of the " five hundredbrethren at once ", the sudden con-version on the Damascus road suchrecords are indeed " worthier of allmen to be believed " because they areno longer relegated to a far-off " ageof miracles " but are repeated and ex-emplified in the phenomena of modernresearch.

Apart, however, from the questionof historical interest, is it too muchto hope that we may sooner or latersucceed in controlling and utilizing toa vastly greater degree than at presentthose new forces which our researches


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APOLLONIUShave brought to light ? Mr H. G. Wells,in a prophetic page of When the SleeperAwakes pictures a Harley Street of thefuture occupied by the consulting-rooms of telepathic specialists, andthere can be little doubt that thevaluable work even now accomplishedin cases of nervous derangements andmental pathology by suggestion, hyp-notic or otherwise, is capable of stillfurther expansion as fuller informa-tion accumulates and earlier prejudicessubside.The employment of suggestion in the

education of the young is a field atpresent almost unexplored, althoughsuggestion is so obvious a factor in the" endless imitation " of childhood. Theincreased application of psycho-analytic methods may in the future notonly relieve to an infinitely greaterextent the maladies and distresses ofthe ordinary individual, but revolu-tionize our attitude towards the


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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHcriminal. Just as the treatment ofhysteria has already advanced farbeyond the beatings and cold douchesof our grandparents' days, so do ourmethods of handling the criminabecome ever more curative thanpenal ; nor is it probable that fiftyyears hence civilized nations will stillregard the rope or the electric chairas the only possible fate even for themurderer.In another direction psychical re-search may stretch out a helping handto reinvigorate the failing forces ofreligion. The structure of organizedChristianity to-day exhibits all thesigns of gradual but inevitable decay.Even of those who may be willing torender lip-service to the formulae oforthodoxy few ever enter a church orchapel. The forces of Christianityappear to exercise little control overdomestic politics, and none at all overthe international conduct of the nations,


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APOLLONIUSwhich so often displays a completecontempt for the precepts of eitherreligion or morality. While theorganized religion of Christ has stilla message for the individual and canstill guide His faithful followers in lifeand cheer them in the hour of death,the despairing cry of the Saxonchronicler might well be uttered overthe masses of " Christian " mankindto-day : " Christ and His saints sleep."Faced with such hard facts, thoughtfulmen are beginning to realize that somereconsideration and restatement of theChristian position is inevitable. Insuch enterprise valuable data would beprovided by the results of scientificpsychical research. One of our bestknown psychologists has indeed goneso far as to declare that no other powerthan psychic research can hope toarrest the advancing forces of material-ism. The acceptance of the fact that

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PSYCHICAL RESEARCHcommunications and influences canreach us which are manifestly not theproduct of human minds nor conveyedthrough the ordinary channels of sensewould stultify any a priori denial of thepossibility of that

"spiritual com-munion " which is an essential feature

of religion.In the second place, psychical research

is, in the view of many, already ableto endow with a measure of precisionand certainty those vague and tremu-lous promises of a future life which areoffered by the Churches. Owing to therapid decay of religious forces in thewestern world this vital doctrine of apersonal survival has for the vastmajority even of so-called Christianslost any real significance. In answerto the query " Do you desire a futurelife whatever the conditions may be ? "which appeared in a questionnairecirculated by the American Branch of


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APOLLONIUSthe S.P.R. in 1900, the ' noes ' num-bered no less than 78 per cent, of thetotal replies received (3321) manytaking the form of " not at all "," not in the least ", " never think aboutit ". And although the results of aninvestigation within such narrow limitscannot be regarded as decisive, it isprobable that the note of scepticism orindifference which runs through themajority of the replies reflects to alarge extent the attitude towards a per-sonal survival adopted by the averageman or woman of the present day.

Against the advancing tide of un-belief or indifference the modernpresentation of religion seems wellnighhelpless. Nevertheless, if this spirit ofblank negation or complete indifferencecontinue

bennet, ernest - apollonius; or, the present and future of psychical research (19--_)

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