theStech/trainer_dataset · Datasets at Fast360

source stringclasses 3 values	answer stringlengths 0 156k	extra dict
book	the unclassified residuum.” Round about the accredited and orderly facts of every science there ever floats a sort of dust -cloud of exceptional observations, of occurrences minute and	null
book	irregular and seldom met with, which it always proves more easy to ignore than to attend to. The id eal of every science is that of a closed and completed system of truth. The charm of	null
book	most sciences to their more passive disciples consists in their appearing, in fact, to wear just this ideal form. Each one of our various ologies seems to offer a definite head of	null
book	classification for every possible phenomenon of the sort which it professes to cover; and so far from free is most men ’s fancy, that, when a consistent and organized scheme of this sort	null
book	has once been comprehended and assimilated, a different scheme is unimaginable. No alternative, whether to whole or parts, can any longer be conceived as possible. Phenomena unclassifiable within the system are therefore paradoxical absurdities, and must be held	null
book	untrue. When, moreover, as so often happens, the reports of them are vague and indirect; when they come as mere marvels and oddities rather than as things of serious moment,—one neglects or denies them with the best of scientific consciences. Only the born geniuses let themselves be worried and fascinated by these outstanding exceptions, and get no peace till they are brought within the fold. Your Galileos, Galvanis, Fresnels, Purkinjes, and Darwins are always getting confounded and troubled by insignificant things. Any one will renovate his science who will steadily look after the irregular phenomena. And when the science is renewed, its new formulas often have more of the voice of the exceptions in them than of what were supposed to be the rules.	null
book	No part of the unclassified residuum has usually been treated with a more contemptuous scientific disregard than the mass of phenomena generally called mystical . Physiology will	null
book	have nothing to do with them. Orthodox psychology turns its back upon them. Medicine sweeps them out; or, at most, when in an anecdotal vein, records a few of them as ‘ effects of	null
book	the imagination, ’—a phrase of mere dismissal, whose meaning, in this connection, it is	null
book	impossible to make precise. All the while, however, the phenomena are there, lying broadcast over the surface of history. No matter where you open its pages, you find things recorded	null
book	under the name of divinations, inspirations, demoniacal possessions, apparitions, trances,	null
book	ecstasies, miraculous healings and productions of disease, and occult powers possessed by peculiar individuals over persons and things in their neighborhood. We suppose that ‘mediumship ’ originated in Rochester, N. Y., and animal magnetism with Mesmer; but once	null
book	look behind the pages of official history, in personal memoirs, legal documents, and popular narratives and books of anecdote, and you will find that there never was a time when the se	null
book	things were not reported just as abundantly as now. We college-bred gentry, who follow the stream of cosmopolitan culture exclusively, not infrequently stumble upon some old-established journal, or some voluminous native author, whose names are never he ard of	null
book	in our circle, but who number their readers by the quarter- million. It always gives us a little	null
book	shock to find this mass of human beings not only living and ignoring us and all our gods, but actually reading and writing and cogitating without ever a thought of our canons and authorities. Well, a public no less large keeps and transmits from generation to generation the traditions and practices of the occult; but academic science cares as little for its beliefs and	null
book	130	null
book	opinions as you, gentle reader, care for those of the readers of the Waverley and the Fireside	null
book	Companion. To no one type of mind is it given to discern the totality of truth. Something escapes the best of us, —not accidentally, but systematically, and because we have a twist.	null
book	The scientific -academic mind and the feminine-mystical mind shy from each other’ s facts,	null
book	just as they fly from each other’s temper and spirit. Facts are there only for those who have a mental affinity with them. When once they are indisputably ascertained and admitted, the academic and critical minds are by far the best fitted ones to interpret and discuss them, —for	null
book	surely to pass from mystical to scientific speculations is like passing from lunacy to sanity; but on the other hand if there is anything which human history demonstrates, it is the extreme slowness with which the ordinary academic and critical mind acknowledges facts to exist which present themselves as wild facts, with no stall or pigeon-hole, or as facts which threaten to break u p the accepted system. In psychology, physiology, and medicine, wherever	null
book	a debate between the mystics and the scientifics has been once for all decided, it is the mystics who have usually proved to be right about the facts , while the scientifics had the	null
book	better of it in respect to the theories. The most recent and flagrant example of this is ‘ animal	null
book	magnetism, ’ whose facts were stoutly dismissed as a pack of lies by academic medical	null
book	science the world over, until the non-mystical theory of ‘hypnotic suggestion’ was found for them, —when they were admitted to be so excessively and dangerously common that special	null
book	penal laws, forsooth, must be passed to keep all persons unequipped with medical diplomas from taking part in their production. Just so stigmatizations, invulnerabilities, instantaneous cures, inspired discourses, and demoniacal possessions, the records of which were shelved in our libraries but yesterday in the alcove headed ‘superstitions,’ now, under the brand- new	null
book	title of ‘ cases of hystero -epilepsy,’ are republished, reobserved, and reported with an even too	null
book	credulous avidity.	null
book	Repugnant as the mystical style of philosophizing maybe (especially when self-complacent),	null
book	there is no sort of doubt that it goes with a gift for meeting with certain kinds of phenomenal experience. The writer of these pages has been forced in the past few years to this admission;	null
book	and he now believes that he who will pay attention to facts of the sort dear to mystics, while reflecting upon them in academic-scientific ways, will be in the best possible position to help philosophy. It is a circumstance of good augury that certain scientifically trained minds in all countries seem drifting to the same conclusion. The Socie ty for Psychical Research has been	null
book	one means of bringing science and the occult together in England and America; and believing that this Society fulfils a function which, though limited, is destined to be not unimportant in the organization of human knowledge, I am glad to give a brief account of it to the uninstructed reader.	null
book	According to the newspaper and drawing-room myth, soft-headedness and idiotic credulity are the bond of sympathy in this Society, and general wonder-sickness its dynamic principle. A glance at the membership fails, however, to corroborate this view. The president is Prof. Henry Sidgwick,	null
book	53 known by his other deeds as the most incorrigibly and exasperatingly	null
book	critical and sceptical mind in England. The hard-headed Arthur Balfour is one vice-president, and the hard-headed Prof. J. P. Langley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, is anothe r.	null
book	Such men as Professor Lodge, the eminent English physicist, and Professor Richet, the eminent French physiologist, are among the most active contributors to the Society’ s	null
book	Proceedings; and through the catalogue of membership are sprinkled names honored throughout the world for their scientific capacity. In fact, were I asked to point to a scientific journal where hard-headedness and never-sleeping suspicion of sources of error might be seen in their full bloom, I think I should have to fall back on the Proceedings of the Society	null
book	53 Written in 1891. Since then, Mr. Balfour, the present writer, and Professor William Crookes have held the	null
book	presidential office.	null
book	131	null
book	for Psychical Research. The common run of papers, say on physiological subjects, which one	null
book	finds in other professional organs, are apt to show a far lower level of critical consciousness. Indeed, the rigorous canons of evidence applied a few years ago to t estimony in the case of	null
book	certain ‘mediums’ led to the secession from the Society of a number of spiritualists. Messrs. Stainton Moses and A. R. Wallace, among others, thought that no experiences based on mere eyesight could ever have a chance to be admitted as true, if such an impossibly exacting standard of proof were insisted on in every case.	null
book	The S. P. R., as I shall call it for convenience, was founded in 1882 by a number of	null
book	gentlemen, foremost among whom seem to have been Professors Sidgwick, W. F. Barrett, and Balfour Stewart, and Messrs. R. H. Hutton, Hensleigh Wedgwood, Edmund Gurney, and F. W. H. Myers. Their purpose was twofold,— first, to carry on systematic experimentation	null
book	with hypnotic subjects, mediums, clairvoyants, and others; and, secondly, to collect evidence concerning apparitions, haunted houses, and similar phenomena which are incidentally reported, but which, from their fugitive character, admit of no deliberate control. Professor Sidgwick, in his introductory address, insisted that the divided state of public opinion on all these matters was a scandal to science, —absolute disdain on à priori grounds characterizing	null
book	what may be called professional opinion, while indiscriminate credulity was too often found among those who pretended to have a first-hand acquaintance with the facts.	null
book	As a sort of weather bureau for accumulating reports of such meteoric phenomena as	null
book	apparitions, the S. P. R. has done an immense amount of work. As an experimenting body, it cannot be said to have completely fulfilled the hopes of its founders. The reasons for this lie in two circumstances: first, th e clairvoyant and other subjects who will allow themselves to	null
book	be experimented upon are few and far between; and, secondly, work with them takes an immense amount of time, and has had to be carried on at odd intervals by members engaged in other pursuits. The Society has not yet been rich enough to control the undivided services of skilled experimenters in this difficult field. The loss of the lamented Edmund Gurney, who more than any one else had leisure to devote, has been so far irreparable. But were there no experimental work at all, and were the S. P. R. nothing but a weather-bureau for catching sporadic apparitions, etc., in their freshness, I am disposed to think its function indispensable in the scientific organism. If any one of my readers, spurred by the thought that so much smoke must needs betoken fire, has ever looked into the existing literature of the supernatural for proof, he will know what I mean. This literature is enormous, but it is practically worthless for evidential purposes. Facts enough are cited, indeed; but the records of them are so fallible and imperfect that at most they lead to the opinion that it may be well to keep a window open upon that quarter in one’s mind.	null
book	In the S. P. R.’s Proceedings, on the contrary, a different law prevails. Quality, and not mere	null
book	quantity, is what has been mainly kept in mind. The witnesses, where possible, have in every reported case been cross -examined personally, the collateral facts have been looked up, and	null
book	the story appears with its precise coefficient of evidential worth stamped on it, so that all may know just what its weight as proof may be. Outside of these Proceedings, I know of no systematic attempt to weigh the evidence for the supernatural. This makes the value of the	null
book	volumes already published unique; and I firmly believe that as the years go on and the ground covered grows still wider, the Proceedings will more and more tend to supersede all other sources of information concerning phenomena traditionally deemed occult. Collections of this sort are usually best appreciated by the rising generation. The young anthropologists and psychologists who will soon have full occupancy of the stage will feel how great a scientific scandal it has been to leave a great mass of human experience to take its chances between vague tradition and credulity on the one hand and dogmatic denial at long range on the other, with no body of persons extant who are willing and competent to study the matter with both	null
book	132	null
book	patience and rigor. If the Society lives long enough for the public to become familiar with its	null
book	presence, so that any apparition, or house or person infested with unaccountable noises or disturbances of material objects, will as a matter of course be repor ted to its officers, we shall	null
book	doubtless end by having a mass of facts concrete enough to theorize upon. Its sustainers, therefore, should accustom themselves to the idea that its first duty is simply to exist from year to year and perform this recording function well, though no conclusive results of any sort emerge at first. All our learned societies have begun in some such modest way.	null
book	But one cannot by mere outward organization make much progress in matters scientific.	null
book	Societies can back men of genius, but can never take their place. The contrast between the	null
book	parent Society and the American Branch illustrates this. In England, a little group of men with enthusiasm and genius for the work supplied the nucleus; in this country, Mr. Hodgson had to be imported from Europe before any tangible progress was made. What perhaps more than anything else has held the Society together in England is Professor Sidgwick’ s	null
book	extraordinary gift of inspiring confidence in diverse sorts of people. Such tenacity of interest in the result and such absolute impartiality in discussing the evidence are not once in a century found in an individual. His obstinate belief that there is something yet to be brought to light communicates patience to the discouraged; his constitutional inability to draw any precipitate conclusion reassures those who are afraid of being dupes. Mrs. Sidgwick—a sister, by the way, of the great Arthur Balfour—is a worthy ally of her husband in this matter,	null
book	showing a similarly rare power of holding her judgment in suspense, and a keenness of observation and capacity for experimenting with human subjects which are rare in either sex.	null
book	The worker of the Society, as originally constituted, was Edmund Gurney. Gurney was a man	null
book	of the rarest sympathies and gifts. Although, like Carlyle, he used to groan under the burden	null
book	of his labors, he yet exhibited a colossal power of dispatching business and getting through drudgery of the most repulsive kind. His two thick volumes on ‘Phantasms of the Living,’ collected and published in three years, are a proof of this. Besides this, he had exquisite artistic instincts, and his massive volume on ‘The Power of Sound’ was, when it appeared, the most important work on aesthetics in the English language. He had also the tenderest heart and a mind of rare metaphysical power, as his volumes of essays, ‘ Tertium Quid, ’ will	null
book	prove to any reader. Mr. Frederic Myers, already well known as one of the most brilliant of English essayists, is the ingenium praefervidum of the S. P. R. Of the value of Mr. Myers’ s	null
book	theoretic writings I will say a word later. Dr. Hodgson, the American secretary, is distinguished by a balance of mind almost as rare in its way as Sidgwick’ s. He is persuaded	null
book	of the reality of many of the phenomena called spiritualistic, but he also has uncommon keenness in detecting error; and it is impossible to say in advance whether it will give him more satisfaction to confirm or to smash a given case offered to his examination.	null
book	It is now time to cast a brief look upon the actual contents of these Proceedings. The first two	null
book	years were largely taken up with experiments in thought- transference. The earliest lot of these	null
book	were made with the daughters of a clergyman named Creery, and convinced Messrs. Balfour Stewart, Barrett, Myers, and Gurney that the girls had an inexplicable power of guessing names and objects thought of by other persons. Two years later, Mrs. Sidgwick and Mr. Gurney, recommencing experiments with the same girls, de tected them signalling to each	null
book	other. It is true that for the most part the conditions of the earlier series had excluded signalling, and it is also possible that the cheating may have grafted itself on what was originally a genuine phenomenon. Yet Gurney was wise in abandoning the entire series to the scepticism of the reader. Many critics of the S. P. R. seem out of all its labors to have heard only of this case. But there are experiments recorded with upwards of thirty other subjects. Three were experimented upon at great length during the first two years: one was Mr. G. A.	null
book	133	null
book	Smith; the other two were young ladies in Liverpool in the employment of Mr. Malcolm	null
book	Guthrie.	null
book	It is the opinion of all who took part in these latter experiments that sources of conscious and	null
book	unconscious deception were sufficiently excluded, and that the large percentage of correct reproductions by the subjects of words, diagrams, and sensations occupying other persons’ consciousness were entirely inexplicable as results of chance. The witnesses of these performances were in fact all so satisfied of the genuineness of the phenomena, that ‘telepathy ’ has figured freely in the papers of the Proceedings and in Gurney’s book on	null
book	Phantasms as a vera causa on which additional hypotheses might be built. No mere reader	null
book	can be blamed, however, if he demand, for so revolutionary a belief, a more overwhelming bulk of testimony than has yet been supplied. Any day, of course, may bring in fresh experiments in succ essful picture -guessing. But meanwhile, and lacking that, we can only	null
book	point out that the present data are strengthened in the flank, so to speak, by all observations that tend to corroborate the possibility of other kindred phenomena, such as telepathic impression, clairvoyance, or what is called ‘ test-mediumship.’ The wider genus will naturally	null
book	cover the narrower species with its credit.	null
book	Gurney’s papers on hypnotism must be mentioned next. Some of them are less concerned with establishing new facts than with analyzing old ones. But omitting these, we find that in the line of pure observation Gurney claims to have ascertained in more than one subject the following phenomenon: The subject’s hands are thrust through a blanket, which screens the operator from his eyes, and his mind is absorbed in conversation with a third person. The operator meanwhile points with his finger to one of the fingers of the subject, which finger alone responds to this silent selection by becoming stiff or anaesthetic, as the case may be. The interpretation is difficult, but the phenomenon, which I have myself witnessed, seems authentic.	null
book	Another observation made by Gurney seems to prove the possibility of the subject’s mind being directly influenced by the operator’s. The hypnotized subject responds, or fails to respond, to questions asked by a third party according to the operator’ s silent permission or	null
book	refusal. Of course, in these experiments all obvious sources of deception were excluded. But Gurney’s most important contribution to our knowledge of hypnotism was his series of experiments on the automatic writing of subjects who had received post-hypnotic suggestions. For example, a subject during trance is told that he will poke the fire in six minute s after waking. On being waked he has no memory of the order, but while he is	null
book	engaged in conversation his hand is placed on a planchette , which immediately writes the	null
book	sentence, “P., you will poke the fire in six minutes.” Experiments like this, which were	null
book	repeated in great variety, seem to prove that below the upper consciousness the hypnotic consciousness persists, engrossed with the suggestion and able to express itself through the involuntarily moving hand.	null
book	Gurney shares, therefore, with Janet and Binet, the credit of demonstrating the simultaneous	null
book	existence of two different strata of consciousness, ignorant of each other, in the same person. The ‘ extra-consciousness,’ as one may call it, can be kept on tap, as it were, by the method of	null
book	automatic writing. This discovery marks a new era in experimental psychology, and it is impossible to overrate its importance. But Gurney’s greatest piece of work is his laborious ‘Phantasms of the Living.’ As an example of the drudgery stowed away in the volumes, it may suffice to say that in looking up the proofs for the alleged physical phenomena of witchcraft, Gurney reports a careful search through two hundred and sixty books on the subject, with the result of finding no first- hand evidence recorded in the trials except the	null
book	confessions of the victims themselves; and these, of course, are presumptively due to either	null
book	134	null
book	torture or hallucination. This statement, made in an unobtrusive note, is only one instance of	null
book	the care displayed throughout the volumes. In the course of these, Gurney discusses about seven hundred cases of apparitions which he collected. A large number of these were ‘veridical, ’ in the sense of coinciding with some calamity happening to the person who	null
book	appeared. Gurney ’s explanation is that the mind of the person undergoing the calamity was at	null
book	that moment able to impress the mind of the percipient with an hallucination.	null
book	Apparitions, on this ‘ telepathic ’ theory, may be called ‘objective’ facts, although they are not	null
book	‘material ’ facts. In order to test the likelihood of such veridical hallucinations being due to	null

book

the unclassified residuum.” Round about the accredited and orderly facts of every science there ever floats a sort of dust -cloud of exceptional observations, of occurrences minute and

null

book

irregular and seldom met with, which it always proves more easy to ignore than to attend to. The id eal of every science is that of a closed and completed system of truth. The charm of

null

book

most sciences to their more passive disciples consists in their appearing, in fact, to wear just this ideal form. Each one of our various ologies seems to offer a definite head of

null

book

classification for every possible phenomenon of the sort which it professes to cover; and so far from free is most men ’s fancy, that, when a consistent and organized scheme of this sort

null

book

has once been comprehended and assimilated, a different scheme is unimaginable. No alternative, whether to whole or parts, can any longer be conceived as possible. Phenomena unclassifiable within the system are therefore paradoxical absurdities, and must be held

null

book

untrue. When, moreover, as so often happens, the reports of them are vague and indirect; when they come as mere marvels and oddities rather than as things of serious moment,—one neglects or denies them with the best of scientific consciences. Only the born geniuses let themselves be worried and fascinated by these outstanding exceptions, and get no peace till they are brought within the fold. Your Galileos, Galvanis, Fresnels, Purkinjes, and Darwins are always getting confounded and troubled by insignificant things. Any one will renovate his science who will steadily look after the irregular phenomena. And when the science is renewed, its new formulas often have more of the voice of the exceptions in them than of what were supposed to be the rules.

null

book

No part of the unclassified residuum has usually been treated with a more contemptuous scientific disregard than the mass of phenomena generally called mystical . Physiology will

null

book

have nothing to do with them. Orthodox psychology turns its back upon them. Medicine sweeps them out; or, at most, when in an anecdotal vein, records a few of them as ‘ effects of

null

book

the imagination, ’—a phrase of mere dismissal, whose meaning, in this connection, it is

null

book

impossible to make precise. All the while, however, the phenomena are there, lying broadcast over the surface of history. No matter where you open its pages, you find things recorded

null

book

under the name of divinations, inspirations, demoniacal possessions, apparitions, trances,

null

book

ecstasies, miraculous healings and productions of disease, and occult powers possessed by peculiar individuals over persons and things in their neighborhood. We suppose that ‘mediumship ’ originated in Rochester, N. Y., and animal magnetism with Mesmer; but once

null

book

look behind the pages of official history, in personal memoirs, legal documents, and popular narratives and books of anecdote, and you will find that there never was a time when the se

null

book

things were not reported just as abundantly as now. We college-bred gentry, who follow the stream of cosmopolitan culture exclusively, not infrequently stumble upon some old-established journal, or some voluminous native author, whose names are never he ard of

null

book

in our circle, but who number their readers by the quarter- million. It always gives us a little

null

book

shock to find this mass of human beings not only living and ignoring us and all our gods, but actually reading and writing and cogitating without ever a thought of our canons and authorities. Well, a public no less large keeps and transmits from generation to generation the traditions and practices of the occult; but academic science cares as little for its beliefs and

null

book

130

null

book

opinions as you, gentle reader, care for those of the readers of the Waverley and the Fireside

null

book

Companion. To no one type of mind is it given to discern the totality of truth. Something escapes the best of us, —not accidentally, but systematically, and because we have a twist.

null

book

The scientific -academic mind and the feminine-mystical mind shy from each other’ s facts,

null

book

just as they fly from each other’s temper and spirit. Facts are there only for those who have a mental affinity with them. When once they are indisputably ascertained and admitted, the academic and critical minds are by far the best fitted ones to interpret and discuss them, —for

null

book

surely to pass from mystical to scientific speculations is like passing from lunacy to sanity; but on the other hand if there is anything which human history demonstrates, it is the extreme slowness with which the ordinary academic and critical mind acknowledges facts to exist which present themselves as wild facts, with no stall or pigeon-hole, or as facts which threaten to break u p the accepted system. In psychology, physiology, and medicine, wherever

null

book

a debate between the mystics and the scientifics has been once for all decided, it is the mystics who have usually proved to be right about the facts , while the scientifics had the

null

book

better of it in respect to the theories. The most recent and flagrant example of this is ‘ animal

null

book

magnetism, ’ whose facts were stoutly dismissed as a pack of lies by academic medical

null

book

science the world over, until the non-mystical theory of ‘hypnotic suggestion’ was found for them, —when they were admitted to be so excessively and dangerously common that special

null

book

penal laws, forsooth, must be passed to keep all persons unequipped with medical diplomas from taking part in their production. Just so stigmatizations, invulnerabilities, instantaneous cures, inspired discourses, and demoniacal possessions, the records of which were shelved in our libraries but yesterday in the alcove headed ‘superstitions,’ now, under the brand- new

null

book

title of ‘ cases of hystero -epilepsy,’ are republished, reobserved, and reported with an even too

null

book

credulous avidity.

null

book

Repugnant as the mystical style of philosophizing maybe (especially when self-complacent),

null

book

there is no sort of doubt that it goes with a gift for meeting with certain kinds of phenomenal experience. The writer of these pages has been forced in the past few years to this admission;

null

book

and he now believes that he who will pay attention to facts of the sort dear to mystics, while reflecting upon them in academic-scientific ways, will be in the best possible position to help philosophy. It is a circumstance of good augury that certain scientifically trained minds in all countries seem drifting to the same conclusion. The Socie ty for Psychical Research has been

null

book

one means of bringing science and the occult together in England and America; and believing that this Society fulfils a function which, though limited, is destined to be not unimportant in the organization of human knowledge, I am glad to give a brief account of it to the uninstructed reader.

null

book

According to the newspaper and drawing-room myth, soft-headedness and idiotic credulity are the bond of sympathy in this Society, and general wonder-sickness its dynamic principle. A glance at the membership fails, however, to corroborate this view. The president is Prof. Henry Sidgwick,

null

book

53 known by his other deeds as the most incorrigibly and exasperatingly

null

book

critical and sceptical mind in England. The hard-headed Arthur Balfour is one vice-president, and the hard-headed Prof. J. P. Langley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, is anothe r.

null

book

Such men as Professor Lodge, the eminent English physicist, and Professor Richet, the eminent French physiologist, are among the most active contributors to the Society’ s

null

book

Proceedings; and through the catalogue of membership are sprinkled names honored throughout the world for their scientific capacity. In fact, were I asked to point to a scientific journal where hard-headedness and never-sleeping suspicion of sources of error might be seen in their full bloom, I think I should have to fall back on the Proceedings of the Society

null

book

53 Written in 1891. Since then, Mr. Balfour, the present writer, and Professor William Crookes have held the

null

book

presidential office.

null

book

131

null

book

for Psychical Research. The common run of papers, say on physiological subjects, which one

null

book

finds in other professional organs, are apt to show a far lower level of critical consciousness. Indeed, the rigorous canons of evidence applied a few years ago to t estimony in the case of

null

book

certain ‘mediums’ led to the secession from the Society of a number of spiritualists. Messrs. Stainton Moses and A. R. Wallace, among others, thought that no experiences based on mere eyesight could ever have a chance to be admitted as true, if such an impossibly exacting standard of proof were insisted on in every case.

null

book

The S. P. R., as I shall call it for convenience, was founded in 1882 by a number of

null

book

gentlemen, foremost among whom seem to have been Professors Sidgwick, W. F. Barrett, and Balfour Stewart, and Messrs. R. H. Hutton, Hensleigh Wedgwood, Edmund Gurney, and F. W. H. Myers. Their purpose was twofold,— first, to carry on systematic experimentation

null

book

with hypnotic subjects, mediums, clairvoyants, and others; and, secondly, to collect evidence concerning apparitions, haunted houses, and similar phenomena which are incidentally reported, but which, from their fugitive character, admit of no deliberate control. Professor Sidgwick, in his introductory address, insisted that the divided state of public opinion on all these matters was a scandal to science, —absolute disdain on à priori grounds characterizing

null

book

what may be called professional opinion, while indiscriminate credulity was too often found among those who pretended to have a first-hand acquaintance with the facts.

null

book

As a sort of weather bureau for accumulating reports of such meteoric phenomena as

null

book

apparitions, the S. P. R. has done an immense amount of work. As an experimenting body, it cannot be said to have completely fulfilled the hopes of its founders. The reasons for this lie in two circumstances: first, th e clairvoyant and other subjects who will allow themselves to

null

book

be experimented upon are few and far between; and, secondly, work with them takes an immense amount of time, and has had to be carried on at odd intervals by members engaged in other pursuits. The Society has not yet been rich enough to control the undivided services of skilled experimenters in this difficult field. The loss of the lamented Edmund Gurney, who more than any one else had leisure to devote, has been so far irreparable. But were there no experimental work at all, and were the S. P. R. nothing but a weather-bureau for catching sporadic apparitions, etc., in their freshness, I am disposed to think its function indispensable in the scientific organism. If any one of my readers, spurred by the thought that so much smoke must needs betoken fire, has ever looked into the existing literature of the supernatural for proof, he will know what I mean. This literature is enormous, but it is practically worthless for evidential purposes. Facts enough are cited, indeed; but the records of them are so fallible and imperfect that at most they lead to the opinion that it may be well to keep a window open upon that quarter in one’s mind.

null

book

In the S. P. R.’s Proceedings, on the contrary, a different law prevails. Quality, and not mere

null

book

quantity, is what has been mainly kept in mind. The witnesses, where possible, have in every reported case been cross -examined personally, the collateral facts have been looked up, and

null

book

the story appears with its precise coefficient of evidential worth stamped on it, so that all may know just what its weight as proof may be. Outside of these Proceedings, I know of no systematic attempt to weigh the evidence for the supernatural. This makes the value of the

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volumes already published unique; and I firmly believe that as the years go on and the ground covered grows still wider, the Proceedings will more and more tend to supersede all other sources of information concerning phenomena traditionally deemed occult. Collections of this sort are usually best appreciated by the rising generation. The young anthropologists and psychologists who will soon have full occupancy of the stage will feel how great a scientific scandal it has been to leave a great mass of human experience to take its chances between vague tradition and credulity on the one hand and dogmatic denial at long range on the other, with no body of persons extant who are willing and competent to study the matter with both

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patience and rigor. If the Society lives long enough for the public to become familiar with its

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presence, so that any apparition, or house or person infested with unaccountable noises or disturbances of material objects, will as a matter of course be repor ted to its officers, we shall

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doubtless end by having a mass of facts concrete enough to theorize upon. Its sustainers, therefore, should accustom themselves to the idea that its first duty is simply to exist from year to year and perform this recording function well, though no conclusive results of any sort emerge at first. All our learned societies have begun in some such modest way.

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But one cannot by mere outward organization make much progress in matters scientific.

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Societies can back men of genius, but can never take their place. The contrast between the

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parent Society and the American Branch illustrates this. In England, a little group of men with enthusiasm and genius for the work supplied the nucleus; in this country, Mr. Hodgson had to be imported from Europe before any tangible progress was made. What perhaps more than anything else has held the Society together in England is Professor Sidgwick’ s

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extraordinary gift of inspiring confidence in diverse sorts of people. Such tenacity of interest in the result and such absolute impartiality in discussing the evidence are not once in a century found in an individual. His obstinate belief that there is something yet to be brought to light communicates patience to the discouraged; his constitutional inability to draw any precipitate conclusion reassures those who are afraid of being dupes. Mrs. Sidgwick—a sister, by the way, of the great Arthur Balfour—is a worthy ally of her husband in this matter,

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showing a similarly rare power of holding her judgment in suspense, and a keenness of observation and capacity for experimenting with human subjects which are rare in either sex.

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The worker of the Society, as originally constituted, was Edmund Gurney. Gurney was a man

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of the rarest sympathies and gifts. Although, like Carlyle, he used to groan under the burden

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of his labors, he yet exhibited a colossal power of dispatching business and getting through drudgery of the most repulsive kind. His two thick volumes on ‘Phantasms of the Living,’ collected and published in three years, are a proof of this. Besides this, he had exquisite artistic instincts, and his massive volume on ‘The Power of Sound’ was, when it appeared, the most important work on aesthetics in the English language. He had also the tenderest heart and a mind of rare metaphysical power, as his volumes of essays, ‘ Tertium Quid, ’ will

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prove to any reader. Mr. Frederic Myers, already well known as one of the most brilliant of English essayists, is the ingenium praefervidum of the S. P. R. Of the value of Mr. Myers’ s

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theoretic writings I will say a word later. Dr. Hodgson, the American secretary, is distinguished by a balance of mind almost as rare in its way as Sidgwick’ s. He is persuaded

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of the reality of many of the phenomena called spiritualistic, but he also has uncommon keenness in detecting error; and it is impossible to say in advance whether it will give him more satisfaction to confirm or to smash a given case offered to his examination.

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It is now time to cast a brief look upon the actual contents of these Proceedings. The first two

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years were largely taken up with experiments in thought- transference. The earliest lot of these

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were made with the daughters of a clergyman named Creery, and convinced Messrs. Balfour Stewart, Barrett, Myers, and Gurney that the girls had an inexplicable power of guessing names and objects thought of by other persons. Two years later, Mrs. Sidgwick and Mr. Gurney, recommencing experiments with the same girls, de tected them signalling to each

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other. It is true that for the most part the conditions of the earlier series had excluded signalling, and it is also possible that the cheating may have grafted itself on what was originally a genuine phenomenon. Yet Gurney was wise in abandoning the entire series to the scepticism of the reader. Many critics of the S. P. R. seem out of all its labors to have heard only of this case. But there are experiments recorded with upwards of thirty other subjects. Three were experimented upon at great length during the first two years: one was Mr. G. A.

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Smith; the other two were young ladies in Liverpool in the employment of Mr. Malcolm

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Guthrie.

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It is the opinion of all who took part in these latter experiments that sources of conscious and

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unconscious deception were sufficiently excluded, and that the large percentage of correct reproductions by the subjects of words, diagrams, and sensations occupying other persons’ consciousness were entirely inexplicable as results of chance. The witnesses of these performances were in fact all so satisfied of the genuineness of the phenomena, that ‘telepathy ’ has figured freely in the papers of the Proceedings and in Gurney’s book on

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Phantasms as a vera causa on which additional hypotheses might be built. No mere reader

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can be blamed, however, if he demand, for so revolutionary a belief, a more overwhelming bulk of testimony than has yet been supplied. Any day, of course, may bring in fresh experiments in succ essful picture -guessing. But meanwhile, and lacking that, we can only

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point out that the present data are strengthened in the flank, so to speak, by all observations that tend to corroborate the possibility of other kindred phenomena, such as telepathic impression, clairvoyance, or what is called ‘ test-mediumship.’ The wider genus will naturally

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cover the narrower species with its credit.

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Gurney’s papers on hypnotism must be mentioned next. Some of them are less concerned with establishing new facts than with analyzing old ones. But omitting these, we find that in the line of pure observation Gurney claims to have ascertained in more than one subject the following phenomenon: The subject’s hands are thrust through a blanket, which screens the operator from his eyes, and his mind is absorbed in conversation with a third person. The operator meanwhile points with his finger to one of the fingers of the subject, which finger alone responds to this silent selection by becoming stiff or anaesthetic, as the case may be. The interpretation is difficult, but the phenomenon, which I have myself witnessed, seems authentic.

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Another observation made by Gurney seems to prove the possibility of the subject’s mind being directly influenced by the operator’s. The hypnotized subject responds, or fails to respond, to questions asked by a third party according to the operator’ s silent permission or

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refusal. Of course, in these experiments all obvious sources of deception were excluded. But Gurney’s most important contribution to our knowledge of hypnotism was his series of experiments on the automatic writing of subjects who had received post-hypnotic suggestions. For example, a subject during trance is told that he will poke the fire in six minute s after waking. On being waked he has no memory of the order, but while he is

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engaged in conversation his hand is placed on a planchette , which immediately writes the

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sentence, “P., you will poke the fire in six minutes.” Experiments like this, which were

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repeated in great variety, seem to prove that below the upper consciousness the hypnotic consciousness persists, engrossed with the suggestion and able to express itself through the involuntarily moving hand.

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Gurney shares, therefore, with Janet and Binet, the credit of demonstrating the simultaneous

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existence of two different strata of consciousness, ignorant of each other, in the same person. The ‘ extra-consciousness,’ as one may call it, can be kept on tap, as it were, by the method of

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automatic writing. This discovery marks a new era in experimental psychology, and it is impossible to overrate its importance. But Gurney’s greatest piece of work is his laborious ‘Phantasms of the Living.’ As an example of the drudgery stowed away in the volumes, it may suffice to say that in looking up the proofs for the alleged physical phenomena of witchcraft, Gurney reports a careful search through two hundred and sixty books on the subject, with the result of finding no first- hand evidence recorded in the trials except the

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confessions of the victims themselves; and these, of course, are presumptively due to either

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torture or hallucination. This statement, made in an unobtrusive note, is only one instance of

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the care displayed throughout the volumes. In the course of these, Gurney discusses about seven hundred cases of apparitions which he collected. A large number of these were ‘veridical, ’ in the sense of coinciding with some calamity happening to the person who

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appeared. Gurney ’s explanation is that the mind of the person undergoing the calamity was at

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that moment able to impress the mind of the percipient with an hallucination.

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Apparitions, on this ‘ telepathic ’ theory, may be called ‘objective’ facts, although they are not

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‘material ’ facts. In order to test the likelihood of such veridical hallucinations being due to

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