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Occultism and common-sense

Chapter 19

part in the questioning, but observed very closely all that was

done. "On the supposition that the medium had made very careful preparation for her sittings in Cambridge, it would have been possible for her to have gathered all the information which she rendered by means of agents in the two cities, though I must confess that it would have been rather difficult to have done the work. "The only distinctly suspicious features were that certain familiar baptismal names were properly given, while those of an unusual sort could not be extracted, and also that one or two names were given correctly as regards the ceremony of baptism or the directory, but utterly wrong from the point of view of family usage. Thus the name of a sister-in-law of mine, a sister of my wife's, was given as Jane, which is true by the record, but in forty years' experience of an intimate sort I never knew her to be called Jane--in fact, I did not at first recognise who was meant. "While I am disposed to hold to the hypothesis that the performance is one that is founded on some kind of deceit, I must confess that close observation of the medium made on me the impression that she was honest. Seeing her under any other conditions, I should not hesitate to trust my instinctive sense as to the truthfulness of the woman. "I venture also to note, though with some hesitancy, the fact that the ghost of the ancient Frenchman who never existed, but who purports to control Mrs Piper, though he speaks with a first-rate stage French accent, does not, so far as I can find, make the characteristic blunders in the order of his English words which we find in actual life. Whatever the medium is, I am convinced that this 'influence' is a preposterous scoundrel. "I think I did not put strongly enough the peculiar kind of knowledge that the medium seems to have concerning my wife's brother's affairs. Certain of the facts, as, for instance, those relating to the failure to find his will after his sudden death, were very neatly and dramatically rendered. They had the real-life quality. So, too, the name of a man who was to have married my wife's brother's daughter, but who died a month before the time fixed for the wedding, was correctly given, both as regards surname and Christian name, though the Christian name was not remembered by my wife or me. "I cannot determine how probable it is that the medium, knowing she was to have a sitting with you in Cambridge, or rather a number of them, took pains to prepare for the tests by carefully working up the family history of your friends. If she had done this for thirty or so persons, I think she could, though with some difficulty, have gained just the kind of knowledge which she rendered. She would probably have forgotten that my wife's brother's given name was Legh, and that of his mother Gabriella, while she remembered that of Mary and Charles, and also that of a son in Cambridge, who is called Waller. So, too, the fact that all trouble on account of the missing will was within a fortnight after the death of Mr Page cleared away by the action of the children was unknown. The deceased is represented as still troubled, though he purported to see just what was going on in his family. "I have given you a mixture of observations and criticisms; let me say that I have no firm mind about the matter. I am curiously and yet absolutely uninterested in it, for the reason that I don't see how I can exclude the hypothesis of fraud, and until that can be excluded no advance can be made. "When I took the medium's hand, I had my usual experience with them--a few preposterous compliments concerning the clearness of my understanding, and nothing more." Among those who have made a careful study at first hand of Mrs Piper's clairvoyance besides Dr Hodgson and Professor James are Sir Oliver Lodge, the late Frederic Myers, Mrs Sidgwick, Walter Leaf, Professor Romaine Newbold, and Professor J. H. Hyslop, and all of these have recorded their conviction that the results are not explicable by fraud or misrepresentation. Another account which sheds light on what occurs at Mrs Piper's seances is furnished by Professor Estlin Carpenter, Oxford. It is dated 14th December 1894: "DEAR PROFESSOR JAMES,--I had a sitting yesterday with Mrs Piper at your house, and was greatly interested with the results obtained, as they were entirely unexpected by me. Various persons were named and described whom we could not identify (my wife was present); but the names of my father and mother were correctly given, with several details which were in no way present to my mind at the time. The illness from which my father was suffering at the time of his death was identified, but not the accident which took him from us. A penknife which I happened to have with me was rightly referred to its place on the desk in his study, and after considerable hesitation Mrs Piper wrote out the word _organ_ when I asked concerning other objects in the room. She added spontaneously a very remarkable item about which I was in no way thinking--viz. that on Sunday afternoons or evenings (her phrase was 'twilight') we were accustomed to sing there together. She stated correctly that my mother was older than my father, but died after him; and she connected her death with my return from Switzerland in a manner that wholly surprised me, the fact being that her last illness began two or three days after my arrival home from Lucerne. She gave the initials of my wife's name rightly, and addressed words to her from her father, whose first name, George, was correct. She also desired me, in my father's name, not to be anxious about some family matters (which have only recently come to my knowledge), though their nature was not specified. Finally, though I should have mentioned this first, as it was at the outset of the interview, she told me that I was about to start on a voyage, and described the vessel in general terms, though she could not give its name or tell me the place where it was going. I saw enough to convince me that Mrs Piper possesses some very extraordinary powers, but I have no theory at all as to their nature or mode of exercise." Another who visited Mrs Piper was the famous French author, M. Paul Bourget, who was astonished at what he heard. He happened to have on his watch-chain a small seal which had been given him by a painter, long since dead, under the saddest circumstances, of whom it was impossible the medium could ever have heard; yet no sooner had she touched the object than she related to him the circumstance. One could quote case after case in the Society's reports, but in all the time Mrs Piper has been under such rigid scrutiny not one suspicious instance or one pointing to normal acquisition of facts has been discovered. Some have boldly hazarded the conjecture that Mrs Piper worked up the _dossiers_ of her sitters beforehand; inasmuch as she could easily obtain her facts in many ways; by reading private letters, for instance, or information derived from other mediums, or by employing private inquiry agents. These things are said to be habitually done by professional clairvoyants, by either going themselves or sending an agent in the capacity of, say, a book canvasser, to some town or district, and get all the information they can, to return some months later and give clairvoyant sittings. There is a belief, and it is possibly correct, that there is an organisation which gives and exchanges information thus obtained by the members of the Society. Perhaps this may account for the extraordinary good fortune of some spiritualists in obtaining "tests." Some sitters who went to Mrs Piper had visited other mediums previously. But one may be sure that all precautions were taken to ensure against her knowing the names of the sitters, so that she could not use any information, even if she had obtained any, in this way. Those best qualified to judge are convinced that her knowledge was not gained in this way, partly because of the precautions used and partly by reason of the information itself. As has been said, Mrs Piper was under the close scrutiny of Dr Hodgson for many years, and nothing of the kind has ever come to light. Also Dr Hodgson arranged beforehand her sittings for more than ten years, never telling her the names of the sitters, who in almost every instance were unknown to her by sight, and were without distinction introduced under the name of "Smith." She made so many correct statements at many individual sittings, and the proportion of successful sittings is so high, that it is very difficult to attribute fraud to her. About dates she appears to be very vague. She prefers to give Christian names to surnames, and of the former those in common use rather than those out of the way. As her descriptions of houses or places are generally failures, she seldom attempts them. Mrs Piper seems to be weakest, indeed, just where the so-called medium is most successful. Her strongest points are describing diseases, the character of the sitter, his idiosyncrasies, and the character of his friends, their sympathies, loves, hates, and relationships in general, unimportant incidents in their past histories, and so on. To retain such information in the memory is very difficult, and to obtain it by general means well-nigh impossible. Many of the personalities or "controls" of Mrs Piper speak, write, and act in a way extraordinarily in consonance with those characters as they were on earth. In other words, her "controls" have well-differentiated identities. Each has a different manner, a different voice, different acts, different ways of looking at things; in fact, has a different character. For example, there is the spirit of G. P., a young journalist and author who died suddenly in February 1892. A few weeks later his spirit possessed Mrs Piper's organism, and although he was unknown to Mrs Piper in life, yet for years since then he has carried on numerous prolonged conversations with his friends, including Dr Hodgson, and supplied numerous proofs of his knowledge of the concerns of the deceased G. P. G. P.'s personal effects, MSS., etc., are referred to, as well as private conversations of the past, and, moreover, he suddenly recognises amongst those attending Mrs Piper's _seances_ those whom he knew during life. Dr Hodgson was unable to find any instance when such recognition has been incorrectly given. But G. P. is only one of several trance personations speaking through Mrs Piper's organism and recognised by friends. After a contemplation of Mrs Piper's trance utterances alone we are inevitably faced by a choice of three conclusions: either (1) fraud (and fraud I hold here to be absolutely inadmissible); or (2) the possession of some supernormal power of apprehension; or (3) communication with the spirits of deceased persons. Dr Hodgson was driven by sheer force of logic to accept the third of these hypotheses. Others who have studied the phenomena have followed. Dr J. H. Hyslop has published a record of the sittings held with Mrs Piper in 1898 and 1899. His report contains the verbatim record of seventeen sittings, and no pains have been spared to make the record complete. It has exhaustive commentaries and accounts of experiments intended to elucidate the supposed difficulties of trance communication. Professor Hyslop finally arrives at the conclusion, after an extensive investigation, during which no item of the evidence has failed to be weighed and no possible source of error would seem to have escaped consideration, that spirit communication is the only explanation which fits all the facts, and he altogether rejects telepathy as being inadequate. * * * * * I hope that those who have so far followed me in this brief inquiry into the mysteries of occult phenomena will recognise the impartiality with which I have endeavoured to conduct it. I said in the beginning that I set out with a light heart as well as an open mind. I had no idea of the extent of the territory, I knew little of its voluminous literature, of the extraordinary ramifications of occultism, of the labours of the many learned men who have spent their whole lives in seeking to separate fact from superstition. My mind was light because, frankly, I believed--with a sort of inherent, temperamental belief--that, however much the testimony concerning coincident dreams, hallucinations, mediumistic manifestations, materialisation, and clairvoyance might mystify, it was all capable of normal explanation--there was nothing supernatural about it. And so throughout the inquiry I sought to show how, chiefly, telepathy was a working hypothesis in most of the manifestations, while for the physical ones, such as table rapping, levitations, and the rest, an unknown extension of human muscular power might possibly exist to solve the mystery. So far I strode forward with some confidence. But now the time has come when my confidence deserts me. Telepathy breaks down. It is a key which by no amount of wriggling will turn the lock. "It is not," as one leading inquirer has said, "that telepathy is insufficient: it is superfluous." If the existence of disembodied spirits is proved, then all the other phenomena are also proved. If the case of Mrs Piper--under rigid surveillance for years--has convinced some of the profoundest intellects of the day--men who began by being sceptical--that disembodied spirits are responsible for her utterances, it would certainly tend to convince me. But I carefully guarded myself from conviction until I had read the evidence--even to a _resume_ of this medium's utterances last year in London under the auspices of the Society for Psychical Research--and I assert with confidence that no metaphysical theory has ever been formulated that will account for these manifestations save one--the survival of the human personality after death. Once Mrs Piper is admitted as genuine, then it follows that the spiritistic manifestations which have puzzled mankind, not merely for generations or during the modern cult of spiritism, but ever since primitive times, become, as it were, emancipated. "It does seem to me," said Mr Balfour, in his famous Society for Psychical Research address, "that there is at least strong ground for supposing that outside the world, as we have, from the point of science, been in the habit of conceiving it, there does lie a region, not open indeed to experimental observation in the same way as the more familiar regions of the material world are open to it, but still with regard to which some experimental information may be laboriously gleaned; and even if we cannot entertain any confident hope of discovering what laws these half-seen phenomena obey, at all events it will be some gain to have shown, not as a matter of speculation or conjecture, but as a matter of ascertained fact, that there are things in heaven and earth not hitherto dreamed of in our scientific philosophy." AFTERWORD _And so our little tour into the occult is ended and we return into the glare of common things--things which we know and can touch and find a practical use for. If only a little of this light we hold so cheap were to illumine the tenebrous fastnesses we have just left, then, perhaps we, in our dull worldly way, might be able to assimilate the mystic to the common, the unseen to the seen, the unknown to the known. But we are not vouchsafed this white light; yet, even in the shadows to which our eyes have grown accustomed, we have heard enough to make us wonder and maybe make us doubtful when some voice, even such a voice as Matthew Arnold's, cries out to us: "Miracles are touched by Ithuriel's spear"--"Miracles do not happen."_ _True, miracles do not happen: but there are events of frequent occurrence in this age, as in all ages of which we have a record, which are miraculous in the sense of their being supernormal--for which science offers no consistent explanation. Is not hypnotism a miracle? Is not telepathy a miracle? Is not the divining rod a miracle? Would Sir William Ramsay or Sir James Crichton-Browne throw these manifestations into the limbo of humbug and charlatanism? And supposing they, and such as they, continue incredulous--is not incredulity a fixed quantity in any society? Were men ever unanimous in their impressions--in their prepossessions, in the chromatic quality with which they steep every surrounding fact before they allow their critical faculties to be focussed upon it?_ _It may be objected by the reader that I who have led him on this little tour into the wilderness of the occult have myself seen no ghosts. Where are my own experiences? Where the relation of my own personal contact with hypnotists, telepathists, mediums, mysteries? Would not that have been of interest? It may be so: if the phenomena appertaining to those in their best and most convincing quality were always to appear on a casual summons and if I were confided in by the public at large as a sane, unprejudiced witness._ _Granted that I have seen no ghosts, I have at least done this: I have met the men--better men--who have. That at the beginning was the real purpose of my brief itinerary. I designed less a tour into the occult itself than an examination of witnesses for the occult whom I met on the literary bypaths of occultism. This I hope I have done, not satisfactorily--very hurriedly--yet honestly, and wanting like a returned traveller to tell folks more ignorant than myself of what I had heard of wonders which each man must, in the last resort, see for himself and meditate upon for himself._ _The blind leading the blind--yea--but--he who hath ears let him hear!_ _One word more. I should like to see a census of all the minds which embrace a belief in the truth of supernormal phenomena. It would astonish the sceptic. It would reveal to him that the attitude of society at large towards spiritualism and the other world is not the attitude of any but a fraction of the component parts of society--not even the evenly balanced attitude of Huxley towards God Almighty. We should see something quite different; something even distinct and apart from religion. We should see men, often without any religion at all properly speaking, breaking out into the ejaculation of Hamlet to Horatio and refusing to believe that certain occurrences in their experience are to be explained away by chance or delusion. And even in religious men the conviction seems to me secular rather than arising from orthodox faith._ _"Far be it from me," wrote Emerson, "the impatience which cannot brook the supernatural, the vast: far be it from me the lust of explaining away all which appeals to the imagination and the great presentiments which haunt us. Willingly I, too, say Hail! to the unknown artful powers which transcend the ken of the understanding." Amen!_ _Only yesterday I picked up a book, a sort of literary autobiography, by the author of "Sherlock Holmes," to find the following passage:--_ _"I do not think the hypothesis of coincidence can cover the facts. It is one of several incidents in my life which have convinced me of spiritual interposition--of the promptings of some beneficent force outside ourselves which tries to help us where it can."_ A Catalogue of the Publications of T. Werner Laurie. ABBEYS OF GREAT BRITAIN, The (H. Clairborne Dixon and E. Ramsden). 6s. net. (Cathedral Series.) 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The book contains many arguments from a scientific standpoint that will interest all who wish evidence other than theological. DO THE DEAD DEPART? and Other Questions. By E. KATHARINE BATES, author of "SEEN AND UNSEEN." Crown 8vo. 6s. net. This somewhat original way of putting a well-worn query, prepares the reader for another book from the pen of Miss E. Katharine Bates. In the present volume psychic matters are treated from a more philosophical standpoint than in "Seen and Unseen," which made no claim to be other than a truthful record of personal experiences. CONTENTS--SOME OBJECTIONS TO SPIRIT RETURN--SOME INSTANCES OF SPIRIT RETURN--A MOTHER'S GUARDIANSHIP IN AMERICA--A CURIOUS ILLUSTRATION OF SPIRIT METHODS--BIBLICAL INCIDENTS--CLAIRVOYANCE--CLAIRAUDIENCE--RE-INCARNATION--AUTOMATIC WRITING--MATERIALISATION--HOW THE DEAD DEPART--GUARDIAN CHILDREN--APPENDIX End of Project Gutenberg's Occultism and Common-Sense, by Beckles Willson