SUMMARY AND REFLECTIONS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Gods who haunt

The lucid interspace of world and world, Where never creeps a cloud, or moves a wind, Nor ever falls the least white star of snow, Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans, Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar Their sacred everlasting calm.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

'Tis not for self we feet the glow

Of passion for continued life,

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

Leaves here no evidence for hope,

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

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

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

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

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

 

Wisdom and passion Playing for place, Whichever winneth

Loses its grace.

When the two, peaceful, Mingle and kiss, Then cometh sweetly

Power and bliss.

 

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

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

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