THE LIMIT OF EVIDENCE

 

EVIDENTIAL tests can eliminate, perhaps, that explanation of psychic communication that is based on theories of the subconscious mind. Tests can eliminate the telepathic theory. They can narrow things down to a point where seemingly only the spiritistic explanation is left. And then—even then it is possible to reject survival of the dead.

 

Rejection in such a case results from a rigorous interpretation of the rules of testimony. Even legal inquiry does not ignore prima facie evidence; it requires that such presumptive evidence be rebutted. But legal inquiry seeks to prove only that which is of ordinary experience. Psychic proof of the survival of the dead involves extraordinary experiences. Therefore, whoever wishes to insist on a strict interpretation of the rules of evidence has right to this statement:

 

One can admit that a Joan voices facts extraneous to her own knowledge, or to a Darby's or an F. W.'s or a Mrs. K.'s, and yet reasonably demand further proof, positive rather than negative, of the dead that live.

 

For instance, the evidence offered by the plaster hand does not conclusively prove that Mrs. K.'s lost husband is found. It can be relied upon to prove only that in some unexplained manner Joan can tell of facts beyond her own knowledge. And I am not convinced that the plaster hand by itself can be depended on even to that extent. It eliminates the subconscious explanation only when it is supported by the entire mass of the Mrs. K. communication.

 

Again, the F. W. messages do not prove conclusively that Uncle Michael survives. They simply eliminate telepathy. Joan, it would appear, has ability not only to voice facts outside her own knowledge, but outside that also of persons en rapport with her.

 

But it may be said that, granted the Mrs. K. and F. W. messages constitute no actual proof of survival, they do nonetheless evidence it. Certainly this is so. The Mrs. K. and F. W. messages evidence survival to the degree that their elimination of contrary explanations is complete. But here there is a fresh difficulty, namely:

 

The psychic evidence of survival that touches you personally impresses you. Evidence that doesn't touch you personally is, so far as you are concerned, less impressive. Let F. W. attach what weight he will to the Uncle Michael messages; you to whom these messages are wholly impersonal will grant them less importance.

 

To Joan and me the F. W. and Mrs. K. messages seem less convincing than Fred Q.'s successful claim to identity with Frederick Gaylord of The Seven Purposes and Stephen's identification of himself as Stephen L——. Somehow these two occurrences were personal to us in a way that neither the F. W. nor Mrs. K. messages were; they seem our particular property. To us, indeed, the Mrs. K. and F. W. messages are cold facts, personally important because they give support to Fred Q. as Frederick Gaylord and Stephen as Stephen L——.

 

And Frederick Gaylord and Stephen L—— are important to Joan and me because they in their turn give support and authenticity to the coming of Stephen's philosophy.

 

In fact, of all the evidence external to the import of the philosophy itself, that has been offered Joan and me, the philosophy's mere coming, the ouija-board's performance as such, seems to us the most startling and most convincing.

 

If you sat down some evening to amuse yourself with a toy, a ouija-board, and the thing, actuated apparently by an agency outside yourself, began to spell out in orderly array a philosophy of life and death, would not such a performance, wholly aside from your ultimate acceptance or rejection of the philosophy, appeal to you as more evidential than John Smith's umbrella or, indeed, Stephen's identification? The ouija-board's bare performance lifts a coral reef such as Mrs. K.'s nearer to the surface of the waters—much nearer, Joan and I think!

 

Yet no sooner do Joan and I make ready to accept the tripod's performance as clinching, final evidence of life after death, no sooner do we start to run with freedom, to quote Mrs. K., than we are caught by the ankle. Strict interpretation of evidence trips us up. However sure we may feel that it was not our subconscious minds that shot the tripod from letter to letter, or the mind of some one in telepathic rapport with us, we cannot conclude simply from that conviction that Stephen L—— is a living dead man. Elimination of subliminal and telepathic explanations of the tripod's performance supports the spiritistic explanation, but does not prove it.

 

Perhaps no conclusive evidence can be found. Perhaps all that evidence can do is to pile itself up, acquiring a cumulative force which, though it never positively proves survival, pushes so-called natural explanations of psychic communications farther and farther into the background. Or perhaps the content of Stephen's philosophy will achieve that which the mere phenomenon of its coming failed of. If the philosophy is reasonable, as the professor has said, in the light of men's already acquired knowledge, perhaps evidence external to it need be corroborative only.

 

In any event, Stephen's philosophy came to Joan and me unvouched for, with not a word for weeks about John Smith's umbrella. We could listen to the unauthenticated message, or pass it up. We chose to listen.

 

And so let us go back to that night in December, 1916, when I came home and found Joan's newly purchased toy hidden behind the trunk in the closet.

 

That night, for the second time in our lives, Joan and I placed our fingers on a ouija-board's pointer. Whether she was the psychic or I, if, indeed, the operation of a ouija-board required a psychic, we did not know. Direct mental communication was as yet undreamed of. Stephen's use of the word "coloring" was not in our vocabulary. Some weeks were to elapse before F. W. would catch our ouija-board red-handed. Mrs. K. was a mere name and was to remain so for over two years. The Seven Purposes was unwritten, and the communications it contains were not to be received for yet a year or more.