FOREWORD

 

THE book to which this is an introduction occupies a definite if humble place in a long evolution of the philosophy of mind. The primitive doctrine of Animism was an attempt to explain first the phenomena of organic beings and then of inorganic. Every body was under the control of a soul or spirit, figured sometimes by the breath, anima, or spiritus, and sometimes by the shadow, ~~~~, or umbra. Spirits, or shades, were then endowed with a power of existence beyond death, but such existence was deprived of the full-blooded intensity of life in body, and was consequently deprecated by Achilles as comparatively worthless.

 

Animism has probably not entered at any time into the structure of religion, though on the other hand it may, as a primitive form of psychology, have contributed to the form taken by it in its evolution. It does, however, underlie historically modern Spiritualism, by this being understood "the belief that the spiritual world manifests itself by producing in the physical world effects inexplicable by the known laws of nature." This definition implies, of course, the possibility that Spiritualism would cease to stand apart from the domain of science so soon as its phenomena were brought under the sway of ascertained law. To help towards this consummation is the aim of all inquiry such as that of the seance-room, and of all records such as those contained in this little volume.

 

Ever since the Fox family in 1848 experienced a series of "raps" in Rochester, U.S.A., and Andrew Jefferson Davis in 1847 published his Principles of Nature, her Divine Revelations, said to have been communicated in clairvoyant trance, the Spiritualistic movement has become endemic everywhere. Some years after the movement was started in America it began in England, and flourished as an exotic. It has been to some extent regularised by the careful investigations of the Society for Psychical Research, and adorned by the names of Daniel Douglas Home and W. Stainton Moses among mediums, and Professor Alfred Russel Wallace, F. W. H. Myers, Professor William James, Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, Professors Charles Richet, Lombroso, and Flammarion as trained and competent investigators.

 

The phenomena of Spiritualism are either physical or psychical, i.e. objective or subjective. The former consist of sounds such as "raps," the movement of heavy bodies, table-tilting, materialisation of spirit forms, the handling of red-hot coals, as by D. D. Home, the ringing of bells, the playing of musical instruments—all, as is supposed, due to the activity of some form of energy at present unknown to physics.

 

The second class embraces clairvoyance, automatic writing or drawing, in connection with a pre-arranged system of signs, trance­speaking, and assumption by the medium of the face or voice of a supposed spirit. To this class belongs this present work. The hand that has written it was the psychic's, but the mind which directed the hand was, it is claimed, that of one known to the scribe by name only when here, but now behind the veil in the Western Land. The validity of the claim will be necessarily determined in the long run by the general character of the records. And those alone who know both the alleged communicator and his amanuensis are in possession of the materials necessary to determine the question whether the communications do in their entirety proceed from the other side, or are to be ascribed to Dr. Carpenter's theory of unconscious cerebration on the part of the scribe, or to the psychologist's theory of her subconscious mentation, or, lastly, are a blend in some degree of both.

 

All that the present writer of this Foreword feels called upon to do, beyond guaranteeing, so far as he may, the bona fides of the writer, is to underline the psychological problem which is responsible for most of the lawful hesitancy with which all Spiritualistic phenomena are encumbered. The mind of man still remains much of a mystery in spite of the marked advances recently made in experimental psychology. In particular, a difficulty is caused in our present inquiry by the now accepted doctrine of the mind as a continuum. We are endowed with, or we achieve, a presentational continuum, a memory continuum, and an ideational continuum, to say nothing of the continuum of "the sensitive and appetitive self," and that continuum or fixity of the Self which bewilders us in the form of temperament.

 

In the individual mind the memory continuum alone is enough to give us pause. For it is difficult even for one trained in self­analysis to mark out the limits of what he does and does not contain in his memory. His memory is like a dark and unexplored treasure-chamber where things valuable and trifling, beautiful and commonplace, are stored on an unknown plan and in undiscovered profusion. Some "interest" will produce from time to time quite unexpected prizes, but the law of the working of a man's system of "interests" is still unformulated, and for aught we know may remain for ever unformulated. We need not to go further and invoke Plato's Reminiscence, for memory as experienced in daily life is sufficiently large in its reach to teach us caution. Who can say for certain, when he is told a truth which he accepts, whether it is more accurate to say, "I have now learned something new," or, "I remember that from of old"?

 

But the doctrine of continuity will open up further difficulties if we extend it, as we certainly must, beyond the bounds of the subject himself. For not only is there continuity of content in any one man's mind, but to some degree and in some manner there is continuity of content between all distinct minds. How far am I every moment in contact with other minds? How much that I am apt to regard as peculiarly my own is in fact the common property of me and my fellows? Who at this time of day will be hardy enough to preach any doctrine whatever which rests on the supposition that minds are hermetically sealed the one to the other? And if this be so, how can we be sure in any given case of the precise share which my mind, or the mind of some other, on this side has contributed to a given product, say the writing of these communications?

 

Considerations such as these do not necessarily point to a negative conclusion, but they do insist on a caution in forming a positive judgment comparable to that of the masters of scientific knowledge. But one consideration has not yet been referred to, which to many at least will carry great weight as a presumption removing beforehand many opposing prejudices—such as are, for example, many of those "apperceptive masses" into which our mental furniture is sorted out.

 

Apart from the self-imposed limitations of speculations such as those of Mr. F. H. Bradley, and apart from the practical materialism which shuts out metaphysics altogether, man has come to hold a belief, the more ineradicable because largely subconscious, in his persistence through death. This belief is based on a judgment of value, of his own value as a person, and asserts as a corollary that man as man is not bound to the fate of his body. Moreover, this persistence of his through death attaches to him as an individual, and is not a mere property of the universe considered as spiritual in nature, nor of the Supreme Being in whom are all things. That focus of will, intelligence, and feeling that we knew as Mandell Creighton or Basil Wilberforce is still a finite centre of the same kind of personal life as when they were here. We should be, therefore, within our rights in holding that such a person can communicate with us here still, even though in a different way, unless we are assured that the obstacles to communication are insurmountable. But if the absence of a physical body be alleged as such an obstacle, we can but demur, and inquire why it should be thought that mind cannot work except through that special kind of form we call Matter. And we may further urge that on the hypothesis of the spirit persisting, when deprived of its material instrument, it is not improbable that it might welcome the opportunity of using ad hoc the body of some medium offered to it for the purpose.

 

The question before us resolves itself, then, into the single question, not whether a spirit can communicate with us, but, "In a given case has a spirit from the other side been active, and may we legitimately conclude that the records offered to us of his doings are to be accepted for what they purport to be?"