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Book: "The Survival of Man"

Author: Sir Oliver Lodge FRS

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- Section One -

Aims and Objects of Psychical Research

Chapter 2

Practical Work of the Society

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          IN the three earliest years of the present century it fell to my lot to occupy the Presidential Chair of the Society for Psychical Research and to give an address each year. One of those addresses - the one for 1903 - dealt with the lines of profitable work which seemed at that time to be opening before us; and, since the general nature of our investigation is there referred to in a preliminary manner, it is useful to reproduce it here as an introduction to the more detailed records which follow.

Our primary aim is to be a Scientific Society, to conduct our researches and to record our results in an accurate and scientific manner, so as to set an example of careful work in regions where it has been the exception rather than the rule, and to be a trustworthy guide to the generation of workers who shall follow.

To be scientific does not mean to be infallible, but it means being clear and honest and as exact as we know how to be. In difficult investigations pioneers have always made some mistakes, they have no immediate criterion or infallible touchstone to distinguish the more true from the less true, but if they record their results with anxious care and scrupulous honesty and painstaking precision, their mistakes are only less valuable to the next generation than their partially true generalisations; and sometimes it turns out, after a century or so, that mistakes made by early pioneers were no such thorough errors as had been thought, that they had an element of truth in them all the time, as if discoverers were endowed with a kind of prophetic insight whereby they caught a glimpse of theories and truths which it would take several generations of workers to disencumber and bring clearly to light.

Suppose, however, that their errors were real ones, the record of their work is just as important to future navigators as it is to have the rocks and shoals of a channel mapped out and buoyed. It is work which must be done. The great ship passing straight to its destination is enabled to attain this directness and speed by the combined labours of a multitude of workers, some obscure and forgotten, some distinguished and remembered, but few of them able to realise its stately passage. So it is also with every great erection, - much of the work is indirect and hidden;- the Forth Bridge stands upon piers sunk below the water-mark by the painful and long continued labours of Italian workmen in "caissons" full of compressed and heated air.

The study of specifically Natural knowledge was fostered and promoted by the recognition in the reign of Charles II of a body of enthusiasts who, during the disturbed but hopeful era of the Commonwealth, had met together to discuss problems of scientific interest, and today The Royal Society is among the dignified institutions of our land, taking all branches of Natural Philosophy and Natural History - the Physical Sciences and the Biological Sciences - under its wing.

Us it does not recognise; but then neither does it recognise Mental and Moral Philosophy, or Ethics, or Psychology, or History, or any part of a great region of knowledge which has hitherto been regarded as outside the pale of the Natural Sciences.

It is for us to introduce our subjects within that pale, if it turns out that there they properly belong; and if not, it is for us to do pioneer work and take our place by the side of that group of Societies whose object is the recognition and promotion of work in the mental, the psychological, the philosophical direction, until the day for unification shall arrive.

Half knowledge sees divisions and emphasises barriers, delights in classification into genera and species, affixes labels, and studies things in groups. And all this work is of the utmost practical value and is essentially necessary. That the day will come when barriers shall be broken down, when species shall be found to shade off into one another, when continuity and not classification shall be the dominant feature, may be anticipated by all; but we have no power of hastening the day except by taking our place in the workshop and doing our assigned quota; still less do we gain any advantage by pretending that the day of unification has arrived while as yet its dawn is still in the future.

Popular Mistrust of Science and its Remedy

Our primary aim is to be a Scientific Society, doing pioneering and foundation work in a new and not yet incorporated plot on which future generations may build, and making as few mistakes as we can reasonably contrive by the exercise of great care. We are not a literary society though we have had men of letters among out guides and leaders ; and we are not a religious society, though some of the members take an interest in our subject because it seems to them to have a bearing on their religious convictions or hopes. I will say a few words on both these points.

First, our relations to literature.

The name of Francis Bacon is a household word in the history of English scientific ideas. I do not mean in the recent, and as it seems to me comic, aspect, that he wrote everything that was written in the Elizabethan era (a matter to which I wish to make no reference one way or the other, for it is completely off my path). But, before that hare was started, his name was weighty and familiar in the history of English scientific ideas; and it is instructive to ask why. Was he a man of Science? No. Did he make discoveries? No. Do scientific men trace back their ancestry to him? No. To Isaac Newton they trace it back, to Gilbert, to Roger Bacon, speaking for those in England; but of Francis Bacon they know next to nothing. Outside England all the world traces its scientific ancestry to Newton, to Descartes, to Galileo, to Kepler; but of Francis Bacon scientific men outside England have scarcely heard, save as a man of letters. Yet the progress of science owes much to him. All unconsciously scientific men owe to him a great debt. Why?

Because he perceived afar off the oncoming of the scientific wave, and because he was able, in language to which men would listen, to herald and welcome its advent.

Scientifically he was an amateur; but he was an enthusiast who, with splendid eloquence, with the fire of genius, and with great forensic skill, was able to impress his generation, and not his own generation alone, with some idea of the dignity and true place of science, and to make it possible for the early pioneers of the Royal Society to pursue their labours unimpeded by persecution, and to gain some sort of recognition even from general and aristocratic Society.

For remember that the term "science" was not always respectable. To early ears it sounded almost as the term witchcraft or magic sounds, it was a thing from which to warn young people; it led to atheism and to Tally other abominations. It was an unholy prying into the secrets of Nature which were meant to be hidden from our eyes; it was a thing against which the Church resolutely set its face, a thing for which it was ready if need be to torture or to bum those unlucky men of scientific genius who were born before their time. I mean no one Church in particular: I mean the religious world generally. Science was a thing allied to heresy, a thing to hold aloof from, to shudder at, and to attribute to the devil. All which treatment that great and eminent pioneer, Roger Bacon, experienced at the University of Oxford; because the time was not yet ripe.

How came it that a little later, in the days of the Stuarts, the atmosphere was so different from that prevalent in the days of the Plantagenets? Doubtless the age of Elizabeth, the patriotism aroused by the Armada and by the great discoveries in geography, had had their vivifying effect; and the same sort of originality of thought which did not scruple to arraign a king for high treason likewise ventured to set orthodoxy at defiance, and to experiment upon and investigate openly all manner of natural facts. But, in partial contradiction to the expressed opinion of some men of science, I am disposed to agree to a considerable extent with the popular British view that the result was largely due to the influence of the writings of Francis Bacon. He had accustomed scholars and literary men to the possibilities and prerogatives of scientific inquiry, he had emphasised the importance and the dignity of experiment, and it is to his writings that the rapid spread of scientific ideas, discovered as always by a few, became acceptable to and spread among the many.

Do not let us suppose, however, that the recognition of science was immediate and universal. Dislike of it, and mistrust of the consequences of scientific inquiryespecially in geology and anthropology, - persisted well into the Victorian era, and is not wholly extinct at the present day. Quite apart from antipathy to investigation into affairs of the mind - which is unpopular and mistrusted still, so that good people are still found who will attribute anything unusual to the devil, and warn young people from it, - there is some slight trace of lingering prejudice even against the orthodox sciences of Chemistry and Physics and Biology. They have achieved their foothold, they are regarded with respect - people do not disdain to make money by means of them when the opportunity is forthcoming - but they are not really liked. They are admitted to certain schools on sufferance, as an inferior grade of study suited to the backward and the ignorant; they are not regarded with affection and enthusiasm as revelations of Divine working, to be reverently studied, nor as subjects in which the youth of a nation may be wholesomely and solidly trained.

Very well, still more is the time not quite ripe for our subject; pioneers must expect hard knocks, the mind of a people can change only slowly. Until the mind of a people is changed, new truths born before their time must suffer the late of other untimely births; and the prophet who preaches them must expect to be mistaken for a useless fanatic, of whom every age has always had too many, and must be content to be literally or metaphorically put to death, as part of the process for the regeneration of the world.

The dislike and mistrust and disbelief in the validity or legitimacy of psychical inquiry is familiar: the dislike of the Natural Sciences is almost defunct. It survives, undoubtedly - they are not liked, though they are tolerated - and I am bound to say that part of the surviving dislike is due not alone to heredity and imbibed ideas, but to the hasty and intolerant and exuberant attitude of some men of science, who, knowing themselves to be reformers, - feeling that they have a grain of seed-corn to plant and water, - have not always been content to go about their business in a calm and conciliatory spirit, but have sought to hurry things on by a roughshod method of progression, which may indeed attain its ends, but gives some pain in the process, and perhaps achieves results less admirable than those which might have been attained by the exercise of a little patience, a little more perception of the point of view of others, a little more imagination, a little more of that recognition of the insignificance of trifles and of the transitory character of full-blown fashions which is called a sense of humour, a little cultivation of the historic sense. In a word, a little more general education.

But this is a digression. I admit the importance of Francis Bacon in the history of the development of the national recognition of the natural sciences in England; and I wish to suggest that in the history of the psychical sciences we too have had a Bacon, and one not long departed from us. It is possible that in F. W. H. Myers's two posthumous volumes we have a book which posterity will regard as a Novum Organon. History does not repeat itself, and I would not draw the parallel too close. It may be that posterity will regard Myers as much more than that, as a philosophic pioneer who has not only secured recognition for, but has himself formulated some of the philosophic unification of, a mass of obscure and barely recognised human faculty, - thereby throwing a light on - the meaning of "personality" which may survive the test of time. It may be so, but that is for no one living to say. Posterity alone, by aid of the experience and further knowledge which time brings, is able to make a judgment of real value on such a topic as that. I will content myself with drawing attention to his comprehensive scheme of Vital Faculty now somewhat buried in the second volume of Human Personality, as section 926A, pages 505-554.

Meanwhile it is for us to see that time does bring this greater knowledge and experience. For time alone is impotent. Millions of years passed on this planet, during which the amount of knowledge acquired was small or nil. Up to the sixteenth century, even, scientific progress was, at the best, slow. Recently it has been rapid, - none too rapid, but rapid. The rate of advance depends upon the activities and energies of each generation, and upon the organisation and machinery which it has inherited from its immediate forbears.

The pioneers who created the S.P.R. have left it in trust with us to hand it on to future generations, an efficient and powerful machine for the spread of scientific truth, - an engine for the advancement of science in a direction overgrown with thickets of popular superstition, intermixed with sandy and barren tracts of resolute incredulity. We have to steer our narrow way between the Scylla of stony minds with no opening in our direction, and the Charybdis of easy and omnivorous acceptance of every straw and waif, whether of truth or falsehood, that may course with the currents of popular superstition.

Now I know that some few persons are impatient of such an investigation, and decline to see any need for it. They feel that if they have evidence enough to justify their own belief, further inquiry is superfluous. These have not the scientific spirit, they do not understand the meaning of "law." A fact isolated and alone, joined by no link to the general body of knowledge, is almost valueless. If what they believe is really a fact, they may depend upon it that it has its place in the cosmic scheme, a place which can be detected by human intelligence; and its whole bearing and meaning can gradually be made out.

Moreover, their attitude is selfish. Being satisfied themselves, they will help us no more. But real knowledge, like real wealth of any kind, cannot be wrapped up in a napkin; it pines for reproduction, for increase: "how am I straitened till it be accomplished". The missionary spirit, in some form or other, is associated with all true and worthy knowledge. Think of a man who, having made a discovery in Astronomy, - seen a new planet, or worked out a new law, - should keep it to himself and gloat over it in private. It would be inhuman and detestable miserliness; even in a thing like that, of no manifest importance to mankind. There would be some excuse for a man who lived so much in advance of his time that, like Galileo with his newly invented and applied telescope, he ran a danger of rebuffs and persecution for the publication of discoveries. But even so, it is his business to brave this and tell out what he knows; still more is it his business so to act upon the mind of his generation as to convert it gradually to the truth, and lead his fellows to accept what now they reject.

Those who believe themselves the repositories of any form of divine truth should realise their responsibility. They are bound in honour to take such steps as may wisely cause its perception and recognition by the mass of mankind. They are not bound to harangue the crowd from the nearest platform : that might be the very way to retard progress and throw back the acceptance of their doctrine. The course to pursue may be much more indirect than that. The way may be hard and long, but to the possessor of worldly means it is far easier than to another. If the proper administration of his means can conduce to the progress of science, and to the acceptance by the mass of mankind of important and vivifying knowledge of which it is now ignorant, then surely the path lies plain.

Argumentum As Dignitatem

Still however there are persons who urge that a study of occult phenomena is beneath the dignity of science, and that nothing will be gained of any use to mankind by inquisitiveness regarding the unusual and the lawless, or by gravely attending to the freaks of the unconscious or semi-conscious mind.

But - as Myers and Gurney said long ago in Phantasms of the Living - it is needful to point out yet once more, how plausible the reasons for discouraging some novel research have often seemed to be, while yet the advance of knowledge has rapidly shown the futility and folly of such discouragement.

"It was the Father of Science himself who was the first to circumscribe her activity. Socrates expressly excluded from the range of exact inquiry all such matters as the movements and nature of the sun and I moon. He wished - and as he expressed his wish it seemed to have all the cogency of absolute wisdom - that men's minds should be turned to the ethical and political problems which truly concerned them, - not wasted in speculation on things unknowable - things useless even could they be known.

"In a kindred spirit, though separated from Socrates by the whole result of that physical science which Socrates had deprecated, we find a great modern systematiser of human thought again endeavouring to direct the scientific impulse towards things serviceable to man; to divert it from things remote, un knowable, and useless if known (such as the fixed stars). What then, in Comte's view, are in fact the limits of man's actual home mid business? The bounds within which he may set himself to learn all lie can, assured that all will serve to inform his conscience and guide his life? It is the solar system which has become for the French philosopher what the street and marketplace of Athens were for the Greek."

I need not say that Comte's prohibition has been altogether neglected. No frontier of scientific demarcation has been established between Neptune and Sirius, between Uranus and Aldebaran. Our knowledge of the fixed stars increases yearly; and it would be rash to maintain that human conduct is not already influenced by the conception thus gained of the unity and immensity of the heavens side " The criticisms which have met us from the orthodoxy sometimes of scientific, sometimes of religious orthodox have embodied, in modernised phraseology, nearly every well-worn form of timid protest, or obscurantist demurrer, with which the historians of science have been accustomed to give piquancy to their long tale of discovery and achievement."
"Sometimes we are told that we are inviting the old theological spirit to encroach once more on the domain of Science; sometimes that we are endeavouring to lay the impious hands of Science upon the mysteries of Religion. Sometimes we are informed that competent savants have already fully explored the field which we propose for our investigation. Sometimes that no respectable man of science would condescend to meddle with such a reeking mass of fraud and hysteria. Sometimes we are pitied as laborious triflers who prove some infinitely small matter with mighty trouble and pains; sometimes we are derided as attempting the solution of gigantic problems by slight and superficial means."

Use of Continued Investigation

But the question is reiterated, my investigate that of which we are sure? Why conduct experiments in, hypnotism or in telepathy? Why seek to confirm that of which we already have conviction? Why value well evidenced narratives of apparitions at times of death or catastrophe, when so many have already been collected in Phantasms of the Living, and when careful scrutiny has proved that they cannot be the result of chance coincidence? (See the, Report of Professor Sidgwick's Committee Proceedings S.P.R., vol. x., P. 394.) There is a quite definite answer to this question - an answer at which I have already hinted which I wish to commend to the consideration of those who feel this difficulty or ask this sort of question.

The business of Science is not belief but investigation. Belief is both the prelude to and the outcome of knowledge. If a fact or a theory has had a prima facie case made out for it, subsequent investigation is necessary to examine and extend it.

Effective knowledge concerning anything can only be the result of long-continued investigation; belief in the possibility of a fact is only the very first step. Until there is some sort of tentative belief in the reasonable possibility of a fact there is no investigation -the scientific Priest and Levite have other business, and pass by on the other side. And small blame to them: they cannot stop to investigate everything that may be lying by the roadside. If they had been sure that it was fellow creature in legitimate distress they would have acted differently. Belief of a tentative kind will ensure investigation, not by all but by some of the scientific travellers along the road; but investigation is the prelude to action, and action is a long process. Some one must attend to the whole case and see it through. Others, more pressed for time, may find it easier to subscribe their "two pence" to an endowment fund, and so give indirect but valuable assistance.

The object of investigation is the ascertainment of law, and to this process there is no end. What, for instance, is the object of observing and recording earthquakes, and arranging delicate instruments to detect the slightest indication of earth tremor? Every one knows that earthquakes exist, there is no scepticism to overcome in their case; even people who have never experienced them are quite ready to believe in their occurrence. Investigation into earthquakes and the whole of the motile occurrences in the earth's crust, is not in the least for the purpose of confirming faith, but solely for the better understanding of the conditions and nature of the phenomena; in other words, for the ascertainment of law.

So it is in every branch of science. At first among new phenomena careful observation of fact is necessary, as when Tycho Brahe made measurements of the motion of the planets and accumulated a store of careful observations. Then came the era of hypothesis, and Kepler waded through guess after guess, testing them pertinaciously to see if any one of them would fit all the facts: the result of his strenuous life-work being the three laws which for all time bear his name. And then came the majestic deductive epoch of Newton, welding the whole into one comprehensive system; subsequently to be enriched and extended by the labours of Lagrange and Laplace; after which the current of scientific inquiry was diverted for a time into other less adequately explored channels.

For not at all times is everything equally ripe for inquiry. There is a phase, or it maybe a fashion, even in Science. I spoke of geographical exploration as the feature of Elizabeth's time. Astronomical inquiry succeeded it. Optics and Chemistry were the dominating sciences of the early part of the nineteenth century, Heat and Geology of the middle, Electricity and Biology of the later portion. Not yet has our branch of psychology had its phase of popularity; nor am I anxious that it should be universally fashionable. It is a subject of special interest, and therefore perhaps of special danger. In that respect it is like other studies of the operations of mind, like a scientific enumeration of the phenomena of religion for instance, like the study of anything which in its early stages looks mysterious and incomprehensible. Training and some admixture of other studies are necessary for its healthy investigation. The day will come when the science will put off its foggy aspect, bewildering to the novice, and become easier for the less well-balanced and more ordinarily equipped explorer. At present it is like a mountain shrouded in mist, whose sides offer but little secure foothold, - where climbing, though possible, is difficult and dangerous.

The assuring of ourselves as to facts is one of our duties, and it is better to hesitate too long over a truth than to welcome an error, for a false gleam may lead us far astray unless it is soon detected.

Another of our duties is the making and testing of hypotheses, so as gradually to make a map of the district and be able to explain it to future travellers. We have to combine the labours of Tycho with those of Kepler, and thus prepare the way for a future Newton; who has not yet appeared above the psychical horizon.

His advent must depend upon how far we of this and the next few generations are faithful to our trust, how far we work ourselves, and by our pecuniary meant, enable others to work; and I call upon those who are simultaneously blessed with this world's goods and like wise inspired with confidence in the truth and value of mental and spiritual knowledge, to bethink themselves whether, either in their lifetime or by their wills, they cannot contribute to the world's progress in a beneficent way, so as to enable humanity to rise to a greater height of aspiration and even of religion; - as they will if they are enabled to start with a substantial foundation of solid scientific fact on which to erect their edifice of faith.

Hint to Investigators

To return to the more immediate and special aspect of our work: one of the things I want to impress upon all readers, especially upon those who are gifted with a faculty for receiving impressions which are worth record - is that too much care cannot be expended in getting the record exact. Exact in every particular, especially as regards the matter of time. In recording a vision or an audition or some other impression corresponding to some event elsewhere, there is a dangerous tendency to try to coax the facts to fit some half -fledged preconceived theory and to make the coincidence in point of time exact.

Such distortions of truth are misleading and useless. What we want to know is exactly how the things occurred, not how the impressionist would have liked them to occur, or how he thinks they ought to have occurred. If people attach importance to their own predilections concerning events in the Universe, they can be set forth in a footnote for the guidance of any one who hereafter may think of starting a Universe on his own account: but such speculations are of no interest to us who wish to study and understand the Universe as it is. If the event preceded the impression, by all means let us know it, - and perhaps some one may, be able to detect a meaning in the time-interval, when a great number of similar instances are compared, hereafter. If the impression preceded the event, by all means let us know that too, and never let the observation be suppressed from a ridiculous idea that such anticipation is impossible. Nor let us exclude well-attested physical phenomena from historical record, on any similar prejudice of impossibility. We want to learn what is possible, not to have minds made up beforehand and distort or blink the facts to suit our preconceptions.

With respect to the important subject of possible prediction, on which our ideas as to the ultimate nature of time will so largely depend, every precaution should be taken to put far from us the temptation or the possibility of improving the original record after the fact to which it refers has occurred, if it ever does occur; and to remember that though we have done nothing of the sort, and are in all respects honest, and known to be honest and truthful, yet the contrary may be surmised by posterity or by strangers or foreigners who did not know us; and even our friends may fancy that we did more than we were aware of, in some hypothetical access of somnambulic or automatic trance. Automatic writers, for instance, must be assumed open to this suspicion, unless they take proper precautions and deposit copies of their writings in some inaccessible and responsible custody; because the essence of their phenomenon is that the hand writes what they themselves are not aware of, and so it is an easy step for captions critics to maintain that it may also have supplemented or amended, in some way of which they were likewise not aware.

The establishment of cases of real prediction, not mere inference, is so vital and crucial a test of something not yet recognised by science that it is worth every effort to make its evidence secure.

Another thing on which I should value experiments is the detection of slight traces of telepathic power in quite normal persons,-in the average man for instance, or, rather more likely perhaps, in the average child. The power of receiving telepathic impressions may he a rare faculty existing only in a few individuals, and in them fully developed ; but it is equally possible, and, if one may say so, more likely, that what we see in them is but an intensification of a power which exists in every one as a germ or nucleus. If such should be the fact, it behoves us to know it; and its recognition would 60 more to spread a general belief in the fact of telepathy - a belief by no means as yet universally or even widely spread-than almost anything else.

Bearing on Allied Subjects

There are many topics on which I might speak: one is the recent advance in our knowledge of the nature of the atom, and the discovery of facts concerning the Ether and Matter which I think must have some bearing, - some to me at present quite unknown bearing, - on the theory of what are called "physical phenomena"; but it is hardly necessary to call the attention of educated persons to the intense interest of this most recent purely scientific subject.

On another topic I might say a few words, viz., on the ambiguity clinging round the phrase "action at a distance," in connection with telepathy. Physicists deny action at a distance, at least most of them do, - I do for one - at the same time I admit telepathy. Therefore it is supposed I necessarily assume that telepathy must be conducted by an etherial process analogous to the transmission of waves. That is, however, a non-sequitur. The phrase "action at a distance" is a technical one. Its denial signifies that no physical force is exerted save through a medium. There must either be a projectile from A to B, or a continuous medium of some kind extending from A to B, if A exerts force upon B, or otherwise influences it by a physical process.

But what about a psychical process? There is no such word in physics; the term is in that connection meaningless. A physicist can make no assertion on it one way or the other. If A mesmerises B, or if A makes an apparition of himself appear to B, or if A conveys a telepathic impression to B; is a medium necessary then? As a physicist I do not know: these are not processes I understand. They may not be physical processes at all.

Take it further:- A thinks of B, or A prays to B, or A worships B. - Is a medium necessary for these things ? Absolute ignorance! The question is probably meaning - less and absurd. Spiritual and psychical events do not enter into the scheme of Physics; and when a physicist denies "action at a distance" he is speaking of things he is competent to deal with,- of light and sound and electricity and magnetism and cohesion and gravitation, - he is not, or should not be, denying anything psychical or spiritual at all. All the physical things, he asserts, necessitate a medium; but beyond that he is silent. If telepathy is an etherial process, as soon as it is proved to be an etherial process, it will come into the realm of physics; till then it stays outside.

There is one important topic on which I have not yet spoken, - I mean the bearing of our inquiry on religion. It is a large subject and one too nearly trenching on the region of emotion to be altogether suitable for consideration by a scientific Society. Yet every science has its practical applications, - though they are not part of the science, they are its legitimate outcome, - and the value of the science to humanity must be measured in the last resort by the use which humanity can make of it. To the enthusiast, knowledge for its own sake, without ulterior ends, may be enough, - and if there were none of this spirit in the world we should be poorer than we are;- but for the bulk of mankind this is too high, too arid a creed, and people in general must see just enough practical outcome to have faith that there may be yet more.
That our researches will ultimately have some bearing, some meaning, for the science of theology, I do not doubt. What that bearing may be I can only partly tell. I have indicated in Man and the Universe, Chapter II. called "The Reconciliation," part of what I feel on the subject, and I have gone as far in that article as I feel entitled to go. We seek to unravel the nature and hidden powers of man; and a fuller understanding of the attributes of humanity cannot but have some influence on our theory of Divinity itself.

If any scientific Society is worthy of encouragement and support it should surely be this. If there is any object worthy of patient and continued attention, it is surely these great and pressing problems of whence, what, and whither, that have occupied the attention of Prophet and Philosopher since human history began. The discovery of a new star, of a marking on Mars, of a new element, or of a new extinct animal or plant, is interesting: surely the discovery of a new human faculty is interesting too. Already the discovery of "telepathy" constitutes the first-fruits of this Society's work, and it has laid the way open to the discovery of much more. Our aim is nothing less than the investigation and better comprehension of human faculty, human personality, and human destiny.

 

Chapters

Contents / Preface / Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5 / Chapter 6 / Chapter 7 / Chapter 8 / Chapter 9 / Chapter 10 / Chapter 11 / Chapter 12 / Chapter 13 / Chapter 14 / Chapter 15 / Chapter 16 / Chapter 1 7 / Chapter 18 / Chapter 19 / Chapter 20 / Chapter 21 / Chapter 22 / Chapter 23 / Chapter 24 / Chapter 25

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