The science of life : fully illustrated in tone and line and including many diagrams

BORDERLAND SCIENCE

powerful and devious than is currently admitted. There may be a capacity for self-deception and collective hallucination greater than we have supposed.

To turn from the tangled “ phenomena ” of the séance as delusive is to turn to psychological speculations. Yet it is a lesser improbability to suppose that a charming lady, an eminent entomologist, some highly respectable Bostonians and a few privileged visitors have been mistaken in their impressions or inaccurate and imperfect in their accounts of what happened on certain obscure and secluded occasions, than that all the rest of our general ideas about life are wrong. These Margery thumbmarks and so forth remain, more or less, very curious material for inquiry even when we decline the spiritualist hypothesis. As Geley implies, the observer is part of the phenomena under observation. extend to this proposition, that the circle of observation includes all the reality of the affair.

It is well for us to recall that a century ago, a controversy very like that which now rages over metapsychics and spiritualism was raging over what was then called Mesmerism or Animal Magnetism. To-day we know that the phenomena of mesmerism were compounded from three sources. Some, the majority perhaps, were fraud and charlatanism ; others were the result of exaggeration, self-deception, or misinterpretation; but there remained a residuum of facts which we now call the facts of Hypnotism. Under competent and critical investigation these were elucidated. And the study of hypnotism has now become an important aid to our modern deeper knowledge of the human mind. The metapsychic controversy may follow a similar course. Such bodies as the British and American Societies of Psychic Research will go on with their work, avoiding as far as possible the sensation-seeker and mercenary impostor on the one hand and the implacable sceptic on the other. It was Sir Oliver Lodge on one occasion who said to one of the present trinity of authors, ‘‘ Save me from my friends,” and the restraint of the credulous enthusiast is among the most necessary conditions for progress in this field.

So by degrees the grain, whatever grain there may be in this matter, will be sifted from the mass of chaff; recriminations will be forgotten ; and science may add a new source of controllable power to the service of mankind. Even if we find the “ other-

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world” phenomena dwindle to nothing, we may learn very much that is now scarcely suspected about joint and collective suggestibility and joint and collective hallucination. We may come to realize that our perceptions depend less upon the immediate fact before us and more upon the prepared matter in our minds than we are at present disposed to admit. We may find our memories less rigid than we imagine them to be. Events may often be less exterior to ourselves than we suppose.

“Impossible” is a word scientific men should never use. ‘‘ Highly improbable ” is as far as they are ever justified in going. We do not hesitate to find Walter “ highly improbable.” But, as Richet reminds us in his Thirty Years of Psychical Research, such a great scientific man as Bouillaud declared the telephone was ventriloquism and the still greater Lavoisier said conclusively that stones cannot fall from the sky because there are no stones in the sky.

§ 5 Mythology of the Future Life

Beyond the world of “ occult ’? phenomena that claim recognition as material for scientific inquiry, there is now a vast, abundant literature of loosely authenticated “ revelations * about the future life, beyond the scope of any exact treatment whatever. Remarkable and moving accounts of how it feels to “ pass over”? and the agreeable or disagreeable opening phases of the new state abound, and every month adds to their multitude and variety. A mawkish prettiness and unattractive poetry adorn many of these effusions.

Their disagreement is stupendous; apparently there is not so much one future life as a thousand thousand, varying in quality with the imagination and mental texture and equipment of the seer. These stories do not really support each other ; they smash each other to pieces. A point upon which none of them insist, but which is very manifest in most of them, is the very much lower intellectual level at which the departed spirits are living in comparison with normal worldly intelligence. And none of these revelations seem to be in precise accordance with that posthumous separation of the sheep and goats, which was formerly, at any rate, the teaching of the Christian churches. ‘This new necromancy is a cult as far removed from orthodoxy as from unbelief. We do not wish to dogmatize about this literature ; we owe it to our readers

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