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DEATH, THE GATE OF LIFE?
(MORS JANUA VITAE?)
A DISCUSSION OF CERTAIN COMMUNICATIONS
PURPORTING TO COME FROM
FREDERIC W. H. MYERS
BY
H. A. DALLAS
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
PROFESSOR W. F. BARRETT, F.R.S.
"The veil
Is rending, and the Voices of the day
Are heard across the Voices of the dark."
-TENNYSON.
TO
MY FRIENDS IN BOTH WORLDS
I DEDICATE THIS LITTLE BOOK
IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE
AND GLAD ANTICIPATION
PREFACE
THE object of this little book is to bring before those who are not
already familiar with the results of psychical research some small portion
of the evidence for survival which has been accumulating within the last
few years. The limits which I have laid down for myself are very narrow: I
have confined myself to one point only, namely, to the consideration of
that part of the evidence which relates to the question of the survival of
the personality of Frederic Myers; and even so it has been necessary to
select only a small portion of the available material, and to content
myself with the briefest survey compatible with carrying out my purpose,
which is to show that there exists a mass of evidence worthy of serious
attention, to indicate what is the nature of that evidence and what are
the conclusions to which it seems to point.
Many of my readers will doubtless think that the conclusions suggested
make too large
vii
viii PREFACE
a demand on their credulity, and they may, perhaps, formulate in their
minds various other conceivable explanations of the facts here presented.
It is not likely, however, that they will light upon any hypothesis which
has not already been fully considered by the careful experts who have for
years been studying these phenomena. I venture to affirm that it is
generally those who know comparatively little of the subject who are most
ready with the offer of simple explanations, such as fraud, collusion,
chance, or mind reading.
Another class of reader will, perhaps, consider that I have claimed too
little; that even the small amount of evidence which I have produced would
justify wider and fuller deductions than those indicated in this book.
I am aware that I have not only reduced the evidence to a minimum, but
that I have also set forth only the most obvious conclusions. This I
deliberately aimed at doing. Those who care to assimilate the evidence
here summarised, and who are able to accept, at least provisionally, the
conclusions based upon it, will have no difficulty in finding further
facts for study and in drawing fuller deductions for themselves.
PREFACE ix
I should like to anticipate one question, which may perhaps be suggested
by the perusal of this work: it is this. If those who have died wish to
communicate, can they not do so simply and directly? Must there always be
an intermediary? Cannot spirit speak with spirit without having recourse
to this difficult and strange method? Certainly there are abundant reasons
for thinking that telepathic intercourse between minds can be maintained
independently of all the channels of sense, and that those who have passed
into the Unseen can, and do, directly impress their thoughts upon the
minds of their still incarnate friends. But such intercourse does not, as
a rule, afford evidence which can be verified in a way to convince those
who do not participate in the experience.
Mr. Myers knew that something more than this was expected from him. He was
familiar with the kind of objections raised by sceptics, objections which
are by no means unreasonable. He had himself in his lifetime demanded
crucial scientific proof of survival, and had undertaken, if such a thing
were possible, to afford the necessary evidence in his own case. It would,
therefore, have been disappointing if after his death there had
x PREFACE
been no sort of attempt to produce proof of a more complex and unequivocal
kind than had been previously forthcoming. To produce this was evidently a
very difficult task, requiring much effort and ingenuity. It does not
follow that all communications between spirits need be of this nature.
I desire to express my sincere thanks to the Council of the Society for
Psychical Research for kindly giving me permission to quote at length from
the published records of the Society; and I hope that the small work which
I am thus enabled to bring out may serve as a useful introduction to the
study of those records in their complete form. At the same time, I wish to
make it clearly understood that the Society is in no way responsible
either for the selection of passages which I quote or for the treatment of
the subject. On both these points the whole responsibility rests with
myself.
I also wish to acknowledge gratefully the kind assistance rendered by Mr.
J. B. Shipley in correcting my MS. and proofs.
H. A. DALLAS.
Hampstead,
November 1909.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE.
INTRODUCTION xiii
I FREDERIC MYERS AND PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 1
II MRS. VFRRALL'S AUTOMATIC SCRIPT 10
III MRS. HOLLAND'S AUTOMATIC SCRIPT 19
IV THE 'SYMPOSIUM' EPISODE. 33
V THE SEALED ENVELOPE 45
VI MRS. PIPER'S MEDIUMSHIP 59
VII THEORIES WHICH HAVE BEEN SUGGESTED 67
VIII CAUSES OF CONFUSION 79
IX MRS. PIPER'S VISIT TO ENGLAND 88
X THE LATIN MESSAGE 95
XI THE PLOTINUS EPISODE 116
XII CONCLUSION 131
xi
INTRODUCTION
THE author has asked me to say a few words by way of introduction to this
little book. I shall, indeed, be glad if any word of mine will help to
commend it to the reader. Miss Dallas has long been known to me as an
earnest and critical student of psychical phenomena. Her knowledge of this
subject is exceptionally wide, and her judgment sane and well informed. In
the present volume she has dealt in an interesting and succinct manner
with one fragment of the evidence that is slowly accumulating on behalf of
survival after death. The service which she has thus rendered is
considerable. Few people have the time or patience to read through, and
carefully consider, the lengthy, detailed, and therefore often wearisome,
reports published by the Society for Psychical Research. Hence, whilst the
interest in this subject is spreading throughout the Western world with
astonishing rapidity, the well informed are few and far between.
Unfortunately the fascination of the subject is like a candle to moths, it
attracts and
xiii
xiv INTRODUCTION
burns the silly, the credulous and the crazy. The natural human longing to
lift a corner of the veil that hides the life beyond the grave, renders a
dispassionate consideration of the facts, a calm and critical weighing of
the evidence, as difficult as it is imperative. Only by the slow and
toilsome pathway of rigorous scientific inquiry can any assured results
ever be obtained. We cannot hope in this generation or the next to clear
away all the perplexities and pitfalls that confront the investigator in
these obscure regions. The methods of science are not the methods of
journalism, and though it was to be expected, it is equally to be deplored
that the untrained and unscientific have rushed in where many wiser men
have feared to tread. Even in ancient times, when, doubtless, there
existed a certain esoteric knowledge of some of the psychical phenomena
which we have now rediscovered, the approach to this subject was guarded
with jealous care. The inquirer needs to be level-headed and to walk
warily; whilst the foolish and the fashionable who merely desire a new
sensation, the roving journalist and the rapid book-maker, should be
warned off so treacherous a ground.
INTRODUCTION xv
Psychical research, as the author points out, requires to be conducted
with care and wise restraint. When this is done we may dismiss as
groundless the fear of any injury being done to the psychic. How far any
injury may occur to the unseen communicators on the other side is another
matter on which we can only form vague impressions. We are led to infer
that, on their part, it is a self-denying act of service, for they speak
of being "disturbed," "suffocated," "kept earth-bound" by trying to
communicate, possibly it involves a partial loss of their personality.
As I have said elsewhere, "indiscriminate condemnation and ignorant
credulity are, in truth, the two most dangerous elements with which the
public are confronted in connection with Spiritualism. It is because I
hold that in the fearless pursuit of truth it is the paramount duty of
science to lead the way, and erect such sign-posts as may be needed in the
vast territory we dimly see before us, that I so strongly deprecate the
past and (to a less extent) the present scornful attitude of the
scientific world towards this subject."
The shrinking which some deeply religious minds feel in relation to
Spiritualism is, no doubt, partly based upon a mistaken view of
xvi INTRODUCTION
the subject, but it is not wholly irrational. We instinctively feel, as
Archbishop Trench has finely expressed it:-
"Where thou hast touched, O wondrous death,
Where thou hast come between,
Lo! there for ever perisheth
The common and the mean."
Whether this be objectively true or not, it is certainly true subjectively
to the stricken survivor, and hence the natural recoil from the inane and
often vulgar futilities of so many spiritualistic seances. It has,
however, long been recognised, and the Society for Psychical Research has
clearly demonstrated the fact, that very much of what professes to be
communication from an ultra-mundane source is nothing more than automatic
expressions of the medium's own mind. And in every case, as might be
expected, the communications are more or less influenced by the mental
equipment, the personality, of the medium. Hence it is that we find Greek
and Latin automatically written by a classical scholar like Mrs. Verrall,
and in general a high level of thought expressed in the automatic writings
of those cultured ladies, who have in recent years given so much patience
and labour to the experimental investigation of this important field of
inquiry.
INTRODUCTION xvii
In the case of thought transference between those who are now living on
earth, the more completely the receiver, or percipient, places his own
waking or conscious thoughts in abeyance the more effective is the result,
and doubtless this is also the case with telepathic communication from the
unseen. The larger part of human personality lies below the threshold of
consciousness, and this subliminal self speaks through involuntary or
automatic muscular action, just as our conscious self speaks through
voluntary muscular action. Not only is the occasional intrusion of the
latter into the former a source of error in all sensitives, but a more
subtle and prolific source of error is the unavoidable intrusion of the
sensitive's own subliminal self into the telepathic message from another.
Hence it is that messages purporting to come from some ultra-mundane
intelligence need to be scrutinised with the utmost care. This has been
done with increasing knowledge by those engaged in the work of the Society
for Psychical Research and by others. Notwithstanding this careful sifting
a growing conviction has been produced in most thoughtful students of this
subject that life and intelligence demonstrably exist in the unseen, and
can get into imperfect communication with
xviii INTRODUCTION
us. It is true that some of us are not prepared to go quite as far as the
author in accepting the identity of the unseen intelligences as adequately
proved. Identity would be enormously difficult to establish even between
two widely separated persons on earth, speaking to each other for a few
minutes through, say, wireless telegraphy, and still more so if messages
from other sources were constantly intermingled.
Miss Dallas has, however, given a portion of the evidence which will
enable the reader to judge for himself so far as concerns the
communications purporting to come from Mr. Myers. Knowing Mr. Myers as I
did intimately on earth for thirty years, I confess that the collective
weight of the evidence now accumulated through the automatic script of
Mrs. Holland, Mrs. Verrall and Mrs. Piper, has convinced me that in this
case it is highly probable that the unseen intelligence is no other than a
fragment of the personality of Mr. Frederic Myers. For in all these
communications purporting to come from discarnate human beings, it is a
sort of dream or truncated personality that presents itself, one largely
bereft of self-determination, and with memory and associations strangely
limited.
INTRODUCTION xix
Nor do we ever hear any connected and consistent account of their
environment or of their life in the unseen. As Mrs. Barrett-Browning said
long ago, "We could as well hope to see our faces in a shivered
looking-glass as catch a clear vision of a desired truth or a lost friend
by these means. What we do see is a shadow at the window, the sign of
something moving without." It is all very like a dream picture, bits here
and there painted on the medium's own canvas, and with patches of the
canvas showing in between. However, such as it is let us be grateful for
it, inasmuch as the implications are tremendous and far reaching. At the
same time we need to bear in mind that these manifestations, however
interpreted, belong to the material plane, and that "our true union with
those we love can only be reached by a common life in God." As Myers
himself wrote:-
"Live thou and love! so best and only so
Can thy one soul into the One soul flow,
Can thy small life to Life's great centre flee,
And thou be nothing, and the Lord in thee."
W. F. BARRETT.
Kingstown, Co. Dublin,
December 1909.
MORS JANUA VITAE?
A DISCUSSION OF CERTAIN
COMMUNICATIONS PURPORTING TO
COME FROM FREDERIC W. H MYERS
CHAPTER I
FREDERIC MYERS AND PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
IT was on January 26, 1900,* that F. W. H. Myers delivered his
presidential address before the members of the Society for Psychical
Research. In this address he reminded them that he had worked for its
objects "from days before the Society's formation," and assured them of
his determination "to go on thus working" as long as his faculties would
allow. (Proceedings of the S.P.R., Part xxxviii, p. 111.)
No one, perhaps, has ever had a deeper realisation of the importance of
the issues involved in this research; to him the main question to be
determined by this means was the question of survival. It is true that it
is not
* Just a year before his death on January 17th, 1901.
1
2 MORS JANUA VITAE?
the only one; for psychical research has led to the discovery of
extraordinary human faculties, formerly unrecognised by science, and
further investigations into these faculties form an important part of its
work; but men of Frederic Myers' temperament would care little to be
assured of the wealth of human endowments if individual consciousness, and
all that it includes, are doomed to final and complete extinction. In his
opinion the question of survival is the "only test we can apply to the
existence of a Providence.... It has been doubt as to the value of life
and love," he says, "which has made the decadence of almost all
civilisations" (Ibid. p. 113). Neither was it the bare fact of survival of
which he desired to assure himself. There are two poems on immortality,
written by him, which show that there were moments in which he
contemplated with repugnance the possibility of persistence under
conditions devoid of delight, conditions under which the weariness of
earthly life might be renewed, or at least all sense of personal identity
might be lost.
One of these poems will be found in a volume entitled Fragments of Prose
and Poetry. In the second stanza he writes:-
FREDERIC MYERS 3
Yet if for evermore I must convey
These weary senses thro' an endless day
And gaze on God with these exhausted eyes,
I fear that howsoe'er the seraphs play
My life shall not be theirs, nor I as they,
But homeless in the heart of Paradise* (o. 173).
The other poem is in a volume called Renewal of Youth published in 1882:-
Ah, but who knows in what thin form and strange,
Through what appalled perplexities of change,
Wakes the sad soul, which, having once forgone
This earth familiar! And her friends thereon
In interstellar void becomes a chill
Outlying fragment of the Master Will;
So severed, so forgetting, shall not she
Lament, immortal, immortality? (p. 55.)
We see, therefore, that Frederic Myers did not enter upon this quest with
that indifference as to the result, which some would have us regard as an
essential condition for an impartial investigator.
Is it true, however, that an attitude of indifference as to the nature of
the issue is the most favourable for successful discovery?
Professor William James evidently does
---
* In this poem there are lines obviously related to an Ode of Horace (see
I. 28), concerning which Mr. Myers wrote to Dr. Verrall that it had
"entered as deeply as any Horatian passage" into his own inner history.
(See Proceedings, Part lvii, p. 406.)
4 MORS JANUA VITAE?
not think so. In an article in the Hibbert Journal, January 1909, he
says:-
Things reveal themselves soonest to those who passionately want them-Need
sharpens wit. To a mind content with little the much of the Universe may
always remain hid (p. 294).
This only applies, of course, to sincere minds, who honour truth above all
things, and are prepared to sacrifice their most treasured hopes if they
are convinced that they are illusions.
Frederic Myers did make this great surrender: and he has told us that to
do so was "more grievous" to him than anything else which happened to him
in life.* Although he did not make the sacrifice with indifference, his
passionate desire for assurance of immortal life of a worthy and
satisfying nature bore a marked effect on his work, for it intensified his
perception of all that seems to negative this hope, he became more keenly
alive to weak points in the evidence in favour of immortality. "Desire is
not necessarily bias," he writes, "and my personal history has convinced
myself-though I cannot claim
---
* Proceedings, Part xxxvii, p. 113. See also the poem called "Retrospect"
(Fragments of Prose and Poetry, p. 119).
FREDERIC MYERS 5
that it shall convince others also-that my wishes do not strongly warp my
judgment-nay, that sometimes the very keenness of personal anxiety may
make one afraid to believe, as readily as other men, that which one most
longs for." (Part xxxvii, p. 113.)
It was in this spirit, moved by the stimulus of almost passionate but
well-nigh hopeless desire, and in an attitude of critical and avowed
agnosticism, that Frederic Myers applied himself to the task which
occupied the latter half of his life.
It was with "little hope-almost with reluctant scorn"-he says, "but with
the feeling that no last chance of the great discovery should be thrown
aside," that he turned to this research, and he adds:-
It is only after thirty years of such study as I have been able to give
that I say to myself at last, Habes tota quod mente petisti-"Thou hast
what thy whole heart desired";-that I recognize that for me this fresh
evidence,-while raising that great historic incident of the Resurrection
into new credibility,-has also filled me with a sense of insight and of
thankfulness such as even my first ardent Christianity did not bestow
(Ibid. p. 114).
It must not be supposed, however, that Frederic Myers assumed that
conviction of truth could only be reached by this process of arduous
scientific study, far from it; he
6 MORS JANUA VITAE?
did not claim that this method is a substitute for intuition and
revelation. He regarded psychical science as a means by which "to prove
the preamble of all religions, to demonstrate that a spiritual world
exists"; but he did not deny, he was, indeed, eventually assured, that men
may be carried by intuition into "even profounder apprehensions of
truth-but such apprehensions are not transferable." Moreover it is not
every one who has this intuitive insight, and those who have such
experiences know that they are transitory, and there are times when they,
too, feel urgent need to seek some scientific basis for the security of
their highest hopes. The work of Frederic Myers was to demonstrate that
this basis exists.
How the idea of this research first originated he has related in his
obituary notice of his friend, Professor Henry Sidgwick:-
I felt drawn in my perplexities to Henry Sidgwick as somehow my only hope.
In a starlight walk which I shall not forget (December 3rd, 1869), I asked
him, almost with trembling, whether he thought that when Tradition,
Intuition, Metaphysic, had failed to solve the riddle of the Universe,
there was still a chance that from any actual observable phenomena-ghosts,
spirits, whatsoever there might be-some valid knowledge might be drawn as
to a World Unseen. Already, it seemed, he had thought that this was
possible;
FREDERIC MYERS 7
steadily, though in no sanguine fashion, he indicated some last grounds of
hope; and from that night onwards I resolved to pursue this quest, if it
might be, at his side (Fragments of Prose and Poetry, pp. 98, 99).
It is deeply interesting to compare this passage with his presidential
address delivered thirty-one years later, in which he was able to affirm:-
This persistent analysis of unexplored faculty has revealed to us already
far more than I, for one, had ever dared to hope.... I do not presume to
forecast what we may come in time to learn; I only say that for the
present hour there will be enough of motive to urge us to utmost effort to
rise in the scale of being (Proceedings, Part xxxvii, pp. 118, 123).
Further on in this address, after alluding to the "enfranchisement of the
blessed dead," he continues:-
We know that they are still minded to keep us sharers in their joy. It is
they, not we, who are working now.... Nay, it may be that our response,
our devotion, is a needful element in their ascending joy; and God may
have provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be
made perfect.... I believe that upon our own attitude towards these
nascent communications their progress and development depend, so that we
cannot too soon direct attention to the high responsibilities opening on
our view (Part lvii, p. 123).
This confidence in their co-operation with us was one which he held with
increasing assurance.
8 MORS JANUA VITAE?
In his work on Human Personality he again refers to it:-
The experiments that are being made are not the work of earthly skill. All
that we can contribute to the new result is an attitude of patience,
attention, care; an honest readiness to receive and weigh whatever may be
given into our keeping by intelligences beyond our own. Experiments, I
say, there are, probably experiments of a complexity and difficulty which
surpass our imagination; but they are made from the other side of the gulf
by the efforts of spirits who discern pathways and possibilities which for
us are impenetrably dark (Human Personality, Vol. II, p. 275).
This passage is of peculiar interest in view of subsequent developments,
developments which bear striking testimony to the correctness of the
belief he here expresses. In order to be able to estimate the evidence
which has accumulated since Frederic Myers' death, and more particularly
the facts which claim to show that he is himself striving to bridge the
gulf between the two worlds and to prove his identity to his colleagues,
it is desirable to be acquainted in some measure with the motives, aims
and characteristics which he displayed in this life. Within the limits of
a short chapter it is impossible to do more than indicate some of these in
briefest manner, but the reader unfamiliar with his writings
FREDERIC MYERS 9
can gather enough from this short outline to recognise that if any
discarnate spirit can bear witness from the other sphere of existence to
the reality and worth of life beyond death, Frederic Myers would, of all
men, be the one we should expect to find so doing.
CHAPTER II
MRS. VERRALL'S AUTOMATIC SCRIPT
AS this book will probably come into the hands of those who are not
familiar with the publications of the Society for Psychical Research, some
account must be given of those through whom have come the "communications"
presently to be discussed. These were principally Mrs. Verrall, Miss Helen
Verrall, Mrs. "Holland" (pseudonym), Mrs. "Forbes" (pseudonym), and Mrs.
Piper, and also Mrs. Thompson.
Mrs. Verrall is a member of the Council of the S.P.R., a classical scholar
and a lecturer at Newnham College. In Proceedings, Part liii, she has
given a full account and detailed analysis of her automatic writings, from
which we learn the following facts.
Mrs. Verrall had never succeeded in any attempt to obtain intelligible
automatic writing, and had come to the conclusion that this was impossible
for her; however, in the month
10
MRS. VERRALL'S SCRIPT 11
in which Mr. Myers died (January 1901), she resolved to make another and
more persistent attempt, but was not successful until March 5. On that
day, after a few nonsense words, the pencil, held between her thumb and
first finger, wrote rapidly in Latin. She says:-
I was writing in the dark and could not see what I wrote; the words came
to me as single things, and I was so much occupied in recording each as it
came that I had not any general notion what the meaning was. I could never
remember the last word; it seemed to vanish completely as soon as I had
written it. Sometimes I had great difficulty in recognising what was the
word I wanted to write, while at other times I could only get part of it.
When I had filled one sheet of paper I turned up the electric light and
read what had been written before going on to the next sheet. On this
first occasion, March 5, 1901, my hand wrote about 80 words almost
entirely in Latin, but though the words are consecutive and seem to make
phrases, and though some of the phrases seem intelligible, there is no
general sense in the passage. Till the end of March, with a very few
exceptions, I continued daily to write fluently in Latin, with occasional
Greek words. The writing was not intelligible throughout, but it improved
and was very different from the rubbish with which it began.... The actual
writing was my own normal handwriting.... After the first two or three
times of writing I never read what had been written till the end, and
though I continued to be aware of the particular word, or perhaps two
words, that I was writing, I still retained no recollection of what I had
just written and no general notion as to the meaning of the whole (Part
liii, pp. 9, 10).
12 MORS JANUA VITAE?
At any early stage the script assumed the character of conversation,
conversation interrupted and confused, as if heard through a telephone
when the wires "seem to have got into contact, so that the operator hears
remarks not addressed directly to him" (p. 69). This is not an uncommon
experience with automatic writers; it is curious and significant. In these
conversations the sensitive is sometimes spoken of in the third person.
For instance, in January 1902, the following was written:-
Patience for you both it will come. Three Latin words can she not write
them? would give the clue (p. 69).
On January 15th, 1903, this was written:-
Wait for the word. He said, "I will send the half message to Mrs. Verrall
and you have the other half." Tell Hodgson this, but you have not got the
word yet (p. 70).
This passage suggests an attempt on the part of some one to produce a
"cross-correspondence," and reads as if it were part of a conversation on
the subject between two or more persons.
The "communicators" through Mrs. Verrall are very various; some are
identifiable, and many are unknown, they are distinguished by names or
signs.
MRS. VERRALL'S SCRIPT 13
One "communicator" appends the Greek cross to his writings. This
individuality was specially successful, and seemed to have a particular
interest in Mrs. Piper and Dr. Hodgson. This deserves to be noted; for the
Greek cross is the sign habitually appended to the script of one of Mrs.
Piper's principal controls, called "Rector," and although Mrs. Verrall had
read this script, and may therefore have subconsciously noted the fact,
she states that she had not consciously done so. In view of subsequent
developments the incident has some significance.
Another very significant point in her script is that it frequently makes
allusion to the importance of combined efforts. For instance:-
On March 19, 1902, the script says that, without "something composite,"
the whole is not "in good rhythm," makes a statement about what can be
"harmonised," and advises me not to guess but to receive what "thought"
casts out (Ibid. p. 126).
Later (May 31, 1902):-
"None of all this perpetual chatter" is said "to fit together," and some
one "versed in Music or the Muses" (or perhaps Musaeus*) is mentioned.
---
* Musaeus is a traditional poet or mystic of the same type as Orpheus.
14 MORS JANUA VITAE?
The remarks on July 13, 1902, and June 21, 1903...seem to imply that some
kind of "combination" is required. The same idea occurs on January 30,
1903, when the script says that what "you have chattered about" and "she
has thought" of fit together, "that joint action" is better, and that
"those who would separate" are not the best in this matter, though there
are occasions when separation must be made (Part liii, p. 126).
One further quotation on this point may be made, as it is particularly
remarkable:-
November 3, 1902-None the less through others not known speaks the fate,-fatum
ineffabile ineluctabile, etsi tu magno contendis corpore contra.* I will
give the words between you neither alone can read, but together they will
give the clue he wants. Comperire...redintegratio amoris A nec non
secessus (desunt hi alia et alioquin). Redit iam verbum ipsum-Caritatis
vocabulum, but hers are in English and will fill the gaps-Wait some time
for hers-it is hard to give her words. Tuus-iam nomen habes in mente etsi
non in calamo (Ibid. p. 170).
When we reach the consideration of Mrs. Holland's automatic script we
shall recognise the importance of the references to combined action. We
must remember that Mrs. Holland was at this time quite unknown to Mrs.
---
* Translation-"The fate unspeakable unavoidable, although you with your
strength fight against it...to discover...the restoration of love and not
separation (here (?) and elsewhere (?) words are missing). Now the word
itself returns-the term Charity.... Yours-you have the name in your mind
now though not on your pen."
MRS. VERRALL'S SCRIPT 15
Verrall. Her automatic script, unlike that of Mrs. Verrall, was almost
entirely written in English, and with reference to the sentence above
quoted, "some one versed in music or the Muses," it is interesting to find
that Mrs. Holland, when describing her experiences previous to 1903, says,
"Any automatic writing that comes to me is nearly always in verse.
This introduces the idea of "cross-correspondences," a term which has
gained a technical meaning. When used in psychical research the term
"cross-correspondence" denotes the independent occurrence, at
approximately the same time, of the same or obviously related ideas, in
the script of two or more automatic writers.
In his work on Psychical Research and the Resurrection Professor Hyslop
mentions that, before his death, Mr. Myers and also Dr. Hodgson had tried
occasionally to make experiments of this kind. The importance of such
experiments, if successful, is that, when carried through under strictly
test conditions, they narrow the problem to be solved by proving that one
and the same intelligence must be controlling two independent minds. It is
necessary that the reader should grasp this
16 MORS JANUA VITAE?
fact before proceeding to consider the next question, namely, to whom does
this controlling intelligence belong? Is it that of one or other of the
automatists? Or is there any indication that it is due to the activity of
some extraneous mind? If the cross-correspondences contain ideas, not
identical but related, the hypothesis of telepathy from one of the
automatists seems very improbable, and we are compelled to seek for some
other intelligent agent; and if, in addition, the correspondences bear the
impress of a selective, intelligent purpose, the conclusion that they
originate in an independent mind seems well-nigh unavoidable.
Mrs. Verrall's own attitude towards the writing was impartial and
critical; at first she was disposed to feel impatient of the apparent
futility of the long, often disconnected, sentences, and sceptical as to
there being any value in the matter produced. She writes:-
May 16 and 17 were the dates when first it seemed to me that there was
something like evidence for an external cause for the writing, and on June
1 of the same year a distinct step in the progressive opinion of which I
have spoken was made (Part liii, p. 92).
Her conviction as to the importance of the
MRS. VERRALL'S SCRIPT 17
script naturally increased with the evidence for its veridical character.
In May 1901 the first obvious cross-correspondence occurred between her
and Mrs. Thompson. The case is an interesting one. It is described in Part
liii, pp. 207, 208.
Although it is not possible to relate this incident in detail, a summary
of it must be given, as it is remarkable. During the early part of May
1901 Mrs. Verrall received an intimation through her automatic writing
that before the 17th inst. Mrs. Thompson would say something, of which she
would be informed through Sir Oliver Lodge. She was also, on May 8th,
between 10 and 10.30 p.m., told that a control, claiming to be Mr. Myers,
was at that time "communicating" elsewhere. At this period Mrs. Thompson
did not usually go into trance or in any way develop her psychic powers;
Mrs. Verrall, therefore, expected that anything which Mrs. Thompson might
have said would have been said in her normal state. As a matter of fact,
however, on the evening of the 8th, Mrs. Thompson, who was dining with Sir
Oliver and Lady Lodge, unexpectedly went into trance and purported to be
controlled by Mr. Myers, who then made the statement that some
18 MORS JANUA VITAE?
one was calling him elsewhere. This, be it noted, took place at the very
hour at which Mrs. Verrall was getting writing from the "Myers control,"
and was told, "No power-doing something else to-night."
If this incident stood alone it would be remarkable, but it does not stand
alone; it is one of many, even more remarkable, cross-correspondences,
some few of which we are about to consider.
CHAPTER III
MRS. HOLLAND'S AUTOMATIC SCRIPT
SOME account must now be given of the experiences of Mrs. Holland.*
This lady says that she attempted automatic writing about the year 1893,
Obtaining, at first, only short and uninteresting sentences. Later the
writing nearly always took the form of verses; these, "though often
childishly simple in wording and jingling in rhyme, are rarely trivial in
subject." She adds, "I am always fully conscious, but my hand moves so
rapidly that I seldom know what words it is forming." (Part lv, p. 171.)
In July 1903, when residing in India, she began to correspond with Miss
Johnson, the research officer of the S.P.R.
In June of that year she read Mr. Myers'
---
* The few details given in this chapter are derived from an able report by
Miss Johnson (research officer of the S.P.R.), published in Proceedings,
Part lv.
19
20 MORS JANUA VITAE?
work, Human Personality. She had no recollection of having even heard his
name before reading it. "But her own experience and her own temperament
had specially prepared her for the reception of it, and the personality of
the author strongly appealed to her" (p. 176). It was not surprising,
therefore, that the automatic script should from this date be to a great
extent associated with the name of Frederic Myers.
Mrs. Holland showed admirable impartiality in her own attitude, and Miss
Johnson says that she gave her every possible help in her study of the
script.
Not only has she answered fully and freely a very large number of
questions, and herself volunteered much information, which I could not
have obtained otherwise, about the sources or possible sources of many of
the statements in the script, but she has also accepted with the utmost
readiness any suggestion of mine as to experiments or methods of
procedure. Further, she has consented to remain for months at a time in
ignorance of the results of these experiments, and has continued
nevertheless to persevere with them (p. 175).
In reply to an inquiry as to whether she had seen any of the S.P.R.
Proceedings or Journals, Mrs. Holland wrote:-
I am delighted to answer any questions that may help me to understand how
much of the automatic writing I get is due to subconscious memory,
MRS. HOLLAND'S SCRIPT 21
and how much, if any, comes from other Influences. I am so afraid of
becoming a self-deceiver, charlatan malgre moi! I have never seen any of
the Proceedings or Journals of the S.P.R., and Mr. Myers' Human
Personality is the only, book on the subject I have ever read (Ibid. pp.
189, 190).
She then mentions a few collections of ghost stories that she had read,
and some flowery "spirit writings" sent to her in MS. by a friend in 1902,
which she says she disliked intensely, and adds, "I have never seen any
other examples of automatic writing."
She then promised to send her script to Miss Johnson, and added, "Please
continue not to give me any clue as to the meaning or meaninglessness of
anything that I may send you; I am very anxious not to begin to think of
'hits and misses,' and indeed I feel as if the less I thought of it the
less misleading it is likely to be" (p. 190).
This will suffice to show the disinterested spirit which animated Mrs.
Holland, and any one at all acquainted with the methods of the S.P.R. will
not require to be assured that, on her part, Miss Johnson took every
precaution to avoid the possibility that her correspondent should obtain
through her letters any information or hint which would
22 MORS JANUA VITAE?
vitiate the experiments. The correspondents did not meet until Mrs.
Holland came to England in the autumn of 1905.
The following review of Mrs. Holland's script must be limited to incidents
immediately connected with Frederic Myers; other matters, however striking
or evidential, do not come within the scope of this work, and even among
such incidents as are relevant to our subject only a small selection can
be referred to.
In September 1903 Mrs. Holland re-read Human Personality.
On September 16 (1903) the following passage was automatically written by
her hand:-
(September 16, 7.30 a.m.)
F.
Friend while on earth with knowledge slight I had the living power to
write Death tutored now in things of might I yearn to you and cannot
write. /17
It may be that those who die suddenly suffer no prolonged obscuration of
consciousness but for my own experience the unconsciousness was
exceedingly prolonged. /1
The reality is infinitely more wonderful than our most daring conjectures.
Indeed no conjecture can be sufficiently daring. /01
MRS. HOLLAND'S SCRIPT 23
But this is like the first stumbling attempts at expression in an unknown
language imperfectly explained. So far away, so very far away, and yet
longing and understanding potentialities of nearness.
M.
(p. 192).
Miss Johnson comments on this script as follows:-
It is written on two sides of a half-sheet of paper; the first side begins
with the initial "F.," and the second ends with the initial "M."; the
whole passage is divided into four sections, the first three ending
respectively in "/17," " /1" and "/01."
January 17, 1901, was the date of Mr. Myers' death, mentioned in Human
Personality; but the simple device of separating these initials and items
from one another was completely effective in its apparent object. I read
the passage a good many times before I saw what they meant, and I found
that the meaning had entirely escaped Mrs. Holland's notice* (p. 178).
The control calling itself Frederic Myers is characterised by an almost
passionate eagerness, and manifests intense longing to be recognised; when
the sensitive's incredulity was very pronounced (as it sometimes was), or
when the communications seemed
---
* Other occasions on which the sensitive was kept in ignorance of the
significance of her script by ingenious devices of this sort will be found
in Part IV, pp. 193, 304, 320.
24 MORS JANUA VITAE?
particularly difficult, the apparent consciousness of unavailing effort on
the part of the control becomes pathetic.
Another control who signs "G" (Edmund Gurney) shows, on the contrary,
somewhat brusque annoyance at her lack of persistence and belief, and he
reprimands her with much decision; Myers appears more anxious, but
gentler, and tries to encourage, sometimes by courteous pleading,
sometimes by explanations.
For instance we read the following:-
(M.) It is such a pity to break the chain-
Since you were out in the morning yesterday why did you not try in the
afternoon. A few minutes steadily each day are not much to ask from you...
(G.) I can't help feeling vexed or rather angry at the half-hearted way in
which you go in for this-you should either take it or leave it- If you
don't care enough to try every day for a short time better drop it
altogether. It's like making appointments and not keeping them. You
endanger your own powers of sensitiveness and annoy us bitterly. G....
(M.) Go on, do go on, you are beginning to establish communication- We
shall be able to strengthen your powers of will presently, only do have a
little faith and patience (pp. 200, 201).
The following is also an interesting bit of script:-
(M.) I want to make it thoroughly clear to you all that the eidolon is not
the spirit-only the simulachrum (sic)
MRS. HOLLAND'S SCRIPT 25
-If M. were to see me sitting at my table, or if any one of you became
conscious of my semblance standing near my chair that would not be me. My
spirit would be there invisible but perceptive but the appearance would be
merely to call your attention to identify me- It fades and grows less
easily recognisable as the years pass and my remembrance of my earthly
appearance grows weaker-
If you saw me as I am now you would not recognize me in the least-
"All I could never be-All men refused in me
This I was worth to God whose wheel the pitcher shaped-"*
I appear now as I would fain have been-as I desired to be in the very vain
dreams of youth-and the time-lined, pain-lined suffering face that some of
you remember with tenderness is a mere mask now that I strive to conjure
up for you to know me by- But my power is weak and you are not really
receptive-
...Remember once again that the phantasm, the so-called ghost is a
counterfeit presentiment projected by the spirit (p. 215).
In this script there is a detail worth noting, and that is, the use of the
terms eidolon and simulacrum.
On this Mrs. Verrall comments as follows:-
Homer (Odyssey, XI, 601) describes how Odysseus met in Hades "Great
Herakles, his phantom [Greek ???????]; himself [Greek ?????] rejoices amid
the immortals," etc. It is a famous passage, as the
---
* Browning, Rabbi ben Ezra; "refused" should be "ignored,"
26 MORS JANUA VITAE?
question of how Herakles came to be in Hades has been much discussed.
It is the passage alluded to by Plotinus, in the extract quoted in Human
Personality, Vol. II, p. 290.
But the point as regards Mrs. Holland's script is the scholarly and
classical use of the words eidolon and simulacrum...
While we should not expect this usage to be known to one who was not a
classical scholar, it would be likely to be familiar to readers of Homer
and Lucretius, and in the quotations from Plotinus in Human Personality,
we have direct proof (if it were wanted) that Mr. Myers knew the passage
in XI Odyssey, the locus classicus for the special use of ????????[Greek]*
(p. 216).
It is difficult and often impossible to differentiate between the
impressions received by the sensitive and her own interpretation of these.
Occasionally, however, the distinction can be made without difficulty, and
these cases are instructive; for they show how easily false
interpretations of genuine impression may be made, quite in good faith,
and therefore with how much reserve and caution mediumistic "messages"
should be received, and more particularly if these profess to give
guidance for practical conduct.
---
* Mrs. Holland cannot have derived the term from Human Personality, for
although Myers refers in that work to the above-named passage from the
Odyssey, he does not use the term eidolon when so doing.
MRS. HOLLAND'S SCRIPT 27
In a later script (Nov. 7, 1903) occurs a detailed description of a tall
man about sixty years of age. Mrs. Holland took this to be a picture of F.
W. H. Myers. In this she was quite mistaken.
The description applied to Dr. A. W. Verrall, and was correct in almost
every particular.
On re-reading the description later Mrs. Verrall writes:-
The attitude strikes me as particularly good. The trick of leaning forward
and gesticulating when interested in what he talks of is very
characteristic in the case of Cambridge friends and especially of Mr.
Myers (p. 188).
Now, although Mrs. Holland was mistaken in her interpretation of the
picture, there was remarkable appropriateness in Myers' friend, Dr.
Verrall, being described on this occasion, for the script began with the
words:-
MY DEAR MRS. VERRALL,
I am very anxious to speak to some of the old friends-Miss J.- and to A.
W.,
and it concludes as follows:-
Get a proof-try for a proof if you feel this is a waste of time without.
Send this to Mrs. Verrall,
5, Selwyn Gardens,
Cambridge.
28 MORS JANUA VITAE?
This script was prefaced by the initial "F."
Referring to this experience Mrs. Holland writes:-
I have never been in Cambridge, but in the two pages of automatic writing
I enclose, what purports to be an address there is thrice given, and the
third time it is stated to be Mrs. Verrall's.
I remember that lady's name in connection with experiments with crystal
vision in Human Personality, but I have no means of knowing if "Selwyn
Gardens" is a real place (p. 185).
From an evidential point of view the incident would be much less
interesting if the man described had been like Frederic Myers, for Mrs.
Holland might possibly have seen a portrait of him; but Mrs. Verrall tells
us that, as far as she knows, no portrait of her husband had ever appeared
in an illustrated paper (p. 188), and the last photograph of him
represented him at the age of forty, so that it is impossible that Mrs.
Holland could have known his appearance.
On the day after this script reached Miss Johnson (in the autumn of 1903),
she mentioned to Mrs. Verrall that her name and address had occurred in
the script of a lady in India; but nothing further was told Mrs. Verrall
about this script until October 1905.
.MRS. HOLLAND'S SCRIPT 29
On November 25, 1903, the following suggestion was made in Mrs. Holland's
script by the control signing "G."
Now there is an experiment I want you to make-suggest to the P.R. (to Miss
J.) that some one with a trained will-he will have no difficulty in
finding some one of the sort-is to try-for a few minutes-every morning for
at least a month-to convey a thought-a phrase-a name-anything you like to
your mind (p. 206).
This suggestion was not immediately acted upon; a gap occurred in Mrs.
Holland's writing whilst she was travelling, and no experiment of the kind
was tried until March 1905.
Miss Johnson then arranged with Mrs. Verrall and Mrs. Holland that they
should write once a week on the same day, both scripts being eventually
sent to her for comparison; the writers remained unknown to each other and
held no communication whatsoever. "The identity of each writer was first
disclosed to the other in October 1905" (p. 252).
The suggestion, be it observed, was made by the control in November 1903;
but on January 17, 1904, more than a year before the suggestion was acted
upon by the sensitives, a cross-correspondence occurred in the scripts of
Mrs. Verrall and Mrs. Holland.
30 MORS JANUA VITAE?
It looks almost as if the controls, finding the operators on this side
would not attempt the experiment, determined to try and carry it out
entirely on their own account. The details of this cross-correspondence
must be greatly epitomised. It will suffice to say that Mrs. Verrall's
script refers to the "seal of the letter," and added, "The question* is
answered and the text given."
Mrs. Holland's script on the same date is as follows:-
Attempt to get a message through. Sealed envelope not to be opened yet.
1 Cor. xvi. 13. Take the message to you all.
(This text had a special association for Mr. Myers and Mrs. Verrall.)
Here more follows of an intense and emotional nature expressive of
yearning to prove his identity "amid unspeakable difficulties." The text,
although not the one which had been asked for, and to which Mrs. Verrall
supposed that her script referred, is one which had associations for both
Frederic Myers and Mrs. Verrall, inasmuch as it is inscribed, in Greek
characters, over the gateway
---
* To explain what this question refers to would involve too wide a
digression.
MRS. HOLLAND'S SCRIPT 31
of Selwyn College, Cambridge, which Mr. Myers must often have passed in
going from his house to Mrs. Verrall's.
This text turns up in the script again more than a year later, in
connection with Mrs. Verrall, and before Mrs. Holland had been informed
that there was any significance in its first appearance (p. 253).
The fact that we have here a cross-correspondence due to something more
than coincidence will hardly be questioned. It is rendered more striking
by the fact that a few weeks before, on December 5th, Mrs. Holland was
told:-
I fear you will never be really responsive trying alone-at least not to
influences unknown to you while they lived. You need the connecting bond.
The subject of the sealed envelope involves a perplexing problem which
must be dealt with in a later chapter.
On March 1 the two sensitives began to experiment together, as above
mentioned, and cross-correspondences continued to appear at intervals in
the two scripts. Both in Mrs. Verrall's script and in Mrs. Holland's the
writing frequently urges combining and weaving together, as for instance
(March 31, 1900: "To one superposing
32 MORS JANUA VITAE?
certain things on certain things everything is clear." This thought seems
also to be expressed in the following lines written automatically by Mrs.
Verrall's hand (July 20)
1904.)
So flash successive visions in a glass
the while we dreaming scarce behold them pass.
Yet all the while on the awakened soul
each flitting image helps imprint the whole
and superposed on what was first impressed
fills so the outline, colour, and the rest,
and while we only watch the master's hand,
no glimpse vouchsafed us of the building planned,
stone upon stone, the battlements arise,
till the fair fabric flashes in the skies.
(Part lv, p. 378.)
CHAPTER IV
THE 'SYMPOSIUM' EPISODE
AT an early period in the development of Mrs. Verrall's automatic script
an idea emerged which formed the subject of a cross-correspondence with
Mrs. Forbes, and is of so significant a character that it will be
interesting to trace it through its various stages. This can only be done
by putting together and comparing the pieces of writing in which this idea
appears. Some demand must be made on the patience of the reader, as the
process of comparing these writings may be rather tedious. The episode in
question is associated with a passage in Plato's Symposium, in which
Socrates says that he will repeat what he learnt from Diotima, a
prophetess of Mantinea. Love is, says Diotima, one of the race of spirits
whose function it is to act as interpreters and mediators between gods and
men. (See The Banquet. Also Part liii, p. 311.)
33
34 MORS JANUA VITAE?
Mrs. Verrall's attention was first drawn to this subject in the following
manner:-
It was on May 31, 1901, that the script made the first recognisable and
direct reference to the dialogue in the words "Diotima gave the clue." I
looked the passage up to see what Diotima said, and how far could be
described as a "clue." I noted at the time what I conceived to be intended
as the clue, namely, that she told Socrates that Love was neither a god
nor a man, but a great spirit, and that the spiritual, being between God
and man, had the power of interpreting and conveying messages from God to
man and man to God; that all the intercourse and talk of God to men,
whether sleeping or waking, is through spirits, one of these is Love.
I was struck with the appropriateness of the message in itself and with
the form in which it was conveyed-not directly in words, but by an
allusion to Plato. I was certain that I had never seen the passage, and
therefore that no emergence of forgotten knowledge could account for its
appearance, so that the effect upon me was considerable and lasting (pp.
311, 312).
On Sunday, March 17, Mrs. Verrall and Mrs. Forbes were both writing
automatically, not together, but unknown to each other. Mrs. Verrall's
writing contained, for the first time, what she regarded as a vague
allusion to Mrs. Forbes. Later, on May 11, through Mrs. Thompson, the
"Myers control" said, "I tried on Sunday with- I saw the receptacle but
not this one."
Sir Oliver Lodge has suggested that this statement made in Mrs. Thompson's
trance,
THE SYMPOSIUM' EPISODE 35
may, perhaps, be connected with the sudden impulse on Sunday, March 17,
which induced Mrs. Verrall to write automatically, and which produced the
first reference to Mrs. Forbes in what eventually became a long series of
cross-correspondences between those two automatists." If this suggestion
is correct it looks as if, already, at this date, Mr. Myers had observed
Mrs. Forbes, had noted her capacity as a "receptacle" and had tried to
work through her.
It was not until September 20, 1901, however, that a definite mention of
Mrs. Forbes appeared in Mrs. Verrall's script, thus:-
Ask Mrs. Forbes if she has a message for you something about Gima or some
such word. Gima dion looks the length. YepiL [Greek ?????????].
Then follows another incoherent attempt to get this word written, and the
script continues:-
One single word.... I can't get it.
As I read this it occurred to me that "Gima dion" may probably represent
an early attempt (evidently unsuccessful) to produce a
cross-correspondence with Mrs. Forbes in connection with the passage in
the Symposium.
36 MORS JANUA VITAE?
"Gima dion looks the length" of the name "Diotima," G being substituted
for T, and "dion" for "dio." (See Part liii, p. 356; compare also the
script of December 18, 1901, p. 243.)
Noting that in her report Mrs. Verrall remarks that this bit of her script
seemed unintelligible, I wrote and asked her whether she did not think
that it might have this connection with the "single word," "Diotima." With
her kind permission I append her reply, which is of considerable interest.
5 Selwyn Gardens, Cambridge,
Feb. 12, 1909.
I am much obliged for your suggestion, which had not occurred to me. I
think it is quite possible that you are right, and that the script of
September 20, /01, represents that an attempt is being made to get the
word Diotima from Mrs. Forbes. "Gima dion" does "look the length," and the
syllables reversed are not unlike "dio tima." It is also true that in Mrs.
Forbes' later attempts, after my mind was attracted to the Symposium, the
word Dion actually emerged (Proceedings, Vol. XX, p. 244).
It never occurred to me to see this meaning in "Gima dion "; I was
probably put off by the Greek "?????????" which follows; for that makes
the vowel after g short e, whereas the i of tima is long i. But the
shortening of the vowel may be due to a desire to make a sort of sense of
"Gema dion," for the words "??????????"[greek] mean-or rather seem to
mean-"is full of Zeus."
If you are right it certainly makes the Symposium episode neater. For
then, after the allusion in my script of May 31, comes on September 20,
/01,
THE 'SYMPOSIUM' EPISODE 37
the suggestion that the word (skilfully disguised) is to be found in Mrs.
Forbes' writing.
Then, when this came to nothing, and a year afterwards I read the
Dialogue, "they" seized the opportunity to draw Mrs. Forbes' attention to
my reading, and so, by fixing my attention on the Symposium, to get an
allusion to the subject and the name "Dio-" in her script. In this case it
looks as if the attention of the "controls" had been steadily fixed on
that passage in the Symposium, as the subject for what we now call a
"correspondence" between Mrs. Forbes and me.
Mrs. Forbes' script does not at this date show any reference to the
Symposium. The next reference to the subject occurs in Mrs. Verrall's
script of June 27, 1902:-
Peace on earth tranquillitas super omnia maria terrasque omnes.* Then
listen to the fiery news-an arch of light bridges the chasm between earth
and sky (p. 314).
This is rather indefinite, but it obviously contains the thought that Love
is the bond between the worlds, which is the main idea of the passage in
the Symposium.
On November 26 Mrs. Forbes' script says:-
H. wishes Mrs. Verrall to open the last book she read for him in which is
the true word of the test (p. 241).
This script ended with the injunction, "let the letter be sent to-night."
* Translation: "Calm over all the seas and all the lands."
38 MORS JANUA VITAE?
This missive reached Mrs. Verrall November 28, and she tells us that it
completely puzzled her until at length she remembered that during November
26 and 27 her thoughts had been much occupied with Plato's Dialogue of the
Symposium, having arranged to lecture on it on November 29.
On the chance that this was the book referred to in Mrs. Forbes' script,
Mrs. Verrall deliberately set her mind upon this Dialogue before writing
automatically on November 28, hoping that by so doing she might enable
Mrs. Forbes to receive a clearer reference to the subject. Had this
occurred, thought transference would have been the ready explanation, but
no reference was found in either script until nearly a month later, when,
on December 18, Mrs. Forbes' script contained an obvious reference to this
subject:-
(a) ...word ...H. make it-...with the Dionysus* Dion-
(b) Edmund writes to tell the friend who writes with Talbot-word of the
Test will be Dy.... Will you give the sense of the message write to Mrs.
Verrall and say the word will be found in Myers' own...will you send a
message to
* Mrs. Forbes marks Dionysus as a guess.
THE 'SYMPOSIUM' EPISODE 39
Mrs. Verrall to say H. will see* with her on Friday-will you be so kind as
to send this to-day?
(c) ...Talbot writes to say you can be sure...it is one of the most
Hymeneal Songs-Love's oldest melody (p. 244)
On this Mrs. Verrall makes the following interesting comments:-
Not the least interesting point in this script is the dramatisation.
The first communicator with great difficulty produces only an attempt at a
word. The second describes that word as part of a test, says that it
concerns me, and attempts to add a further point for its identification.
The third, in a few words, written with comparative ease, gives a
description of the book such as suits very well the supposed situation,
viz. that of an intermediary not himself acquainted with the passage in
question but endeavouring to help in the transmission under difficulties
of a somewhat technical allusion (p. 245)
That Mrs. Forbes herself was completely unaware of the significance of
what she wrote is obvious from her letter enclosing the script, in which
she said, "If it turns out that you have anything to do with weddings
tomorrow, or are reading any special book with a hymeneal song in it, I
shall be very much delighted."
---
* Or "sit"; word not clear. Sir Oliver Lodge has since stated that "H."
represents the "Myers control." When Mrs. Verrall's report was published
it was considered undesirable to publish his name.
40 MORS JANUA VITAE?
Mrs. Verrall received this on December 19, 1902, and on that date her
script contained the sentence:-
In the sealed book* is the word the message to men, the new and old
Diatessaron.
This was followed by the drawing of a book.
The interpretation which should be given to the "sealed book" and the
"word" is somewhat uncertain. Was the book referred to Myers' book in
which he proclaimed his "message," his joyful news to men?
But if so, why is it called a "sealed book"? It looks as if there were
here an indication of confusion between two distinct subjects. A scaled
pamphlet had already been mentioned in the writing, and the incident of
the sealed pamphlet may perhaps throw some light on a perplexing
circumstance which will be dealt with in the next chapter.
On December 26, 1902, Mrs. Verrall was assured by her script, "Mrs. Forbes
will get
---
* Tatian's Harmony of the Four Gospels is known as Tatian's Diatessaron.;
of this Mrs. Verrall was aware, but she only subsequently learned that
there is also a Pythagorean Diatessaron. This renders the expression "new
and old Diatessaron" appropriate.
THE 'SYMPOSIUM' EPISODE 41
the word I want." This assurance was repeated in January 1903.
On January 6 (1903) we find in Mrs. Forbes' script apparent attempts to
write the word Symposium:-
Son...son suspuro suspiro sryseo sym on H. eros. *
Faint scribbles follow, containing a suggestion of Greek letters, but
these are not verifiable.
On January 11 unmistakable isolated Greek characters are legible,
???????????????????? and are described as part of an uncompleted test (p.
246).
Mrs. Forbes does not know the Greek alphabet, and has never consciously
written Greek characters (p. 246).
On January 21 (1903), after a reference to the Symposium, comes the
sentence, "Wait for the word from Mrs. Forbes," and this is immediately
followed by an obvious reference to some papers Dr. Verrall had lost. Mrs.
Verrall writes:-
In the last half of January there came, closely following upon one
another, five statements which I interpreted to mean that the passage in
question was alluded to and emphasised in Mr. Myers' forthcoming book,
Human Personality (p. 315)
* i.e. The god of Love?
42 MORS JANUA VITAE?
These are as follows:-
January 14, 1903. The book will help-our word is there contained.
January 22, 1903. In Myers' book is a word that ought to make things
plain-read it to see-not at the head of a chapter, but quoted in the
text-it should have been and surely is-
January 23, 1903. Read the book for me and look there for the helping
word.
January 25, 1903. Between God and man is the Greek "????????????"-you will
see that quoted in the book-Love is the bond.
January 31, 1903. Look for what I have told you in the book-Myers' book.
The passage is important, "To the ends of the earth." That is the
countersign (pp. 315, 316).
Mrs. Verrall did not know at the time of writing whether these statements
were correct. Mr. Myers had never talked over his book with her, and the
only portions she had seen in proof were Chapter VI with its appendix and
the headings of chapters. She says she had no means of knowing whether it
was likely that her script was correct, and she was very anxious to test
this. On receiving the volume, therefore, which was published on February
10, 1903, she searched it with considerable interest, and she found that
Vol. I, pp. 112, 115, contains paragraphs dealing with Plato's view of
love, and particularly with the above-mentioned Dialogue
THE 'SYMPOSIUM' EPISODE 43
in the Symposium Frederic Myers says, "Love becomes, as Plato has it, the
Interpreter and Mediator between God and man."
In Vol. I, chap. III, p. 113, we find a brief sketch of the ideas
expressed in the Dialogue, and in a footnote he speaks of this utterance,
placed by Plato in the mouth of Diotima, as unsurpassed among the
utterances of antiquity.
It is obvious, therefore, that the passage in Plato's Symposium occupied a
large place in Myers' thoughts when writing his book. Moreover, in Vol.
II, p. 282, we find a further allusion to it which should be compared with
the script of June 27, 1902.
Speaking of telepathy he says, "Again its action was traced across a gulf
greater than any space of earth or ocean, and it bridged the interval
between spirits incarnate and discarnate, between the visible and the
invisible world."
Further comment is not necessary. The episode requires close attention to
be appreciated, but it repays the trouble which its study involves. No one
who considers the matter carefully can fall to be impressed by the
indications of purpose which are apparent in the development of this
incident. Beginning
44 MORS JANUA VITAE?
with an early attempt to impress Mrs. Verrall (and perhaps also Mrs.
Forbes) with the name "Diotima," the control works persistently towards
the idea that the passage in the Symposium (containing the Dialogue) would
be found in "Myers' own"' work, not at that time published.
CHAPTER V
THE SEALED ENVELOPE
FREDERIC MYERS, before his death, entrusted to the care of Sir Oliver
Lodge a scaled envelope containing some words which it was his intention
to try to communicate after his death. Of this fact Mrs. Verrall was
aware.
On July 13, 1904, a statement was made in her script to the effect that
this envelope contained the passage from the Symposium about Love.
July 13, 1904-I have long told you of the contents of the envelope. Myers'
sealed envelope left with Lodge, you have not understood. It has in it the
words from the Symposium about Love bridging the chasm.
They are written on a piece of single paper, folded and put in an
envelope. That is inside another envelope which has my initial at the
bottom, left hand, and there is a date on the envelope too, the outside
envelope not in my writing. The whole thing has been put with other papers
in a box, a small box clamped with metal. (Part liii, p. 424.)
(Here follows a reference to another envelope
45
46 MORS JANUA VITAE?
supposed to have been left by Professor Sidgwick.)
Mrs. Verrall's script repeatedly urged that this sealed envelope should be
opened. When this was done, however, the statement as to its contents was
found to be incorrect.
No explanation of the error has been found, or, at least, no conclusive
explanation; there are, however, a few considerations which may throw a
little light upon it and may suggest a clue as to the possible causes of
the erroneous statement.
Between April 27 and May 8, 1901, there occurred repeated references in
the script to a lost book, indicating that it was to be searched for in a
certain room (recognised from the description as Mrs. Sidgwick's room),
and adding, "It is a test." Mrs. Sidgwick had forgotten altogether about
the existence of this pamphlet, which was not found until nearly two years
later, i.e. in December 1903, and then was discovered in the place
described in the script.
The following extract from Mrs. Verrall's report refers to this matter:-
When in the spring of 1901 (April and May) Mrs. Sidgwick was asked if,
among Dr. Sidgwick's papers, there was such a sealed
THE SEALED ENVELOPE 47
packet, she replied that there was not.... It thus appears that at the
time when inquiries were made of Mrs. Sidgwick about a sealed packet the
script was writing a description of a place containing some sort of book-a
place corresponding closely enough with the place where the missing
pamphlet was found." (Part liii, p. 198.)
References to a sealed packet, or envelope, occur in many other places,
associated sometimes with Professor Sidgwick, sometimes with Dr. R.
Hodgson.
Even after Mrs. Verrall had learned that the latter had no such envelope
her hand still wrote as if he had one. It is not surprising that the
communications concerning the passage in the Symposium and those connected
with a sealed packet should have become mixed together in her mind. Both
these ideas, as we have seen, were associated with tests which had been
verified. One had been verified in connection with the passage from the
'Symposium, quoted in Frederic Myers' book, and the other by finding among
Dr. Sidgwick's papers, in the place specified, a missing pamphlet in a
sealed envelope.
It seems probable that the definite assertion of July 13, 1904, is due to
a mistaken
48 MORS JANUA VITAE?
inference of her subliminal mind, based on this confusion. The character
of the script of this date rather favours this hypothesis. If it is
compared carefully with what has gone before, with the broken sentences
and obscure allusions quoted in the preceding chapter, it will be observed
that the difference between the clear flowing statement of July 13 and
those other scripts is very marked, and may well be due to the fact that
the earlier scripts really do give us the halting attempts of a "control"
to express ideas through Mrs. Verrall's brain, whereas the fluent writing
of July 13 emanated mainly from her own subliminal consciousness.
Sensitives are very liable to mistake their own inferences for impressions
received, and it is often difficult, sometimes impossible, for them to
distinguish between the two. This is also more likely to occur if the
subject occupies the sensitive's mind in its normal state in the intervals
between writing; for in this case it is well-nigh impossible to exclude
conjectures and surmises. I do not, of course, intend to suggest that Mrs.
Verrall had consciously associated the sealed envelope with the Symposium,
but merely that the two subjects had become associated in her subliminal
THE SEALED ENVELOPE 49
consciousness; and since it is this region which is tapped through
automatic writing, it would be natural that this connection should appear
in the script.
This interpretation is confirmed by Mrs. Holland's writings. In her script
the error is attributed to the intervention of Mrs. Verrall's own
thoughts. The passage is an interesting one and deserves careful
consideration. In order to appreciate it some extracts must be quoted from
Miss Johnson's report.
The envelope had been opened on December 13, 1904, and the result was
published in the S.P.R. Journal for January 1905, which appeared on the
17th.* "The Westminster Gazette on the same date contained a paragraph
stating briefly the facts given in the Journal, and this paragraph was
widely copied in other English papers." (Part lv, p. 242.)
On February 15, 1905, Mrs. Holland wrote to Miss Johnson:-
I have discontinued my practice of automatic writing for nearly a year, as
the shock and jar of any chance interruption seemed out of all proportion
---
* From an evidential point of view, of course, this fact renders the
subsequent allusion to the subject in Mrs. Holland's script less valuable
than it would have been had the dates been in reverse order, but it is
still of considerable interest.
50 MORS JANUA VITAE?
to the value of anything I obtained. However, this morning I had an
unexpected impulse to write sentences which as usual mean nothing to me
personally-and I enclose the message....
[M.] "Under other conditions I should say how much I regretted the failure
of the envelope test, and I do regret it because it was a disappointment
to you-otherwise it is too trivial to waste a thought upon-
...."Imperfect instruments imperfect means of communication. The living
mind, however sensitive, intrudes its own conception upon the signalled
message. Even now my greatest difficulty is to combat the suggestion of
the mind whose hand writes this, though the owner tries to be passive.
Short of trance conditions which are open to even graver objections, the
other mind is our greatest difficulty. And they tire and flag so soon.
Eternally,
Life touching lips with Immortality.'"*
(Part lv, pp. 241, 242.)
Miss Johnson, on receiving this, naturally concluded that Mrs. Holland had
seen the newspaper accounts of the incident; she therefore wrote and
inquired of her whether she had heard anything at all in connection with
the S.P.R. since coming to England. Mrs. Holland replied:-
I very seldom hear the name of your society mentioned, and as I am in the
habit of concealing the interest I take in it, I never hear any news
concerning
---
* D. G. Rossetti, for a Venetian Pastoral by Giorgione.
THE SEALED ENVELOPE 51
it or its members. I have never seen any of the Proceedings, and Human
Personality is the only book in connection with it I have ever read.
I remember an article in the December Fortnightly on "The Progress of
Psychical Research" (p. 243).
(This article contained no mention of the sealed envelope or of Sir Oliver
Lodge.)
Miss John son did not refer to the subject again in writing, but in
October 1905 she had a long interview with Mrs. Holland. She then learned
that this lady had no conscious recollection of having heard anything at
all about the opening of the sealed envelope.
She remembered the passage in Human Personality recommending such
experiments to be made (Vol. II, p. 499), and told me of another magazine
article which she had read some time ago, which she thought might have
contained reference to the subject. (I afterwards read this article, and
found in it only a reference to supposed communications from Mr. Myers
through automatic writing.)
At a later interview with Mrs. Holland (May 29, 1906) I showed her the
paragraph in the Westminster Gazette about the opening of the sealed
envelope, and cross-questioned her as to the possibility of her normal
knowledge of it. She repeated that she was certain that she had never
heard of it till I told her, and that she thought it quite impossible that
she could have seen it and forgotten it (p. 244).
Whilst we are on this subject it may be well to consider some other
possible causes
52 MORS JANUA VITAE?
of confusion which must be reckoned with by students.
It is not only the sensitive on this side who is liable to become
confused, the controlling intelligence is liable to be so also. For if
sensitives can receive impressions from their "controls" It is obvious
that, the condition of rapport once established, the control may also be
liable to receive the thoughts of the sensitive. This reciprocal
telepathy, whilst it is essential for communication, is probably the
source of many errors; since fusion of thought at the moment when it is of
urgent importance that the "control" should formulate a distinct idea may
frustrate the very object of the contact, and may result in the sensitive
receiving his own thought returned to him, mixed up, perhaps, with
thoughts of the communicator. It is easy to see how misleading such a
mixture of ideas might be.
In an early report on Mrs. Piper's trance (published in 1892) Dr. Hodgson
points out that when the communications lack lucidity this is, apparently,
not always due to the sitter, and he quotes the following remark made by
"Dr. Phinuit," who at that time purported to be Mrs. Piper's chief
control.
ENVELOPE 53
Sometimes when come here, do you know, actually it hard work for me to get
control of the medium. Sometimes I think that I am almost like the medium,
and sometimes not at all. Then [when the control is incomplete] I am weak
and confused. (Proceedings, Part xxi, p. 9.)
I will here add an entry made in a notebook of my own after reading the
automatic script of a friend, as it bears on this point under
consideration.
March 30, 1903-Record indicates anxiety on the part of X. (i.e. the
communicator), lest control should mean a merging of individualities-a
danger to both-
"But you hold on," he adds, as if this saved the situation.
That is to say, my friend's capacity to "hold on" to her own distinct
personality safe-guarded both from the risk of fusion of thought and
consciousness.
Further I find the following extract:-
"Glory is the ineffable majesty of the eternal God;" the communicator
adds, "partly your thought, I put mine behind it-to shine through, that's
the way we correspond, interact on each other's minds."
Again another incident which has come under my observation corroborates
this.
A young friend of my own used at one time to write and speak
automatically, and sometimes
54 MORS JANUA VITAE?
went into trance. On one occasion, in the trance state, the "control"
said, the medium is "dreaming, and her dreams get in my way," and then
added that the word "Gehenna" was in the mediums mind, and offered an
obstruction. Being at a loss to understand how such a word should be in
the girl's mind, she was questioned on the point when she had come out of
the trance state. She then said she did not know what the word meant, and
that she had been wondering as to its meaning during the previous day.
This incident suggests the kind of obstructions which may have to be
overcome by both the "control" and the sensitive.
Through the hand of the same girl a fuller account of these difficulties
was written in reply to an inquiry as to the source of erroneous messages.
It may be of interest in this connection to quote this in full.
I do not think you have been deceived, but I have no doubt that confusion
has crept in. It does so to such an extraordinary extent that you would
marvel if you could watch the process. Let me try to describe to you a
little bit of our feelings when we control. We find ourselves entering a
dense mist. It blinds us, deafens us, and clogs our senses. Then we seek
to make some movement, often not knowing what will be the result. The
result is often-is usually-totally unexpected by ourselves.
THE SEALED ENVELOPE 55
It is as though you meddled with some large machine whose properties you
do not understand. It is quite terrifying sometimes if you are very
confused and cannot understand what your machine is doing. As you remain
isolated, lonely, confused, some word floats through the medium's
atmosphere. You seize on it with gladness, believing very often in your
confusion either that it is the message you had yourself intended sending,
or that it is a word from your spirit friend reminding you of what you had
wanted to say- One idea once started in a medium's mind often starts and
suggests another idea, and often then a whole story is fabricated, the
communicator sincerely believing that he is speaking the truth.
Then when we leave the medium we look back on a collection of falsehoods
which quite appal us and can only wait for another opportunity of
rectifying the mistake- It is a heavenly relief to return to the spirit
atmosphere- But you must not think that this is the case with all spirits,
for to many of us it is comparatively easy-
To myself especially so now, though at first it was not so.
In reply to the inquiry whether the power of communicating between that
state and our own would grow stronger, in connection with the work
generally, the following reply was given:-
Yes, certainly- They intend perfecting the work which is at present only
half begun.
Question. What did you mean by some word floats through the medium's
atmosphere?
Answer. Either in the medium's mind or spoken by one of the circle.
This script came through the hand of a girl
56 MORS JANUA VITAE?
who had read little of the literature on the subject, though she was
doubtless familiar with the idea that many difficulties attend the effort
to communicate.
If this graphic description correctly indicates the nature of these
difficulties, it is easy to understand how such an error as that connected
with the sealed envelope may have arisen.
In a report published in June 1909 Sir Oliver Lodge expresses in not
dissimilar language what he conceives to be the condition during some of
these attempts to communicate. He says:-
They are attempts at doing something rather beyond the power of the
operators who arrive approximately at their aim without achieving what
they want exactly. They are trying to get something definite through, let
us say, and something like it comes. Occasionally they hardly know it
comes, it is a puzzle to them as to us, and often they don't know what it
is that we have got; but sometimes they too seem to be spectators, aware
of the result, and to be worried by the misconception and the
misunderstanding which they see will arise, but which they are powerless
to prevent except, as here, by trying to instruct us and awaken our
intelligences into a condition in which we too can understand and grapple
with the unavoidable difficulties of the situation. (Part lviii, p. 218.)
It is interesting to compare these two quotations, remembering that one
was written
THE SEALED ENVELOPE 57
through the hand (if a girl who had not studied the Piper records, and the
other from the pen of a Professor who is summing up some of the
impressions made on him by prolonged study of these and other experiences.
It is very important that students should realise that such causes of
error are factors more or less present in all psychic experiences. They
have been dealt with at length by Dr. Richard Hodgson *in Proceedings,
Part xxxiii, which students would do well to read carefully.
The causes of confusion may be classed as follows:-
1. First, the fact that thoughts telepathically received from those still
in the flesh may blend with, or be mistaken for, messages from the
discarnate.
2. The thoughts of the medium, whether in trance or out of trance, may act
in a similar way.
3. The Intelligence desiring to communicate may be unable to concentrate
his mind sufficiently to control the medium's brain, and may have to use
an intermediary,' who may fall to receive the message correctly.
---
* This will be further explained in dealing with Mrs. Piper's trance.
58 MORS JANUA VITAE?
4. Several spirits may attempt to communicate their thoughts to the medium
at the same time, and may interfere with each other without being aware
that they are doing so.
5. The eagerness or possible agitation of the communicating spirit is also
a disturbing cause; and to this may be added the fact-
6. That the very act of controlling another brain causes partial oblivion.
Perhaps the common experience of forgetting a name when we are
particularly desirous of recalling it may be a somewhat analogous
experience. We say, "I shall remember it if I don't try to think of it."*
---
* The subject of confusion arising from possible difficulties of
communication is further dealt with in Objections to Spiritualism
(Answered), by H. A. Dallas, published by the London Spiritualist
Alliance, 110, St. Martin's Lane, W.C.
CHAPTER VI
MRS. PIPER'S MEDIUMSHIP
AS Mrs. Piper's mediumship has played such an important part in the more
recent developments in connection with Frederic Myers, it is desirable to
put the reader in possession of some of the particulars concerning this
remarkable sensitive which have been published from time to time by the
S.P.R.
The earliest account of her appeared in 1890. (Part xvii.) She had then
been more or less under observation for about five years. Professor
William James made her acquaintance in the autumn of 1885. In the report
which he made to the American S.P.R. of his experiences with her he said:
"I am persuaded of the medium's honesty and of the genuineness of her
trance." He attempted to hypnotise her, but succeeded only "as far as
muscular phenomena and automatic imitation of speech and gesture go; but,"
he
59
60 MORS JANUA VITAE?
adds, "I could not affect her consciousness, or otherwise get her beyond
this point. Her condition in this semi-hypnosis is very different from her
medium trance. Suggestions to the 'control' that he should make her
recollect after the medium trance what she had been saying were accepted,
but had no result no clear signs of thought transference as tested by the
naming of cards during the waking state.... Trials of the 'willing game.'
and attempts at automatic writing gave similarly negative results." (Part
xvii, pp. 6,53, 654.)
Professor Hyslop has recently stated that he, too, has found her not
suggestible,- he writes in the Journal of the American S.P.R., October
1908:-
I believe only one person has ever been able to hypnotise Mrs. Piper
effectively. But in her trance she is not suggestible at all as that is
understood by Psychopathologists.... Suggestibility means imitative and
apparently automatic response to an operator's command or request. Now
Mrs. Piper does not do this at all (p. 545).
The importance of this fact will be recognised later when we discuss the
development called "Crosscorrespondences."
The testimony to her honesty borne so unequivocably by Professor William
James
MRS. PIPER'S MEDIUMSHIP 61
is corroborated by Mr. Myers, Dr. Richard Hodgson, Professor Hyslop and
Sir Oliver Lodge. The latter writes:-
That the Phenomenon is a genuine one, however it is to be explained, I now
regard as absolutely certain; and I make the following two statements with
the utmost confidence:-
1. Mrs. Piper's attitude is not one of deception.
2. No conceivable deception on the part of Mrs. Piper can explain the
facts. (Part xvii, p. 446.)
Any one desiring further assurance on this point should read the opening
pages of the two reports published in Parts xvii and xxi of Proceedings,
in which are described the precautions taken by investigators to satisfy
themselves with regard to the honesty of the Medium and the reality of her
trance, of which Professor James affirms he has not "the remotest doubt,"
at the same time giving it as his conviction that Mrs. Piper is "an
absolutely simple and genuine person." (Part xvii, p. 654.)
She seemed anxious that the phenomena connected with her state should be
investigated by scientific men, as she did not profess herself to
understand it at all, and she showed "the fullest readiness to accept
suggestions in any way whatever, for the purpose of ascertaining the
meaning of the
62 MORS JANUA VITAE?
Phinuit personality," who formerly manifested in her trance state. Both
she and Phinuit gave full permission to Dr. Hodgson to try any tests which
might seem to him desirable. The Committee appointed by the American S.P.R.
to investigate Mrs. Piper's case, report in a similar way of the aid
afforded them by the "generous cooperation of +the Medium." (Part xxi, p.
2.)
The following particulars quoted from Sir Oliver Lodge's report are of
considerable interest:-
These trances cannot always be induced at pleasure. A state of quiet
expectancy or "self-suggestion" will usually bring one on; but sometimes
the attempt altogether fails.... The first time that it occurred (as Mrs.
Piper informs us), it came as an unwelcome surprise.... There was often a
marked difference between the first few minutes of a trance and the
remaining time. On such occasions almost all that was of value would be
told in the first few minutes; and the remaining talk would consist of
vague generalities or mere repetitions of what had already been given.*
Phinuit, as will be seen, always professed himself to be a spirit
communicating with spirits; and he used to say that he remembered their
messages for a few minutes after "entering into the medium," and then
became confused. Le was not, however, apparently able to depart when his
budget of facts was empty. (Part xvii, p. 441.)
---
* The student should observe this tendency to repetition, which is a
marked feature in experiences of this sort and a factor to be reckoned
with.
MRS. PIPER'S 'MEDIUMSHIP 63
In the trance state, under the Phinuit "control," she seemed to be
partially anaesthetic, sensations of touch being somewhat enfeebled,* and
the senses of taste and smell apparently lacking. (Part xxi, pp. 4, 5.)
The communications which purported to be made at the earlier stages of her
mediumship, were not by writing but through the voice.
Speaking of the voice of the Phinuit "control," Sir Oliver Lodge says:-
It sounded like a man, and I quite forgot that it was a woman who was
speaking for the rest of the sitting; the whole manner and conversation
were masculine...the occasional irrelevance faintly coming in every now
and then amid the more constant coherent and vigorous communication,
reminded me of listening at a telephone, where, whenever your main
correspondent is silent, you hear the dim and meaningless fragment of a
city's gossip, till back again comes the voice obviously addressed to you
and speaking with firmness and decision.... The details given of my family
are just such as one might imagine obtained by a perfect stranger
surrounded by the whole of one's relations in a group and able to converse
freely but hastily with one after the other; not knowing them and being
rather confused
---
* A medium with whom physical manifestations occurred, but who did not go
into the trance state, experienced the opposite; she has told me that when
phenomena were occurring she has become painfully and acutely sensitive to
sound and even to the touch of a fly lighting upon her.
64 MORS JANUA VITAE?
with their number and half understood messages and personalities, (Part
xvii, pp. 144, 145.)
Mrs. Piper's health appears to have benefited rather than otherwise from
her strange state. Previous to the year 1893 her health was not good, in
that year she underwent an operation necessitated by an injury received
some time before in a collision with an ice-sled; another operation was
performed in February 1896, and "since then," Dr. Hodgson says, "her
health has been uniformly better and she may now be regarded as a
thoroughly healthy woman." (Part xxxiii, p. 288.) This statement was
endorsed in a personal letter which I received from Mr. Myers in December
1898, in which he says:-
The actual facts have been carefully watched throughout, and noted by
first-hand observers, medical and otherwise,* in successive Reports. In
her earlier years of trance Mrs. Piper would give various jerks and gasps
during entry into and exit from trance. She was unconscious of this and
made no complaints, nor was there ever any ground to suppose them
injurious to her. Of recent years, e.g. when I saw her in 1893, and ever
since she has passed into and out of trance, just as she would into and
out of sleep, with perfect calm.... The probable view is that the
trances-or the "controls"-have improved Mrs. Piper's health.
---
* Professor William James is a physician as well as a psychologist.
MRS. PIPER'S MEDIUMSHIP 65
It is interesting, in view of later developments both of experience and
opinion, to observe the guarded comments made by Mr. Myers, Sir Oliver
Lodge, Dr. Hodgson and other investigators in the earlier reports in Parts
xvii and xxi. None of them were at that time prepared to commit themselves
to any interpretation, even provisionally, as a working hypothesis; but
various possible hypotheses were under consideration. These will be
referred to in the next chapter.
In Dr. Hodgson's Report published in 1892 (Part xxi), after referring to
thought transference, clairvoyance, secondary personality, etc., and
endeavouring to show how far they might apply to some of the phenomena, he
concludes by saying:-
The hypothesis which for a long time seemed to me the most satisfactory is
that of auto-hypnotic trance in which a secondary personality of Mrs.
Piper either erroneously believes itself to be, or consciously and falsely
pretends to be, the "spirit" of a deceased human being.... Several facts
which I have mentioned...seem to point strongly towards this view. My
confidence, however, in this explanation has been considerably shaken by
further familiarity with the Phinuit personality and other allied
"manifestations" of Mrs. Piper's trance-state, and I have no certain
convictions that any single theory which has been put forward is the real
one. (Part xxi, pp. 57, 58.)
To this he adds a note at a later date:-
66 MORS JANUA VITAE?
The foregoing report is based upon sittings not later than 1891. Mrs.
Piper has given some sittings very recently which materially strengthen
the evidence for the existence of some faculty that goes beyond thought
transference from the sitter and which certainly prima facie appear to
render some form of the spiritistic hypothesis more plausible (p. 58).
It was this hypothesis to which he ultimately committed himself in the
report published in 1898. (Part xxxiii.)* In this report he deals very
fully with the reasons which led him to this conclusion, and with the
probable difficulties which have to be surmounted by any spirit trying to
use the organism of another as a channel of self expression. The whole
subject is dealt with in a masterly manner, with clearness, with weighty
reasoning and comprehension, the result of long and patient experiment
through upwards of ten years.
In this report he points out that, whilst the errors and confusions are
not incomprehensible, if we take into consideration the great difficulties
and the conditions generally, they "are not the results we should expect
on the hypothesis of telepathy from the living," and that the spirit
hypothesis is that which most satisfactorily accounts for these and other
facts.
---
* A document of great importance to any student who wishes to gain a clear
grasp of the subject.
CHAPTER VII
THEORIES WHICH HAVE BEEN SUGGESTED
ALTHOUGH Dr. Hodgson stated in his report of 1898, that he no longer had
any doubt that the chief communicators through Mrs. Piper are veritably
the personalities which they profess to be (Proceedings, Part xxxiii, p.
406), he did not, at that date, claim that the correctness of his
conclusions was absolutely proven, but only that the weight of the
evidence was strongly, and in his opinion convincingly, in their favour. I
will now briefly touch upon some of his reasons for regarding this
hypothesis as a more adequate one than any other, but readers must bear in
mind that it is impossible to do full justice to his argument in so
cursory a survey.
To begin with, he attached some weight to the fact that the communicators
not only persistently asserted themselves to be the spirits of deceased
persons, but also produced marvellous simulation of the deceased,
67
68 MORS JANUA VITAE?
accompanied by their specific memories and "by the presentation of each
character in its unity, showing a clear self-consciousness, a working
intelligence of its own, and a morality in no case less than that of the
persons concerned when living, but showing rather a more definite upward
movement, a stronger determination towards the things that are higher."
He could not reconcile "all this apparently complete independence and
power of reasoning and lofty ethical aspirations" with the supposition
that they were "either lying or mistaken about the fact of their existence
itself, and must be assumed to be, one and all, merely fragments of Mrs.
Piper." (Part xxxiii, p. 369.)
To those who are only superficially acquainted with the phenomena the
hypothesis that these personalities are "fragments of Mrs. Piper," that is
to say, secondary personalities of Mrs. Piper, is likely to seem more
probable than to those who have closely and profoundly studied them.
Persons who have not paid much attention to scientific definitions have
sometimes a vague general notion that a "secondary personality" is capable
of displaying all sorts of super
THEORIES SUGGESTED 69
normal faculties, and that there is no limit to the capacity for acquiring
information with which it may be credited.
The following paragraph from a letter by Professor Hyslop* will show that
this notion is quite erroneous.
The Scientist has to have a term to denote the subconscious production of
matter which is neither supernormal nor spiritistic, but derivable from
the normal experience of the subject, and latent to the normal
consciousness and memory.
As secondary personality is known to the Scientist it has no traces of the
supernormal.... We must remember that the term secondary personality is
not a name for any special power of the mind other than the normal, as
many people have supposed, but is as I have defined it....
Mrs. Piper shows no traces of secondary personality as defined and
recognised in psychiatry or pathology.
In Professor Hyslop's opinion, therefore, the hypothesis of secondary
personality will not account for the supernormal acquisition of knowledge.
Is the hypothesis of telepathy more satisfactory? Are the facts such as to
justify the conclusion that Mrs. Piper (in the trance state) obtains
information from the minds
---
* Not intended for publication, but quoted with his kind permission.
70 MORS JANUA VITAE?
of living persons, and, impersonating the character of the deceased,
retails this information to their friends?
We must bear in mind that the information imparted is often unknown to any
person present, so that, if the theory of thought transference (or
telepathy) be accepted, it will be necessary to assume that the agents are
persons at a distance from the percipient, that she has, subliminally,
access to the minds of persons of whose existence she has! normally, no
knowledge, and that she can receive from their minds facts of which they
are not consciously thinking.
Now it can be claimed as experimentally demonstrated that ideas
consciously in the mind of one person can, when thought has been
concentrated on these ideas, be transferred to the mind of another person
at a distance, and such transference may take place without the agent
having the intention of transmitting anything; but it cannot be claimed
that the kind of thought-transference which has to be assumed to explain
the phenomena which occur with Mrs. Piper, has ever been experimentally
demonstrated at all.
Sir Oliver Lodge lays emphasis on this fact in his discussion of the case.
He says:-
THEORIES SUGGESTED 71
Whereas the kind of thought-transference which has been to my knowledge
experimentally proved was a hazy and difficult recognition by one person
of objects kept as vividly as possible in the consciousness of another
person, the kind of thought-transference necessary to explain these
sittings is of an altogether freer and higher order-a kind that has not
yet been experimentally proved at all. (Part xvii, p 452.)
And further on he repeats:-
It ought to be constantly borne in mind that this kind of
thought-transference without consciously active agency has never been
experimentally proved (p. 453)
Dr. Hodgson endorses this statement and says that, judging from his own
experience, and that of other sitters, the results "would prove
conclusively that the information was not obtained by a process like that
involved in experimental thought-transference, and that for the kind of
telepathy, if telepathy it be, involved in these manifestations there is
no experimental basis whatever."
If the phenomena are to be attributed to the activities of Mrs. Piper's
subliminal consciousness alone, we are compelled to make the arbitrary
supposition, not only that Mrs. Piper's subliminal mind gets into relation
with the minds of distant living persons, but also that this part of her
consciousness is
72 MORS JANUA VITAE?
endowed with a selective capacity as to occurrences, and a discriminative
faculty as to the persons related to the occurrences; otherwise the
information acquired would not be correctly associated with the persons
whom the events in question concerned. Her impersonations (if they are to
be so denoted) manifest "emotional remembrances and desires and
intelligence characteristic of the alleged communicators and urging
further towards higher aspiration and noble deeds, and constantly
affirming their independent existence." (Part xxxiii, pp. 394, 395.)
Moreover, here is another significant fact the failures which occur in
many attempts to communicate present features of a character in accordance
with what might be expected, if the communicators are what they claim to
be, independent entities, but they are not such as we should expect on the
hypothesis of telepathy from the living.
Dr. Hodgson again writes:-
Having tried the hypothesis of telepathy from the living for several
years, and the "spirit" hypothesis also for several years, I have no
hesitation in affirming with the most absolute assurance that the 46
spirit" hypothesis is justified by its fruits and the other hypothesis is
not. (Part xxxiii, pp. 392-306.)
THEORIES SUGGESTED 73
In this connection the statement made by Professor Hyslop, already quoted,
should not be forgotten, namely, that Mrs. Piper in her trance is "not
suggestible at all." (See Journal American S.P.R., Vol. II, p. 545,
October 1908.)
The above facts deserve very careful consideration: those who desire to
form a fair judgment as to the bearings of these phenomena as a whole must
rid their minds of all ambiguity as to the assumptions which it is
necessary to make if the spirit hypothesis is rejected, and they must
fully realise that neither the theory of secondary personality, nor that
of telepathy, can be applied to account for the phenomena without
extending the significance of these terms to include faculties the
existence of which has not up to the present been scientifically
demonstrated; and therefore that it cannot be argued in favour of these
interpretations that they have the advantage of being already proven. The
recognition of this is important, for there is, perhaps, no greater
hindrance to growth in understanding and conviction than to allow the
imagination to be captivated by a hypothesis, under the illusion that it
rests on demonstrated facts,
74 MORS JANUA VITAE?
when it is really only an unproven speculation.*
Speculation is perfectly legitimate if it is recognised to be merely
speculation, it may even be useful by suggesting a direction for fruitful
investigation, but if a false value is attached to it, its effect is
mischievous; mental areas which should be receptive and open become
prepossessed and closed, and thus the discovery of a truer and more
adequate hypothesis ray be indefinitely postponed.
I will now give a few details as to the manner of Mrs. Piper's trance, and
what appear to be the conditions under which communications are made
through it. Dr. Hodgson says in his report that the trance exhibits four
definite stages. In Stage I, Mrs. Piper appears to have two modes of
consciousness, which he calls respectively normal (or supraliminal) and
subliminal. In this stage the normal consciousness is beginning to
disappear; she is still dreamily conscious of the persons beside her, and
at the same time she is also dreamily conscious
---
* The Law of Psychic Phenomena, by Thomson Jay Hudson, appears to me to be
a speculation of this misleading kind,
THEORIES SUGGESTED 75
of "spirits." She seems to be partly conscious, as it were, of two worlds.
In Stage II her normal consciousness "has entirely disappeared and the
subliminal consciousness only is manifest. It is as though her own
personality held much the same relation to her organism as Phinuit or
other 'spirit' controller of the voice.... She seems then to possess not
the dreamy consciousness of the previous stage...but a fuller and clearer
consciousness...which is in direct relationship, not so much with our
ordinary physical world, as with another world."
In Stage III this consciousness also disappears; "it seems to be withdrawn
from any direct governance of her body, the upper part of which becomes
inert and apparently lifeless." The upper part of her body falls forward,
and her head is supported upon cushions on a table.
In Stage IV a very slight disturbance arises in the upper part of the
body, "which becomes less inert and which appears to have come to some
extent under the control of some consciousness...and the right hand and
arm...begin to make movements suggesting writing." (Part xxxiii, pp. 397,
76 MORS JANUA VITAE?
398.) In the earlier phase of Mrs. Piper's experiences the voice alone was
controlled; later, when writing developed, "the personalities controlling
respectively the hand and the voice showed apparently a complete
independence...seemed to be entirely distinct from each other, and
frequently carried on separate and simultaneous independent conversations
with different sitters" (p. 398).
The intelligence communicating through writing seems to be unaware of the
effect which is produced on Mrs. Piper's organism, "as little aware as a
person talking into a phonographic mouth-piece is aware of the
registration on the revolving cylinder.... The writing...is liable to
include occasionally remarks not intended to be written, words apparently
addressed by an indirect 'communicator' to the consciousness of the
hand...or by indirect communicators to one another...or the wandering
thoughts of the direct communicator were apparently produced in writing in
incoherent fragments.... But there never seemed to be any confusion
between the personality moving the hand...and the personality moving the
voice" (pp. 398, 399).
THEORIES SUGGESTED 77
When passing out of trance, which Mrs. Piper does more slowly than when
entering the trance state, she frequently utters words or sentences which
seem to have been made to her by communicators, she seems like a spirit
not in full control of her body. "She frequently has visions, apparently
of distant or departing communicators" (p. 40). In this returning stage of
the trance some valuable utterances have been made (valuable, that is,
from the point of view of evidence), and communications which could not be
given during the state of deep trance have not infrequently been
successfully conveyed during the waking stage.
For instance, Miss Edmunds was holding a sitting on behalf of a lady who
was not present. As Mrs. Piper was coming out of the trance, her voice
shouted excitedly, "Tell Aleck Bousser (pseudonym) not to leave them
alone." Miss Edmunds knew nothing of Aleck Bou |
