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close of the meeting that I had accomplished that feat for myself some quarter of a century agone, and what is more, though I did not say this to him, I did so without any tears, and without any anguish whatever. These personal references are merely to show that in taking up the cause of the newer heretics I am not in any wise biassed by a misdirected mind in their favor.

Let us have freedom. Let us think it out. Let the struggle go on, and let us not, with pallid faces and strident voices, cry out in fear; for the only tribunal that can righteously adjudicate the rightness of human thought is the tribunal, as Schiller has it, of history, which unquestionably is on earth the tribunal of the infinite God. He rules in the world of mind as well as in the globe of matter, and eighteen centuries ought to convince us that truth slowly emerges from warring opinions, conflicting theories, and especially from pathetic longings of the human soul to discover its hidden meanings and its widest and grandest applications. Alas! perhaps our ignorance and intolerance may render it necessary that now, as in the past, the prophets of God must first be stoned to death before we will give heed to their message or commemorate their greatness by the homage of our mind. But seriously, I would advise all who have any regard for their own comfort, happiness, and even self-respect, to have as little to do with this wretched stoning business as possible; for I have never yet been able to discover what satisfaction there can possibly be in helping a dear brother or sister to a martyr's crown at the expense of one's own fairness and kindly charity.

HARVEST AND LABORERS IN THE PSYCHICAL

FIELD.

BY FREDERIC W. H. MYERS.

THERE is no living savant, one may say with little fear of contradiction, who surpasses Mr. A. R. Wallace in generous readiness to esteem at its full worth the work of other men. And one may add that this habit of mind, so attractive in a man of acknowledged eminence, is as a rule not attractive only, but actively serviceable to science; that it stimulates effort, and creates an atmosphere in which good work is zealously done.

Yet there may be cases in which this ready appreciativeness may prove a hindrance to progress rather than a help. If wrongly received, it may lead men who have done little to think that they have done much; it may deter others from embarking on needful tasks which they may suppose to have been already amply performed.

In two papers in THE ARENA for January and February, 1891, Mr. Wallace dwelt, partly with criticism, and partly with praise, on the work already done by the Society for Psychical Research. To his criticisms I make no demur; they are legitimate and interesting; and indeed where Mr. Wallace's opinions diverge from those which I have myself set forth, I am disposed to think that we are but looking on "the two sides of the shield," a shield embossed on either side with devices so marvellous that no man's interpretation can as yet suffice to unriddle them.

But on the other hand, I cannot let pass without protest the sentence (ARENA, January, p. 130) in which Mr. Wallace speaks of the thanks due to the Society for Psychical Research, "for having presented the evidence in such a way that the facts to be interpreted are now generally accepted as facts by all who have taken any trouble to inquire into the amount and character of the testimony for them, the

opinion of those who have not taken that trouble being altogether worthless." Now in the first place I do not think that all those who have studied our testimony are convinced by it. I received a letter (for instance) not long ago, from a distinguished American, an old friend of mine, who wrote in the most cordial terms to say that out of personal regard for me he had read "Phantasms of the Living" from beginning to end, and that he did not believe a word of it. Our readers' scepticism is perhaps seldom quite so robust; but nevertheless I should say that the attitude of at least half of them is best described by saying not that they accept our evidence ex animo, but that they have not yet exactly managed to see their way to upsetting it.

Nor can I possibly treat as unimportant the attitude of that great majority of savants who have paid no attention at all to the matter. Naturally, their opinion of our evidence does not affect my own opinion thereof, but it decidedly affects my view as to what lines our work ought to follow. Why is it that these men have not studied our Proceedings? It will not do to talk about indolence and prejudice. All men are more or less indolent and prejudiced; but savants as a class are certainly less indolent, and probably less prejudiced, than any other class that one could name. We must not count upon finding our savant "semper vacuum, semper amabilem," any more than Horace found his young ladies always in that condition of affable receptivity. The main reason why so many eminent men neglect our work may be stated in a much less offensive way. The minds of all of us move in certain orbits, from which we are sensibly deflected only by the approach of some new body of adequate mass. Now our "psychical" experiments and observations have plainly not as yet attained sufficient mass to be able to deflect the majority of those great bodies, the luminaries of science, from their accustomed paths through the heavens. Tides, indeed, we do create; there is a refluent washing to and fro of magazine articles about our topic; but we have not yet generated that wholesale perturbation of the scientific system which our facts, if facts they be, must in time inevitably effect.

"Some of the best workers in the Society," says Mr. Wallace again, "still urge that the evidence is very deficient, both in amount and in quality, and that much more must be

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obtained before it can be treated as really conclusive. This view, however," he adds, "appears to me to be an altogether erroneous one. On the contrary, I venture to say, this assertion of the need of more work, and consequently of more workers, is of absolutely primary, absolutely urgent importance. What would have become of the evolution theory itself (if I may use an argumentum ad hominem of no disrespectful kind), what would have become of that theory itself, though urged at first by savants of such surpassing merit, had no one been able to repeat and confirm their observations? And we who are dealing, not with plants and animals which can be held fast and observed, but, for the most part at any rate, with phantasmal sights, subjective impressions, surely we must feel a tenfold need of the multiplication of centres of experiment and observation, of the formation of fresh bodies of record in every country, and in each year that passes by. No single small group can ever gain leverage enough to divert the world's prevalent modes of thought, unless it is gradually reinforced by fellow-workers enough to make the possible mistakes or possible death of a few persons quite unimportant to the general result.

It has been suggested by Mr. Wallace and by other critics that we have been too exclusively preoccupied with the idea of telepathy, that we have tried to force into that category phenomena which need a different or a further explanation. Considering the complexity of these phenomena there may well be some truth in this criticism, yet we should surely be unwise if we relaxed our insistence on the importance of telepathy, or the transference of thought or feeling from mind. to mind without the agency of the recognized organs of sense as the very root and basis both of experiment and of theory as concerning an unseen world. No one, of course, can suppose that the infinitely complex laws of which we are just now obtaining a precursory glimpse and first faint intimation, can possibly be summarized in any single expression. But the prime importance of telepathy lies in the fact that here, at last, is an action of unseen, uncomprehended forces which can be made the subject of actual experiment. Nay, more, the very fact that in this special direction experiment turns out to be possible, is in itself an augury that we are on a true scientific track; for it involves a remarkable coincidence between a theoretical conclusion and a practical discovery.

In the first place, let us try to realize theoretically what is involved in the supposition that any sort of invisible intelligence can become in any way known to us. I speak of the methods of communication only, without reference to the nature of the supposed intelligence, beyond the mere fact of its habitual invisibility. It is plain, I think, that the said intelligence must either so act upon visible matter as to affect our sense-organs in the ordinary way, or else must convey messages to our minds by some directer process, not depending on the intervention of our organs of sense.

Now probably no one will assume that the first method will alone be employed. Even those who insist, with Mr. Wallace, on the objectivity of apparitions, do not, I think, maintain that it is only by moving material objects that unseen intelligences affect our minds. Few will doubt that if there be communication from unseen beings at all, it will probably be at least partly in the second of the two modes already specified, that is, that it will reach our minds in some way more intimate and direct than by ordinary senseperception. But if this be so, then there must be in our minds a certain power of reciprocity. We must be able to receive the message in the same impalpable way in which the unseen intelligence communicates it.

But if we suppose that man possesses this power of receiving direct or telepathic messages from unembodied or invisible intelligences, it is natural to inquire whether he is capable of receiving similar messages from embodied or visible intelligences. If we cannot find that he is thus capable, our belief in the supposed messages from the unseen will be doubly difficult; for we shall have to postulate both the new forms of intelligence and the new mode of intercourse. But if, on the other hand, we can show that the mode of intercourse here needed does already exist, and appears in man's relations with his fellow-men, then the transition to messages from the unseen will be so much the less violent. We shall only be supposing that man can receive from the disembodied a kind of message which he already receives from the embodied, and which has no obvious dependence on a corporeal embodiment. One single proved transmission, direct from mind to mind, of the most trivial fact or percept, will do more to make communion with the unseen scientifically conceivable,-I do not say more to make

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