The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research

This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project
to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject
to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books
are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.

Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the
publisher to a library and finally to you.

Usage guidelines

Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the
public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to
prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.

We also ask that you:

+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for
personal, non-commercial purposes.

+ Refrain from automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine
translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the
use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.

+ Maintain attribution The Google "watermark" you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find
additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.

+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just
because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other
countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of
any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner
anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe.

About Google Book Search

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers
discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web

at|http : //books . google . com/

V \^^ \ \ ^

JOURNAL , (Ji^t

Uo "'^v ,,-^V

OF THE X- ^

Ainerican Society for Psychical Researcli

SECTION "B"

OF THE

AmericaD iDStitiite for Scientific Researcli

Volume I
1907

THE SOCIETY'S ROOMS
519 West 149th St.
NEW YORK CITY

^

1 ,^ v) 1! (^ ^

CONTENTS

GENERAiL ARTICLES.

Dr. Richard Hodgson. By James H. Hyslop 2

The Fay Performances. By James H. Hyslop 40

Visions of the Dying. By James H. Hyslop 45

Letter of Dr. Pierre Janet 73

Experiments with Mr. Piper since Dr. Hodgson's Death. By James H.

Hyslop 93

Further Experiments Relating to Dr. Hodgson since his Death. By

James H. Hyslop 125

Conclusion of Experiments Relating to Dr. Hodgson: Theories. By

James H. Hyslop 183

Spirit Slate-Writing and Billet Tests. By David P. Abbott. 1 148

11 244

HI 413

IV 513

Hypothesis Concerning Soul Substance; Together with Experimental

Evidence of Such Substance. By Duncan MacDougaM, M. D... 237

On Dr. MacDougall's Experiments. By Hereward Carrington 276

Some Instances of Subconscious Creative Imagination. By Miss Frank

Miller 287

Introduction. By Prof. Th. Flournoy 288

Phenomena of Passing Suggestion or of Instantaneous Auto-Sug-

gestion 293

Telepathy. By James H. Hyslop 308

Omar Khayyam and Psychical Research. By Hereward Carrington 351

Philosophy, Psychology and Psychical Research. By James H. Hyslop. . . 371

A Remarkable Mediumistic Experience. By Dr. J. F. Babcock 382

Soul and Body. By J. Arthur Hill 403

Human Personality. By Hartley B. Alexander. 1 443

II 547

Dr. Mackay on the Immortality of the Soul. By James H. Hyslop.. 459

The Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism. By Frank Podmore 495

Statement of Sir William Crookes 502

Identification of Personality. By James H. Hyslop 505

On the Influence Upon the Communicator's Mind of Objects Presented to

the Medium. By Hereward Carrington 536

Some Features in Mediumistic Phenomena. By James H. Hyslop 564

Contents,

MISCELLANEOUS.

Dissolution of the American Branch i

Objects of the Institute 15

Needs of the Institute 28

Prospectus 32

Editorials 35, 108, 161, 229, 255, 328, 357, 394, 427, 479, 522, 590

Incidents 39, 114, 165, 261, 358, 431, 486, 528, 591

Book Reviews 59, 117, 174, 283, 347, 397, 492, 542, 611

Treasurer's Reports 121, 235, 400, 545

Correspondence 263, 340, 370, 440, 491, 536, 602

Additional Members 61, 122, 180, 236, 285, 349, 401, 493, 546, 613

Errata 613

Vol. I.— No. I. January, 1907.

JOURNAL

OF THE

AinericaD Society for Psychical Research

CONTENTS

GsscBRAL Articlbs: paob

Dianlntkm of the American Branch, - 1

Dr. Richaxd HodfBon, .... 2

Objects of the Institute. .... 15

Needs of the Institute. .... 9

Prospectos. 33

Editobial:

Notes, 35

Bzplanation of Terms, - - - - 36

PAOB

The American and London Societies. - 36
Inczdbnts:

The Fay Performances, .... 40

Visions of the Dyinff. .... 45

A Visual Experience, - - - - 55

Cases of Amnesia - 57

Paeudo^lalrvoyanoe, - • - - 58

Book Rbvibws, 59

List of Mbmbbks .... 61

It will be a sufficient explanation of the reasons for the
organization of an American Society to publish the official
document which announced the dissolution of the American
Branch. This is found below as published in the " Journal "
of the London Society.

DISSOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN BRANCH.

The following document was signed by three Vice-Presi-
dents of the Society for Psychical Research at a meeting in
Boston last May, at which it was resolved to dissolve the
American Branch of the London Society:

American Branch of The Society for Psychical Research.

After full and anxious consideration it has been decided to
dissolve the American Branch of the Society for Psychical
Research at the end of the current year.

It is hoped that a scheme, upon which Professor Hyslop
has been for some time past engaged, may result in the
formation of an independent organization which will carry
on the work of psychical research in America.

The records of sporadic phenomena now accumulated at
the office of the Branch will be carefully gone through, and a
selection from them will be published in the " Journal."

2 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

The Piper records, and all documents appertaining there-
to, will remain in the charge of the Council of the Society;
and, as promptly as the labor involved in the study of their
voluminous and complicated contents will allow, a full report
on the later developments of the Piper case up to the date of
Dr. Hodgson's death will be issued in the " Proceedings."

After publication the Council of the Society will allow
qualified and serious students access to the records ; but only
on terms which will ensure that all private and intimate
matter contained in them shall be handled with proper dis-
cretion and reserve, and that all confidences shall be
respected.
Signed on behalf of the American Branch

WILLIAM JAMES, )

JAMES H. HYSLOP, V Vice-Presidents.

GEORGE B. DORR, )

Signed on behalf of the Council of the Society for Psychical
Research,

J. G. PIDDINGTON.
S Boylston Place, Boston, Massachusetts, May i8, 1906.

DR. RICHARD HODGSON.

Psychic research has suffered an irreparable loss in the
death of Dr. Richard Hodgson, and it is fitting in the re-
organization of this work in this country that his unusual
gifts in connection with the past work of this kind should
receive some memorial notice. He had devoted his life and
abilities to the solution of one of the world's largest problems
and for this task he was possessed of exceptional qualities of
mind and heart, developed under the most favorable
influences. His place in the work can be appreciated only by
a brief account of his life. ♦

Richard Hodgson was born in 1855 in Melbourne, Aus-
tralia, and received his early education in the public schools
of that place. He afterwards entered the University of Mel-
bourne and took there the degrees of M. A. and LL. D.

It was his original intention to study law and this course

Dr. Richard Hodgson.

was followed for a time. But during his legal studies he gave
some attention to science and philosophy, and finally resolved
to devote his attention exclusively to these fields. In the
meantime he early became interested in the occult, owing to
certain incidents which he told only to certain intimate
friends, and it seems that a symposium in one of the British
monthly magazines stimulated him to make this matter a
subject of his inquiries.

After completing his law studies at Melbourne, he went
to the University of Cambridge, England, and there
graduated in the mental and moral sciences. The teacher
from whom he learned most, according to his own state-
ments, both in personal instruction and lectures, was Pro-
fessor Henry Sidgwick, Professor of Moral Philosophy in
Cambridge, and President of the Society for Psychical
Research. In philosophy he had also learned much from the
study of Herbert Spencer and was to a considerable extent
influenced by that writer's doctrines, tho he afterward
imbibed enough of an idealistic philosophy to eliminate the
materialistic tendencies of that author. On the subject of
Spencer he at one time engaged in a controversy with
Thomas Hill Green, of Oxford.

After the completion of his Cambridge course, he spent
six months in Jena, Germany, attending the university there,
and soon after his return to England he lectured for six
months at different towns in the north of England in con-
nection with University Extension. His subjects were
scientific and literary, being " The Development of Poetry
Since 1789," and " The Mind and the Senses."

An undergraduate society, called the Cambridge Society
for Psychical Research, was started during the second term
in Cambridge, early in 1879, and in this he took an active
part. He assisted at various sittings with mediums, who
proved to be, with one exception, fraudulent or unsatis-
factory; and the society gradually dissolved, this being due
partly to the fact that the members of the society could not
spare the time from other university work. The exception
mentioned above was a medium, who gave some remarkable
tests, sometimes in apparently normal states and sometimes

4 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

under " control." Dr. Hodgson had met her in London and
persuaded her to give two experiments to the small society.
This society, however, had no connection with the later
organization which took its place in work of this kind and
owed its existence to a different set of influences.

Soon after the dissolution of the Cambridge Society, Dr.
Hodgson joined the new Society for Psychical Research
which. was organized in 1882 and served on its Council and
some of its committees. In 1884, he was appointed by the
Board of Mental and Moral Sciences in Cambridge Uni-
versity, England, as Lecturer on the Philosophy of Herbert
Spencer. But this course was interrupted by an appoint-
ment to go to India and to investigate the marvelous
phenomena alleged to have occurred in connection with
Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society. The
details of the investigation, made in behalf of the Society for
Psychical Research, were published in Vol. Ill of the
Society's " Proceedings." His conclusion was that the
phenomena were fraudulent, and whoever takes the pains to
examine this report with care must appreciate the strength
of his case, to say nothing more of it.

After his return to England, in 1885, he lectured again at
Cambridge on the Philosophy of Herbert Spencer, and then
spent a year in London, engaged to some extent in political
work. At the same time he employed himself in psychic
research. He conducted a series of investigations, assisted
by Mr. J. S. Davey, into the possibilities of mal-observation
and lapse of memory, with special reference to the marvelous
phenomena alleged to occur in the presence of mediums and
with reference to conjuring tricks imitative of spiritistic or
alleged spiritistic phenomena. The result of these investiga-
tions was published in Vols. IV and VIII of the Society's
" Proceedings." In the monthly " Journal " of the Society,
about that time, he reviewed in detail a large number of
reports of alleged independent slate-writing and analogous
phenomena, showing that they could be accounted for by
conjuring. He also contributed papers on philosophic sub-
jects to the quarterly journal " Mind."

Early in 1887 he accepted the position of Secretary to the

Dr. Richard Hodgson.

American Society for Psychical Research, which, in January,
1890, was transformed into the American Branch of the
English Society, of which Branch he was appointed the
Secretary and Treasurer. During his residence in America
and his service in the American Branch he contributed
various articles in the " Forum " and " Arena," as well as a
number of important papers and reports to the " Proceed-
ings " of the Society. Of the latter are the following : —

" A Case of Double Consciousness," being a report on a
remarkable instance of duplex personality in which a man
lived a normally unconscious life for eight weeks. The next
was his first Report on the Piper Case, which was entitled,
" A Record of Certain Phenomena of Trance." Then came
an article on " The Defence of the Theosophists," being a
reply to criticisms by the theosophists of his Report on
Madame Blavatsky, and an article on " Indian Magic and the
Testimony of Conjurers." Following this was his second
Report on the Piper Case, " Further Record of Observations
of Certain Phenomena of Trance," in which he came out in
defence of the spiritistic hypothesis as based upon that
record.

The above short sketch of Dr. Hodgson's life and work
has been taken, in the main, from the " Religio-Philosophical
Journal." The editor of that Journal was a personal friend
of Dr. Hodgson's and received from him the main incidents
representing his career. The most important incidents, how-
ever. Dr. Hodgson could not state for himself. It will remain
for his literary executors to give a more full account of him
and his work.

The most important incident in his career was the pub-
lication of his second Report on the Piper Case. It came out
in 1898. This represented him as apparently breaking with
all his previously skeptical convictions in regard to spiritual-
ism, or what has been called spiritism in order to escape the
associations which that term has obtained from its connec-
tion with so much fraud and illusion. Dr. Hodgson had
established such a reputation for the discovery of fraud and
for scepticism regarding a future life that his conversion, as
indicated in this Report, to the theory of spiritism or the

6 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

possibility of communicating with deceased friends and
relatives came as a distinct surprise to many psychic
researchers to say nothing of the astonishment of the man
of the world. He had been exceedingly cautious and slow in
the formation of his convictions on the subject, and had
maintained such a reserve in his scientific utterances that few
would have even suspected the real sympathies he felt for
the conclusion which he wished to see proved, but which his
strength of intellectual nature would not allow to be proved
by anything short of the most satisfactory evidence. Many
a time just as he thought he had hit upon the phenomena
which would serve his purpose he found himself balked by
various difficulties and had still to suspend his judgment
until he obtained further light. The primary difficulty with
the theory was not the lack of supernormal evidence, but the
peculiar form and limitations of the phenomena which pur-
ported to be this evidence of a future life. It was not until
1896 or 1897 that these perplexities were finally cleared up
in his mind and the result was published in the Report
mentioned. But the sympathies of his mind are well indi-
cated in a personal letter to the editor of the " Religio-
Philosophical Journal " in 1890, before even his first Report
on the case was published. I am permitted to quote from
this letter to Col. Bundy. He said : —

" My interest in psychical research is greater than ever,
and it seems to me highly probable that before many years
have elapsed there will be much new and valuable testimony
before the world as the result of the labors of our society, in
favor of the spiritualistic claim that it is possible for our
departed friends under special conditions to make their con-
tinued existence known to us. It is my own conviction that
such communication is possible, tho I hold that' it is not
nearly so frequent as most spiritualists commonly suppose.
What we need at the present time is the earnest sympathy
and co-operation of all who do hold or would like to hold this
conviction as well, indeed, as of all those who think that
further inquiry may lead to a different conclusion."

It is a tribute to the scientific cautiousness and thorough-
ness of the man that he so long persisted in the suspense of

Dr. Richard Hodgson.

judgment that carried him through seven or eight years more
investigation before he would allow himself to confess his
belief in the scientific evidence for a future life. He appreci-
ated quite as fully, and in the same spirit, as the lamented
Frederick W. H. Myers, the wide and deep bearing of the
belief in a future life upon philosophy, religion, and social
and political life, but he allowed no mere sentiment to affect
his conception of the scientific method which was to be the
arbiter of that fate. As he proceeded with his inquiries, after
some earlier experiences which had awakened his interest, he
found himself more and more confronted with difficulties in
his problem. These difficulties, however, affected the evi-
dential aspects of it, not the truth of it. He saw more and
more clearly the radical distinction between scientific proof
and personal belief obtained by personal experience, a dis-
tinction which few see, or if they see it, too frequently
neglect its importance in the prosecution of their work. It
was the realization of this distinction and its importance for
his problem that sustained him in a policy which brought
many an anathema upon his head from the very class whose
belief he was proving. He had long felt the cogency of
certain facts in favor of the belief, but as believing and
proving were such different things to him he sacrificed his
personal desires to the rigorous demands of scientific method
and kept up the high ideal which he, with the Society of
Psychical Research, had formed of scientific duty and
allegiance. His patience and perseverance were finally
rewarded. Tho he had much material which had great sig-
nificance in support of his suit he did not make up his mind
until fortune favored him with a long series of investigations
in a single group of the most interesting phenomena yet
recorded — those of the Piper case. He had been able to
publish a part — a very small part— of the concrete evidence
gathered by his labors in support of survival of personal
identity after death. This he regarded as the foundation of
his work and he never wearied in his efforts to lay that
foundation broad and deep. On this foundation it was his
desire to build a structure which would equally explain the
perplexities apparent in the problem and the limitations

8 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

under which the revelations of another life were made. But
I believe he had committed nothing to writing of the system
which he had in mind, save what he had stated briefly in his
Report on the Piper case, when, on the 20th of December,
1905, he suddenly passed away and left some future successor
to gather up the threads which his death so disappointingly
severed.

Of the man Richard Hodgson as he appeared to his
friends in the ordinary conversation of daily life a sketch has
been drawn, so vivid and true, that no account of him will be
complete without quoting from it. His work and convictions
had brought him to a course which required him to distin-
guish between a personal and a scientific life and to keep
them apart in behalf of their own several interests, and this
resulted in certain concessions to the " personalities " which
had been instrumental in his conversion to the belief in a
personal existence after death. Whether he was right or not
makes no difference to us as long as we know that he sur-
rendered none of his allegiance to scientific method. To
quote, then, from the above-mentioned sketch: —

" Tho finally surrendering his own life to the direction of
* Imperator ' (the chief of the trance personalities whom he
recognized in the Piper case as spiritual), he sought to retain
in his work of interpretation for others the attitude of the
investigator insisting upon the best of evidence. It was his
unflagging desire to accumulate a mass of evidence sufficient
to form a reasonable hypothesis regarding the * spirit world.'

" There is no lack of pathos, from one point of view, in
his having dropped this work unfinished. From another
there is the satisfaction of his having passed quickly, as he
wished to pass, from the present to the future life. More
than one of his friends recall the eagerness with which he
said only last summer, ' I can hardly wait to die.' A keen
intellectual curiosity regarding what awaited him was his
own chief concern about death. Then came that which he
desired; and then neither the doubters nor his fellow-
believers could wholly grudge him the opportunity to carry
forward — as he would have said — ' on the other side ' the
work to which he gave his life on earth. With a swift pas-

Dr. Richard Hodgson,

sage from the known to the unknown sphere, the visible life
among us came to an end.

" To those who knew him in private his utter confidence
in his work was one of its highest justifications. To hear
him talk of that ' other side ' as if it were literally a room
separated from the house of life only by walls and doors of
glass, to see him year in and year out devoting to an idea
intellectual and moral powers which might well have won
him many of the rewards which men prize most, — this was
to realize in a measure the spirit which has animated the
idealists of every age, the spirit through which a man saves
his life by losing it.

"The general and the personal significance of his work
were so inextricably twined together that it is hard to discuss
it at all without seeming to invade the inmost sanctities. Yet
it is no sacrilege to quote from a private letter of 1901 a pas-
sage which reveals at once the intense conviction of Richard
Hodgson's belief and the pure spiritual faith of which it was
the embodiment : ' I went through toils and turmoils and
perplexities in '97 and '98 about the significance of this whole
Imperator regime, but I have seemed to get on a rock after
that, — I seem to understand clearly the reasons for inco-
herence and obscurity, etc., and I think that if for the rest of
my life from now I should never see another trance or have
another word from Imperator or his group, it would make no
difference to my knowledge that all is well, that Imperator,
etc., are all they claim to be and are indeed messengers that
we may call divine. Be of good courage whatever happens,
and pray continually, and let peace come into your soul.
Why should you be distraught and worried? Everything,
absolutely everything, — from a spot of ink to all the stars —
every faintest thought we think up to the contemplation of
the highest intelligences in the cosmos, are all in and part of
the infinite Goodness. Rest in that Divine Love. All your
trials are known better than you know them yourself. Do
you think it is an idle word that the hairs of our heads are
numbered? Have no dismay. Fear nothing and trust in
God.'

" His friends and brothers care especially to remember

lo Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

one thing — that this idealist did not detach himself from the
most earth-bound of us all. Tho so much of his commerce
was with the unseen, his feet kept step with ours on solid
earth. In the field of mental activities, there was no one
better qualified to discuss the freshest topics of physical
science, the events and tendencies in the world of affairs, and
their deeper significance.

" Nor was this community of interest restricted by any
means to the things of the mind. The healthy Anglo-Saxon
devotion to every exhibition of physical prowess was con-
spicuously characteristic of this child of the spirit. The
professional ball game, the college boat race and foot-ball
battle excited his keenest interest; and it was like him to
double his enjoyment in these sports by the companionship
of one or more of us.

" A purity of nature which leaves his friends unable, even
should they try, to recall a single taint of coarseness in his
word or thought ; a sincerity like that of a true-hearted boy ;
an unselfishness and absence of egotism which made our con-
cerns far more often than his the topics of our personal inters
course ; a self-respect which included in its operations a body
as wholesome as the air and sea he loved ; — these must surely
be remembered in any enumeration of the qualities which
made his personality so rare a blending of the spirit and the
flesh. Who better than our well-loved friend can remain
for us the interpretation and type of this blending? What
man of us has lived in the flesh a life so illuminated and con-
trolled by the spirit that the transition from the seen to the
unseen could have seemed so short a journey as for him ?
One whose spirit, like our friend's, was clothed with the
whole armor of faith and courage has told what it is for such
a man to die : * In the hot-fit of life, a tip-toe on the highest
point of being, he passes at a bound on to the other side.
The noise of the mallet and chisel is scarcely quenched, the
trumpets are blowing, when, trailing with him clouds of
glory, this happy-starred, full-blooded spirit shoots into the
spiritual land.' " *

* "A Memoir of Richard Hodgson," by M. A. DeW. H. Quoted by per-
mission.

Dr. Richard Hodgson. ii

Very few know anything about the personal struggles
which he had in the effort to carry on his work. Of the inner
hfe that sustained him in these struggles during nearly thirty
years of investigation; that made poverty light and enabled
him to remain unmoved amidst ridicule and calumny alike,
and that kept up his faith in the most trying and pathetic
circumstances the time has not yet come to speak without
reserve. They were incidents of a firm resolution to know
and abide by the truth, whether it favored his personal
wishes or not. Sincerity was native to him, and in the
modern dissolution of the old faiths the now dominant
methods of science compelled him to surrender a large part
of the convictions which he had imbibed with his early teach-
ing and at a cost which none who do not know the circum-
stances can realize. He felt that, for him and for men of his
type, the belief in an unseen world of spirit which is the sole
sustenance of the best spiritual life, must be based upon
evidence of a more substantial kind than the one of tradition,
and that without credentials of a scientific character the
belief must inevitably waste away. In Professor Sidgwick,
Mr. Gurney, Mr. Myers and the group of men that gathered
about them in Cambridge, England, he found men who were
influenced by the same conviction and the fortunate meeting
with them determined Richard Hodgson's life work. As
long as these men lived they were his faithful friends and co-
workers. None of them ever lost sight of the great end in
view, namely, the scientific demonstration of a future life, but
none of them ever forgot that a chief means to that end was
a strict adhesion to the severest methods of criticism and
investigation which would result in the collection of a body
of evidence that would command respect and produce con-
viction.

Dr. Hodgson's native hatred of fraud and humbug
enabled him to enter into the work of sifting evidence with
great zest. Early in his career he found it needful to
acquaint himself with all the methods and appliances with
which adventurers delude the public and as a result he
became one of the most skillful detectors of fraud that has
yet arisen, as was shown in his exposures of Madame Blavat-

12 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

sky and Eusapia Palladino. Indeed the earlier years of his
work seem to have been productive rather of negative than
of positive results. He did meet, however, at an early period
with a few phenomena which he could not discredit and
which encouraged him to continue perseveringly his work
with the hope of finally obtaining what he sought, namely, a
mass of evidence which would be sufficiently impressive to
enforce consideration of his problem. This he first found
in the Piper case. After several years' anxious doubt he
came finally to the definite conviction that the communica-
tions there received are the utterances — confused and frag-
mentary and mingled with extraneous elements — yet in the
main the utterances of spirits freed from their earthly em-
bodiment, and in that conviction he found the basis for a
religious faith which he had so long sought.

Yet his personal conviction never caused Dr. Hodgson
to lose his sympathy with the position and difficulties of the
honest sceptic. He had too long wandered in the labyrinth
of doubt himself to lose appreciation for those in perplexity
with their beliefs. He well knew the maxim of Epicharmus,

A sober sense of honest doubt
Keeps human reason hale and stout.

In fact the honest sceptic's state of mind was much more
congenial to him than that of the uncritical believer. He
welcomed every precaution an experimenter could take to
guard against deception and frankly recognized that he had
himself to bear the suspicion that he was in collusion with
Mrs. Piper, urging that in no other way could evidence be
obtained that would be worthy of that name. Sound
evidence was always his object, both for himself and for
others, and nothing so much delighted him as the convincing
of an unbeliever, just as nothing so excited his contempt as
the unreasoning credulity which accepts everything and
examines nothing.

Far as he went in his acceptance of the Piper phenomena,
he never went further than he believed the evidence would
carry him. So-called " physical phenomena " he never
definitely accepted. To a friend who asked him this

Dr. Richard Hodgson. 13

question some years ago he replied : " All I can say is that I
have sought for them diligently more than fifteen years and
have never found any that I could regard as well established."
To the same friend he said that he thought Crookes' experi-
ments with Home were the best attested physical phenomena
on record, but he could not finally accept them until some
additional cases had been adduced. This extreme reluctance
to accept phenomena which he had not personally examined
frequently caused him to differ with his associates in the
Society for Psychical Research and especially with Mr.
Myers. Yet these differences led to no interruption of the
friendship and esteem that had so long subsisted between
them. This was well indicated in the fact that Mr. Myers,
when failing health would not permit him to complete unas-
sisted his great work on " Human Personality and its Sur-
vival of Bodily Death," invoked the aid of Dr. Hodgson. Dr.
Hodgson worked with Mr. Myers for several months and
after Mr. Myers' death, Dr. Hodgson and Miss Johnson
superintended the completion of the work. What that work
owes to Dr. Hodgson's acute intellect and critical judgment
Mr. Myers alone could attest, and he would no doubt have
acknowledged the amount of that debt had he lived to write
the preface.

It is in place to state something of my own personal
relation to Dr. Hodgson and his work. The incident that
attracted my interest in psychical research was his paper on
"A Case of Double Consciousness," which is mentioned
above in the list of his contributions to the Society's pub-
lications. I heard an abstract of it read by himself at a
meeting in New York City, called for the purpose of organ-
izing a Section of the Society. What excited so much satis-
faction in me regarding this paper was the great pains and
expense involved in the effort to ascertain exactly what the
facts of the case were without any attempt to offer a theory
to explain them. The reading of that paper decided my
mind to join my lot with these investigators. To me it
seemed that science was primarily observation of facts and
only secondarily a thing concerned with explanation and
theory. The joining of the Society soon brought me into

14 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

intimate relations with Dr. Hodgson as Secretary and also
as a personal adviser in matters pertaining to it and in which
I was but a novitiate. I soon learned his range of knowl-
edge in the complicated field of abnormal and super-normal
psychology as well as in the prestodigitator's field of tricks
and illusions. This acquaintance began in 1889 soon after
I came to Columbia University and it soon ripened into a
warm friendship. But our relations were associated mostly
with the scientific aspects of his work. What impressed me
most in his character was the separation of his emotional
from his intellectual life, or better his desires from his scien-
tific judgment. He knew from his own experience and from
his knowledge of human nature generally that the subject of
a future life stimulated emotional interests and judgments
which ought to be kept in abeyance when paying deference
to the claims and methods of science, and he was so coldly
cautious on this matter that he never gained the reputation
before the public, as did Mr. Myers, for human sympathies
which were his in a most marked degree. He had a pro-
foundly emotional nature which few ever knew or suspected,
but he never allowed it to play any part in his scientific con-
clusions. In this respect he was a perfect master of himself.
From personal conversations with him I found that he had
such a confidence in the idealistic view of the world that he
had no need to press his facts into moulds that did not fit.
He did not require scientific support for his ideals tho he
wanted it. Hence he was the most unsparing critic of any
temptation to accept conclusions in the mere interest of
emotional passions. This was so true that he had the
reputation of being an uncompromising opponent of spirit-
istic theories when the very opposite of this was the fact.
He was exceedingly anxious to prove that theory, but long
after he had come to the conclusion personally that the belief
in a future life was true he kept his scientific method intact
from the influence of emotional interests and still made many
spiritualists hate him cordially for his apparently obstinate
scepticism. He knew better than they, however, the neces-
sity and importance of methods which serve the truth more
effectively and more serviceably than impatience with the

Objects of the Institute, 15

most rigorous scientific standards. He had his faults, but
they were not what the public has often supposed. He was
not always as tactful or patient with others as is necessary
in this complicated subject, but even in this only his best
friends are entitled to criticize. The sincerity of his devo-
tion to sound methods was so great that nothing would stand
in the way of enforcing their consideration, and the future
will have occasion to pay its tribute to his insistence on them.
We were both working together for the proper organi-
zation and endowment of psychical research in this country
and I had hoped that only a short time would intervene
before having him in a position to do his work more effect-
ively. We exchanged views upon the subject and had
reached a definite understanding in regard to our policy.
We both agreed as to the problems which we had to solve
and also in the main as to the theoretical considerations
which needed public discussion. But he had been the blazer
of the way and I was the follower. I had relied upon the
prospect of his taking the leadership in this country, as there
Wos no other man so well equipped for it. The deaths of
Mr. Myers and Professor Sidgwick in England had left the
work very much in need of successors. With Dr. Richard
Hodgson passing the great divide there are fewer or no such
persons to assume the task thus laid down, and those of us
who are left to continue it will have to accept its duties in a
stoical temper.

JAMES H. HYSLOP.

OBJECTS OF THE INSTITUTE.

It will be proper to explain at some length the aims of the
American Institute for Scientific Research, of which the
American Society for Psychical Research is but a Section.
The Institute has received a perpetual charter from the State
of New York and intends to combine the work of investiga-
tion and philanthropy. The work of scientific investigation
will occupy two more or less separate fields of interest. Its
philanthropic work will be confined to one of them. This
latter function will be taken up only when it has secured the

i6 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

proper endowment. In the meantime it can only begin its
investigations upon a small scale. But the nature, aims and
needs of the Institute will here be the subject of careful
explanation.

I. Nature of the Institute.

The Institute is constituted by a Board of Trustees,
whose primary function shall be to act as custodians of funds
and to supervise their distribution among qualified men or
bodies of men interested in the fields of abnormal and super-
normal psychology, and residual phenomena generally. The
Institute will also supervise the organization of groups of
scientific men interested in its fields of work. This work will
be limited to a definite tho comprehensive territory of scien-
tific investigation and philanthropic labor, namely, that of all
residual phenomena in normal, abnormal, and supernormal
psychology, including borderland and sporadic phenomena
between physiology and psychology. No propagandism of
any sort, whether philosophic, religious, or scientific, will be
associated with the work of the Institute. Hence there will
be no teaching connected with it. Its sole work will be the
care of endowments and the supervision of investigations
with such philanthropic services in mental disease as are
necessary in the interest of these inquiries.

The first function which the Institute can perform is that
of a " clearing house " for all those sporadic phenomena and
isolated cases having a scientific interest for psychology and
which would otherwise be lost to science. Academies of
Medicine and bodies of scientific men can be invoked and
aided in its aims, and committees appointed for the collection,
record, and publication of important material related to the
objects of the Institute. It will thus be apparent that the
Institute does not intend to act in entire independence of
other efforts to deal with residual phenomena, but as a
central bureau or co-operative agency in more effective in-
vestigation.

There are two fields of investigation with which the In-
stitute will be directly and indirectly occupied. The first
may be called Psychopathology, or Abnormal Psychology,

Objects of the Institute, 17

and with this it is desired to associate a philanthropic work
of an important kind, a clinic, partly as a means of giving a
practical character to the Institute's aims and partly as a
means of facilitating scientific research. The second field is
popularly known as Psychic Research and may be called
Supernormal Psychology. It comprehends a variety of
phenomena imperatively demanding investigation. At
certain points the two fields tend to merge into each other
and at others they are widely separated. On this account
and of several other considerations it is important not to
associate the investigations of the two fields, while the
means are provided for the articulation of results in both.
Hence two Sections of the Institute have been organized.
Section A., or Psychopathology, and Section B., or Super-
normal Psychology.

II, Psychopathology.

The field of Abnormal Psychology in which philanthropic
effort may be organized and conducted simultaneously with
investigation consists of such cases as functional mental
disease, and all psychological disturbances due even to
organic troubles; functional insanity and hallucinations;
amnesia or loss of memory, especially of that type often taken
for serious insanity, but curable by other than ordinary
methods; secondary personality or unconscious mental
action simulative of other agencies than the normal con-
sciousness; functional melancholia and vicarious or sympa-
thetic mental aberrations; neurasthenia and psychasthenia;
hysteria and hystero-epilepsy ; obessions; fixed ideas or
monomanias; phobias; delusions, alcoholism, and all func-
tional troubles that may ultimately be made to yield to the
various forms of suggestion. It will also be an important
part of the Institute's work to aid or to conduct a thorough
scientific investigation into the phenomena and capabilities
of hypnotism, especially on their psychological side, while
organizing the application of hypnotic therapeutics in their
scientifically legitimate forms. For this purpose a clinic and
hospital of the Salpetriere, Nancy or Berillon type would be
necessary after the Institute has been fully organized.

i8 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

In thus outlining this field of work and investigation I do
not mean to imply that science has been oblivious to it or
that it has neglected it in its main aspects, but only that the
work needs both centralization and special attention to its
psychological as well as to its physiological relations. The
work proposed is superadded to that of Psychiatry, and is
not a substitute for it. The physiological study and con-
nections of the phenomena interesting to it will not be sup-
planted or ignored by it. On the contrary, this must ever
be the basis of much of its inquiries and always the final
result of them. But owing to the fact that there is some
reason to suppose that the phenomena of consciousness have
something like a causal nexus between different events in its
stream and also that they probably exercise a frequent
influence to produce bodily disturbances, it is desired that
the purely psychological connections and relations of mental
phenomena in certain cases be studied with reference to their
possible value in diagnosis and the application of therapeutic
methods supplementary to the ordinary ones. Many im-
portant facts may be ascertained for practical life antecedent
to the autopsy which must be the last stage of inquiry and
which never aids in the treatment of the individual patient.
Experience has shown that the psychological study of certain
disorders may lead to the improvement in methods of treat-
ment.

This is not the place to explain in detail how the psycho-
logical aspects of these phenomena shall be investigated,
since every psychologist will understand what is needed in
work of this kind in contradistinction from physiological
problems. What is most wanted is the right understanding
of the dissociations of abnormal mental life in comparison
with the associations of normal life, in order to determine
more distinctly the practical measures which may be neces-
sary for prevention and cure. The many cures in this field
effected by suggestion are evidence of what might be accom-
plished after a more scientific knowledge of abnormal mental
phenomena has been obtained.

Incidentally investigations in abnormal mental phe-
nomena, especially those of secondary personality, may

Objects of the Institute. 19

throw light upon some of the vexed problems of philosophy.
They may affect these in what they show of the nature and
limitations of our normal personality. We must remember
that what we directly know of ourselves is the result of in-
trospection and what we know of the consciousness of others
is indirectly ascertained through their motor actions. All
consciousness other than our own is inferred from physical
actions, and we can infer and understand it only in propor-
tion to our direct knowledge of ourselves, on the one hand,
and on the other, in proportion to our knowledge of the
extent to which consciousness obtains physical expression
through the motor system in others. In our normal life
consciousness and the organism are so correlated as never to
suggest any other conception of their relation than the
dependence of consciousness on the body and the body alone.
In this normal life personality seems to have its nature and
limitations determined by the nature of the organism and its
wants. Consciousness of the normal type has been useful in
the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest, and
the abnormal types seem to characterize the unfit and unad-
justed organism. But in certain forms of abnormal mental
life there are distinct traces of mental action that does not
obtain physical expression at all times. Unconscious motor
actions shovr evidence of personality that apparently repre-
sents no utility in the process of evolution, and sometimes
indicate a wider range of that personality than the normal.
Hence it is important to ascertain, if possible, how much
evidence there may be for this condition of things, as it is
quite possible to conceive that abnormal rather than normal
psychology may be the key to the solution of the problems of
philosophy. It would be strange if Materialism were dis-
credited by the study of the very phenomena upon which it
has hitherto relied for the proof of its claims. But however
this may be it is certain that our conclusions must be con-
sistent with the existence of the abnormal, and it may be that
the abnormal instead of the normal must represent the terri-
tory in which the solution of our problems is to be found.

We know that the study of physiology and the practice
of medicine were revolutionized by the study of pathology.

22 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

many able physicians who would be glad to employ it in
certain emergencies did it not affect their practice. A clinic
would obviate this difficulty without affecting the practice of
those who wish to employ it, while it would at the same time
afford rare opportunities for the scientific study of hypnotic
phenomena on a large scale.

III. Psychic Research.

'^ The second field for investigation which it is desirable to
organize and aid is that which is known as Psychic Research.
The popular conception of this field identifies it with the
study of Spiritualism which has managed, in this country
especially, to associate its methods and " phenomena " with
fraud and illusion to such an extent that it is almost impos-
sible to elicit attention to genuine phenomena. But it is
designed in this term to sustain that conception of the field
which is much wider than the general notion of Spiritualism,
while it may comprehend it in both its fraudulent and appar-
ently genuine form. The work of the English Society for
^Psychical Research defines what we have in view. This
comprehends alleged telepathy, alleged clairvoyance, alleged
mediumship, and all claims to the supernormal acquisition
of knowledge, as well as the alleged production of physical
effects without contact. As all these phenomena are exceed-
ingly sporadic, except perhaps their fraudulent form, it is in
the same degree necessary that the work of investigation
should be organized and centralized with funds to make its

'^ aims effective. The organization is in a measure already
undertaken by the English Society, but very inadequately
for the want of funds and proper co-operation, and it is the
aim of the American Institute for Scientific Research to
organize and endow this work while it extends investigation

V to abnormal psychology.

There is a vast field of pseudo-supernormal phenomena

which intervene between the genuinely supernormal and the

abnormal, and this field is of especial importance to psychic

research, more particularly because the abnormal is some-

nes the medium through which supernormal facts find their

ay. We require as much to define the limits and medium

Objects of the Institute, 23

of the supernormal as we do the existence of the super-
normal, and these limits are close to a very large territory of
the abnormal and of secondary personality. It is therefore
important that we articulate the results of investigation in
both fields of mental phenomena while we keep the actual
work of inquiry in each case independent. Scientific men
will appreciate the necessity of careful methods in this matter
and ought to recognize the importance of making the investi-
gation as comprehensive as possible, and of bringing the
whole field of residual mental phenomena together to ascer-
tain their inter-relations. Not that the supernormal is
necessarily associated with the abnormal, but that some-
where between the purely normal field of mental action and
the supernormal we should expect to find connecting links,
now associating the supernormal with the normal and now
associating it with the abnormal. Our knowledge of its
nature and limits will thus be determined more or less by the
borderland cases, so to speak, intervening between the two
extremes.

The field of psychic research proper divides itself into at
least three types of facts having a scientific interest. The
first of these may be denominated as that of frauds and delu-
sions. This is an extremely large one and is represented by
all those forms of jugglery which claim to be " supernatural "
phenomena, such as slate-writing tricks and cabinet " ma-
terializations," and various mystifying performances. This
field of fraud is well organized and equipped for its work. It
was demoralized by the publication of the Report by the
Seybert Commission, but since the work of the Society for
Psychical Research has reinstated the belief in the super-
normal of some kind, whether rightly or wrongly, the effect
has been to encourage the reorganization of fraud on a wide
scale and it is so rife that no better service for a large class
of people can be performed than to serve as means for the
correction of illusion and the detection of this fraud. In the
decline of religious beliefs which had created so many hopes
and ideals it is quite natural that the despair attending the
dissolution of that faith should result in the credulous pur-
suit of consolation, especially if science will not step in to

24 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research/

supply the guidance which is so much needed. Science has
insisted on supplanting faith in determining truth and hence
it cannot shirk the duty to take its place in the investigation
of the phenomena which claim, whether rightly or wrongly,
to be so important. It cannot assume an attitude of intel-
lectual and aristocratic pride, after disillusioning mankind as
to the " supernatural," without forfeiting its claim to be our
7 moral guide in the affairs of practical life. It must offer a
constructive view of the world or surrender to the influences
which scepticism does not and perhaps cannot destroy. In
this work protection against illusion and fraud is a task not
less important than the discovery of the supernormal.

The second field may be called that of the pseudo-super-
normal and the pseudo-spiritistic type of phenomena, with-
out implying that there is anything fraudulent or consciously
associated with deception in them. This field is far larger
than the public suspects, and is as important as it is scien-
tifically interesting. This territory was not properly under-
stood or appreciated before 1879 ^^^ perhaps not until later.
Hence much that passed for the supernormal and spiritistic
has been excluded from that consideration, and found to be
the result of subconscious mental action or secondary per-
sonality. It is often simulative of other agency than the
person manifesting it. Flourney's case of Mile. Helene
Smith is a good instance of this kind. Another most striking
case is that of Dr. Morton Prince. In less interesting forms
the phenomena are very frequent and are the source of much
illusion and error on the part of those who cannot discrimi-
nate secondary personality from the supernormal. The
study and mastery of this field will put very decided limits to
the claims of spiritualism and will also exhibit the matrix
through which much of the actually supernormal has to
come. For both sides of the issue involved this field is a
most important one and its study will afford as much scien-
tific instruction as it provides protection against illusion.

The third field is that of the actually supernormal and
comprises the claims of telepathy and spiritism as names for
facts and not their explanation. What its extent is we do
not know and it may be long before we do know. If

Objects of the Institute. 25

previous inquiry had discredited the existence of anything
supernormal the claims of investigation could not be so
forcibly presented. But the work of the Society for
Psychical Research, though carried on under disadvantages
and discouragements which no other form of inquiry has had
to suffer, has presented such a mass of evidence for some-
thing exceptional in the processes of acquiring knowledge
that its possible meaning for philosophy, science, religion,
ethics, and politics cannot longer be ignored without for-
feiture of the claim to scientific intelligence, to say nothing
of human moral interests. This is true without accepting
even the provisional hypotheses which are often put forward
to explain its phenomena. But even its best accredited
theory, if theory it is, namely, telepathy, is not a generally
accepted fact in the scientific world, and whether true or
false involves vastly important consequences to human
knowledge. If true, it revolutionizes philosophical psy-
chology and if false its place must be taken by a far vaster
hypothesis, and as the phenomena which bear this super-
normal character are very sporadic, organization on a large
scale is the only means of testing the claims of any theory
and of ascertaining the conditions under which the
phenomena occur.

Then there are the phenomena of apparitions which com-
prehend phantasms of the living, of the dying, and of the
dead, and which seem to transcend explanation by chance
and subjective hallucination, but for which we have as yet
no adequate or intelligent explanation. To consider them
as having a cause outside the organism in which they occur
as facts of experience is to open up the largest question of
interesft that man ever faced and may be fraught with an im-
portance which it is impossible to estimate.

Connected with, apparitions and suggesting the same
general explanation are genuine mediumistic phenomena
which are something like experimental data bearing upon
the proof of a life after death. There are many doubts and
perplexities associated with such a conclusion, but the facts
are certainly very impressive when we have excluded fraud
from their production. They are of a character which makes

26 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

it inexcusable to neglect their investigation. The system-
atic work of the Society for Psychical Research has placed
the subject beyond ridicule or legitimate indifference, and it
only remains to give the problems which are suggested by
the facts and the exclusion of fraud some scientific solution,
whatever this may be. It is even possible that an inquiry of
this kind might result in scientific assurance regarding a
future life. If the verdict be affirmative, no matter whether
such a life be desirable or not, we should know upon what we
have to reckon, as in all the other rational affairs of the
present life. If the verdict be negative we should have our
protection from illusion which is scarcely less important than
the discovery of positive truth. But we must be neither
credulous nor incredulous in the matter. We cannot afford
to be fooled by scepticism, if a future life be a fact, and we
cannot afford to be fooled by belief in it if it be not a fact ; and
indifference to it is only an excuse for the evasion of respon-
sibilities which, if it happens to be a fact, we would never
escape in any other question of knowledge and morality.

The most important consideration for the investigation
of mediumistic and similar phenomena is, as already indi-
cated, their sporadic character. The evidential cases are
perpetually eluding us, and nothing but a central organi-
zation can hope to cope with the problem of collecting them
for scientific treatment. They are such as cannot be verified
at every moment or place. In the physical sciences it is
somewhat different. When a physicist announces a new
discovery his claims can be tested in a short time in most of
the institutions of the world. It is not so with the claims of
a psychical researcher. Its phenomena are so casual and
so complicated, even when they are not supernormal, that
only some highly organized and endowed effort can accom-
plish anything with them. This is true of all residual
phenomena, whether physical or mental. But it is still more
true of the abnormal and supernormal in psychology where
the complications are much greater than in the inorganic
world of matter.

There are also very important fields of residual phe-

Objects of the Institute. 27

nomena in the borderland between physiology and psychol-
ogy that require investigation. They are all alleged facts
bearing upon the problems of the inheritance or non-
inheritance of acquired characteristics and of prenatal in-
fluences, with perhaps many allied phenomena. The facts
related to these questions generally elude us like ghost
stories, while the importance of a definite knowledge on both
these questions represents one of the most gigantic ethical
problems ever considered by science. It is difficult to experi-
ment in either of them, while we can endeavor to avail our-
selves of the real or apparent experiments of nature and, if
possible, to give them scientific credentials, in so far as such
a character is conceivable regarding spontaneous phenom-
ena. There is much unsystematized matter bearing upon
these questions, but its nature and value will not be known
until it is studied in a scientific manner and the conditions
known which aflfect its moral importance.

IV. Endowment of the Institute.

It will be apparent that the financial wants of such a work
will be very large, especially that it combines philanthropic
effort with scientific investigation. For its complete
organization and effective administration many millions will
ultimately be required. But it can make a very good begin-
ning of its work with a sum much less than its ultimate needs
require and which can at first be divided between the two
departments of the Institute's task. When it has demon-
strated its usefulness, it will have no difficulty in securing
adequate financial support, as its results will be quickly
appreciated by every man who sees its humanitarian import-
ance and feels what the privilege may be in considering its
endowment.

The importance of the work at present is clear enough to
the scientific man, and if we can only combine the enthusiasm
and sympathy of those who appreciate the opportunity there
will be those who will come forward to see that the com-
pletion of the work shall be eflfected. In the meantime it is
all-important to make a beginning, and this can be done in
either of the departments by a sum smaller than that which

28 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

has been named. Any beginning will quickly demonstrate
the value of the work and it is the rarest of all privileges to
see that the task is immediately undertaken.

NEEDS OF THE INSTITUTE.

The explanation of the objects of the Institute outlines a
scheme that involves a very large and expensive scientific
work. It must show its worthiness by initial investigations
and publications and will not expect any sufficient financial
aid until it has shown its importance. That it has some
claims, however, to financial assistance ought to have been
made clear by the last twenty years of the London Society's
work. It is to this that attention is called in putting the
claim for endowment forward as one of the first objects of
the present undertaking. The time has gone by when we
should rely upon the sporadic and voluntary contribution of
individuals for the sole evidence of the supernormal and
some effort should be made in earnest to place the investi-
gations upon the same substantial basis as is enjoyed by
other phenomena. It has been made all the more imperative
by the dissolution of the American Branch, which never had
funds enough to do its work rightly. I wish in the inaugu-
ration of this new movement to keep its financial needs as
prominent as the importance of its work and to do this I
ought to explain definitely what scientific investigations of
the kind cost.

Some measure of the expense involved in the scientific
examination of psychic phenomena may be seen in the cost
of the twenty years of experiments with Mrs. Piper. They
cost in all probably as much as $75,000, and this was not a
large sum compared with the value of the results. It will
cost much more to deal in a similar manner with a number
of like cases, and this must be done before the rigid demands
of scientific method are satisfied even for the simplest phase
of the conclusion involved. It is not expected immediately
to launch upon such an undertaking until the funds are
secured. But it is hoped that this need will be appreciated

Needs of the Institute. 29

as early as possible and that friends of the work will see that
a proper corps of men are put to work on this task.

The membership fees, unless they come from several
thousand members, can hardly do more than pay for pub-
lications and office expenses. This was all that could be
effected by the fees of the American Branch, and indeed they
did not suffice for that purpose. There were not even funds
to pay for publications of any kind. Nothing but imperfect
records could be made of phenomena independent of the
Piper case. If this subject is to merit the attention and
respect of scientific men it must be able to collect and publish
scientific matter for study. This labor is not less expensive
than other scientific investigations and will require the same
patience and sacrifices that the discovery of all scientific
truth claims. A large membership will help greatly toward
the desired end, if it only creates a public opinion to support
the work. The membership could be large enough to endow
the work partly in a few years, but this result will not be
expected from that source.

One of the most important steps demanding immediate
attention is the funds to put such men to work as may suc-
ceed to it when the present organizers have passed away.
One of the great misfortunes to the work of Dr. Hodgson
was the inability to have had a man with him who could have
taken up his work without interruption and this disaster
ought not to happen again. The immediate crying need is
men enough to investigate cases and experiences all over the
country as they come to our notice. This requires that we
be able to give suitable men a career. The proper men for
the work will not undertake it unless a career can be offered
and time given for doing really scientific investigation.

Another important circumstance should be noted. It
refers to immediate wants. There are a number of very
promising cases which ought to receive scientific attention.
They require to be put under the proper care and surveillance
in order to make the results of investigation scientifically
valuable. A series of protected experiments are necessary
as a means of ascertaining whether such an investigation as
has been given to Mrs. Piper would be desirable. I know

30 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

seven cases which demand such attention. Even the prelim-
inary investigation cannot be adequately carried out without
funds for it. The small fund already obtained for prelim-
inary organization of the Institute may suffice to determine
the importance of the cases, but it will not long support a
large investigation of them.

The office and editorial work will require most of one
man's time and labor, so that a very early need is the employ-
ment of an assistant who may make a career of his work.
Next to this is a fund for coralling cases for experimental
investigation. No reliance can be placed upon experiences
with professional psychics. Private cases must be pro-
tected against doubt and suspicion. Scientific method
requires that the experimenter be able to determine the con-
ditions under which his investigations are made and to sup-
ply this wartt we must guarantee the instrument of investi-
gation against the objections which the habits of adventurers
have brought upon the men who deal in psychic phenomena.
An admirable article on this subject was recently published
in the " Annals of Psychical Science " by its editor. There
it was shown that psychics needed the same care and pro-
tection that any machine for experimentation requires and
the sooner that this fact is realized the better for the work.

The appeal is therefore here made for an early endow-
ment of the Institute that its work may be properly organ-
ized. As much attention must be called to this as to the
investigation, and in fact the investigation cannot be prop-
erly conducted unless the endowment be made equal to the
task. Just to put the work on a proper foundation will
require an income of $10,000 a year. If that can be secured
by membership fees and a reasonable assurance made that
it will be permanent it will be easy to initiate a work which
will soon secure a larger endowment on its merits. It is
hoped that members will use their influence to encourage
the establishment of an adequate fund for the application of
proper scientific methods to this very complicated problem.

It is due to those who may be interested in both the work
of psychic research and its endowment to say that a small
fund has already been secured. The amount pledged and

Needs of the Institute. 31

paid in has been $25,000, which was obtained as a prelim-
inary organization fund and with the liberty of using both
principal and interest in the work designed by the Institute.
The permanent endowment desired is $1,000,000, which will
yield about $40,000 a year for the investigations. A large
sum will be required for Psychopathology. But we are here
speaking only of the needs of psychic research, which
demands $10,000 a year for putting it rightly on its feet. It
is hoped that we may be able to make the fund now available
a part of such an endowment and we can certainly do this if
an adequate permanent fund can be secured at an early date.

In behalf of the plan for endowment we call special
attention to the following scheme of membership. There
will be five types of members: Founders, Patrons, Fellows,
Members, and Associates. Those classes whose contribu-
tion establish a permanent endowment are mentioned in
their place. It would not require a very large number of
these to place the Society beyond the contingencies of
annual assistance. We would therefore emphasize the con-
sideration of this plan by all that are interested in the prob-
lems of the institute.

Founders shall have all the privileges of Patrons, Fellows,
Members, and Associates, and shall have their names pub-
lished in perpetuity, if so desired, in the Proceedings of the
Institute in all its Sections. A person may become a
Founder upon the payment of $S,ooo.

Patrons shall have the privileges of Fellows, Members,
and Associates, and shall have their names published during
their lives, if so desired, in the Proceedings of the Institute
in all its Sections. A person may become a Patron upon
the payment of $1,000.

Fellows shall have the privilege of being enrolled in all
Sections of the Institute ; of receiving the publications of the
same; of the use of the rooms and library, and shall pay an
annual fee of $25. A person may become a Life Fellow upon
the payment of $500.

Members shall have the privilege of being enrolled in one
Section of the Institute; of receiving all the publications of

32 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

that Section, and shall pay an annual fee of $io. A person
may become a Life Member upon the payment of $200.

Associates shall have the privilege of being enrolled in
one Section of the Institute ; of receiving only the " Journal "
published in that Section, and shall pay an annual fee of $5.
A person may become a Life Associate upon the payment
of $100.

The funds contributed by Founders, Patrons, Life Fel-
lows, Life Members, and Life Associates will be invested,
and only the incomes thereof used in the work of the Insti-
tute.

PROSPECTUS.

In connection with the statement of the aims of the
American Institute for Scientific Research should go an
explanation of the means by which its work shall appear
before the public. These means will be its publications.
The record and discussion of its investigations will find ex-
pression in the publication of two organs. These will be an
annual volume of " Proceedings " or " Reports," and a
" Journal." The annual Proceedings will consist of detailed
reports and discussions of a more scientific character and
representing matter which is intended to be of more per-
manent value. The Journal will be an organ with less pre-
tensions as a detailed record of its matter and will be in-
tended to serve a more popular object. It will be necessary
to explain briefly its nature and policy, both in regard to
what it will not do and what it will do.

There are three things which the Journal will not do.
First, it will not be an organ for the publication of specu-
lative theories of any kind, philosophical, religious, or scien-
tific. Its primary object must be scientific record and criti-
cism. Various theories and explanations of phenomena may
come in for discussion, but the Journal will not be an ex-
ponent of any special view of facts. Secondly, it will not
limit itself to evidence of the supernormal, but will empha-
size the record of facts of mental experience, throwing light
on the conditions affecting the supernormal, and admit such

Prospectus. 33

criticism and discussion as will enable it to serve some con-
structive object. Thirdly, it will not limit its task to the
discovery and exposure of mere frauds and illusions. As
little of this work will be done as possible. Some of it will
be absolutely necessary for the protection of genuine facts.
But there is no longer good excuse for confining attention
to the fraudulent and illusory aspect of psychic research.
The time has come to do some other kind of work and to
emphasize it, tho it will devolve upon us to be the conserva-
tive influence in the community concerning such things as
the supernormal. The discovery and exposure of fraud and
of illusions have their value for psychology as well as for
public interest, and this wholly apart from the existence of
anything supernormal. Consequently they may stop the
exploitation of human credulity by adventurers in matters
so important as real psychic research. But if the super-
normal of any kind be a fact it would be inexcusable to ever-
lastingly pander to the prejudices of scepticism simply
because it is respectable. Hence it will be a fundamental
part of the Journal's policy to see that the claims of the
supernormal shall have fair consideration.

The matter which the Journal intends to furnish its
readers will consist of five kinds: general articles, editorial
matter, incidents, correspondence and discussion, and re-
views.

The first will be articles on such topics as will interest
psychic researchers in regard to methods, special cases,
psychological problems of an obscure type, historical ques-
tions in philosophy and other intellectual fields as affecting
psychic research, and any phenomena connected with the
main purpose of the Society. Special emergencies will
determine the nature of the matter so regarded.

The editorial department will serve as a vehicle for the
discussion of questions suggested by correspondence and the
general needs of the work in regard to methods, experimenta-
tion, and all conditions affecting the nature and results of
investigation. The amount of space devoted to this depart-
ment will vary with circumstances.

In regard to the publication of incidents several consid-

a

34 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

erations will have to be taken into account. In the first
place, incidents will not be published on the ground that they
"prove" any special contention, even though as a fact they
may do so. Whatever value they may have as individual
phenomena their real importance must be determined by
their place in a collective whole. The evidential point of
view for science is quantity as well as quality and in observ-
ing this rule we mean to suspend explanatory considerations
in the publication of them. This must be reserved for the
discussions in the Proceedings where the facts can have a
collective force and importance. In the second place, the
records in the Journal will be treated as "raw material" re-
quiring either more detailed investigation and discussion or
the multiplication of confirmatory evidence to give them
scientific importance. They will primarily justify inquiry
rather than prove theories. The plan will be to allow the
reader to determine for himself the interpretation of such
incidents as the Journal records. All general theories of
them must be referred to other publications where the crite-
rion of quantity may be satisfied. In the third place, the
Journal must confine its incidents to the less comprehensive
instances of mental experience and experiment. Detailed
and elaborate cases will have to go to the Proceedings. In
the fourth place, it will consider phenomena that interest
psychological students wholly apart from the supernormal
and that serve as the matrix in which the supernormal may
be moulded. This brings its functions into the field of illu-
sions, hallucinations, coincidences and similar phenomena of
an unusual kind. In the fifth place, it will try, as far as the
circumstances permit, only to vouch for the fitness of the
recorcis for serious consideration. Whether facts have been
accurately and correctly described by reporters will perhaps
be a matter of individual judgment, and the editor wishes to
defer as much as possible to that right, though endeavoring
to admit only such instances of personal experience as seem
to him probably important for some purpose. Their record
will be intended to call out thorough investigation and dis-
cussion upon their merits in this respect. Those which pass
this ordeal and embody the essential characteristics of evi-

Editorial. 35

dential matter may be usable in constructive discussion in
regard to general views affected by collective masses of evi-
dential matter.

The publication of correspondence and discussion will
have to be regulated by the editor's judgment of its relation
to the general policy of the Journal. Only such letters and
discussions can receive publication as seem to represent the
scientific objects which we wish to keep uppermost in our in-
vestigations. ThisJ department is intended to be a vehicle
for the critical expression of views regarding published mat-
ter and so a medium for others than the official representa-
tives of the Society.

The reviews of books will be those of a shorter nature.
More elaborate reviews and discussions of books will have
to be reserved for the Proceedings.

EDITORIAL.

In the February number of the Journal we shall have
one of two articles representing a summary of experiments
with Mrs. Piper since the death of Dr. Richard Hodgson,
The detailed records will receive publication at some later
time in the Proceedings.

Readers of the Journal must remember that the dissolu-
tion of the American Branch of the Society for Psychical
Research with the removal of the records accumulated by
Dr. Richard Hodgson in Boston to England makes it neces-
sary to begin the work of collection anew in this country.
There will probably be some difficulty in obtaining well at-
tested phenomena for scientific purposes and it may require
several years work to arrive at that point of interest which
the collection of Dr. Hodgson had established. The co-
operation of all that are interested is earnestly sought to
make up for the loss of that material, which will undoubtedly
receive publication by the London Society.

36 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

Explanation of Terms.

An important precaution should be stated regarding the
use of terms in the Journal for denoting the various types of
phenomena recorded. There are three terms which are
commonly taken as terms of explanation, but which are really
and only descriptive terms. They are Telepathy, Clairvoy-
ance, and Premonition. They will be used in the record of
incidents merely as classifying or descriptive terms and not
in any sense as implying a specific cause or explanation of the
facts. Telepathy will be a name for coincidences between
the thoughts of two or more persons that suggest a causal
nexus of some kind, though we may not be able to define this
cause. Clairvoyance will be the name for the alleged acqui-
sition of physical knowledge not previously acquired by the
subject in a normal manner and not referable to telepathy.
Premonition will be the name for those incidents which claim
to forecast future events in some specific manner not ex-
plicable by chance or guessing, or ordinary prediction. The
three classes of phenomena are somewhat distinct in their
character and even if they be ultimately referable to a com-
mon cause they will probably have subsidiary hypotheses
associated with their explanation. But in the meantime we
can only classify the facts, and the terms used for this pur-
pose must be employed only in the descriptive sense defined.
They will not be in any sense explanatory.

The American and the London Societies.

The reorganization of psychic research in this country
may suggest to many persons a misconception of the motives
at the basis of it, and hence the idea that it is to be a rival
afJain If any such conception of the matter should arise it
is proper to disillusion those who entertain it. While it was
the original purpose of Dr. Hodgson and those who were
interested in the Institute ultimately to merge the American
>anch \x\X\\ the Institute it was not to be done in any way

at would involve unnecessary friction with the parent body.

le American Branch had its own funds and was in no wav

EditoriaL 37

helped for years by the English body and it was deemed
necessary to seek financial assistance in this country. This
required that local responsibility should exist for their use.
Dr. Hodgson's death interrupted this plan, and it was the
purpose of the Institute to abandon the organization of an
independent body unless the English Society dissolved the
American Branch. The subject is one in which rivalry of
any kind would be at least unfortunate, if not fatal. Hence
it is and was desired that there should be no sense of rivalry
in the organization and work in the field. It will be the
policy of the American Society to encourage all who are able
to remain members of the English Society while they are
asked to join the new American Society. Both Societies
have the same object and merely occupy different fields in
which it is more convenient to do the work independently
than in union. There is to be no competition in their organ-
ization and investigations. All that are interested and have
the means should support both of them, as it is financial as-
sistance that is most needed for conducting their work
rightly. With this understanding there need be nothing but
goodwill and a co-operative spirit in carrying on the investi-
gations for which they exist.

Dr. James J. Putnam of Boston, and Dr. Minot J. Savage
found it necessary to resign from the Board of Trustees of
the American Institute for Scientific Research. Dr. Savage
resigned because of his ill health, and Dr. Putnam had other
reasons for not continuing in its service. Dr. R. Heber
Newton was willing to resign in deference to an unfounded
prejudice against clergymen on such a Board. His resigna-
tion, however, was laid on the table at a meeting of the
Board and it is hoped that circumstances will arrive that will
make it wiser to withdraw his resignation.

This misunderstanding on the part of many person?
about the work of the Board makes it advisable to explain
it more clearly. It has been the impression that the Board
of the Institute is an investigating body. It is in fact noth-
ing of the kind, and so does not require professionally scien-

38 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

tific men to do its work. It is desired that the Board shall
be constituted of men having a national reputation so far as
that is possible that it may be the custodian and disburser of
the funds contributed to the investigations and practical
work of its Sections. The Councils in the separate Sections
are to supervise the scientific aspects of the work and the
general Board of Trustees will do nothing more than inspire
confidence in the care and use of the endowment which the
Institute seeks and expects. The Institute is modelled after
the Carnegie Institute in Washington. The Board of that
Institution is not primarily a scientific body and does not re-
quire to be. The scientific men are the receivers of subsidies.
It is intended that the work of the American Institute shall
conduct its work in the same way. The independent Sec-
tions shall be responsible for the scientific features of the
work and it is these that must have scientific men for their
members. Section "A" will be for Psychopathology or Ab-
normal Psychology, and Section "B" for Psychic Research
or Supernormal Psychology. The Board of the American
Institute will simply stand for the importance and respecta-
bility of the work and will be responsible for the care of its
endowments. That will be the only service expected of it.

The present Board consists of the Incorporators and Dr.
R. Heber Newton and Mr. Charles Griswold Bourne. The
Incorporators will resign when the Board has been com-
pleted. They are serving only as a working body until the
proper persons have been selected. It will be a matter of
some difficulty in the present state of things to secure the
men desired. In this country the work of abnormal psychol-
ogy and psychic research has not yet received the open sup-
port that it obtains in Europe. There it has received aristo-
cratic indorsement and scientific men lose nothing by mani-
festing an interest in it. Patience and hard work will give it
the standing which it deserves and which it has received in
other lands.

In answer to many inquiries which come to us from
various sources it may be well to state that Mrs. Leonora

Incidents. 39

Piper, who was so long the subject of investigation and
experiments by Dr. Richard Hodgson, has recently gone to
England under the auspices of some of the members of the
English Society for Psychical Research. She will remain at
least for the year in England, and no other assured plans
have, at present, been arranged for the future.

Apropos of this circumstance it may be well to announce
that some recent experiments have revealed another case
which might be made as useful to science as that of Mrs.
Piper had we the endowment fund to protect it and to enable
proper experimentation to be carried on. It is the case of
Mrs. Smead (pseudonym), the wife of a clergyman and
never at any time a professional. An article representing
some experiences and experiments in connection with her
was recently published in the " Annals of Psychical Science."
The experiments which have since then been conducted
under more favorable conditions for scientific importance
have shown that it is a case which we cannot afford to
neglect. It is hoped that a report of these experiments can
be published in an early number of the " Proceedings." In
the meantime we can only present the opportunity for
scientific investigation in the case to all those who may
appreciate the nature of such an undertaking.

We would call special attention to the reprint of the
Application Blank which occupies two pages at the end of
this Journal. It is designed for those who may be interested
in becoming members. They have only to cut it out, sign
it in conformity to the conditions specified therein and mail
to the Secretary.

INCIDENTS.

The Society assumes no responsibility for anything published
under this head and no endorsement is implied, except Uiat it has
been furnished by an apparently trustworthy contributor whose
name is given unless withheld at his own request.

40 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

THE FAY PERFORMANCES.

The public is very generally acquainted with the entertain-
ments of persons calling themselves the Fays and these perform-
ances have been constantly reported to me as " remarkable " and
as illustrating mind-reading of a very extensive type. Being a
public affair 1 never had any interest in them as matters having
any scientific importance. But the constant reports to me of
facts that certainly mystified the audiences and which could not
be easily explained as reported made it necessary for me to wit-
ness the entertainment that I might say to people, who were
always asking me whether I had seen them or not and advising
me to go, that I had seen them. I felt that I had no right to
express an " a priori " judgment about them, no matter how
certain I might be regarding their actual or possible explanation,
and that my judgment would have more weight if I could report
from experience. It was enough for me personally that the per-
formance was the stereotyped one to make it scientifically worth-
less, even if it was what it appeared to be to observers interested
in the supernormal. But I saw no reason for depending upon
conjecture in spite of the fact that the performances belonged to
the class which has had the run ever since Houdin or Cagliostro.
I knew well enough that the performances were not reported to
me rightly. At least I felt quite certain of it, but would not
allow surmises to regulate my statements, tho the time will
soon come when it will not h€ necessary to witness such enter-
tainments in order to express a judgment of their real character.

The consequence was that I took the first opportunity in New
York to go and see their performance. It was at the Alhambra.
It may surprise some readers if I say that, so far from interesting
me as mind-reading, the performance bored me. It was not at
all what was reported to me. People had told me that the mind-
reading was remarkable and the description of the phenomena
certainly made them so appear. But there was not the
slightest superficial evidence of such a phenomenon in the per-
formance, taking the question of conditions into account in the
matter. In order to confirm my impressions and in order to
secure definite evidence of what the explanation was I went a
second time and took a stenographer with me for reporting
certain statements of Mr. Fay that were of importance inproving
that reports of such entertainments are rarely correct. The con-
sequence was that I confirmed the view which I had taken of the
first entertainment.

The first thing to be said in justice to the Fays is that they
actually make no pretense of doing what the public usually
reports as being done. This fact struck me as one of the most
astonishing that I ever observed. It is such a good illustration

Incidents. 41

of mal-observation on the part of people reporting on such
phenomena. Mr. Fay prefaced the performance with remarks
about it. He stated that he and Mrs. Fay did not pretend that
there was anything supernatural about the entertainment, but
that what they did was done by perfectly natural means. He
said, however, that he did not pretend to explain it and that the
audience could draw its own conclusions. There was a slightly
oracular air about his evidently prepared statements that was
calculated to mislead careless observers. He was quite willing
to leave upon his hearers a mystified impression, tho his
language did not require any interpretation implying more than
the traditional prestodigitator's illusions. He reiterated several
times his disclaimer to the supernatural and there was no excuse
on the part of the audience for thinking the performance any-
thing more than what can be seen with Hermann and Kellar. In
perfect justice to the Fays, therefore, it should be said that their
performance is a perfectly legitimate entertainment for those
who go to witness jugglers' tricks of that sort. Men are them-
selves to blame if they imagine that it is anything else, for the
Fays are careful to exculpate themselves from the accusation of
being frauds. If the audience would simply observe what it is
told it would see that the whole thing is an illusion and that it
has no right to cry fraud until it has eliminated its own illusions.
The only criticism which can be made of the Fays is that the
language of Mr. Fay is studiedly vague and is well calculated to
deceive the unwary listener. That is perhaps the art of the
juggler to help in the impressiveness of his performance. Her-
mann and Kellar used it, but with no intent to deceive any one
in an illegitimate way. It is often necessary to put the mind in
a condition to appreciate the mystery about the performance and
so to increase the difficulty of explaining it easily. But this is no
reason why the observer should assume a credulous attitude
toward phenomena that have an oracular claim to a supernormal
interest.

I am not going to enter into any detailed account of what the
tricks are or how they are performed. As I am not entitled,
after the explanatory remarks of Mr. Fay himself, to accuse them
of fraud, it is neither necessary nor just to make such an accu-
sation any more than we would accuse a professional prestodigi-
tator of it when he is mystifying us by his tricks. But it will be
permissible to call attention to an interesting historical fact
which will explain both the short memories of the public and its
careless judgment of such phenomena.

The performances of the Fays which I witnessed contained
two parts. The first was what is called a physical phenomenon
in the parlance of psychic research. Mrs. Fay permits a com-
mittee— two men in what I witnessed — to tie bands about each

42 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

wrist and then to tie her hands to a post or board behind her
back. The details I need not give as I am concerned only with
the appearance of security in the case. In this condition a sort
of cabinet is drawn up to cover her from the sight of the audience
and she then throws objects placed on her lap out through an
opening in the shielding curtain, or a glass placed on her lap is
found held in her teeth, or a box is placed around her and a tarn-
bourine is thrust about. To the ordinary spectator the
phenomenon seems inexplicable.

But I would remark two important facts. First the very
presence of the cabinet and concealing curtain proves that it is
not what it appears to be. There is no excuse for this conceal-
ment but the fact that the trick cannot otherwise be performed
without betraying its method, which is very simple. Secondly,
there is no assurance that the committee does not actually consist
of confederates, who do the tying to suit the emergency. Con-
federates are not at all necessary for this performance, as it can
be carried out very easily without confederates of any kind except
Mr. Fay, and with "green" hands it can be done without his
complicity. I refer to these circumstances because they are so
usually neglected by spectators in the formation of their judg-
ments or in their experience of mystification. These incidents
are presumably negligible circumstances when as a fact they can
be the secret of a perfectly simple explanation. The form in
which they are presented is calculated to disarm our suspicion as
our attention is concentrated on other matters in the perform-
ance. What we need to learn in such cases is the habit of careful
observation of all the facts and of recognizing that the very cir-
cumstances which we are disposed to disregard are the important
supernormal character was as questionable thirty years ago as
ones, at least in many or most cases.

But there is a more interesting fact which should be remarked
in regard to this physical performance. It is fully described and
explained with illustrations in Truesdell's " Bottom Facts of
Spiritualism." Curious enough the performance in all the details
of the present Fays — who have no connection with the original
Annie Eva Fay, save that Mr. Fay is represented as her son, — is
precisely that which I mention. It was a trick of the original
Annie Eva Fay and can be performed by even the most amateur
person after a little practice. It is strange that such a per-
formance could be revived at this day without newspaper dis-
covery and exposure. But here is the same old trick exciting the
interest and credulity of the public and the newspapers do not
'-now enough of history to recognize the phenomena.

")f course, to begin with, no one should take such perform-
; seriously. They no doubt do so for reasons that did not
' in the last generation. The existence of anything whatever

Incidents. 43

of a supernormal character was as questionable thirty years ago
as the belief in fairies, and only the serious claim on the part of
psychic researchers that telepathy is a fact could revive a dis-
position to think that there " must be something in it " when a
juggler makes claims to the supernatural. When a man dis-
covers some new phenomenon in physical science and proves his
case satisfactorily to the scientific world he can then turn to
public exhibitions and illustrations of his discoveries. This is
what has occurred with Xrays, with wireless telegraphy, color
photography and similar matters of public interest. It is then
quite natural, when the claim of mysterious agencies is made,
that the public should throw aside its natural scepticism and
listen patiently and credulously to such performances. But
while it is natural it is not intelligent to do so. Such claims have
not been satisfactorily proved to the scientific world and hence
the duty of the public is to respect scientific method and con-
ditions until the existence of " supernatural " phenomena has
been proved. It can then be a passive spectator to the exhibi-
tion of them. I am not implying that they ever will be proved
to the satisfaction of any one, but I am emphasizing the point of
method which is so essential to keep in mind when witnessing
claims of the kind under consideration. There is no excuse in
assuming the possibility of such things and suspending our
sceptical judgment in the presence of public performers. Such
performances are prima facie jugglers' tricks until they are
proved otherwise, and they will never be proved otherwise in
such a public way.

Readers will be interested to know that some persons who
had been in the employ of the Fays appropriated some of the
material and devices used in their entertainments to set up a
similar business of their own. The Fays brought suit for an
injunction and the defendants aver that the performances, in
which they were themselves accomplices, are all tricks. It is not
our place here to discuss the merits of either side to such a con-
troversy, but it is clear from the affidavits made and from the
evidence on file in the New York Courts that the phenomena
exhibited by the Fays have no claim to serious consideration by
intelligent people. A complete copy of the documents on file in
the New York Courts is in our possession. It is not necessary
to publish these. Their existence is sufficient to show the folly
of scientific interest in such performances.

I shall not give any explanation of the " mind-reading " per-
formance of the Fays as I witnessed it. I shall not treat a per-
fectly legitimate entertainment and amusement as a fraud. My
object here is only to say that the public must defend itself and
that it can easily do by looking at the matter as it would an enter-
tainment by Hermann and Kellar. Enjoy it and admit that you

44 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

do not see the secret. It is not easy to see exactly what the trick
is in all cases. The fact is that no one method is employed, or
need be employed, in the performance. I have very good evi-
dence of what parts of it are, but I do not care to expose them
until serious claims have been made that they are supernormal.
I desire only to emphasize the fact that persons interested in
psychic research should not form their conceptions of what some
of us are interested in by any such performances. They must
learn that there is but one simple fact to be constantly kept in
mind regarding the claims of the supernormal. It is that the
conditions under which phenomena are produced must be under
the control of a responsible scientific man. They must not be
determined by the subject exhibiting the phenomena. With that
criterion one need never be exposed to illusion in the formation
of his judgment, no matter how illusory his sense perception may
be. Just assume that it is all an interesting trick and laugh at
your own discomfiture in not discovering it. The serious con-
sideration of such phenomena must be stopped except as educa-
tion in delusions. There will be no intelligent progress in
psychic research as long as the public runs after such per-
formances and forms its ideas of what some scientific men are
seeking by such manifest and simple tricks. The fact is that the
performance will not compare in interest with the entertain-
ments of Hermann and Kellar, and these do not profess to be
more than delightful illusions.

There is another way of stating the last point made. It is
that the demand for public illustrations of the supernormal
always leads to the adventurer's method of simulating it. If the
public would only cease seriously to consider such performances
as either interesting, save for the production of illusion, or illus-
trative of the supernormal, the exhibition would die of itself. It
will live just so long as people wish to be humbugged in that
manner, and when the performers are shrewd enough to tell the
audiences that they are onl)*^ entertaining them the spectators
must have themselves to blame if they go away astonished. If
we are to have genuinely interesting psychic phenomena let the
demand he for really scientific conditions and the production of
them under circumstances not resembling such performances as
are here under notice. It ought not to be necessary in this day
to say this. It would not have been necessary if the scientific
world had done its duty the last quarter of a century in sifting
from illusory phenomena having a genuine interest and if it had
educated the public up to the means of discriminating the genuine
from the false. Unfortunately the scientific men have allowed
the public to discover the genuine and then to believe with it the
fraudulent simulation of it. Consequently the blame for the
present public credulity and hasty judgment must be shared by

Incidents. 45

those who should have been the leaders and educators. But
whoever is to blame there is no reason to exercise that demand
which results only in humbugging ourselves. Demand that
scientific work be done and pay one-fourth as much for that as
you do for fraud and illusion and you will find something worth
while. It may not be all that you expect to start with, but it will
be enough to throw light upon the nature and destiny of man.
This will never come from public exhibitors. It is in private life
and in the application of scientific method that we may expect to
find genuine phenomena whatever their meaning.

JAMES H. HYSLOP.

VISIONS OF THE DYING.

There is a group of psychic phenomena which are well
worthy of a most searching investigation. I refer to the
alleged visions which many dying persons are said to have
had of friends who have passed away before them. In some
cases they seem to have a coincidental importance that may
give them some scientific value, if well enough attested as
facts.

It would be natural to suppose that the crisis of death
would often be attended by all sorts of hallucinations. We
know how disease and accident lead to deliria in which all
sorts of hallucinatory experiences occur; and narcotics and
anaesthetics evoke similar phenomena in various degrees.
They are but illustrations of influences which disturb the
normal activity and functions of the organism, so that the
non-cordination of central functions results in the simulation
of realities by all sorts of phantasmal forms. Death is a par-
ticularly disintegrating process and we should expect similar
mental disturbances in its progress. Usually the motor
functions are so paralyzed by it that we should expect little
evidences of sensory phantasms. One way of indicating
what dying experiences are in any clear manner seems pos-
sible and that is by speech. When this occurs the subject
must retain enough of his normal motor activity to give ex-
pression to his mental experiences. Indistinct indications
may be given by motor action in the eyes. But what we
should discover from ocular movements of a dying person
would be doubtful and possibly capable of various interpre-

46 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

tations. It would be the same with hearing. But when
speech is retained enough may be uttered for us to ascertain
the nature of the experience of the dying person, and occa-
sionally dying persons utter intelligible sentences which con-
vey unusual information. It is such that ought to be the
subject of a very careful investigation. I propose here to
suggest that a census of them might easily be collected and
made the subject of statistical study and psychological analy-
sis.

The interest which such phenomena may have for sci-
ence will depend upon a variety of considerations. The
first is that we shall be able to attest their existence and their
nature. The second is that we shall have some reason to
believe that they have a selective character pertinent to their
apparent significance. The third is that we shall have some
means of distinguishing them from those capricious and
kaleidoscope phenomena that are classifiable as ordinary
hallucinations. The fourth is that their characteristics shall
suggest some coincidental incidents not referable to chance
and at the same time distinguishable from others possibly
due to subjective causes. It will not be an easy task to con-
duct such an investigation, but it is possible by long efforts
and perseverance to accumulate facts enough for some sort
of study and analysis. The method of effecting this object
will be the subject of discussion later in this article. We
must first describe the phenomena to which attention needs
to be called.

The phenomena which I have in mind are a type of ap-
parition. Whatever their explanation they have one char-
acteristic which distinguishes them from ordinary deliria.
They represent the appearance of deceased persons to the
vision, imagination, or other source of sensory representa-
tion, of the dying person. If we should find that they bear
evidences in any case of supernormal information they would
become especially significant. But one of the most import-
ant things to study in them would be their relation to in-
stances of hallucination under the same circumstances that
had no coincidental value. That is, we need to study their
statistical aspects which would require a comparison of the

Incidents. 47

really or apparently coincidental cases with those which are
unmistakably hallucinatory and subjective in their origin.
For this a large collection is necessary and this can be made
without any presumptions regarding their explanation. I
shall illustrate the kind which are particularly interesting
and suggestive. They are as described above, instances in
which dying persons seem to see previously deceased friends
claiming in cases to be present for the purpose of aiding in
the passage of death. When this claim of assistance in the
crisis of death is made it is through mediums and it is some-
times or generally made when there has been no evidence at
the death scene that such a presence was remarked. I shall
give a few illustrations of both kinds.

The following instance I received from a correspondent
whose testimony I have no reason to question :

"I called this afternoon (May 14th, 1906) upon a lady who
buried a mne-year-old boy two weeks ago. The child had been
operated upon for appendicitis some two or three years- ago, and
had had peritonitis at the same time. He recovered, and was
apparently quite well for a time. Again he was taken sick, and
from the first the doctor thinks he did not expect to get well. He
was taken to the hospital, and operated upon. He was perfectly
rational, recognizing his parents, the doctor, and the nurse, after
coming out from under the influence of the anaesthetic. Feeling
that he was going, he asked his mother to hold his hands, until
he should be gone. He had, I forgot to say, been given strong
stimulants after the operation, which, I suppose, made his mind
very active.

Soon he looked up and said, " Mother, dear, don't you see
little sister over there?"

"No, where is she?"

" Right over there. She is looking at me."

Then the mother, to pacify him, said she saw the child. In a
few minutes, his face lighted up full of smiles, and he said : —

"There comes Mrs. C (a lady of whom he was very

fond who had died nearly two years before), and she is smiling
just as she used to. She is smiling and wants me to come." In
a few moments : —

" There is Roy ! I'm going to them. I don't want to leave
you, but you'll come to me soon, won't you ? Open the door and
let them in. They are waiting for me outside," and he was gone.

"No, I forgot to tell about his grandmother. I gathered the

48 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

impression that he did not know his maternal grandmother, but
may be wrong.

As his mother held his hands, he said : " How small you are
growing. Are you still holding my hands? Grandma is larger
than you, isn't she? There she is. She is larger, isn't she?
Her hand is larger than yours. She is holding one hand and her
hand is larger than yours.

" Remember that the boy was but nine years old. Did he
really see spirits and recognize them ? Or was it the result of the
highly sensitive condition of the brain caused by the medicine? "

The mother confirms this narrative and inquiry brings
out the following facts. The boy had never known his
grandmother who had died twenty years ago. His sister had
died four years before his own birth. Roy is the name of a
friend of the child and he had died about a year previous.

It will be apparent that the instance is not in any respect
an evidential one. There is no way to displace the assump-
tion that the phenomena were hallucinations until better in-
dications of their real nature can be obtained by further in-
vestigations, if that can ever be done. It is natural to sup-
pose that the critical condition of the mind and body would
give rise to these and similar phantasms, especially in certain
kinds of natures. The natural assumption may not be the
right one, but it is the only one that science can tolerate until
its credentials are better satisfied by evidences of the super-
normal. There is nothing in this instance that can be veri-
fied as not a natural and subjective effect of the conditions
associated with dissolution, unless it be the systematic group
of deceased persons involved. For the physiologist and the
psychologist this goes without saying, and the mention of it
here is only to emphasize for the general reader the confident
opinion which science would entertain regarding such inci-
dents. Science might not have better evidence that this
special case is hallucination than the believer in its reality
has for this character, but the mass of facts in human experi-
ence connected with abnormal mental and physical conditions
?sociated with disease and death would predispose any cau-
ous person in favor of the scientific interpretation as either
ore probable or more safe an assumption than the one in
ivor of the other.

Incidents. 49

Other cases of a similar nature have come to my atten-
tion, but I have not yet been able to have a first hand account
made for me. I remember that my step-mother told me that
her mother, while dying, saw an apparition of her husband
who had died many years before. Such incidents are prob-
ably relatively numerous, but as they are not recorded or
examined carefully they can only be subjects of sceptical con-
sideration.

But I have a group of incidents which are much more
suggestive of something unusual and possibly quite signifi-
cant. Some of them involve a record and confirmatory sup-
port that gives them importance. The first of this group is
one dictated to me and taken down verbatim by the two
persons who knew the facts. They are both intelligent and
trustworthy witnesses, not more liable to errors in such
things than all of us. It involved circumstances which give
peculiar value to the incident as the story will vouch for it-
self. I quote the narrative as I took it down.

" Four or five weeks before my son's death Mrs. S was

with me — she was my friend and a psychic — and a message was
given me that little Bright Eyes (control) would be with my son
who was then ill with cancer. The night before his death he
complained that there was a little girl about his bed and asked
who it was. This was at Muskoka, 160 miles north of Toronto.

He had not known what Mrs. S had told me. Just before

his death, about five minutes, he roused, called his nurse for a
drink of water, and said clearly : " I think they are taking me."
Afterward seeing the possible significance of this I wrote to Miss

A and asked her to see Mrs. S and try to find why

the word " they " was used, underscoring it in the letter, as I
always supposed the boy's father would be with him at death.

Miss A went to see Mrs. S , and did not mention the

letter. When I saw Mrs. S — - — more than a week later we
were having a sitting and Guthrie, my son, came and told me
how he died. He said he was lying on the bed and felt he was
being lifted out of his body and at that point all pain left. His
first impulse was to get back into his body, but he was being
drawn away. He was taken up into a cloud and he seemed to be
a part of it. His feeling was that he was being taken by invisible
hands into rarified air that was so delightful. He spoke of his
freedom from pain and said that he saw his father beyond."

50 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.
The intimate friendship of Mrs. S with Mrs. G-

the mother of the boy, makes it possible to suppose that
hints or suggestions may have been unconsciously conveyed
to the boy before his death or that something was said at the
experiment which might deprive the incidents of that im-
portance which thqy superficially seem to have. I have,
however, observed that the two ladies are as careful in their
account as we should expect, and while I cannot give the
narrative as much scientific weight as may be desirable I
think there is reason to believe that the main incidents are
correct. The boy's experience of a strange girl at his bedside,
and the allusion to the plural of the pronoun are quite pos-
sibly correct accounts of the facts. A record of the later
sitting would be necessary to be assured that the allusion to
the father was not in response to a suggestion. But in any
case the incident is better than, or at least appears to be,
superior evidentially to the first one quoted, and it indicates
what may be done to assure ourselves of significance in such
phenomena.

I quote next a well authenticated instance on the au-
thority of Dr. Minot J. Savage. He records it in his Psychic
Facts and Theories. He also told me personally of the facts
and gave me the names and addresses of the persons on
whose authority he tells the incidents. I am not permitted
to mention them. But the story is as follows :

" In a neighboring city were two little girls, Jennie and Edith,
one about eight years of age, and the other but a little older.
They were schoolmates and intimate friends. In June, 1889,
both were taken ill of diphtheria. At noon on Wednesday, Jen-
nie died. Then the parents of Edith, and her physician as well,
took particular pains to keep from her the fact that her little
playmate was gone. They feared the effect of the knowledge on
her own condition. To prove that they succeeded and that she
did not know, it may be mentioned that on Saturday, June 8th, at
noon, just before she became unconscious of all that was passing
about her, she selected two of her photographs to be sent to Jen-
nie, and also told her attendants to bid her goodbye.

" She died at half-past six o'clock on the evening of Saturday,
June 8th. She had roused and bidden her friends goodbye, and
was talking of dying, and seemed to have no fear. She appeared
to see one and another of the friends she knew were dead. So

Incidents. 51

far it was like the common cases. But now suddenly, and with
every appearance of surprise, she turned to her father, and
exclaimed, ' Why, papa, I am going to take Jennie with me ! '
Then she added, ' Why, papa ! Why, papa ! You did not tell
me that Jennie was here ! ' And immediately she reached out
her arms as if in welcome, and said, * O, Jennie, I'm so glad you
are here."

As Dr. Savage remarks in connection with the story, it
is not so easy to account for this incident by the ordinary
theory of hallucination. We have to suppose a casual co-
incidence at the same time, and while we should have to sup-
pose this for any isolated case like the present one the multi-
plication of them, with proper credentials, would suggest
some other explanation, whatever it might be.

I shall turn next to two instances which are associated
with the experiments and records of Mrs. Piper. They both
represent the allegation of death-bed apparitions, and state-
ments through Mrs. Piper purporting to represent commu-
nications from the deceased showing a coincidence with what
was otherwise known or alleged to have taken place at the
crisis of death. The records in these cases are unusually
good, having been made by Dr. Richard Hodgson. I quote
his reports. The first instance is the experience of a man
who gives only initials for his name, but was well known to
Dr. Hodgson. It occurred at a sitting with Mrs. Piper.

" About the end of March of last year (1888) I made her (Mrs.
Piper) a visit — having been in the habit of doing so, since early in
February, about once a fortnight. She told me that a death of a
near relative of mine would occur in about six weeks, from which
I should realize some pecuniary advantages. I naturally thought
of my father, who was in advanced years, and whose description
Mrs. Piper had given me very accurately some week or two
previously. She had not spoken of him as my father, but merely
as a person nearly connected with me. I asked her at this sitting
whether this person was the one who would die, but she declined
to state anything more clearly to me. My wife, to whom I was
then engaged, went to see Mrs. Piper a few days afterward, and
she told her (my wife) that my father would die in a few weeks.

About the middle of May my father died very suddenly in
London from heart failure, when he was recovering from a very
slight attack of bronchitis, and the very day that his doctor had
pronounced him out of danger. Previous to this Mrs. Piper (as

52 JourncU of the American Society for Psychical Research,

Dr. Phinuit) had told me that she would endeavor to influence
my father about certain matters connected with his will before
he died. Two days after I received the cable announcing his
death my wife and I went to see Mrs. Piper, and she (Phinuit)
spoke of his presence, and his sudden arrival in the spirit world,
and said that he (Dr. Phinuit) had endeavored to persuade him
in these matters while my father was sick. Dr. Phinuit told me
the state of the will, and described the principal executor, and
said that he (the executor) would make a certain disposition in
my favor, subject to the consent of the other two executors when
I got to London, England. Three weeks afterward I arrived in
London ; found the principal executor to be the man Dr. Phinuit
had described. The will went materially as he (Dr. Phinuit) had
stated. The disposition was made in my favor, and my sister,
who was chiefly at my father's bedside the last three days of his
life, told me had repeatedly complained of the presence of an old
man at the foot of his bed, who annoyed him by discussing his
private aflfairs."

The reader will remark that the incident is associated
with a prediction, but it is not the subject of important ob-
servation at present. The chief point of interest is that the
prediction is connected with a reference to a will affecting
private business matters, that the sister reported a number of
visions or apparitions on the man's death-bed, and that sub-
sequent to his death, not known apparently to Mrs. Piper, the
statement was made by Phinuit that he had influenced or
tried to persuade the man in reference to these matters. The
coincidence is unmistakable and the cause is suggested by
the very nature of the phenomena and the conditions under
which they occurred. But we should have a large mass of
such incidents to give the hypothesis something like scientific
proof.

The next case is a most important one. It is connected

with an experiment by Dr. Hodgson with Mrs. Piper, as was

•he previous one, and came out as an accidental feature of

le sitting. The account is associated in his report with in-

idents quoted by him in explanation of the difficulty and

infusion accompanying real or alleged communications

roni the dead. It will be useful to quote the Report on that

potnl before narrating the incident itself as the circumstances

lOciated with the facts are important in the understanding

Incidents. 53

of the case, while they also suggest a view of the phenomena
which may explain the rarity of them.

"That persons 'just deceased,'" says Dr. Hodgson, "should
be extremely confused and unable to communicate directly, or
even at all, seems perfectly natural after the shock and wrench of
death. Thus in the case of Hart, he was unable to write the
second day after death. In another case a friend of mine, whom
I may call D., wrote, with what appeared to be much difficulty, his
name and the words, ' I am all right now. Adieu,' within two or
three days of his death. In another case, F., a near relative of
Madame Elisa, was unable to write on the morning after his
death. On the second day after, when a stranger was present
with me for a sitting, he wrote two or three sentences, saying, ' I
am too weak to articulate clearly,' and not many days later he
wrote fairly well and clearly, and dictated to Madame Elisa (de-
ceased), as amanuensis, an account of his feelings at finding him-
self in his new surroundings."

In a footnote Dr. Hodgson adds an account of what this
Madame Elisa communicated regarding the man. I quote
this in full. Referring to this F. and Madame Elisa, he
says : —

" The notice of his death was in a Boston paper, and I hap-
pened to see it on my way to the sitting. The first writing of
the sitting came from Madame Elisa, without my expecting it.
She wrote clearly and strongly, explaining that F. was there with
her, but unable to speak directly, that she wished to give me an
account of how she had helped F. to reach her. She said that
she had been present at his death-bed, and had spoken to him,
and she repeated what she had said, an unusual form of expres-
sion, and indicated that he had heard and recognized her. This
was confirmed in detail in the only way possible at the time, by
a very intimate friend of Madame Elisa and myself, and also of
the nearest surviving relative of F. I showed my friend the
account of the sitting, and to this friend a day or two later, the
relative, who was present at the death-bed, stated spontaneously
that F., when dying said that he saw Madame Elisa, who was
speaking to him, and he repeated what she was saying. The
expression so repeated, which the relative quoted to my friend,
was that which I had received from Madame Elisa through Mrs.
Piper's trance, when the death-bed incident was of course
entirely unknown to me."

The apparent significance of such a coincidence is evi-

54 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

dent and though the entire number which I have quoted are
not sufficient to afford alone the proof of survival after death
they are indicative of events wrhich demand a most careful
investigation. If there be such a thing as a transcendental
spiritual world and if we actually survive in our personality
after death we might naturally expect some connection be-
tween the two sets of cosmic conditions, at least occasionally,
supposing, of course, that the chasm between them is not too
great to be spanned. The existence of a large mass of facts
alleging such a connection, though these facts are relatively
few in comparison with the cases of silence regarding the
beyond, is a circumstance which would suggest searching
for incidents during the passage of death that might repre-
sent a rare connection between the two worlds in this critical
period. We could not expect them to be frequent a priori
but we should not expect two worlds, closely enough related
for the individual to retain his identity, to wholly exclude
communications in articulo mortis. If anything like it actu-
ally appeared to occur we should endeavor to ascertain how
much evidence exists for the credibility of the occurrence in
sufficiently numerous cases to establish the truth of the
actual connection, or to confirm other types of incident point-
ing toward the same conclusion. The phenomena are too
suggestive in many ways to leave their occurrence unnoticed
and uninvestigated.

The object, therefore, in calling attention to the incidents
which I think impressive enough to urge an organized effort
to certify a larger number of them, if this be possible. What
is urged, therefore, is that efforts be made to report for
record all the death-bed visions and utterances that may
possibly bear upon the issue suggested in such as we have
quoted. I would propose that all members of the Society
report or ask to have reported all such experiences as have
come under their notice. In this way a census of them can
at least be initiated. To this method I hope to add some
means of inducing physicians in their private practice to be
on the watch for them and to report them to the proper
persons. We may ultimately induce physicians in the
hospitals to instruct nurses and officers to make observations

Incidents, 55

and to record all experiences of an hallucinatory character or
otherwise. In any case they will be rare, but on one side or
the other of the issue there is no other way to give our con-
victions a scientific character.

The cases which I have mentioned show interesting coin-
cidences and are too suggestive to disregard the opportunity
to collect similar instances with a view to their study in
detail. We must expect the largest number of them to be
non-evidential, that is, to represent facts which are not veri-
fiable in respect of the other side. But if they can be
obtained in sufficient numbers to exclude chance in respect
of the persons said to appear in such apparitions we may have
a scientific product. To exclude chance we need to compare
them with visions that do not represent the discarnate as
thus appearing, but that may be treated as casual halluci-
nations. Hence we shall want to take account of all types of
dying experiences as observed by the living. It will be
especially important to have records from those who were
thought to be very ill or dying and recovered who may
describe peculiar experiences in conditions bordering on
death. It is therefore hoped that members and readers will
call attention to any such cases that may have come within
their knowledge and to aid in securing a record of them.
The extension of the inquiry to hospitals and asylums will
require time and such interest as physicians may be induced
to take in collecting data for study. But a good beginning
can be made independently of the more organized effort to
obtain records. The present article is simply an appeal for
assistance in an important investigation. The interesting
incidents quoted seem to be inexplicable by chance and a
large number of similar cases would more certainly exclude
it from consideration.

JAMES H. HYSLOP.

A VISUAL EXPERIENCE.

The following experience is especially interesting because
it does not superficially suggest its explanation. It is from
a young lady whom I know personally as well as the other

56 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

members of her family. There can be no doubt about the
trustworthiness of the lady's statements regarding her
experience as she remembers it. What its source is may be
left to any one who wishes to conjecture it. The contents
of it do not place it beyond a hallucinatory production of her
subconscious mental action. Her studies had included the
matter which was thus reproduced, and the interesting cir-
cumstance is the resourcefulness of the subliminal conscious-
ness, if such it be, in recalling and reproducing in this hal-
lucinatory manner knowledge which could not find recall in
the ordinary way. An important point of interest is the fact
that nearly two years later the lady suddenly developed
automatic writing of a most interesting character.

July 1st, 1905.

" One day in the Fall of the year 1903, I went into Roman
History Class at School without having looked at my lesson. I
was not in the habit of bluffing, so when the teacher called upon
me to answer a question I rose to my feet and commenced to say :
' I do not know my lesson today,' when suddenly on the black-
board behind me appeared in red letters the answer to the ques-
tion. I hesitated and then read aloud what was written on the
Board. It proved to be the correct answer. The red letters did
not look like chalk, but like ink. This occurred several times
during the year, but only in this one subject, Roman History.

" In the spring of the year 1905 in Vergil Class I was sent to
the Board to translate fifteen consecutive lines of Vergil. Now I
knew only the first five lines. So I commenced bravely. At
about the fifth line I hesitated. I did not know what to write
next, and there seemed to be writing on the board below, so to
gain time till the dismissing bell should ring, I asked the teacher
if I might erase this writing : I said, ' May I erase the board
clear?* She answered: 'There is nothing there. It is clean.
Go on with the translation.' I looked at her astonished. * The
writing,' I said, pointing to it. She said : ' Don't be silly, there is
no writing there.' The girls were beginning to smile and look at
me, so I said nothing more, but turned to my translation. I
finished the fifth line. The queer writing was in the way. I
stared at it. It seemed to be a translation of the next ten lines of
Vergil which I was supposed to write, but did not know. The
writing looked like white chalk and was in a very slanting hand.
Now I wrote a decidedly back hand at the time. I took my own
chalk and traced over this writing. Then at last the teacher
seemed to see the writing. She read over the translation, said :

Incidents. 57

' You are improving, Anna/ and added : ' Why didn't you write it
all alike? It looks terribly. The first five lines are back hand
and the rest slant towards the right.' "

A B-

JAMES H. HYSLOP.

CASES OF AMNESIA.

Whenever I take a long ride in the open air, if it is a new
experience in comparison with my indoor and sedentary habits,
the ride makes me very sleepy and if I am free to do so I allow
myself to take a restful nap. But I am sometimes in a position
where courtesy requires me at least to try to keep awake. Today
(August 4th, 1906) I was coming from Westport to Hurricane in
the Adirondacks on a stage with a lady whose acquaintance I had
made a few hours before on Lake George, both happening to be
going much of the way together. We were talking about psychic
research matters and as usual I became very sleepy. I did not
feel free to let myself go off and tho I was not in any way bored
by my company, I resolved to arrest all temptations to even feel
sleepy. But it was in vain. My eyelids became so heavjr that,
to rest them, I closed them and when I opened them again in a
few moments, perhaps not longer than five or ten seconds, I
found that I could not recall the subject about which I was talk-
ing and had to stumble about with general remarks to avoid dis-
covery. This occurred three times. An interesting feature of
the experience was the fact that I did not really go wholly to
sleep during these few seconds. I was perfectly conscious of
having my eyes closed, of the surrounding country, and of myself
as in the midst of conversation. My introspective and inner con-
sciousness was perfectly wide awake, and the closing of my eyes,
instead of tending to put me into a deeper sleep, seemed rather
to tend to help keeping me awake. But there was total amnesia
of what I was talking about and I could not recall the incidents
for some time and only after great effort.

Apparently in these circumstances the thoughts which occu-
pied my mind and conversation were of the visual type and any
interruption of the normal visual centers threw the mental
images into oblivion while the main central consciousness
remained active and normal. The fact, if thus rightly inter-
preted, may throw light upon the relation between a general
stream of consciousness and its inability to recall at pleasure the
sensory experience which may be necessary for manifesting its
rationality.

JAMES H. HYSLOP.

58 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

Hurricane, N. Y., Sept. 3d, 1906.
While talking with a friend today, I became again very sleepy
and not feeling the duty to resist it so vigorously as in the case
narrated above I closed my eyes as in the previous experience.
It was but for a moment and the amnesia which I experienced
before was repeated, but I did not remain distinctly conscious
during the short moment of sleep which this time occurred. The
amnesia, however, did not remain long. I actually slept for a
few seconds and on awakening I could recall in a few moments
what I was thinking about. The dissociation of my thoughts
was not so complete as in the instance of August 4th, and prob-
ably this was due to the fact that there was real sleep for a few
seconds. Consequently the waking state enabled me easily to
recall my previous thoughts, as the break with attention was not
so distinct as in the earlier case and as the different sensory
functions were probably not dissociated as they were when I
retained consciousness and allowed the visual functions to sus-
pend their activity. This, of course, is largely conjecture, and I
tolerate it only to suggest a problem at psvchological analysis.

JAMES H. HYSLOP.

PSEUDO-CLAIRVOYANCE.

The following is an incident which would probably have been
taken as an instance of clairvoyance unless the circumstances
under which it occurred had not been at once determined. I
had asked my Secretary yesterday to address a number of
envelopes and then to make out some bills. While writing out
the bills she wrote the name J. B. Jones and without turning over
the paper wrote the next name, Charles S. Florence, which was
concealed below the first sheet of paper and was not visible in
any way. I carefully examined this at the time, and found it
impossible to detect the slightest trace of the name or letters
through the sheet by normal vision. But if we were to suppose
that the phenomenon was due to anything like supernormal
vision we should do so without recognizing a most important
circumstance which would have been quickly forgotten had not
notice been taken of it at once, when my Secretary called atten-
tion to the coincidence at the time. This circumstance makes it
necessary to show that the description of the phenomenon as
given above is not exactly complete.

When I asked that the envelopes be addressed it was my
intention that the bills should be made out afterward and
enclosed independently. But after a number of the envelopes
had been addressed it occurred to me that it would save time and
confusion if the bills were made out simultaneously, as the same

Book Reviews. 59

names were concerned. I therefore suggested that, before going
any farther with addressing of the envelopes, the bills should be
made out for those addressed. The result was that the cards
from which the addresses were taken were simply turned upside
down to take them in the same order in which the addresses had
been written. The consequence was that when the name J. B.
Jones was written memory could easily influence the recall of
Charles S. Florence. The second writing of the two names was
but half an hour later than the first writing. The lady did not
notice that memory had figured in the phenomenon, but recog-
nized that this was its explanation. It was probably a subcon-
scious act which left no traces in the normal consciousness of
the influence which gave the act an apparently clairvoyant char-
acter. Had not my attention been called to it immediately and
had two hours elapsed when I could not have examined the exact
conditions of its occurrence it would have been or appeared inex-
phcable by any ordinary means.
Oct loth. 1906. JAMES H. HYSLOP.

BOOK REVIEWS.

Beside the New-Made Grave: A Correspondence. By F. H.
Turner, Boston. James H. West Company, 1906. pp. 170.

This little book is an attempt to prove a future life or the
immortality of the soul from the various doctrines of science and
philosophy. It is written in the form of letters purporting to be
between a mother who has lost a son and one who endeavors to
prove survival after death as a means of offering consolation to
a bereaved mother. The book is soberly conceived and written
in the best spirit of modern science and philosophy. There is
no attempt to run off into the usual vagaries of those who con-
fuse pseudo-science with the real thing. The author has a fair
acquaintance with the problems and doctrines of modern thought
and keeps well within their limits and does not touch upon the
methods of psychic research, tho the concluding part of the book
touches upon an idea which the psychic researcher may have to
reckon with in the near future, namely, that of the etherial or
" spiritual body." All the rest of it, however, does not go beyond
the recognized postulates and theories of physical science, and
makes its appeal to these for a belief which its advocates usually
deny. Both the merits and the weakness of the book consist in
this characteristic. Its merit is that it makes an ad hominem
appeal for a future life ; its weakness is that the appeal cannot be
stronger than the conjectures that rest upon this foundation of
physical fact. The conservation of energy and the indestructi-
bility of matter are not in any respect an evidence of the survival

6o Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

of human consciousness. They may be reasons for raising the
question, but not for solving it. Besides there is as yet no clear
idea of the relation or conservation to the problem. In one of
its conceptions it is wholly unrelated to it and in the other the
doctrine is so doubtful as to make it worthless on either side of
the issue. We have first to make clear what we mean by the
conservation of energy other than the mere facts which it is sup-
posed to explain before we can say whether it has any bearing
on the question of a future life.

Another point on which the author relies is also effective
enough as an ad hominem argument. It is the doctrine that
there are " psychical waves " concomitant with the nerve waves
and this idea is supposed to guarantee the existence of some other
subject than the brain for the explanation of consciousness.
Consequently, this assumed, there goes with it the notion of a
" soul " capable of surviving death. The doctrine is the old one
of parallelism and assumes that consciousness is not a function of
the brain unless it is reducible to* nerve waves. This, in the
critic's opinion, is an illusion and will be inexcusable if " psychical
waves " are assumed, as " waves " of any kind can be supposed
to have their basis in the organism. But the school that insists
on supposing this concomitance of consciousness with physical
or neural action and the distinctness of its nature from the
physical will have a problem of a certain kind that requires a
solution somewhat different from what is suggested by the con-
servation of energy. Hence it is legitimate to use its conces-
sions, whether consciously or unconsciously made, to support a
conclusion which they have not seen to be a necessity, at least an
apparent one. But the sceptic's position will be to demand
evidence for "psychical waves" and I must say that I do not
know any evidence whatever for such things. When the
physiologist or psychologist who believes in them supplies this
evidence it will be time to treat the matter more seriously. In
the meantime there is no harm in drawing conclusions from his
premises.

Whatever we may think of the argument in this little book,
I have no doubt that it will be a helpful one to many persons
who think and do not depend upon their emotions. There is one
pathetic feature in it that deserves notice. The bereaved mother
is made to say in reply to the first letter of consolation and argu-
ment: " I have been so immersed in practical affairs as to have
no leisure for matters which in their nature seemed rather of

?)eculative and future than of practical and present interest."
his is just the trouble with all philosophic speculations. The
practical affairs of life give no time for mastering them and they
have no weight without this mastery. Some proof of a future
life needs to be obtained which represents an appeal to facts

List of Members of American Society for Psychical Research. 6i

rather than to scientific and philosophic theories of an abstruse
type. The latter are effective with the intelligent classes who
can understand them, but they have the limitations of all specu-
lative doctrines.

LIST OF MEMBERS OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR

PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. SECTION B OF THE

AMERICAN INSTITUTE FOR SCIENTIFIC

RESEARCH.

Fellows.

Mr. B. R. Banning, 2434 Hillside Ave., Berkeley, Calif.

Mr. N. H. Bishop, Crawford Road & 82d St., Cleveland, Ohio.

Mrs. W. H. Bliss, 6 East 6sth St., New York City.

John I. D. Bristol, Metropolitan Building, i Madison Ave.,

New York City.
Mr. Ernest N. Brown, care Halstead & Co., 304-12 17th St.,

Jersey City, New Jersey.
Rev. Howard N. Brown, 295 Beacon St., Boston, Mass.
Mrs. Samuel R. Brown, 2501 Forman St., Omaha, Neb.
Mrs. C. M. Chadbourne, 37 Madison Ave., New York City.
Mr. T. B. Clatworthy, 93 Chambers St., New York City.
Miss Olivia T. Closson, 1359 Columbia Road, Washington,

D. C.
Mrs. Esther L. Coffin, 550 Park Ave., New York City.
Mr. R. R. Colgate, 100 William St., New York City.
Mr. Robert Colgate, 59 William St., New York City.
Mr. J. T. Coolidge, 114 Beacon St., Boston, Mass.
Rear- Admiral P. H. Cooper, Morristown, New Jersey.
Mr. William S. Crandall, 253 Broadway, New York City.
Mr. John Finnigan, care Hotel Brazos, Houston, Texas.
Mr. John M. Forbes, Morristown, New Jersey.
Lyman J. Gage, Point Loma, Calif.

Mrs. George Gillies, 180 St. George St., Toronto, Canada.
Mrs. Bryant B. Glenny, Sheffield, Mass.
Mr. Arthur Goadby, 21 West 35th St., New York.
Mr. James Hartness, Springfield, Vermont.
Mr. Charles M. Higgins, 279 Ninth St., Brooklyn, New York.
Miss Mary K. Hillard, St. Margaret's School, Waterbury,

Conn.
Mr. Anton G. Hodenpyl, 7 Wall St., New York City.
Mr. Walter C. Hubbard, 138 W. 74th St., New York City.
James H. Hyslop, 519 W. 149th St., New York City.
Mr. Noble B. Judah, 2701 Prairie Ave., Chicago, 111.
Mr. Werner Kaufmann, 45 North 7th St., Philadelphia, Pa.

J

62 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

Mr. Emil V. Kohnstamm, Hotel Endicott, Columbus Ave. &
8ist St., New York City.

Miss Elizabeth Lawton, 550 Park Ave., New York City.

Mr. C. Lombardi, care Dallas News, Dallas, Texas.

Mr. G. Lewis Meyer, 1831 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, Pa.

Rev. R. Heber Newton, Easthampton, Long Island.

Mrs. R. Heber Newton, Easthampton, Long Island.

Mr. Edward W. Parker, suite 14, The Lexington, 175 Lex-
ington Ave., New York City.

Mrs. Stanhope Philips, 19 East 38th St., New York City.

Miss Theodate Pope, Farmington, Conn.

Mr. E. E. Pray, River & Ward Sts., Hackensack, New Jersey.

Mr. Charles Robinson Smith, 34 W. 69th St., New York City.

Mr. Thomas Curran Ryan, 427 Prospect Ave., Merrill, Wis.

Mr. de Bevoise Schenck, Ridgefield, Conn.

Mrs. de Bevoise Schenck, Ridgefield, Conn.

Mr. A. Van Deusen, 74th St. & Central Park West, New
York City.

Mrs. Henry Wolcott Warner, 62 East 67th St., New York
City.

Mrs. W. G. Webb, 40 Avenue Henri Martin, Paris, France.

Mr. Charles Hill Willson, 104 South Ave., Mount Vernon,
New York.

Mr. Isaac H. Wing, Bayfield, Wis.

Mrs. Emma D. Woodhouse, Manhattan Hotel,- N. Y. City.

Mrs. Julia A. H. Worthington, 4 West 40th St., New York
City.

Members.

Mr. David Abbott, 205 Neville Block, Omaha, Neb.

Miss Evangeline S. Adams, 402 Carnegie Hall, 57th St. &
7th Ave., New York City.

Dr. Geo. S. Adams, Westborough, Mass.

Rev. T. E. Allen, Jamestown, New York.

Mr. George Armisted, Maryland Club, Baltimore, Md.

Horace J. Atwater, Norfolk, New York.

Mrs. Marshall L. Bacon, Tarrytown, New York.

Mr. Joseph P. Bailey, P. O. Box 266, Philadelphia, Pa.

Miss Hannah M. Barbour, Wyoming, Rhode Island.

Dn William N. Barnhardt, 105 Wood St., Toronto, Canada.

Dr. Weston D. Bay ley. Cor. isth & Poplar Sts., Philadel-
phia, Pa.

Dr. E. P. Beadles, Danville, Vir.

Prof. W. R. Benedict, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati,
Ohio.

Mrs. W. H. Bigler, 235 W. 76th St., New York City.
Mo.

List of Members of American Society for Psychical Research. 63

Miss Mary Blair, Care Monroe & Co., 7 Rue Scribe, Paris,

France.
Mr. Henry W. Blodgett, 506 Equitable Building, St. Louis,

Missouri.
Mr. Charles L. Bogle, 146 West 104th St., New York City.
Mrs. Louise Aguste Bourne, The Touraine, New York City.
Mrs. John B. Bouton, 21 Craigie St., Cambridge, Mass.
Mr. Nathaniel J. Brittain, Pacific Union Club, San Fran-
cisco, Calif.
Mr. George D. Broomell, 496 West Monroe St., Chicago, 111.
Mr. W. H. Caldwell, 306 Western Union Bldg., Chicago, 111.
Miss Alice C. Carpenter, 16 Kennard Road, Brookline, Mass.
Mr. E. H. Carpenter, Castine, Maine.

Mr. Hereward Carrington, 793 Amsterdam Ave., New York.
Mr. W. E.. Clark, Parker, South Dakota.
Mr. George W. Clawson, care Clawson, Strean Co., Kansas

City, Mo.
Rev. Willis M. Cleaveland, Millinocket, Maine.
Mr. A. B. Coffin, Winchester, Mass.
Dr. Hills Cole, 1748 Broadway, New York.
Mrs. Gertrude P. Coombs, 18 East 58th St., New York City.
Mr. Wm. Edmond Curtis, 27 West 47th St., New York City.
Mr. James Dangerfield, Hartford, Conn.
Mr. William Danmar, 5 McAuley Place, Jamaica, Long Is-
land, New York.
Judge Abram H. Dailey, 16 Court St., Brooklyn, N. Y.
James Dangerfield, 307 West 29th St., New York City.
William Danmar, 5 McAulay Place, Jamaica, L. I., N. Y.

Mrs. Henry C. Davis, 1822 Pine St., Philadelphia, Pa.

Mr. Milse Menander Dawson, 76 William St., New York City.

Hon. Wm. M. O. Dawson, Charleston, West Virginia.

Lieut.-Col. George McC. Derby, U. S. Engineer Office, St.
Paul, Minn.

Mr. Hasket Derby, 182 Marlborough St., Boston, Mass.

Mr. James W. Donaldson, Ellenville, N. Y.

Mrs. Charles Duggin, 25 E. 38th St., New York City.

First Spiritual Church, 215 Milton Ave., Baltimore, Md.

Mr. C. A. Ensign, 503 Mahoning Ave., Youngstown, Ohio.

Mr. Irving Fisher, 460 Prospect St., New Haven, Conn.

Mr. Wm. King Fisher, 511 West I52d St., New York.

Mr. Charles S. Florence, Asotin, Wash.

Mrs. H. C. Fogle, 925 Cleveland Ave., Canton, Ohio.

Mr. William Fortune, 154 Woodruff Ave., Indianapolis, Ind.

Mr. J. R. Francis, 40 Loomis St., Chicago, 111.

Mr. Isaac K. Funk, care Funk & Wagnalls, 44-60 East 23d
St., N. Y.

Mr. H. P. N. Gammel, Austin, Texas.

64 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

Prof. H. Norman Gardiner, Northampton, Mass.
Mr. J. H. Gardner, i8 Grays Hall, Cambridge, Mass.
Mr. M. T. Garvin, Lancaster, Pa.

Mr. William A. Gifford, St. Louis Mercantile Library Associ-
ation, St. Louis, Mo.
Mr. W. Howard Gilmour, 763 Broad St., Newark, N. J.
Mr. F. H. Goldthwait, Springfield, Mass.
Miss Florence H. Goodfellow, Room 611, 42 Broadway, New

York.
Mr. Henry G. Gray, 161 Madison Ave., New York City
Dr. L. V. Guthrie, West Virginia Asylum, Huntington, W.

Va.
Dr. Daniel S. Hager, 181 W. Madison St., Chicago, 111.
Mr. H. P. Hanson, Box 39 R. F. D. Route 5, Harlan, Iowa.
Mr. J. M. Harman, Millville, Pa.
Dr. H. J. Harnly, McPherson, Kansas.
Miss Cornelia Hartshorn, Milton, Mass.
Mr. Charles H. Hartshorne, Montclair, N. J.
Mr. Henry Haubens, 1547 North 20th St., Omaha, Neb.
Mrs. W. Hauxhurst, care Messrs. Morgan Harjes & Co., 31

Boulevard Haussman, Paris, France.
Mr. Henry W. Haynes, 239 Beacon St., Boston, Mass.
Mr. John Arthur Hill, Wensley Bank, Thornton, Bradford,

England.
Rev. Newell Dwight Hillis, 31 Grace Court, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Mrs. A. Stewart Holt, 224 W. I32d St., New York.
Mr. George W. Hunter, St. Louis, Mo.
Prof. Wm. James, 95 Irving St., Cambridge, Mass.
Mr. David Jameson, Citizens National Bank, New Castle, Pa.
Mr. G. W. Johnson, Lawrence Saving & Trust Co., New

Castle, Pa.
Mr. Charles N. Jones, Equitable Bldg., 120 Broadway, New

York City.
Henrietta O. Jones, The Sevillia, 58th St. & 6th Ave., New

York City.
Mr. J. B. Jones, Asotin, Wash.

Miss Hannah P. Kimball, 350 Otis St., West Newton, Mass.
Rev. Stanley L. Krebs, 845 Hinman Ave., Evanston, 111.
Miss Elizabeth Lawton, 550 Park Ave., N. Y. City.
Mrs. R. F. H. Ledyard, Cazenovia, N. Y.
Mr. J. S. Leith, Nevada, Ohio.
Dr. A. D. Leonard, 27 E. 30th St., New York City.
Mrs. Rose Levere, 321 W. 94th St., New York City.
Mrs. H. L. Luscomb, 41 Ashforth St., Allston, Mass.
Mrs. Eugene Macauley, 319 West 90th St., New York City.
Rev. J. A. Marquis, Beaver, Pa.
Dr. M. C. Marrs, Caro, Texas.

List of Members of American Society for Psychical Research. 65

Earl H. Mayne, 139 Bay 17th St., Brooklyn, N. Y.

Mrs. R. M. C. Meredith, Cedarhurst, Long Island, N. Y. •

I. Meyer, 2028 N. Park Ave., Philadelphia, Pa.

Alex. McVeigh Miller, Alderson, West Virginia.

Minneapolis Athenaeum, Minneapolis, Minn.

Charles M. Minus, 441 W. 47th St., New York City.

Miss Jennie B. Moore, 335 W. S7th St., N. Y. City.

Edward L. Morris, R. D. Station 3, Norwich, Conn.

Prof. William R. Newbold, University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, Pa.

Mrs. J. E. Newell, West Mentor, Ohio.

Louis W. Oakes, Bradford, Pa.

Louis Odio, 2955 Rodriquez Pena, Buenos Ayres, Argentine
Republic.

Mrs. W. S. Overton, 560 Greene Ave., Brooklyn, N. Y.

Daniel E. Parks, 615 DuBois St., West Hoboken, N. J.

Mr. Orville Peckham, First National Bank, Chicago, 111.

Dr. J. M. Peebles, care U. S. Consul, Calcutta, India.

Mr. Sidney B. Perkins, 142 Meigs St., Rochester, N. Y.

Mr. William B. Perkins, The Chelsea, 222 W. 23d St., New
York.

Mrs. W. B. Perkins, The Chelsea, 222 W. 23d St., New York.

Mr. Albion A. Perry, 5 Forster St., Somerville, Mass.

Mr. Thomas A. Phelan. 107 West 76th St., New York City.
Miss Margaret G. Philipse, 119 E. 21st St., New York.
Mr. Clifford Pinchot, 1615 Rhode Island Ave., Washing-
ton, D. C.
Mrs. William Post, Buchannon, W. Virginia.
Mrs. H. A. Potter, 95 Harrison St., East Orange, N. j!
Miss Irene Putnam, Bennington, Vt.
Mr. Josiah Phillips Quincy, 82 Charles St., Boston, Mass.
Mr. J. A. R. Ramsdell, Newburgb, N. Y.
Mr. M. T. Richardson, 27 Park Place, N. Y.
Miss Anne Mannering Robbins, 91 Newberry St., Boston,

Mass.
Dr. W. L. Robinson, 753 Main St., Danville, Virginia.
Mr. A. N. Roe, Br^nchville, N. Y.
Mrs. E. R. Satterlee, 60 East 78th St., New York.
Mr. Luther R. Sawin, Mt. Kisco Laboratory, Mt. Kisco, N. Y.
Mr. William Schuyler, McKinley High School, St. Louis, Mo.
Mr. W. A. Scott, 99 Notredame St., Montreal Canada.
Mrs. Kate Sharp, Dresdner Bank, Prager Strasse, Dresden,

Germany.
Mr. George H. Shattuck. Medina, N. Y.
Mr. Elbert E. Smith, Record Building, Kansas City, Mo.
Mr. Ralph P. Smith, 1627 Douglas St., Sioux City, Iowa.
Mrs. Esther B. Steele, 352 W. Clinton St., Elmira, N. Y.

66 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

Dr. Henry M. Stokes, Bureau of Standards, Washington, I
D. C. I

Mrs. Courtlandt Taylor, 226 W. 70th St., N. Y. 1

Mrs. J. B. Taylor, Watertown, N. Y.

Mr. Geo. A. Thacher, 863 Bootwick St., Portland, Ore.

Mrs. G. W. Thompson, Connellsville, Pa.

Mrs. Robert J. Thompson, 195 Wabash Ave., Chicago, 111.

Mr. R. T. Trimble, New Vienna, Ohio.

Mrs. Elizabeth Trowbridge, 18 Huntington Ave., Boston,
Mass.

Mr. Herbert B. Turner, 683 Atlantic Ave., Boston, Mass.

Mr. James H. Tuttle, Croton-on-Hudson, N. Y.

Mrs. Moses Coit Tyler, University Place, Ithaca, N. Y.

Mr. Samuel T. Tyson, King of Prussia, Pa.

Mr. H. S. Van Deren, Nashville, Tenn.

Mr. A. Van Deusen, 74th St. & Central Park West, N. Y.

Rev. Charles Van Norden, D. D., LL.D., East Auburn, Cal.

Mrs. H. G. Wadley, 265 Prospect Ave., Mount Vernon, N. Y.

Mrs. Harry Watrous, 352 Lexington Ave., New York.

Mr. Arthur R. Wendell, 412 West 12th St., New York.

Mr. David Wesson, 11 1 South Mountain Ave., Montclair,
New Jersey.

Mr. R. R. Whitehead, Woodstock, Ulster Co., N. Y.

Mr. Charles W. Williams, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio.

Mr. Franklin A. Wilcox, 933 Madison Ave., New York City.

Dr. Dunning S. Wilson, 1700 Brook St., Louisville, Ky.

Mrs. C. R. Wood, 440 West End Ave., New York City.

Associates.

Mr. Hartley B. Alexander, 384 St. James Ave., Springfield,

Mass.
Mr. C. S. Allen, Burr Block, Lincoln, Neb.
Dr. Frank Anderson, Med. Inspect. U. S. N., Navy Yard,

Mare Island, Calif.
Miss G. I. S. Andrews, West Somers, West Chester Co., N. Y.
Dr. J. F. Babcock, Katahdin Iron Works, Maine.
Mr. W. H. Barnes, Ventura, Calif.
Mr. George C. Bartlett, Tolland, Conn.
Mrs. Tryphosa Bates Batcheller, Aberdeen Hall, North

Brookfield, Mass.
Mrs. K. A. Behenna, 41 East 29th St., New York.
Mr. Samuel A. Bloch, Middletown, Conn.
Mr. Charles E. Booth, National Arts Club, New Yorlt.
Miss Lillian D. Bostock, 50 Willow St., Brooklyn, Nj. Y.
Mr. Daniel W. Brainard, Grinnell, Iowa. 1

Mr. J. M. Brundage, Andover, N. Y. ;

I

List of Members of American Society for Psychical Research. 67

Mr. Geo. L. Brooks, 903 W. Copper Ave., Albuquerque, New
Mexico.

Mr. Charles Carroll Brown, 2247 N. Pennsylvania St., In-
dianapolis, Ind.

Mr. Edward P. BuflFet, 804 Bergen Ave., Jersey City, N. J.

Mr. J. C. Bump, White Plains, N. Y.

Mr. Austin H. Burr, Richmond, Virginia.

Mr. Henry A. Burr, Wilmington, N. C.

Dr. Arthur T. Bushwell, Barton, Vermont.

Mrs. Hermon B. Butler, Winnetka, 111.

Prof. G. R. Carpenter, Columbia University, New York.

Miss M. E. Chapman, 290 Pearl St., Cleveland, Ohio.

Mr. W. T. Cheney, Rome, Ga.

Mrs. Rebecca S. Clark, Norridgewock, Maine.

Mr. William W. Clemens, Marion, 111.

Dr. H. L. Coleman, Box 29, Farragut, Iowa.

Prof. Mattoon M. Curtis, 43 Adelbert Ave., Cleveland, Ohio.

Mr. Alan Dale, no St. Nicholas Ave., New York City.

Rev. John M. Davidson, Xenia, Ohio.

Mr. E. T. Dickey, Room 4, Lombard Bldg., Indianapolis, Ind.

Mr. George R. Eager, 49 Seminary Ave., Auburndale, Mass.

Miss Katherine Edwards, Liberty, N. Y.

Charlotte Errain, 20 N. i6th St., East Orange, N. J.

Rev. Carl G. H. Ettlich, Laurel, Pa.

Mr. T. R. Evans, Le Sueur, Minn.

Mrs. W. G. Evans, 1310 S. 14th St., Denver, Col.

Mr. G. I. Finley, Kiona, Wash.

Mr. J. J. Flippin, 121 West Main St., Danville, Vir.

Mr. J. D. Forrest, 30 Audubon Place, Indianapolis, Ind.
St., New York.

Mrs. A. R. Franklin, 2209 Nebraska Ave., Tampa, Fla.

Mrs. Rebecca Friedlandcr, The Belleclaire, Broadway & 77th
St., N. Y.

Miss Sarah F. Gane, 430 N. State St., Chicago, 111.

Prof. E. V. Garriott, 1308 Howard St., Washington, D. C.

Mr. H. B. Gayfer, 169 Dauphin St., Mobile, Ala.

Mr. Morrill Goddard, 2 Duanc St., N. Y.

Mr. E. P. Gomery, Richmond, Province of Quebec, Canada.

Mr. Henry R. Goodnow, 95 Riverside Drive, N. Y.

Mr. Henry R. Gordon, 7 Wall St., N. Y.

Dr. J. H. Gower, 609 Mack Block, Denver, Col.

Mr. O. T. Green, Thousand Island Park, N. Y.

Mr. Hermann Handrich, 941 Green Ave., Brooklyn, N. Y.

Dr. C. H. Hayes, Chelsea Square, New York.

Mrs. W. Hinkle-Smith, 2025 Locust St., Philadelphia, Pa.

Mr. Arthur E. Hobson, Meriden, Conn.

68 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

Prof. F. S. HoflFman, Union College, Schenectady, N. Y.

Mr. G. G. Hubbell, 608 S. Queen St., Lancaster, Pa.

Mrs. A. H. Joline, The Dakotah, 726 St. & Central Park
West, New York.

Mr. Hiram Knowles, Missoula, Mont.

Mr. Blewett Lee, 1700 Prairie Ave., Chicago, 111.

Mr. J. D. McBeath, 223 ?:vwin Hill Ave., Dorchester, Mass.
ui Mr. Herbert Mcintosh, 9 Harvard Ave., Allston, Mass.

][i\ Mr. John MacLean, 32 University St., Montreal, Canada.

t ]; Mr. Colin MacLennan, 2473 Broadway, New York.

Mr. Geo. Mann, 32 University St., Montreal, Canada.

Mrs. E. H. Martin, 29 Lake View Park, Rochester, N. Y.

P. A. Martineau, Marinette, Wis.

Mr. J. H. Merriam, 41 Liberty St., N. Y.
"Ir. T. S. " ' ^ -"

Mr. T. S. Mitchell, i Lothrop St., Plymouth, Mass.
; I ' ■ Mme. Louise L. de Montalvo, Box O, Lakewood, N. J.

L { Mr. T. M. Morris, Hazleton, Pa.

, Mrs. Herbert Myrick, 151 Bowdoin St., Springfield, Mass.

^ Mr. S. W. Narregang, Aberdeen, S. D.

Mr. Henry Nash, 516 Madison St., Chicago, 111.
i Mrs. Fred. Nathan, 162 West 86th St., N. Y.

; ; Mr. C. E. Ozaime, 785 Republic St., Cleveland, Ohio.

„ Dr. R. L. Parsons, Greenmont-on-Hudson, N. Y.

* Mr. C. B. Patterson, 33 W. 67th St., N. Y.

Mrs. A. P. Peabody, 47 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, Mass.
Mr. W. W. Picking, 2000 Michigan Ave., Chicago, 111.
Mr. H. I. J. Porter, i Madison Ave., N. Y.
- ' Mr. Reinhardt Rahr, Manitowoc, Wis.

' t Mr. Reginald Raymond, 7937 Elm St., New Orleans, La.

t , .! Dr. A. H. Roler, 500 N. Y. Life Bldg., New York.

^ Mr. M. V. Samuels, 1624 Octavia St., San Francisco, Calif.

' Mrs. L. E. Sackett, 54 Andrew St., Springfield, Mass.

Mr. H. C. Schweikert, Central High School, St. Louis, Mo.
: : ^ Miss L. B. Scott, 28 West 58th St., N. Y.

Miss M. M. Shelden, Walnut Valley Times, Eldorado, Kan.
Bolton Smith, 66 Madison St., Memphis, Tenn.
! ' Mrs. H. D. Smith, 177 Lake View Ave., Chicago, 111.

I Mr. J. M. Snyder, Hollidaysburg, Pa.

; ;t Mr. M. B. Sparks, Batavia, Iowa.

' ! -^ Dr. J. G. W. Steedman, 2803 Pine St., St. Louis, Mo.

j * 1 Mrs. C. H. Stone, 5562 Clemens Ave., St. Louis, Mo.

, ' Dr. O. C. Strickler, New Ulm, Minn.

Mr. V. K. Strode, 867 Kelly St., Portland, Ore.
I .J Mr. W. G. L. Taylor, 434 North 2Sth St., Lincoln, Neb.

1:-' Miss Amelia Tyler, Patent Office, Washington, D. C.

- Mr. Albert Turner, Metropolitan Bldg., Madison Ave. & 23d

St., New York.

List of Members of American Society for Psychical Research, 69

Mr. H. G. Walters, Langhorne, Bucks Co., Pa.

Miss M. B. Warren, 19 Second St., Troy, N. Y.

Mr. G. W. Welch, Ames, Iowa.

Mr. W. F. White, 660 Johnson St., Portland, Ore.

Mr. Harris Whittemore, Naugatuck, Conn.

Miss Lillian Whiting, Hotel Brunswick, Copley Square,

Boston, Mass.
Dr. C. A. Wickland, 616 Wells St., Chicago, 111.
Mrs. Frank Wilson, 50 Ridge St., Orange, N. J.
Miss Susan Willard, 2 Berkeley Place, Cambridge, Mass.
Mr. E. S. Willcox, Peoria Public Library, Peoria, 111.
Rev. Leighton Williams, Amity House, 312 W. 45th St., New

York.
Dr. Walter Wyman, Stoneleigh Court, Washington, D. C.
Mrs. G. W. Wood, 2906 F St., Washington, D. C.
Mr. E. de B. Woodson, 5417 Bartmer St., St. Louis, Mo.
Mr. G. A. Wolter, 182 North May St., Chicago, 111.

■H

■^'i

[SIGN AND MAIL TO THE SECRETARY]

American Society for Psychical Research

SECTION "B- OF THE

American Institute for Scientific Research

JAMES H. HYSLOP, Secretary
519 West 149th Street, New York .

190

Board of Trustees of the
American Institute for

Scientific Research.
Gentlemen:

In accordance with the provisions hereto attached I apply for
membership in the American Society for Psychical Research as

a *9 with the understanding that the dues

will become payable upon notice.
Yours truly,

Name

Address

The following references are given.

Name

Address

Name

Address

Note. — All applications should be promptly mailed to the Secretary —
address given above. ("Direction for applicants" on opposite page should be
carefully read before the blanks are filled in).

♦ Insert the class of Membership desired, (Founder, Patron, Fellow,
Member or Associate).

71

DIRECTIONS FOR APPLICANTS.

Applicants in special cases may be asked to give references
and shall then be expected to supply the names and addresses of
two persons of good standing in the community.

There are five classes of contributing members : " Founders, '
"Patrons," "Fellows," "Members," and "Associates," with
privileges as follows:

Founders shall have the privileges of Patrons, Fellows, Mem-
bers, and Associates, and shall have their names published in
perpetuity, if so desired, in all the Proceedings of the Institute.
A person may become a Founder on the payment of $S,ooo.

Patrons shall have the privileges of Fellows, Members, and
Associates, and shall have their names published, if so desired,
during their lives in all the Proceedings of the Institute. A
person may become a Patron on the payment of $i,ooo.

Fellows have the privilege of being enrolled in all Sections
of the Institute ; of receiving the publications of the same, of the
use of its rooms and library, and shall pay an annual fee of $25.
A person may become a Life Fellow on the payment of $500.

Members shall have the privilege of being enrolled in one Sec-
tion of the Institute; of receiving all the publications of that
Section, and shall pay an annual fee of $10. A person may
become a Life Member on the payment of $200.

Associates shall have the privilege of being enrolled in one
Section and of receiving only the Journal of that Section, and
shall pay an annual fee of $5. A person may become a Life
Associate on the payment of $100.

The monies paid by Founders, Patrons, Life Fellows, Life
Members, and Life Associates will be invested in the " Endow-
ment Fund," and only the income thereof will be used in the
work of the Institute.

Applicants will do a service by securing as many members as
possible and may send to the Secretary for blanks and circulars.

Make all checks payable to American Institute for Scientific
Research.

72

Vol. I.-N0. 2.

February, 1907.

JOURNAL

OF THE

Aierican Society for Psychical Research

CONTENTS

Gbcbral Axtxclbs: Pi

LetterofDr. Pierre Janet. - - -
Experiments with Mrs. Piper Since the
Death of Dr. Richard Hodeson. •

EorroBiAL:

Notes.- -
Local SodetisB,

iOB

Incidents:

PAOB

T3

CoUectiTe Halludnatioo.
Apparent Premonition, -

- - - lis

• - 116

93

Book Rbvibws :

Reriew of Prof. Jastrow's
oonscioas.**

" The Sub-

- - 117

106

TRBA8UltBR*8 RBPOKT,

- - - m

lU

AODXTIONAI. MbKBBBS, -

- - - 122

LETTER OF DR. PIERRE JANET.

[TRANSLATION.]

Rue Barbet de Jouy, Paris,

July 28th, 1905.
My Dear Mr. Hyslop :

You are trying to found an important institution, "the
American Institute for Scientific Research," which would
contribute to the development of psychological investigation,
and you ask me to aid you in showing the American public
the importance of this work. You have been kind enough
to say in your request that I am able to give helpful aid and
that the expression of my opinions would bring sympathetic
support to your task and would influence those who hesitate
to support it. I do not think I have the ability to give such
assistance; indeed American psychologists and neurologists
have much more influence than I have and it is their aid and
not mine which will convince your fellow-men of the useful-
ness of this work and give them the coivfidence which they
might have in it. But however little my influence may be I
shall not be tardy in doing my part and shall state briefly
what seems to me interesting and important in your project.

74 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

I.

The preceding century was devoted to the physical sci-
ences and it is impossible to enumerate all the benefits which
to-day accrue to mankind from the discoveries of these sci-
ences. But the sciences which have for their object the
study of man, the laws of the human mind, and the relations
between the physical and the mental, have for a long time
followed, though slowly, the rapid progress of the knowledge
which has resulted from the study of matter. It is certain,
however, that the mental sciences can be as helpful and pos-
sibly more important than the investigation of physical phe-
nomena. They may indeed explain the laws of the social
organism and may possibly aid in establishing better social
conditions. They ought to play an important part in our
criminal jurisprudence and possibly provide a veritable pre-
ventive of crime. The study of pedagogy should be asso-
ciated with the science of psychology and this alone can
regulate the conscious reform of our methods of education.
A field in which psychology, if more advanced, might render
incalculable service is that of mental therapeutics. If we are
to judge by the progress which certain scientific investiga-
tions, relative to hypnotism, suggestion and double person-
ality have already made with reference to the therapeutic
treatment of certain nervous diseases, we would discover a
large number of such maladies of so terrible and melancholy
a character that are incurable to-day only because of our
ignorance.

Finally, is it not evident that the science of the mind is
more than any other capable of satisfying the restless curi-
osity of the human soul? Doubtless it is hardly probable
that a single science can ever completely solve the problem
of our nature and destiny. But in the meantime nothing can
even approach these perplexing questions except the study of
the mind. We can see the evidence of this in the passionate
interest which certain phenomena excite, that are in reality
psychological, namely, those of secondary personality, men-
tal suggestion, clairvoyance and mediumship. These phe-
nomena have evidently interested men to such an extent be-

Letter of Dr, Pierre Janet, 75

cause they seem to be related to the profoundest powers of
the mind. Would not the scientific investigation of them,
whatever the result it reached, aid much in understanding
human nature ? More than any other science psychology is
connected with philosophical and religious problems.
Doubtless it is this fact that creates the great difficulty in the
investigation, and it is also the fact which intensifies its in-
terest and importance.

Many attempts have been made, especially during the
second half of the last century, to undertake the study of this
rich and interesting field. It is apparent everywhere that we
have tried to apply to psychology the inductive and experi-
mental methods which have produced the marvellous results
of the physical sciences. Mathematical methods have been
applied to psychology in the study of psychological and psy-
chometrical phenomena. With the use of new methods the
anatomy and physiology of the nervous system have been
revolutionized. No country has done so much in this field
of scientific psychology as the United States. Thanks to
the vigor of the American universities, the elasticity of their
courses, and the wealth of their resources, the new science of
psychology has been able to take an important place in edu-
cation, and psychological laboratories in the United States
have become more numerous, more excellent and better
equipped than elsewhere. It is for that reason that no other
country better understands the importance of certain recent,
if not new, investigations which ought now to be associated
with that psychology which is ordinarily studied in the lab-
oratory, not for the purpose of converting it, but for that of
developing and extending its power.

It is evident that the study of the human mind can exer-
cise a beneficial influence on morals : for traces of intellectual
culture are found in a great number of phenomena which
a:e exhibited in psychological investigations. If it be pos-
sible soon to arrive at the knowledge of the laws of mental
action, we may turn to account much more than has yet been
done in the study of language, of art and of primitive civil-
izations, just as we have begun to do in the study of the in-
stincts and intelligence of animals. We ought simply to

76 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

choose and distinguish what the facts are whose investiga-
tion seems for the moment to be specially useful; what the
researches are that it is important to add to to-day to the

"" various sciences now pursued in our laboratories. If I am
not deceived, three types of allied investigation present, at
this time, a particular value and have arrived at that degree
of maturity which makes them important for us. These are
those investigations which pertain to mental diseases, those
which pertain to suggestive therapeutics, and those which
propose an inquiry into the phenomena that we call super-

•^ normal or occult, for the lack of a better name. It is neces-
sary that we examine the importance which these investiga-
tions have for the development of psychology.

II.
Psychological investigation has not been fully organized
in the same way or directed to the same end in all countries,
and even this is fortunate for its progress. If I am not mis-
taken, investigators in other countries have been disposed to
keep distinct two types of inquiry which the French psychol-
ogists have been forced to associate. Most frequently we
study, on the one side, the normal psychology of the indi-
vidual, or pretend to do this, and on the other, we are occu-
pied with the analysis and classification of mental diseases.
It seems to me that, in France, under the influence of my
masters, whom I am happy to mention, Charcot and Ribot,
we have endeavored a little more to explain psychiatry by
means of normal psychology and to regard mental diseases
as good natural experiments, which enable us better to un-
derstand what the normal functions are.

Whatever the importance of the laboratory to psychol-
ogy, we must not forget that a genuine experiment with the
human mind is very difficult to obtain in a perfect form.
One of the operations essential to the experimental method
consists in changing the phenomena which we are consider-
ing and with it the conditions affecting it. We need the
power to vary the phenomenon concerned, to increase or to
iminish it, and especially the power to suppress it with a
iew to discovering its cause in the circumstances which

Letter of Dr, Pierre Janet. yj

vary with it at the same time: this is a summary of physio-
logical method and the explanation of its success. That is,
for example, the removal of the thyroid glands, the excision
of the pneumo-gastric organs, the destruction of certain
cerebral centers have enabled us to discover the functions of
the thyroid glands, the functions regulating the action of the
heart, and the functions of the motor centers in the cortex,
etc. It is impossible to apply this method rigorously to psy-
chology: we cannot exactly remove the memory, language
or his voluntary actions from a man. Even though we were
able we do not recognize the right to do it. There is always
some aspect of the experimental method, and this the most
important, that escapes us in psychology. The consequence
is sufficiently grave to prevent us from always giving a clear
account of psychological investigations. That is, we cannot
experiment simply as we desire. We always find ourselves
in the presence of a complicated individual and the condi-
tions which determine a phenomenon are always infinitely
complex, and they are difficult to define and impossible to
eliminate.

III.

Doubtless disease also remains complex; but in the mean-
time it subjugates the individual. It brings him to those
forms of consciousness which are less normal and less varied.
I have a well defined suspicion that patients of the same type
show astonishing resemblances. We are surprised to dis-
cover subjects, belonging to very different social classes, dif-
ferent environments and different countries,, using exactly
the same forms of expression and metaphors, when they are
attacked by the same disease. Two psychasthenics and two
hysterical persons resemble each other much more than two
normal individuals, having approximately the same charac-
teristics. This circumstance indicates that the malady sim-
plifies the mental condition of the patient when producing it.

From time to time this reduction of higher states becomes
particularly interesting for us when it clearly suppresses cer-
tain psychological phenomena which our introspective analy-
sis has already distinguished and which we assume to be

78 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

important. We meet subjects in whom language, memory
or the will is suppressed. In some even the lesion is still
more delicate: one portion of one's language is suppressed
and another remains intact. Some lose the power to under-
stand speech or to understand what they read, and yet they
can speak themselves. We see some who have lost this or
that type of memories and retained others: they may have
completely forgotten recent events and yet be able to recall
the more remote, or even remember what they have experi-
enced in the past and yet be unable to acquire any new
memories of the present experience. They have lost the
power of acquisition but not the power of conservation or
reproduction. It is the same with all the mental functions.
They may be dissociated by disease in a more remarkable
manner than we could effect by any dissection or mutilation
of the organism. It is easy to explain that these are simply
the dissociation, the obstruction of functions which the ex-
perimental method would reclaim and which we cannot in-
dependently effect ourselves. Doubtless science has been
arrested for a time by the scruple that the disease deranges
and diverts the vital functions. But we know, since Claude
Bernard, "that we do not find any radical difference between
physiological, pathological and therapeutic phenomena;
these phenomena originate from causes which, being peculiar
to living matter, are identical in their essential characteristics
and do not vary except with the different conditions in which
the phenomena are manifested." In our day physiology
appropriates for itself a large part of these pathological facts
and psychology, which does not have at its disposal the same
resources that physiology has, receives a still greater ad-
vantage. In fact, many chapters of normal psychology be-
gin with the study of diseases. Let any one recall the works
on the diseases of memory, the diseases of personality and
the diseases of the will. Much of the more interesting and
important knowledge which to-day fills the works of psy-
chology has originated in observations that were connected
with abnormal phenomena. It suffices to remark the ma-
terial on the limitations of the compass of consciousness, on
subliminal states, on the complexity and synthetic action of

Letter of Dr. Pierre Janet. 79

personality, on the synthesis of sensory and motor experi-
ences in perception, such as have been remarked in the study
of agnosia and apraxia, and the various forms and degrees of
involuntary action. We should have to sacrifice two-thirds
of the present psychology if we were to withdraw from con-
sideration what has been obtained by virtue of the investiga-
tion of abnormal phenomena of the mind and nervous system.
We should remember that services of this kind are re-
ciprocal, and that the treatment of nervous and mental dis-
eases has already drawn and will draw more and more benefit
from its understanding with psychology. Whatever the
neurologists may say of it, it can still be claimed that psy-
chological terms are the best for describing and explaining
our clinical problems clearly. Physicians can secure a great
benefit from the study of perceptive processes in interpreting
the diseases of sensibility, from investigations of volition and
emotion for understanding nervous troubles. Even to-day
hysteria and psychasthenia in connection with obsessions,
ideo-motor impulses and phobias are already, and before
long, if I am not mistaken, epilepsy will be, entirely unintel-
ligible without a serious study of psychology. Some time in
the future it will not be possible to speak of the various forms
of deliria without understanding the laws of suggestion, the
modifications of the area of consciousness, or the various
degrees of mental strain in volition and attention and their
influence on the ideas and feelings of the patient. We shall
be surprised in a short time to see how much psychiatry has
been influenced by contact with a more exact psychology.

IV.
Nervous and mental diseases still present us phenomena
whose investigation is particularly important. These are
such as happen under the various forms of medical practice
and especially the phenomena which occur at the moment of
recovering the normal state. Scientific method is properly
realized when we can examine the same phenomenon in two
cases that differ from each other only in a single known cir-
cumstance, the other phenomena remaining exactly the same.
The study of the same patient now during the period of his

8o Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

illness and now at the point of recovery approximates this
ideal. During the progress of hysterical paralysis we can
observe the persistence of a certain amount of anaesthesia
and then when the paralysis disappears we can note that,
while the subject remains the same in all other respects, the
anaesthesia previously remarked has disappeared. Have we
not the right to say that this insensibility plays an important
part in the coincidence? Many psychological observations
have been made with this method.. Not only have men thus
studied paralyses, anaesthesias and their relation to the field
of consciousness, but also the influence of fixed ideas, auto-
matisms, amnesia, voluntary actions during and after seizure,
attention, emotional excitement during or after the crisis of
ecstacy, etc. To apply this method correctly we must be
able to watch the same patient for a long period and on many
occasions, but we shall be most frequently recompensed best
by persistent observation.

It is here that reciprocity of services between physiology
and psychology will appear most striking. More and more
we see the importance which medical practice, based on a
knowledge of psychologfical laws, will receive in the thera-
peutics of mental disease. In my opinion, this is not to assert
that a satisfactory claim has been made out for psycho-
therapy, such as is practiced today. It is still very rudi-
mentary and we are almost always reduced to the uncertain
therapeutics of moral influence. But the reception given this
method today permits of attempts to improve it and to give
it a more precise character.

For a long time the first rank of observers has been dis-
posed to believe that, in respect to ills ascribed to the imagi-
nation, it is important to oppose remedies of the same kind.
There have been all the while some marvelous cures effected
by religious faith, by the influence of necromancy, and even
by the influence of the physician. Most of the methods of
psychotherapy which are heralded about today are scarcely
distinguishable from gross charlatanry. Under pretext of
educating and reforming the reason and the will some urge
the patient to know how to live in a passive mental state,
how to will to be in good health, how to persist in trusting

Letter of Dr. Pierre Janet. 8i

his own powers, even though they are weak, and how to
cultivate the habit of disregarding his insignificant pains and
to boldly continue his life without occupying himself too
much with his comfort. Now one forces himself to follow
false ideas by reasoned argument that they are true, and now
he accepts his inclinations and desires with the object of
stimulating and directing them.

These methods, in reality very ancient and very ex-
tensively applied before modern practice, have indeed a great
practical value. This is indisputable, and indeed some
patients consider them sufficient to effect a cure. But it is
not less indisputable that they very frequently miscarry and
in the meantime the trouble seems to be of a moral character ;
that is, under this very primitive form of treatment there are
some defects of which the greatest is the lack at times of
exactness and clear generalization. They lack exactness
because we can apply them without distinction to every form
of malady. You can carry on the same conversation with an
epileptic, a melancholiac, an hysteric, and a psychaesthenic,
distracted by his fears and obsessions. It is, in fact, not
necessary to diagnose their disease in order to encourage
self-reliance and resignation in them. On the other hand,
that which makes the charm and the success of the sug-
gestion is first the peculiar capacrty of the man who makes it,
the fascination of his character, and also a certain disposition
in the subject to yield to this seduction in the character of the
operator. All this is very singular; the patient who has been
relieved by one physician cannot go to another, though the
latter applies the same methods. It is possible that he does
not experience any effect in such cases. The physician who
succeeds by these methods with one patient cannot feel
assured that he will cure the same malady in another by
similar methods ; it is possible that he will effect nothing at
all. It is certain that we have a duty to resort to these
methods while looking for better, but we are bound to con-
sider that a scientific psychotherapy has not reached its per-
fection.

For some years men have hoped to reach more precision
in their practice when they began to use hypnotism, but they

82 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

often exaggerated its value when they claimed to find hys-
terical phenomena in all cases of hypnotic suggestion and to
apply it at random. Psychotherapeutics will not make any
real progress until the physician understands the psycho-
logical mechanism by which a definite disease has been pro-
duced, even though he may know to some extent the precise
laws which regulate the appearance and disappearance of
certain psychological phenomena. When he knows that a
particular motor disturbance is due to some anaesthesia ; that
a certain feature of delirium depends on the presence of sub-
liminal memories which we think ought not to have disap-
peared; that this case of dizziness or that of delirium depends
on inadequate attention and some modification of the
emotions or of coenaesthesia, then every intelligent physician
will be able, without having any of the special abilities of a
miracle worker, to treat every patient whose condition had
been properly diagnosed. We must not indulge any illusions
in this matter. We are still very far from this goal. It is
only by a more exact analysis of mental diseases; by the
minute examination of the differences that the patient
presents in his state of illness and his state of health : in a
word, it is only by a very serious study of normal and ab-
normal psychology that we can approach the art of relieving
the sufferings of the mind which we are only beginning to
know.

V.
In the field of pathological phenomena, which, in my opin-
ion, is just before our eyes, is a certain number of very com-
mon facts which are attested by popular observation, which
are exaggerated by its fears and hopes, and which are singu-
larly magnified and distorted by superstition. For the lack
of a better name we will call them "occult," in order to make
clear that we do not know what they are. In all the litera-
tures of antiquity, Hindu, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Arabian,
are indications, more or less vague, of phenomena of
* which men have referred to mysterious agencies,
mly during the last century at most that these phe-
have been observed with care and classified with
iclness. Still more recently M. Ch. Richet, Profes-

Letter of Dr. Pierre Janet, 83

sor of Physiology in the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, in a
series of remarkable articles, from which we may quote,
shows the importance which he attaches to these investiga-
tions by giving a classification of the controverted phe-
nomena. In the first group we may place the facts which
seem to belong to the category of physical phenomena, al-
though they apparently transcend all known physical laws.
For example, these are those noises which we call " raps "
and which seem to be produced in material objects without a
known cause ; or, better still, there is the alleged transporta-
tion of physical objects. In another group we place those
phenomena which apparently have a psychological character.
For example, there are the phenomena which we designate
by the name telepathy, in which sensations and thoughts
seem to be transmitted from one person to another without
intermediate sense impressions; and clairvoyance, which is a
phenomenon of the same type in that the human mind seems
to acquire certain knowledge without use of the usual and
normal means of gaining knowledge, and the various pre-
sentiments in which the mind seems to have been freed from
the limitations of time as in clairvoyance it seems to have
been freed from those of space.* These phenomena have
been indicated by the various names of animal magnetism,
bio-magnetism, telepathic agency, unknown force, telekinetic
force and psychic force. They have been described and ex-
plained after a manner, but they are very little understood.
Most serious minds are embarrassed by them and do not
even know what attitude they should take when asked to
consider them. At present, when it is a matter of expressing
an opinion on clairvoyance and the movement of objects
without contact, we find that there are only two views, both
equally exaggerated and absurd, the one of an enthusiastic
advocate and the other of blind faith or denial as ignorant as
they are mistaken, and it is easy to discover that one is as
untenable as the other.

Whatever justice or even indulgence we wish to accord
writers who describe these occult phenomena in special re-
views, it is impossible not to be amazed at the absurd manner
in which they present their data. During all these years

84 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

there have appeared on these matters some hundreds of vol-
umes and some thousands of articles, written by men of very
good character whose opinions evidently deserve serious con-
sideration. But really we soon stop disgusted with our read-
ing: these authors assert the most improbable facts without
giving themselves the least trouble to verify their beliefs.
Their data are only a confused mixture of enthusiasm,
poetry, entreaties and rudeness of manner toward all those
who do not immediately accept their statements. Their
absolute lack of scientific method, their absolute ignorance of
the rules of observation, — I would not say scientific, but even
of the slightest rational observation — have ended in com-
pletely disgusting men of science and have completely dis-
couraged their interest in the phenomena.

Against these credulous enthusiasts are the sceptics who
are indifferent to occult phenomena. The physicians, the
physiologists, and the psychologists find it altogether be-
neath the dignity of their science to concern themselves in
any manner whatever with the phenomena of thought trans-
ference. They ignore or treat with contempt all the work
of their predecessors. This attitude is no better than that of
the believer. In the presence of facts, or if one prefers, of
phenomena apparently very important and which, if they
bring us new knowledge, would be likely to revolutionize our
conception of the world, a refusal to investigate and a sys-
tematic denial of the problem are as puerile as the uncritical
faith and the blind enthusiasm of the occultists. No reason
which has been advanced to excuse this refusal to investigate
can be considered serious and such as are given will not
stand criticism.

Should we condemn the study of these phenomena be-
cause some people call them occult and because we find their
investigation bringing us toward mysticism? There are no
terms more vague and undefined than "occult" and "mystic."
Every phenomenon is occult for those who know it imper-
fectly. Thunder and lightning were occult phenomena for
savages. The study of the properties of metals was a mys-

* Charles Richet Annals of Psychical Research, January, 1905. Proceed-
ings of the Society for Psychical Research.

Letter of Dr. Pierre Janet. 85

tical affair with the alchemists of the middle ages. In ceas-
ing to be occult these phenomena cease to be arbitrary. This
is a postulate of science, and these phenomena fall into the
category of general causation without which the study of
them would modify the general principles of science.

Should we condemn the study of them because, in the
opinion of some people, they seem actually impossible?
Beyond pure mathematics is there anything impossible? We
know very well that the results of present science do not have
absolute truth and that they always depend upon certain
conditions for their occurrence. Oxygen and hydrogen, as
we all know, combine in certain conditions, but we know well
that, if we remove these conditions, their combination does
not take place. "It is admitted," says Ch. Richet,* "that
bodies which are not the subjects of chemical change, which
apparently do not lose any of their weight, do not produce
heat." This seems to be a universal law, one of the immu-
table foundations of physics. But lo ! the discovery of radium
has destroyed this alleged universality, since, without any
appreciable chemical change, it produces considerable quan-
tities of heat. "Physical science is not overthrown by the
discovery: it concludes only that certain conditions, still un-
known, which determine the loss of weight in other bodies,
are not present in the case of radium."

Suppose the reply is that the conditions which determine
the so-called occult phenomena are too complicated ever to
be realized experimentally. What do we know in such a
matter? Most things which are actual facts today have been
declared impossible at other times, examples, the railway, the
telegraph, the telephone, the balloon. Who would have ad-
mitted twenty years ago that we should one day be able to
photograph the fracture of a bone through the flesh of a
Hving man? All these objections invariably return to this
singular and common idea: "That is impossible because I
have not seen it." It is with this kind of statement that men
always try to prevent discovery. That which properly
defines science is its function to make us see what we have
not hitherto seen. " Science," says Duclaux, " is the exten-
sion of sensation : whenever it effects any progress it repro-

86 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

duces on the plane of our imperfect sensory organs every-
thing that exists beyond the reach of them. Let us under-
stand then, that the wise man who every day attends at simi-
lar disclosures is not naturally inclined to believe in anything
beyond what he sees — for there is an infinite number of
things we do not see — that the world is not limited to forces
which act on our senses and that it probably contains thous-
ands of others."

We cannot make a better summary of these observations
than to quote the conclusion of the work of M. Ch. Richet:
" Instead of seeming to ignore spiritism, scientists should
study it. Physicians, chemists, physiologists and philoso-
phers ought to take the trouble to know and understand the
facts affirmed by spiritists. A long and diligent study of the
subject is necessary; it will certainly be fruitful, for however
absurd the theories may be, these do not alter the facts. And
if there are many errors and illusions in the assertions of the
spiritists, there are probably, nay, certainly, many truths
which for us are still enveloped in mystery. These truths,
when they are better understood, will profoundly modify the
puny notions we at present entertain concerning man and

^ the universe."*

X I can only further say that the phenomena which are the

subject of these investigations ought some day to be the sub-
ject of physical research. But above all else they ought to be
the subject of psychological inquiry. All along they have
not appeared as facts purely physical, but have always de-
pended on the presence of a human being and the mind of
this person. Even the phenomena that are apparently purely
physical, incidents like raps or materializations always de-
mand the presence of a medium. The investigation of these
facts ought always to begin with the study of this particular
person, with an investigation that should exhibit his decep-
tions, his unconscious mistakes, and the nervous and mental
conditions which accompany the phenomena. This physio-
logical investigation is far from being useless even when it
does not result in discovering the phenomena under dispute.
It was in the study of facts in a case of alleged mental sug-

* Ch. Richet, Annals of Psychical Science, January, 1905, p. 8.

Letter of Dr. Pierre Janet. 87

gestion that I was aroused to the presence of subliminal
mental phenomena, and we will doubtless find a rich field of
psychological information when disentangling the mental
condition of a medium, and also the singular mental condi-
tion of the believer who watches seances of the kind in an un-
critical spirit.

I shall further add that the first investigation of these phe-
nomena belongs to pathological psychology. The people ^
who act as mediums are more than variations from the nor-
mal: they are very often actually demented. To understand
them it is necessary to be constant attendants at their per-
formances, to observe their habitual illusions and the actions
that accompany them. On a single occasion I had the oppor-
tunity to investigate a case of apports and was able to show
the part played in this instance by subliminal consciousness
and spontaneous somnambulism. Later we may be able to
prove that genuine mediums can be distinguished by the fact
that they are what we know as neurotic subjects. This is
possible, but for the present we must approach instances of
the kind from a point of view which begins by investigating
them by means of the same methods which are employed in
other cases. It is to abnormal psychology that the duty now "
falls to solve the vexatious problem raised by the allegation
of occult phenomena. Let it hold itself equally free from
puerile credulity and blind incredulity; let it restrain auda-
cious hypotheses, but let it exhibit a rigor of method in the
verification of facts proportioned to their novelty and to the
gravity of their consequences, and it will discover in the
study of these facts some singular resources for explaining
them and for the application of therapeutics to the human
mind.

VL

Some such psychological investigation, bearing on the
various phenomena of the mind as presented in mental dis-
eases, in the applications of psychiatry, in the strange experi-
ments of which abnormal or occult phenomena are the oc-
casion, are today much more extended than we imagine.
There has been a great advance in this field during the last

88 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

twenty years. Such scientific inquiries are less misunder-
stood and men are not so often accused of insanity for study-
ing hypnotism or mental suggestion. We ought to be grate-
ful to those great men who have blazed the way and who
have had the courage in the love of truth to face the disre-
pute once attached to these inquiries. Nor must we forget
that the field has already been cultivated with some success
and has already furnished science with some valuable results.
Although this be true, we can easily observe that there is still
much to do and that such investigations in psychology have
not yet obtained in any way, even in America, the place
which we would desire for them.

Such inquiries as exist are not only defective, isolated and
insufficiently supported financially, but still in an unorganized
condition and without any bond of interest to connect and
systematize them. The psychology largely cultivated in our
institutions scarcely takes any account of pathological or ab-
normal phenomena. In the laboratories of natural science
and of physiology men do not neglect the study of cerebral
functions, but they only incidentally broach the facts of which
I have been speaking. In the medical colleges and in the
hospitals men are now beginning to recogfnize that psychol-
ogy ought to have a place in the study of nervous diseases
and insanity, but it is not possible to dispute that this investi-
gation, except in a small part of the hospital service, should
not be considered as wholly accessory. In confirming this
position, we are made to hope that, instead of thus occupying
a secondary place, the psychology of which we speak ought,
in some particular institution, to be the principal object, the
center about which all other studies, philosophical, psycho-
logical and medical should converge. An institute of this
kind, without multiplying labor and expense by additional
forms of education, as we find it in our various colleges,
would only supplement what we have, would co-ordinate
them, and give them much more unity and importance. It
seems to me that it will even act eflfectively on public opinion
to show that at some time the study of man has been placed
in the first rank and that this will give a fertile impulse to all
those researches, moral, physiological and clinical, which

Letter of Dr, Pierre Janet, 89

always have the same purpose, when their work is summed
up, namely, the knowledge of man as a whole. This institute
should begin a strenuous effort to put in the forefront the
study of the human mind in all its manifestations, physical
and moral, in all their elementary or developed forms, normal
and abnormal.

VII.

A work of this kind has its place so well indicated today,
its use so well recognized by all the best minds, that in sev-
eral countries it has already found some interesting attempts
to realize its aims. In the first rank of these societies which
have tried to organize some investigation of the kind is the
English Society for Psychical Research, which, I believe, has
an important branch in America. Owing to the influence of
Gurney, Myers and Sidgwick this society has very greatly
extended the interest in psychological investigation and has
gradually introduced the study of psychic phenomena into
the schemes of the regular and exact sciences. The Psycho-
logical Institute, which we tried to found in 1900 in France,
has a similar object, possibly even a larger scope, inasmuch
as it makes pathological phenomena a larger part of the in-
vestigation than the English Society. Some such efforts
have had more or less success ; they might be developed still
more and render us further service.

But it is evident that the creation of such an institute de-
mands large resources and that it is extremely difficult to
accomplish its formation. Moreover, we must expect to see
this work reorganized from different points of view and new
attempts occurring to complete the work of the first. The
American Institute for Scientific Research, of which you have
sent me the charter, evidently approaches the attempts pre-
viously mentioned and aims to pursue the same path. It does
not appear that you wish to organize opposition to the gen-
eral work of older institutions, but that you are trying to
collaborate with them in a manner which will give greater
publicity to their investigations and which can even aid them
in their researches. You have shown us so many wonders
in the universities of the United States, you have so often

90 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

seen what makes intelligent generosity in a donor, that we
expect much of any similar work undertaken by you, and we
shall consider its success a great benefit for all similar inves-
tigations which it will encourage and sustain.

The plans of the American Institute are well indicated in
the charter, which you have been kind enough to send me.
It is a pleasure for me to speak of it : for it promises to realize
all my dreams for the organization of a psychological insti-
tute. I should choose from your outline the various forms of
research which I think desirable today for developing in a
complete manner the science of the human mind. The
various articles of the charter and the different features of the
institute seem to answer perfectly to all that I could desire.

I would agree with you that the study of mental diseases
furnishes the most interesting and important psychological
facts of the age. You justly propose to study all the phe-
nomena of abnormal psychology, hallucinations, illusions,
disintegration of personality, alcoholism, and all the phe-
nomena of mind that we meet in neurasthenia and psychas-
thenia before they reach insanity proper. I would emphasize
the importance of treating mental disease5, the improvement
of mental disorders, their cure by various methods, physical
or mental, not only as a benefit to the patient, but as an edu-
cation most valuable to the physiological psychologist. But
you rightly desire some day to organize a hospital after the
type of the Salpetriere, in which men may be occupied with
the philanthropic treatment of mental diseases as well as in
the scientific investigation of them. However excellent the
organization of American hospitals, it is always useful to
have another, especially when its object is to apply thera-
peutic methods which have not yet received sufficient recog-
nition. I refer especially to a class of very unfortunate
patients and for whom your plan would constitute an im-
portant help: these are those unhappy neuropathic subjects
who live on the borders of insanity without ever fully enter-
ing it. They suffer cruelly from all sorts of disorders : they
are wholly unable to earn a livelihood and cannot even adjust
themselves to the social organism, and yet in the meantime it
■s very difficult to find a retreat where any one will consent to

Letter of Dr. Pierre Janet. 91

consider their distress or to aid them in restoring their health.
They have no temperatures or organic troubles that would
justify their admission into the ordinary hospitals. They
have no such mental maladies as would open to them the
asylums for the insane. If they were rich they would find a
place in those hydro-therapeutic institutions which are spe-
c'ally built for this class of patients. But we know how inac-
cessible these retreats are for the larger portion of these un-
fortunates. In the meantime how important it would be to
treat all these invalids, inebriates, hysterical and psychas-
thenic patients in large hospitals. Their seizures and at-
tacks of insanity are a permanent danger to society. The
development of their disease, which we can hardly treat at all,
will bring with it some day real insanity which will be at the
charge of the state, when a little rest and intelligent care at
the beginning of their malady vvould not only prevent their
suffering, but would save to society minds that are frequently
very useful. These incipient cases of insanity are the most
interesting and important for scientific psychology. They
are such as will be the most important from all points of view*
for humane care and cure. Your institute ought to be as
acceptable to the philanthropist as to the scientist.

In the next place I would admit with you the importance
which the work has for psychology and for every science in
bringing into clear light the statements incessantly made
about so-called occult phenomena and in extracting from all
these legendary stories the real facts which they conceal.
Paragraph (d) of your charter meets this demand very
clearly :

" To conduct, endow and assist investigation of all alleged
telepathy, alleged apparitions of the dead, mediumistic phe-
nomena, alleged clairvoyance, and all facts claiming to repre-
sent supernormal acquisition of knowledge or the supernor-
mal production of physical effects." And in your letter you
add : " I should see that cases were studied in the interests of
psychology as well as physiology, and the records published
in detail, so that men all over the world could have the benefit
of the results. I should see that committees be appointed in
all the large cities in this country and that their carefully

J

92 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

studied cases should find record and publication. ... In
psychic research I should see that an American society was
organized and wherever properly qualified men could do
work in it, I should see that they did not lack the means to
investigate, but I should devolve upon them the responsibility
of publishing their own work or have the society accept it. I
do not intend that the Institute which I have incorporated
shall accept any public or official responsibilities for work of
that kind. I should be very cautious about even aiding it."
In a word, your prudent and courageous intention altogether
indicates a firm resolution to give the investigation of these
phenomena all the scientific rigor which is at present abso-
lutely necessary.

Your project, my dear Mr. Hyslop, is therefore excellent,
but permit me to say to you that I cannot congratulate you
much for the conception of £he plan. All these things are in
the air, as we say. Many of the best minds in the world have
tried to organize institutions similar to that which you are
projecting. It remains for you to accomplish the most diffi-
•cult and the most original part of the plan. It depends on
you to build up your institute, to transform the project on
paper into an enduring structure. Most similar attempts,
after a partial success, have always been arrested in their
course by the difficulty which meets all others in our day,
namely, the want of money. It will require a very large sum
to accomplish your object, and ambitious plans become
ridiculous when we have only small resources at our disposal.
But after all is this an obstacle for you? Does the lack of
money exist in America when the matter is one of philan-
thropic and scientific labor? Are there not always millions
of dollars for libraries, for universities, and for institutions
that are devoted to some noble work? You say that you
intend to carry on a campaign for securing the necessary
funds, and I do not doubt that you will obtain them very
easily. I shall then be very happy to congratulate you; for
you will have transformed into a beautiful living reality an
institution for which we have hoped so long and you will
have made an important step in the progress of the science

Experiments ivith Mrs. Piper. 93

which is of all the most important and the most rich in
promise, the science of the human mind.

With my sympathy for the American Institute for Scien-
tific Research, please to accept the assurance of my highest
regards.

DR. PIERRE JANET,

Professor of Psychology in the College of France, Paris.

EXPERIMENTS WITH MRS. PIPER SINCE DR.
RICHARD HODGSON'S DEATH.

By James Hervey Hyslop.

In accordance with a previous promise I summarize here
some results of experiments since the death of Dr. Richard
Hodgson. They of course implicate Mrs. Piper, but I do
not mean to confine the phenomena to what has occurred
through her. The reason for this is apparent. The scien-
tific sceptic would not easily be convinced by any alleged
messages from Dr. Hodgson through that source. He
wishes to be assured that Mrs. Piper had no means of know-
ing the facts which illustrate the personal identity of real or
alleged communicators before accepting even telepathy as
an explanation. I must therefore respect this attitude in
quoting any facts which show intelligence of a kind not refer-
able to guessing or chance coincidence. It is not that any
suspicion of Mrs. Piper's honesty is to be entertained at this
late day, as the past elimination of even the possibility of
fraud as well as the assurance that she has not been disposed
to commit it are sufficient to justify ignoring it. But our
troubles have not been wholly removed when we have merely
eliminated the right to accuse her of fraud. A far more com-
plicated objection arises and this is the unconscious repro-
duction of knowledge acquired in a perfectly legitimate way.
Dr. Hodgson had been so long associated with Mrs. Piper
that we cannot know, without having his own ante-mortem
statement, what he may casually have told her about himself
and his life. It is easy to exclude previous knowledge of
total strangers, but a man who had worked for eighteen

94 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

years in experiment with Mrs. Piper is exposed to the sus-
picion that he may have told many things to her in a casual
manner which may turn up in unconscious simulation of his
personality. I do not here concern myself with that hypoth-
esis of many unscientific people who think that Mrs. Piper's
mind has drawn telepathically into it the personality and
memories of Dr. Hodgson previous to his death and can at
pleasure afterwards reproduce them and palm them off as
spirits. Any one who can believe such a thing without an
iota of evidence for it can believe anything. I shall not treat
seriously such an hypotl;^esis until it condescends to produce
at least some evidence for itself commensurate with the mag-
nitude of its claims. I am not attracted by miracles as long
as a perfectly simple theory will explain the facts, and hence
I should be much more impressed by either fraud or second-
ary personality than by any such credulous acceptance of the
supernatural, for supernatural of a most astonishing kind it
would be. Under the known circumstances it is far easier
to suppose that Mrs. Piper might have casually acquired
information from her conversations with Dr. Hodgson and
that the trance state produces it in spiritistic forms. That
is the real difficulty which the scientific man has to face.

For this reason I shall have to exercise great caution in
selecting the facts which are probably free from this sus-
picion. In doing so I shall assume that the reader knows
what has been done to protect Mrs. Piper's seances from the
accusation of conscious fraud on her part. All this will be
taken for granted in the present narrative, and such facts
selected i±s Lire most likely representative of supernormal in-
formation. In the instances implicating other psychics be-
sides Mrs, Piper we shall have facts which may help to pro-
tect those coming from her. Upon these special stress may
be laid, but some of those " communicated " through Mrs.
Piper are so forceful in illustration of personal identity and
so flifficult to have been in any way ascertained by Mrs.
Pipcr» when we know how cautious and reticent Dr. Hodgson
dually was about his aflfairs to her, that they will serve to

y a natural curiosity of the public which demands such
rauoications, if the theory which Dr. Hodgson held be-

Experiments with Mrs. Piper, 95

fore his death is to be considered as true. I believe that this
interest has its rights and that an organization like the So-
ciety for Psychical Research, receiving the funds of its mem-
bers, owes something to them in return, and while it must
maintain a certain reserve in the publication of its facts it is
easy to postpone this duty beyond all rational limits.

It would be much better for the scientific man if I could
publish the detailed record of the experiments, but this is
impossible in the Journal, and as this is not intended to rep-
resent the organ for proving any doctrine scientifically we
may well abbreviate results to merely illustrate the type of
facts which we have in our possession.

I repeat that the reader must assume that I have allowed,
for the usual and simple objections to the phenomena which
I mean here to summarize. I should admit frankly that, if
I were dealing with ordinary professional mediums the facts
which I expect to narrate would have no evidential or scien-
tific importance. It is because they follow a long history of
accredited facts that they derive at least a suggestive value.
The reader may entertain the account as one of hypothetical
importance and await the investigation of cases where the
same reservations will not have to be maintained.

Again before starting on the facts which are to serve as
evidence of something supernormal in the communications
purporting to come from Dr. Hodgson, I must remind the
reader that we can give only the most trivial incidents. We
are not engaged in the recording and parading about great
revelations. This must not be expected. We are employed
in a scientific problem which is one of evidence and only the
most trivial circumstances will serve as proof of the hypothe-
sis which seems to be illustrated in the phenomena of Mrs.
Piper. If we are to believe in the spiritistic theory to ac-
count for her case, or to explain any other phenomena sup-
posed to be produced by the discarnate, we cannot forget that
the primary problem is the proof of personal identity. If a
spirit claims to communicate or to produce phenomena not
easily explicable by ordinary methods it must prove its iden-
tity and must communicate little trivial incidents in its past
earthly life which cannot be guessed and which are not com-

96 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

mon to the lives of other people. In other words we must
have supernormal information and such a quantity as well as
quality of it as will make the spiritistic theory more probable
than any other. Ethical or other revelations are worthless
for this problem and have to be discarded, whatever other
interest psychological or philosophical they may have.
Hence readers must not be disappointed if we insist on con-
centrating their attention upon the incidents that prove per-
sonal identity and the supernormal character of the informa-
tion conveyed through Mrs. Piper. When we have reason
to accept the supernormal and to believe that its selective
reference to the personality of deceased persons make sur-
vival after death probable, we may take up the other prob-
lems, but we cannot do more than one thing at a time.

One of the early incidents in the communications through
Mrs. Piper purporting to come from Dr. Hodgson implicates
another psychic to a slight extent. Dr. Hodgson and I had
made an experiment with a certain young lady, who had
mediumistic powers and who was not a professional psychic,
nearly a year before his death. A short time after his decease
a friend was having a sitting with Mrs. Piper and in the
course of the communications — to be called this on any
theory of them — the friend asked if he would communicate
with her through any other " light," the term used by the
trance personalities to denote a medium. The reply sub-
stantially was : " No, I will not, except through the young
light. She is all right." Later in the sitting one of the
trance personalities or controls, referring to this told the
sitter that I (Hyslop) understood to whom this referred,
giving my name. Dr. Hodgson added to his statement that,
as soon as he recovered from the shock of death he had ex-
amined the case and found it all right.

Now Dr. Hodgson and I, with the parents and one or two
relatives, were all that knew anything about this case. The
sitter and others associated with the experiment in Boston
did not know the meaning of the incident and reference.
When I was informed of it, the matter was made perfectly
clear. It is true that Dr. Hodgson, while living and after
our experiment with the young lady, had mentioned the case

Experiments unth Mrs, Piper, 97

without names to the trance personalities so that at least
Mrs. Piper's subliminal can be supposed to have been aware
of the facts sufficiently to deprive the incident of the evi-
dential value which we would like it to have. But the most
striking incident is one that involves a cross reference with
this young lady. The father carefully kept the knowledge
of Dr. Hodgson's death from his daughter and very soon
after his death and about the time of the incident just men-
tioned wrote me that they had a sitting with the daughter
and that the control had said he had seen Dr. Hodgson.
This coincides with his statement through Mrs. Piper that he
had examined the case and found it all right.

One incident of great importance occurred in my first
sitting after Dr. Hodgson's death. After he had referred to
some discussions which he and I had over my Report on the
Piper case in the spring of 1900 and had made some reference
to his posthumous letter, he suddenly broke out with the
statement : " Remember that I told Myers we would talk
nigger talk." I saw at a glance, owing to my familiarity
with phenomena of this kind, that something was wrong and
I said, speaking to Mrs. Piper's hand, as we always do:
" No, you must have told that to some one else." The reply
from Hodgson was: "Ah, yes, James. I remember it was
Will James. He will understand. Do you remember the
difficulties we had in regard to our hypothesis on the spirit-
istic theory?" I knew nothing of this and wrote to Prof.
James, who was in California at the time, to ascertain
whether any such remark had ever been made to him by Dr.
Hodgson. The statement was pertinent, as I knew that Dr.
Hodgson and I had talked with Prof. James on the mental
conditions of communicators, but I did not know whether
any such definite incident had occurred between them. Prof.
James replied that he did not recall any incident of the kind.
When he returned to Cambridge late in the spring the inci-
dent was told him again by his son and Prof. James again
denied all recollection of the matter. At lunch with Mr.
Piddington the same day he was telling his guest what his
opinion was of the trance personalities in the Piper case.
Prof. James did not believe them to be spirits, but secondary

98 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

personalities of Mrs. Piper, suggested by her knowledge of
the same personalities in the case of Stainton Moses and the
development of Dr. Hodgson's influence during his experi-
ments. In the process of thus explaining his opinion he
said to Mr. Piddington that he had several times told Dr.
Hodgson that, if he would only use a little tact, he could con-
vert their deific verbiage into nigger minstrel talk, and then
he suddenly recalled what had been said in the communica-
tions and wrote me the facts.

The reader will remark the important fact that it was not
Dr. Hodgson that had made the statement to Prof. James
and that the subject was not the difficulty of communicating,
but the nature of the trance personalities, and that it was
Prof. James who had made a reference to " nigger talk."
Just enough is given to recall the identity of the persons and
relations between them, while the rest of the incident shows
mental confusion between the incident which Prof. James re-
.called and the subjects of discussion which had taken place
between them regarding the mental condition of communi-
cators which Dr. Hodgson and I had tried to make clear to
our common friend. George Pelham's statement that we
have to be in a dreamlike state on the other side in order to
communicate is distinctly suggested by this incident as it is
so like a delirium that it appears to be wholly unlike either
telepathic or other phenomena, while there is little excuse
from the ordinary explanations for the form which the com-
munication takes.

Another incident of some interest is the following. We
had been working together in behalf of the plan which we
are now putting into execution since his death, namely, the
formation of an independent American Society. We had
met the second summer before at Putnam's Camp in the
Adirondacks to talk it over and did so, agreeing there upon
the main outlines of the scheme. It was our intention to
talk the matter over again last summer (1905) at the same
place, more especially with reference to points not touched
on in our first interview which was occupied with the main
outlines. But he was not at the camp when I called and I
missed him. He then wrote me that he would either return

Experiments with Mrs. Piper. 99

to Boston by way of New York or make a special trip to
New York after his return to settle matters. He was pre-
vented doing this as soon as he had expected and at last de-
cided that he would come after the holidays. Less than two
weeks before this he was in his grave. Hence the reader
will appreciate the following communications.

After alluding to the pleasure of seeing the new world
beyond death, a circumstance wholly worthless for any
rational purposes in this discussion, he changed the subject.
I quote the record, putting what I said in parentheses and
what was written automatically by Mrs. Piper without en-
closure of any kind.

" I will now refer to the meeting I proposed having before
I came over.

(When was the meeting to be?)

" I suggested having a meeting in New York, at the

(Yes, that is right.)

" No one could know about these plans better than your-
self.

(That is right.)

" Do you remember my desire to publish my report next
season. Yes, extracts.

(About whom were the extracts?)

" I wished to publish extracts about our telepathic ex-
periments.

(All right. That was not what I was thinking about.
But go ahead.)

" I also wished to publish extracts about the spirit side of
test experiments and my theory in answer to some criticism
I recall from Mrs. Sidgwick."

Now it was a part of Dr. Hodgson's plan to have his reply
to Mrs. Sidgwick's strictures on his report in 1899 ready for
the first publication of the new movement. We had agreed
upon this. We may suppose that Mrs. Piper knew of his
desire to reply to Mrs. Sidgwick, but hardly of his plan to
meet me and talk over the matter in New York which had
been quietly arranged. The allusion to "telepathic experi-
ments " is intelligible only in the light of the fact that Mrs.
Sidgwick in her criticism admitted the probability that in Dr.

ic» Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

Hodgson's Report he had a record of frequent telepathic or
other form of communication from the dead, though through
the subliminal mental action of Mrs. Piper. But Mrs. Sidg-
wick. could not accept what Dr.. Hodgson had called the
" possession " theory of the process. His probable intention
in his reply to her was to quote the record of telepathic ex-
periments in the Society's Proceedings to show that the
analogies between them and the Piper phenomena could not
be sustained. However that may be it is a relevant point in
the problem, and his special conversation with me turned
upon the selection of extracts from the records to show that
his theory of the matter was defensible. He had no occasion
to reply to her attitude of the spirit hypothesis, as she had
tacitly conceded this and only disputed his view of the pro-
cess. He and I had frequently talked over his reply and I
had called his attention to an important point he could make
in it from the failure of one of the Piper Reports to quote the
record in full, actually leaving out a sentence which was the
clue to the whole difficulty in the communication.

On the oc?casion when we visited the " young light " we
also had some sittings with a case of alleged independent
voices. I had reached the city a few days previous to Dr.
Hodgson and in order to test the genuineness of the claims,
in accordance with a request of my host, I used a liquid to put
in the psychic's mouth, as the experiments had to be con-
ducted in pitch darkness. In the communications through
Mrs. Piper, Dr. Hodgson interrupted some allusions to the
eflfect of death upon the memory and continued.

" I shall never forget our experiments with a so-called
light when you took a bottle of red liquid.

(Very good. You know what a noise that man has
made.)

" I do. I know all about it.

(I have had some controversy with a friend of his.)

"Recently?

(Yes, recently. Now can you answer a question? Tell
me who it was or all you can recall about it.)

" Yes, which ? I remember our meeting there. I can re-

Experiments with Mrs, Piper. loi

member the liquid experiment which was capital. I also
recall an experiment when you tied the handkerchief.

(I do not recall it at this moment.)

" What's the matter with you ?

(I have tied a handkerchief so often.)

" Remember the voice experiment ?

(Yes, I remember that well. That was when the liquid
was used.)

" I am referring to it now. I know it perfectly well, but
no one else does.

(Yes, that's right.)

" I remember how she-tried to fool us.

(Yes, it was my first trial at that.)

" I remember it well. Remember one thing and keep
this on your mind. I shall avoid referring to things of which
you are thinking at the time as much as possible and refer to
my own memories. I have seen too much not to understand
my business. I remember what our conversation was. She
was an arrant humbug.

(Yes I remember well.)

" I wish to recall an incident. Do you remember writing
me from the west about an experiment you tried to make
while there ?

(Yes, go on please.)

" It was on the whole good.

(Yes, I think it was on the whole good.)

"After there is some definite arrangement made here
about some one to fill my place, I hope you will take this up
again when I shall help you."

The liquid that I used in the experiment was not red but
purple. A part of the controversy that arose regarding the
case occurred before Dr. Hodgson's death, but not the part
that I had in mind. There was no handkerchief tied on the
occasion, but on the train coming home Dr. Hodgson told
me of a most interesting experiment with himself in which
the handkerchief had been used to bandage his own eyes and
he showed me how almost impossible it is to wholly exclude
vision on the part of a shrewd person by bandaging the eyes.
This, of course, is not indicated in the statements of the com-

I02 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

municator, but it is near enough to remind me of what he had
said and as any allusion to a handkerchief in this connection
is pertinent one must imagine that the incident which I have
mentioned was actually intended and that either his own
amnesic condition of the misapprehension of the trance per-
sonality in control is responsible for the mistake.

The opinion expressed of the medium on the occasion is
the opinion that he held about the case .when living and so
is a point in identity though it cannot be used to reflect on
her character in any respect, as one may hold that the evi-
dence for fraud was not satisfactory. But Dr. Hodgson was
very fully convinced that there was no reason to believe it
genuine.

It is interesting to remark the allusion to not telling me
what I was thinking of at the time. I doubt if any other
communicator than Dr. Hodgson would think of this point.
He was so familiar with the objection to the spiritistic hy-
pothesis from telepathy that he was always on the lookout
for the facts that told against this objection and here it turns
up as a habit of thought which few would manifest.

The last incident is quite as important as any of the
others. Nearly two years before I had had an experiment
with a psychic out west, a non-professional case — I would
not quote a professional type — and I not only obtained some
important names, but I received the Christian name of
George Pelham in response to the request that my father
bring the man there who had helped him communicate in the
Piper case, and this was not known by the woman. After-
ward George Pelham stated through Mrs. Piper that he had
gotten his Christian name through in this case. This is the
reason that Dr. Hodgson thought it a good one on the whole.

The communications quoted were followed by an allusion
to the newspaper stories about his " returning." No men-
tion was made of the papers, but only of the stories to that
effect. I then asked him if he had been anywhere and he
replied that he had tried though not very successfully and
then said he had tried with the " young girl." The perti-
nence of this will be apparent to the reader after noting the
incident narrated earlier in this paper. I then asked if he

Experiments with Mrs, Piper. 103

had tried at the case in which I had been interested so long.
I referred to the Smead case not yet published. The reply
was as follows :

" I will tell a message I tried to give. I said I had found
things better than I thought I had. I also spoke of your
father. Do you remember this. I am Hodgson. I have
found things better than I hoped." He then made an allu-
sion to my hypnotic experiment with a student, but as this
had been published in my Report on the Piper case the men-
tion of it has no value.

There was a number of allusions to Dr. Hodgson in the
automatic writing of Mrs. Smead before she knew of his
death which had been carefully concealed from her by Mr.
Smead, and one or two apparitions of him associated with a
frequent apparition of myself. At one sitting the name of
my father was associated with that of Dr. Hodgson, but
there was no statement that he had found things better than
he had hoped. There were many pertinent statements
which have no place in this account further than to mention
the fact, and later the very language here stated as having
been given through this case was found in my record of it,
save the reference to the way in which he found things.

I come now to a set of incidents which are perhaps as im-
portant as any one could wish. I had an arrangement for
three sittings beginning March 19th (1906). Previous to
this I arranged to have a sitting with a lady whom I knew
well in New York City. She was not a professional psychic,
but a lady occupying an important position in one of the large
corporations in this city. This sitting was on the night of
March i6th, Friday. At this sitting Dr. Hodgson purported
to be present. His name was written and some pertinent
things said with reference to myself, though they were not 'n
any respect evidential. Nor could I attach evidential valdi
to the giving of his name as the lady knew well that he had
died. I put away my record of the facts and said nothing
about the result to any one. I went on to Boston to have
my sittings with Mrs. Piper.

Soon after the beginning of the sitting Rector, the trance
personality usually controlling, wrote that he seen me " at

I04 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

another light," that he had brought Hodgson there, but that
they could not make themselves clear, and asked me if I had
understood them. I asked when it was and received the
reply that it was two days before Sabbath. The reader will
see that this coincides with the time of the sitting in New
York. Some statements were then made by Rector about
the difficulty of communicating there, owing to the " inter-
vention of the mind of the light," a fact coinciding with my
knowledge of the case, and stated that they had tried to send
through a certain word, which in fact I did not get.

When Dr. Hodgson came a few minutes afterward to
communicate he at once asked me, after the usual form of his
greeting, if I had received his message, and on my reply that
I was not certain he asked me to try the lady some day again.
As soon as the sitting was over I wrote to the lady without
saying a word of what had happened and arranged for an-
other sitting with her for Saturday evening the 24th.

At this sitting one of the trance personalities of the Piper
case, one who does not often apear there, appeared at this
sitting with Miss X. as I shall call her and wrote his name,
if that form of expression be allowed. Miss X. had heard of
this personality, but knew that Rector was the usual amanu-
ensis in the Piper case. Immediately following the trance
personality whose name was writtenDr. Hodgson purported
to communicate and used almost the identical phrases with
which he begins his communications in the Piper case — in
fact, several words were identical, and they are not the usual
introduction of other communicators. After receiving this
message I wrote to Mr. Henry James, Jr., without saying
what I had gotten and asked him to interrogate Dr. Hodgson
when he got a sitting to know if he had recently been com-
municating with me and if he answered in the affirmative, to
ask Dr. Hodgson what he had told me. About three weeks
after Mr. James had his sitting and carried out my request.
Dr. Hodgson replied that he had been trying to communicate
with me several Sabbaths previously and stated with some
approximation to it the message which I had received on the
evening of the 24th.

Experiments with Mrs, Piper. 105

The reader will perceive that these incidents involve cross
references with another psychic than Mrs. Piper, and though
I am familiar with the methods by which professional me-
diums communicate with each other about certain persons
who can be made victims of their craft it must be remem-
bered that we are not dealing with a professional medium in
Miss X. and that we can not call Mrs. Piper this in the ordi-
nary use of the term. I can vouch for the trustworthiness of
Miss X. and think that the ordinary explanation of the coin-
cidences will not apply in this instance.

The next day after the sitting just mentioned when Dr.
Hodgson came to communicate he asked me if I remembered
anything about the cheese we had at a lunch in his room.
At first I thought of an incident not connected with a lunch,
but with an attempt at intercommunication between two
mediums in which a reference to cheese coming from Dr.
Hodgson was made, but as soon as the mention of a lunch
was made which had no relevance to what I was thinking of,
I recalled the interesting circumstance that once, and only
once, I had had a midnight lunch with Dr. Hodgson at the
Tavern Club when he made a Welsh rarebit and we had a
delightful time.

Another incident is still more important as representing
a fact which I did not know and which was relevant to a
mutual friend who was named and who knew the fact. At
this same sitting Dr. Hodgson sent his love to Prof. New-
bold, of the University of Pennsylvania, and told me to ask
him if he remembered being with him near the ocean on the
beach. I inquired of Prof. Newbold if this had any perti-
nence to him and he replied that the last time he saw Dr.
Hodgson was in the previous July at the ocean beach.

At the next sitting I had the " young light " present for
certain experimental purposes. After the communications
relevant to her and after she had left the room Dr. Hodgson
asked me if I remembered the meeting we had had with her
and what he had said about her hysteria, saying that he ex-
plained it as a partial case of hysteria. The facts were that,
after our meeting with the young lady and while we were
walking to a friend's for dinner. Dr. Hodgson remarked to

io6 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

me that he thought there was some hysteria in the case and
that she was a very clever girl, the last remark being repeated
here on this occsaion through Mrs. Piper.

At a sitting on April 25th after an allusion to telepathy
in which he said there was none of this in the process except
in what came from his mind to me through Mrs. Piper, Dr.
Hodgson too-, ap another important message whose truth
and importance I learned accidentally some time afterward.
He said, in the automatic writing of Mrs. Piper:

" Do you remember a man we heard of in — No, in Wash-
ington, and what I said about trying to see him ?

(What man was that?)
" A light.

(A real light?)

" Yes, I heard of him just before I came over. Perhaps
I did not write you about this."

Now Dr. Hodgson had not written me about any such dis-
covery and the statements had no meaning to me. In June
I had some business in Washington and on the 13th I acci-
dentally met a gentleman in charge of a department in one
of the largest business houses there and in the course of our
conversation he casually mentioned that he had written to
Dr. Hodgson a short time before his death about a man there
who showed signs of mediumistic powers. It happened that
I knew the man and had received from him some years previ-
ously an interesting experience. I had not heard from him
for several years. He is employed in a very important office.
In my conversation with the first mentioned gentleman I
learned that recently this other man referred to had clearly
shown indications of mediumistic powers. Here then was
the possible explanation of the allusion at this sitting on
April 25th. I had known absolutely nothing of the facts
until thus mentioned at the sitting and afterward verified in
the way described.

I am not going to enter into any elaborate theoretical ex-

-©lanation of these incidents. As I have already said, the

lentific man will attach less value to what purports to come

>m Dr. Hodgson through Mrs. Piper than if it came from

me one else. Besides I am not anxious to insist upon ex-

Experiments with Mrs, Piper. 107

planations at present. The most important point is to have
the facts, and if there were space in this Journal I would be
glad to give the detailed records, since these are the data-
which a really scientific man wishes. But I cannot satisfy
him in this publication. I desire only to excuse the demand
for the investigation of such phenomena. It will be appar-
ent, I think, to every man that these statements through Mrs.
Piper are not due to chance, and that, if we have reason to
believe that Mrs. Piper had not previously acquired by nor-
mal means the information conveyed, we have facts which do
not have an ordinary explanation. What the true explana-
tion is we need not insist upon. Every one knows what
hypothesis I would suggest in the case, but I wish less to
keep in the front any supernormal explanation of the phe-
nomena than I do the facts. It is easier to quarrel with
theories than it is with facts and if we have any reason to
trust the phenomena as supernormal I am quite willing to
leave their ultimate cause to the scientific psychologist. I
should do no more than hold him responsible for the evi-
dence that any other theory than the superficial one actually
applies. But there need be no haste in the adoption of any
special theory. It is the collection of similar phenomena that
is now the most important task before us, and the present
paper is to encourage support for the immense task in-
volved.

io8 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

EDITORIAL.

The article on experiments with Mrs. Piper since the
death of Dr. Richard Hodgson is one of those which we ex-
pect to publish in early numbers of the Journal. The second
article will represent evidential incidents involving " cross
references '* with other cases. The third article will contain
matter bearing on the conditions aflfecting the " communica-
tions."

By request Dr. R. Heber Newton withdraws his resigna-
tion and so remains on the Board of Trustees of the Ameri-
can Institute for Scientific Research. Mr. Charles Griswold
Bourne, owing to inability to accept the responsibility of
serving, has resigned from the same.

Mr. Hereward Carrington, author of " The Physical
Phenomena of Spiritualism," which is now in press, and a
trained prestidigatator, has accepted a place on the Council
of the American Society for Psychical Research.

It was not possible to indicate in the list of members
published last month in all cases the exact status of some of
them. The contributors to the fund for preliminary organ-
ization did not wish to be named, and so they were classified
in a manner to conceal their rank as Founders and Patrons.
It was the same with several others. At present I can only
indicate that Life Fellows, Life Members, and Life Associates
are already numerous enough to make the permanent fund
which cannot be used equal to the sum of $2,000. This is to
be treated as the basis of a permanent endowment fund. If
a sufficient endowment is obtained at an early date the fund
now in hand for preliminary organization will be added to it
and only its income used. This would meet the preferences
of those who made the contribution, though they appreciated
the needs of the work so fully as to permit the use of the
entire amount if the circumstances required it. It is hoped
that the occasion may not arise in which the principal will
have to be spent.

Editorial. 109

It may be important to say to members and readers of the
Journal that it will not be a primary object of this publication
to explain the facts which it reports. We are engaged in the
task of collecting data and it is not in place to offer a theory
for every individual fact, new or old, that we discover. Ex-
planation has its place in dealing with large masses of phe-
nomena. There has been too much speculation in regard to
psychic research theories and too much concession to the
merely popular demand for a theory or an explanation. We
are not yet prepared for any explanation of the supernormal
as a whole. Only in one field of it are we entitled to indulge
explanatory hypotheses. We have still to collect and certify
our facts in large numbers before we can be justified in ad-
vancing large theories regarding them. Our primary prob-
lem, then, is to assure ourselves that the facts alleged are
really what they claim to be. And also it will be important
to watch for those accidents and associations accompanying
them which tend to throw light upon their larger meaning.
But it will not be the first object of this Journal to advance
an explanation every time it publishes a fact or alleged fact.
It is true that psychic research has gone far enough to dis-
cuss hypotheses, and we shall do this under the proper cir-
cumstances. But many facts do not yet lend themselves
either to the confirmation or refutation of these hypotheses,
and we have to await a larger collection of them before as-
signing them an explanation.

1

There is another important matter to emphasize for read-
ers. It is the distinction between the real and the evidential
nature of reported phenomena. One of our most important
tasks is to secure reports which have evidential value, that is,
characteristics which prove something unusual. Many facts
are explicable by a theory which they do not prove. Many
facts also can be conceded to be genuinely supernormal, after
the supernormal has once been proved, but they often carry
no evidence of the character which they may really possess.

It is necessary to remark this distinction because the
policy of the Journal must be critical, and readers must learn
that the pointing out of evidential weaknesses may not

no Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

destroy the genuineness of the facts though it does impair
their evidential force. The reduction of proof is not the de-
struction of faci. It often seems so, because in the first
stages of any new truth it cannot be held until proved. But
once established by rigid scientific methods many facts which
could not pass the ordeal of evidential standards may come
in to find an explanation and acceptance under theories which
they did not prove, and may even in certain accidents afford
valuable light for the general problem. Hence it is hoped
that readers will understand from our policy of critical analy-
sis that we are dealing primarily with an evidential rather
than an explanatory problem and so be patient with what
might otherwise appear to be a destructive purpose.

Readers must not misunderstand the nature of the prob-
lem in the reproduction of results obtained by experiment
with Mrs. Piper since the death of Dr. Hodgson. In the
present stage of investigation we have to assume the possible
or probable truth of Materialism in order to test its validity
by trying the application of it to such facts as are here re-
ported. Those who have other grounds for belief in survival
after death naturally look for some revelation of wonderful
importance. But it must be remembered that we are not at
present concerned with any such view of the issue. It is as
impossible as it is absurd to look at it from this point of view
as long as we are deficient in evidence that there is a spiritual
world of any kind. Our primary business is to see if the
prevailing materialistic view is tenable, and if it is so, it must
be able to explain supernormal knowledge which shows a
direct and selective reference to the personal identity of de-
ceased persons.

It is not our object to get into communication with the
deceased simply for the sake of communication. We assume
that there are no spirits with whom to communicate and that
we must have a certain type of phenomena in order to justify
the belief that spirits exist. Communication with them is an
incident of proof, not a process of acquiring knowledge about
them. If spirits exist and if they can communicate with us
at all they can prove their existence by telling us incidents

Editorial. iii

from memory of their past terrestrial life for the purpose of
proving their identity, and proof of that identity is absolutely
essential to the belief that they exist. Only the most trivial
incidents will ever prove this identity ,as any one will readily
perceive who has thought for a moment upon what he would
have to do when his identity is questioned. Hence as we
are engaged in the preliminary work of scientific inquiry re-
garding this fundamental issue, readers must expect us to
limit our problem and to continue at it until general convic-
tion is established, if that be possible. We shall not allow
ourselves to be diverted away from it by the demands of
those who do not intelligently recognize the issue. Until
scientific scepticism has been satisfied of the supernormal and
of phenomena that suggest evidentially the continuance of
personal consciousness we cannot take up other problems,
however desirable they may seem.

LOCAL SOCIETIES.

. The circular which we published in the January
Journal explaining the nature and object of the American
Institute and its Sections refers to the formation of local so-
cieties for the work of psychic research as a desirable means
of enlarging the interests and usefulness of such investiga-
tions. In thus encouraging such endeavors we do not mean
that it is advisable to have a number of wholly independent
bodies working alone, but groups of members of the central
body organized for more serious interest and assistance in the
general aims of the Institute. A plan may be matured later
for the interchanging of material among the various groups
for the purpose of their meetings. That, however, is a mat-
ter for future consideration. The first object is to encourage
the co-operation of local members in the collection of phe-
nomena of importance in the work of psychical research and
the co-operation of such local groups with the central organ-
ization. The phenomena with which psychic research has to
deal are exceedingly sporadic compared with the phenomena
with which physical science usually has to occupy itself.
They are not individually sufficient generally to prove any

112 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

special explanation of them and have to be collected, as were
incidents about meteors, in order to justify the application of
any large hypothesis and to understand the subsidiary influ-
ences affecting its integrity. Consequently the only safe
procedure in such circumstances will be the united effort of
all that are interested to give supernormal and other experi-
ences that value which only a collective mass of them can
have. In psychic research we cannot well scatter our ener-
gies, at least in the present nature of the inquiry.

It will be desirable to allow each local society all the free-
dom possible. The central body or the American Institute
will not assume responsibility for the direction of their work,
nor will it wish to interfere in any way with their organization
or the appointment of officers. It may be desirable, in some
cases at least, that the important officers should be acceptable
to the central body as a guarantee of the proper co-operation
with them in a common cause and of the acceptability of re-
ports made to the central society. But that may be the most
that the Council of the American Society would wish to ask.
Each independent group should have as much freedom of
action as possible and the main reason for general co-opera-
tion is the necessity of combining the results of investigation
in a way to give them the collective force of which they may
be capable and the largest possible scientific interest and
form. Phenomena of this kind have too long been allowed
to perish or to lose their value simply because they have not
received the imprimatur of scientific bodies. The larger and
wider the co-operation in collecting and certifying the facts
the more important the result and the more effective their
influence in moulding human conviction.

The most important thing which the central body will
expect will be the reporting of all records to it for filing and
publication. As the utmost freedom is conceded to local
groups the central society will have to exercise its own judg-
ment in the manner of dealing with the phenomena so re-
ported and perhaps, in some cases at least, add its own in-
quiries regarding the facts reported. One of the Society's
most important duties will be to deal with its material in the
manner which promises to be most effective in supporting

Editorial. 113

its claims. It cannot always agree to deal with the facts on
their own merits alone, but it must select and combine them
in a way to give them that scientific value which will affect
human conviction most cogently. Some facts may be very
important in themselves and to those who have been con-
vinced of the supernormal, but they may not always have the
characteristics which are calculated to influence others, and
especially those who have not had the opportunity to witness
them or their like, or to know the persons with whom the
phenomena have occurred or by whom collected. Hence the
Council of the central body will have to use discretion in the
classification and publication of matter, choosing time and
matter with reference to the greatest effectiveness which re-
ports may have for influencing scientific interest. Availabil-
ity as well as intrinsic worth will have to be a consideration in
the use of matter, and often this secondary merit may suffice
to give precedence to public consideration where incidents
of greater intrinsic importance may have to be reserved for
later notice. Publication will not be a test or the only test
of scientific merit, but at times merely an evidence of char-
acteristics that are calculated to attract favorable considera-
tion. The whole policy of publication must be directed with
reference to the psychological status of human interest and
prejudice.

The economy and scientific importance of this policy will
hardly be questioned and it will remain only to give it form
and effectiveness. Local bodies can carry on their investiga-
tions and report them to the central body for record and
such use as the general cause necessitates, while they may
also be recipients of what other and similar bodies report.
The work may thus obtain the importance which belongs to
such transactions as those of the Royal Society in England,
while the financial work is assumed by the central organiza-
tion. Endowment funds may thus be concentrated and ad-
ministered in the most economic and efficient manner while
the work itself is widened and deepened.

This policy I think will recommend itself to all who have
psychic research at heart, and it is hoped that this continent
may not see divided counsels in the prosecution of its investi-

114 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

gations. We are engaged, not merely in determining our
own personal convictions, but in the more difficult task of
influencing the convictions of others who may not be so
fortunate as to have close personal contact with important
facts, and hence the largest possible co-operation is necessary.
To make this effective, however, the largest possible freedom
of association and action will be necessary, such as may be
compatible with the interests of the general work and at the
same time such as may impose upon these independent
groups the strictest responsibility for the scientific integrity
and worth of the facts reported. The general Society may
impose the criteria and conditions upon which it will accept
the satisfactory nature of reports, whether for private record
or for public use. With this understanding there need be no
solicitude regarding the utility and wisdom of a very com-
prehensive system of co-operation.

INCIDENTS.

The Society assumes no responsibility for anything published
imder this head and no indorsement is implied, except that it has
been furnished by an apparently trustworthy contributor whose
name is given unless withheld at his own request.

The following experience was written out and sent to me
immediately after its occurrence. Mr. Carrington is a mem-
ber of the Council of the American Society for Psychical Re-
sarch and has been a contributor to the Proceedings of the
English Society. We are not primarily interested in an ex-
planation of the incident, but in the record of it as an actual
experience. It is called a " collective " hallucination because
it is that at least, whatever else it may be. It does not super-
ficially suggest its explanation, but I think it can safely be
accepted as a fact of some interest in coincidences whether
we choose to regard it as a causal or casual one. We might
implicate the phenomena in- telepathy, but this would hardly
be an explanation, and we could not treat it alone as adequate
proof of this.

Incidents. 115

A COLLECTIVE HALLUCINATION.

On the night of July 21, 1906, I had staying with me a friend
whom I shall designate by the initials L. K. (I am not at liberty
to use the full name for publication.) The morning of the 22nd.
being Sunday, we were both sleeping rather late, as we had both
been working hard the previous evening, 'till past one A. M. I
was sound asleep when I was suddenly and thoroughly awakened
by the sound of a coin dropping on 'to a wooden surface — ^it
seemed spinning round and round before finally falling flat down
—as coins frequently do. I had an idea the coin was an Ameri-
can cent and that the surface it was spinning on was solid wood.
As I say, I woke up at once and completely. At the same instant
my friend sat up in bed, and said, " What was that? " and looked
across the room to the very spot where I had located the sound.
L. K. had also been suddenly and completely awakened by the
sound of the falling coin (the vision in this case being that of a
quarter), and the sound designated as that produced by the coin
spinning on a solid wooden surface. The remark that a "vision"
of a spinning coin was seen was volunteered. The first thought
that occurred to both of us, I think, was — "There's some one in
the house !" We both instantly jumped out of bed, and ran into
the other rooms in turn — looking for some one to lay hands on —
but there was no one in the place — nor did a careful search reveal
any coin anywhere on the floor or elsewhere. The floor is bare
boards with rugs. The time was almost exactly 8.30 A., M. The
reasons for not thinking it a real coin are (i) The fact that none
was anywhere discovered, as the result of a search. (2) It would
have been impossible for any to have dropped, because there was
no money lying around loose anywhere — e. g., all slanting up-
wards, and not in a downward angle. (I noticed this in making
the search.) It should be noticed, on the other hand, that (i)
the sound woke us both up, at precisely the same instant. (2)
That, in both cases, the awakening was instantaneous and very
complete. (3) That we both had a dream-like vision of a coin
spinning (though they were of different values). (4) We both
located the sound in the same part of the room--exactly. (5)
That to both of us — the sound was identical, i. e., it sounded to
us both as though spun on wood. (6) It struck us both as a
very extraordinary kind of sound at the time. The fact that we
were both awakened so completely and instantaneously, argues
for its subjectiveness, as it would require much more than a coin
spinning to wake me up normally — I being a very sound sleeper.
This is also true in the case of L. K. It seems to me a clear case
of collective audotory hallucination of a very interesting type,
and throws a light on some sounds heard by some persons coin-

ii6 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

cidentally in haunted houses (See e. g. " The Alleged Haunting
of B — House," p. 92, etc.) The fact is recorded, however, with-
out offering any theory by way of explanation.

HEREWARD CARRINGTON.

July 22, 1906 (9.10 A. M.)

I have read the above account, and hereby certify that it is
precisely correct in so far as my own observation of the occur-
rence goes, and wherein it relates to myself. L. K.

July 22, 1906 (9.15 A. M.)

i

APPARENT PREMONITION.

The following was an experience of a personal acquaint-
ance of myself. The lady is a perfectly reliable and intelli-
gent witness. She has also had many experiences in auto-
matic writing, some of them bearing evidence of being super-
normal and after the type of those exhibited by Mrs. Piper
and similar cases. It seems, when the present premonition

occurred, Miss M not only had no reason to believe that

the event would take place, but in fact rather had reason not
to expect it. Inquiry seems to show that the engagement
did not yet exist.

June 22, 1906.
Dr. James H. Hyslop,

My dear Dr. Hyslop :

In February or March, 1905, I was dressing near the
mirror in the morning and the impression came to me that my
sister Anna would be married in October (1905). I either said
aloud or thought in half utterance: "Well, I would. That's a
good idea."

My sister was not then engaged to the gentleman I had in

mind, Dr. Q , but had been besought by him for years and

refused. My sister could not make up her mind in the matter.
But she and Dr. Q were married in the latter part of Sep-
tember, 1905. M. M.

While we cannot treat such an incident as evidential of
anything supernormal it will interest the student of psychol-
ogy to know that it is but one experience among others of a
different type in the same subject. Miss M. has developed
automatic writing and has shown some evidence of super-
-^mal intelligence in it. Most of it is amenable to the hy-

Book Reviews, 117

pothesis of subliminal or secondary personality, but with
occasional incidents of a supernormal character the occur-
rence of spontaneous incidents of this kind have an interest
in connection with the probable unity of all such phenomena.

BOOK REVIEWS.

The Subconscious. By Joseph Jastrow, Professor of Psychol-
ogy in the University of Wisconsin. Boston and New York:
Houghton, MufHin & Co., 1906. London: Archibald Constable
& Co., Ltd.

Since the time when, as Professor Richet has remarked, it
required a certain courage to pronounce the word " sonambul-
ism," there has indeed been a very considerable advance in psy-
chological inquiry and discovery. A generation ago, Psychology
was the science of the normal, waking alert consciousness ; it was
a kind of sunlit terrace — to use Prof. James' simile — which could
be measured and mapped out with precision. In recent years,
however, there has occurred a remarkable extension of the scope
of psychological investigation, and the ground outside the terrace
has become a scene of busy exploration by many and variously
equipped pioneers. In France — to drop metaphor and to resume
psychological terminology — ^the inquiry into the more obscure
forms of mental functioning has been prosecuted almost entirely
along the lines of hypnotism — and important work has been done
by Liebeault, Binet and Fere, Bernheim, and others of the ^ancy
school. In England there has also been a fair amount of ex-
perimental research bv hypnotic methods — chiefly, as in France,
in connection with Therapeutics. Dr. J. Milne Bramwell has
published what may well be considered the standard work on the
subject.

But the most important part of the investigation in England
has undoubtedly been that which was undertaken by the Society
for Psychical Research, and which is associated pre-eminently
with the name of F. W. H. Myers, who, as Prof. James has said,
made this part of psychology so much his own that the problem
of the exploration of man's outlying mental tracts may conveni-
ently be termed " Myers' problem." It is, however, in some re-
spects, unfortunate that Myers was so greatly preoccupied with
the question of man's survival of bodily death; for his monu-
mental work on Human Personality is to some extent lessened in
the eyes of psychologists by its author's manifest and admitted
desire to find evidence in support of such survival. It is there-
fore not surprising to find that Prof. Jastrow, who now presents
us with the first important work yet published in America on this

ii8 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

aspect of psychological inquiry, has been almost entirely unable
to derive help or benefit from the work of his English predecessor
in this field, though giving due meed of praise to his discerning
labors ; for, to the cautious, conservative psychologist, Myers has
been led by his emotional inclinations to erect a superstructure
of theory which is altogether too stupendous for the fact founda-
tions on which it is based.

Professor Jastrow's book is, as we have just said, the most
important contribution to the literature of what may be called
orthodox transmarg^nal psychology that has yet been published
in America. It is an elaborate and careful survey, more descrip-
tive than explanatory, of many different varieties of subcon-
scious mental functioning, in normal 'and abnormal states. The
ordinary waking consciousness is taken as the normal, and the
abnormal states dealt with are sleep, natural and induced, un-
usual states induced by drugs, states of dissociation of person-
ality and so forth. It is pointed out how, in the normal state,
deliberately initiated actions, such as walking, speaking a lan-
guage, etc., become automatic to such an extent that they can be
carried on while the consciousness is otherwise occupied. We
can discuss questions which require great concentration of at-
tention, without consciously directing the muscles which we are
using in walking or articulating. Next in order come those
sensory and motor lapses of consciousness in which the per-
ception, or the knowledge of our act, does not at the time come
within the area of consciousness ; as when " Miss X " reserved
the date of the Times by visualizing another part of the paper
which she had consciously noted, and as when the clergyman
" sent round the plate " a second time, unconscious of the fact
that the collection had already been taken.

From consideration of many interesting cas^s of this kind,
Professor Jastrow goes on to cases of subconscious functioning
in abnormal states. An interesting illustration of this category
is the case of Professor Hilprecht's dream, in which was solved,
with much subconscious dramatization, a problem concerning a
Babylonian inscription which had baffled the waking conscious-
ness. Here we have a kind of transition stage between normal
and abnormal processes ; for "the purpose of the waking state was
carried over into the dream state," and there fulfilled with the
accompaniment of typically subconscious and fanciful setting.
From such cases as these it is not a long step, via somnambulism
hypnosis to those cases of disintegration of personality or parti-
tioning of consciousness which Professor Jastrow suitably illus-
trates by quoting the now well known case of Mile. " Helene
Smith." In the phenomena observed in connection with Miss
Smith's trances and impressions, which have been carefully

Book RexHews. 119

studied and recorded by Professor Flourney, of Geneva,* there is
an extreme form of subconscious functioning which seems at first
sight so different from the normal personality of the sensitive as
to suggest a foreign intelligence or " spirit control." But on ex-
amination it is evident, as Flourney has shown, that " Leopold "
and his confreres are made of the same stuff as the Assyrian
priest in Professor Hilprecht's dream. They are in a state of
more complete and permanent segregation, but they may safely
be classed under the same heading as fragments of the incarnate
personality. The structure of the Martian language shows that
it is based on French, the only language that is well known to
Miss Smith, and the Sanscrit of the " Hindoo pre-i near nation "
does* not exceed what might have been picked up and forgotten,
besides showing its subconcious origin by its internal contradic-
tions.

Such is Professor Jastrow's work, in so far as it can be repre-
sented by a brief allusion to its principal features of detail. It
will perhaps hot be without interest to view it now in more gen-
eral fashion, and to glance for a moment at its relation to the
theory of the " Subliminal," which was worked out in such detail
by the pertinacious genius of F. W. H. Myers. Professor Jas-
trow's book is, as we have said, descriptive rather than explana-
tory. It aims at " the more precise comprehension of those man-
ifestations of consciousness, and of those varieties of its activities
that take place below the threshold of our fully awakening
minds " (p. 7) ; it is an exposition which " considers respectively
the functioning of subconscious processes in the normal and
abnormal mental life" (p. 168). With much literary charm,
pertinent illustration, and apt analogy, we are led gradually from
the brightly illuminated area where the search light of attention
shows up every mental detail, away through semi-obscure
regions, where we see grotesque yet familiar forms, to the dark-
ness of the outer confines where what is visible seems to suggest
a foreign land. Yet our way has been made step by step, and
with no jumping of unexplored gaps or chasms; we have pro-
ceeded by gradual stages, perceiving analogy and relation be-
tween the more bf zarre fact, as we arrive at it, and the less
strange fact which we have just quitted. Discontinuity is graded
down by suitable illustrations of transition processes, or we see
that the mind is a unity ; that the beads are all strung on the same
thread.

The old psychology restricted itself to the " sunlit terrace " of
waking consciousness, and consequently had to retire in favor of
theology in face of such problems as alleged " possession ; " but

♦**Fnmi India to the Planet Mars, also Nouvellcs observatious sur de
Sonrnambulisme/'

I20 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

modern inquiry, by close interrogation and examination of nature
in the sphere of mind, has established an unbroken connection
between the most orthodox psychological facts and the baroque
" possession phenomena " of a Miss Smith. Science is largely
an affair of the binding together of phenomena by observation of
analogies and resemblances, and the consequent formulation of
laws ; it must advance from the known to the less known, making
good its links as it goes on grappling the bits of the known in
the less known, to the existing sum of known, and thus steadily
accreting and enlarging. Of this process is the realm of psychol-
ogy. The Subconscious furnishes an interesting and inspiring
illustration. Almost the only objection that can be urged against
it, is, that the arbitrariness of selection excludes many phenomena
which might justifiably be expected to appear. The evidence for
the absence of common fraud, and consequently the probability
of interesting forms of mental process, whatever the ultimate
source may be, is admittedly much greater in cases of Mrs. Fiper
and Mrs. Thompson than in that of Miss Smith ; yet the latter is
taken and the former are left.

It is true that Professor Jastrow at the outset announces his
intention of excluding such phenomena as cannot be coupled up
with normal phenomena by more or less close analogy of process ;
and the exclusion is perfectly legitimate, though seeming to carry
with it an implication which is doubtless unintended. If the
Piper and Thompson phenomena are in no case due to " spirit
agency," it is obvious that they fall to an explanation by the
Subconsciousness of the Sensitives ; and they might thus reason-
ably be looked for in a book bearing the title t)f the volume under
discussion. Their exclusion seems to indicate that they are not
looked on as subconscious, and the inference may be drawn that
Professor Jastrow regards them as genuinely spiritistic — an in-
ference which, though logically justified, would be far from repre-
senting truly the Professor's opinions. Some other choice of
title would have obviated the possibility of such a mistaken im-
pression.

Finally, as to the relation of Professor Jastrow's "subcon-
scious " to the " subliminal " of Mr. Myers. It seems to me that
the relation and similarity are closer than the former writer ap-
pears to think, and that he is under some slight misconception on
certain points. Certainly I have never heard of the theory of the
subliminal self being applied as "a plea for the supernatural"
(p. 535 ) ; and I think that those who held it are not very guilty
of " occult " leanings. In fact it may be contended with some
plausibility that the theory of the " subliminal " is the only alter-
native to still greater admissions ; that it is held, not out of love
for the " occult," but as yielding foothold to a conservative in-

Treasurer's Report, 121

vestigation in face of a rising tide of supernormal phenomena
which threatens otherwise to sweep him away into still more
dubious and dangerous regions. I know quite well that many
people, chiefly, if not entirely those who have not investigated,
do in fact see no need for any theory even as far reaching as that
of the " subliminal," and for them the position of Professor Jas-
trow is perfectly sensible and logical. It is a matter of evidence
as to whether certain phenomena do or do not occur ; and until
we are compelled to accept the facts, there is no necessity for ap-
parently too imaginative theories. There is greater danger from
haste than from conservatism, and it is well that the leaders of
thought in these matters should preach caution and care, lest the
uninstructed rush into the excesses of credulity. Recognizing
this, we are sure that Professor Jastrow's able exposition will be
warmly welcomed as a valuable addition to the literature of Psy-
chology, even by those whose experience has driven them to take
up a somewhat more advanced position.

Bradford, England. J. ARTHUR HILL.

AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.
Treasurer's Report.

The following is the Report of the Secretary and Treas-
urer of the Society presented to the Board of Trustees of the
American Institute for Scientific Research as an account of
funds received therefrom for the work of the Society.

Receipts.

Subsidy from the American Institute $1,000.00

Disbursements.

Printing and Stationery $241.85

Office furniture 63.35

Stamps 194.00

Typewriting machine 100.00

Investigation of cases 14855

Assistant's salary 160.00

Miscellaneous 268.25

Total disbursements $1,186.00

JAMES H. HYSLOP,
Secretary and Treasurer.

122 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

ADDITIONAL MEMBERS.

Fellows.

Mr. H. W. Desmond, Cranford, N. J.
Mrs. Henry Draper, 271 Madison Ave., New York.
Prof. J. D. Forrest, 30 Audubon Place, Indianapolis, Ind.
Frederick William Frankland, Foxton, New Zealand.
Mrs. Julia R. Lecocq, 641 Monroe Street, Brooklyn, N. Y.

Members.

Mr. J. W. Bemis, 704 Equitable Building, St. Louis, Mo.

Miss Mary Cassatt, 10 Rue de Marignais, Paris, France.

Mr. George L. Douglass, 184 La Salle St., Chicago, 111.

Mary E. Dowson, Merry Hall, Ashtead, Surrey, England.

Mr. L. O. Erickson, 663 Boulevard Loop, Highland Park, Wee-
hawken, N. J.

Mr. William Esty, 85 Elm Street, Worcester, Mass.

Rev.' W. H. Fishburn, D. D., 519 Linden Street, Camden, N. J.

Mrs. D. U. Fletcher, 240 West Church Street, Jacksonville, Fla.

Mr. Charles T. Ford, Central Valley, N. Y.

Mrs. M. B. Greenwood, Anaconda, Montana.

Miss Ellen S. Groot, Murray Hill Hotel, New York City.

Mr. George T. Hughes, 9 Clarke Ave., Jersey City, N. J.

Miss Margaret Huntington, 35 Remsen Street, Brooklyn, N. Y.

Immanuel Church, Boston, Mass.

Mr. B. L. Johnson, Lacrosse, Wis.

Judge Frank T. Lloyd, Camden, N. J.

Mrs. Alice May, 15 Decatur Street, Brooklyn, N. Y.

Prof. Phillip Van Ness Myers, College Hill, Ohio.

Mrs. Netta H. Perry, 2278 Kenmore Ave., Chicago, 111.

Michael Petrovo-Solovovo, 24 Sergievskaia, St. Petersburg, Rus-
sia.

Mr. C. A. Snow, 1812 Newton Street, Washington, D. C.

Elizabeth H. Swinburne, 115 Pelham Street, Newport, R. I.

August Waerndorfer, 23 Elizabeth Street, Baden, Wien, Austria.

Mr. Henry L. Wallace, P. O. Box 46, Indianapolis, Ind.

George W. Wheatley, care Messrs. Grindley Co., 54 Parliament
Street, Westminster, London, S. W., England.

Laura J. Wilson, Urbana, Ohio.

Additional Members. 123

Associates.

Mr. John Armstrong Chanler, Cobham, Va.

Mr. Horace Atwater, Norfolk, N. Y.

Dr. S. A. Aykroyd, Cor. Princess and Bagot Streets, Kingston,

Ontario, Canada.
Dr. C. B. Bates, 12 Hawthorne Street, Cambridge, Mass.
Mr. E. D. Beckwith, care First National Bank, Utica, N. Y.
Mr. M. Bigley, P. O. Box 280, Joplin, Mo.
Mr. L. W. Billingsley, Billingsley Block, Lincoln, Neb.
Abbey A. Bradley, Hingham, Mass.
Mr. E. T. Brewster, Andover, Mass.

Mrs. William Reynolds Brown, 79 Park Ave., New York City.
Miss Ella Brown, Canaan, Conn.
Dr. A. B. Carnahan, Oldtown, Greenup Co., Ky.
Mr. H. StJ. Card, Augusta, Ga.

Mrs. Lucian Carr, 163 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Mass.
Mr. M. R. Carson, 121 North Main Street. Canandaigua, N. Y.
May Cline, Harmony, N. J.

Mrs. James B. Colt, Geneseo, Livingstone Co., N. Y.
Mrs. Elizabeth Dayton, South Kaukauna, Miss.
Mr. Warren J. Davis, Marinette, Wis.

Rev. H. W. Gelston, 113 Allan Boulevard, Kalamazoo, Mich.
Mrs. Ellen Gibbs, 2426 Virginia Street, Berkley, Cal.
Mrs. I. W. Greenwood, Farmington, Maine.
Mr. Franklin N. Green, Glens Falls, N. Y.
Mrs. Edward F. Jones, Binghamton, N. Y.
Mrs. Sylvester D. Judd, 164 Summer Street, Maiden, Mass.
Mrs. Dauphine Kiefer, (West) Lafayette, Ind.
Mr. W. P. Kirkwood, 1625 Wesley Street, St. Paul, Minn.
Mrs. Emma Klaking, 1137 New Jersey Ave., Washington, D. C.
Mr. John Lindsey, Milton, Mass.
Dr. Anna Lukens, Pacific Grove, Cal.
Mr. John McCracken, 231 Pien Street, Portland, Ore.
Mr. L. P. McGehee, Chapel Hill, N. C.
Prof. J. F. McCurdy, 72 Spadina Road, Toronto, Canada.
Mrs. Helen C. V. Mann, Grove Point, Great Neck, Long Island,

N. Y.
Mr.. A. G. Merwin, 668 Hancock Street, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Mr. Charles L. Newhall, Southbridge, Mass.
Mrs. George Place, 125 East S7th Street, New York City.

124 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

State Library, Lansing, Mich.

Mr. Austin D. Middleton, 127 West 92nd Street, New York City.

Mrs. Henry Phillips, West 4th Street, Ottumwa, Iowa.

Mr. Carl Riedel, 1582 East 14th Street, Flatbush, Brooklyn, N. Y.

Mr. John C. Sheets, Station K, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Mrs. Henry Siegel, 26 East 82nd Street, New York City.

Bishop F. S. Spalding, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Mrs. Olve Cole Smith, 212 East 46th Street, Chicago, 111.

Mrs. W. W. Strong, 268 Park Place, Kenosha, Wis.

Prof. A. W. Van Renterghem, i Van Breestraat, Amsterdam.

Holland.
Prof. H. T. Vulte, Teachers' College, Columbia University, New

York City.
Mrs. Mary Wilkins, 40 Harcourt Street, Dublin, Ireland.

Vol L-No. 3.

Makch, 1907.

JOURNAL

OF THE

American Society for Psycliicai Research

CONTENTS

Oekikal Axtxclbs: paob

Further Experiments relating to Dr.

HodgBoo since his Death - - - - 125
SpiritSUte-Writinff and Billet Tests - 148
Editokial:
ExplaaatioD of Mr. Abbott's Articles - 161
PnbUcation of Proceedinffs - - - 161
"Tbe American InsUtute for Psychical

Rcaeareh'*

The Scientific Asx»ect of Psychic Re-
search 163

162

Ihcxdbmts:
A Correction - « •
A Case of Premonition -
An Unrecorded Case of
Waminr - - . -
A Telepathic Incident

PAOB

- 165

- 165

PremonitoiT

166
173

Book Rbvxbws:
Dreams and thdr Meanings - - . 174

FURTHER EXPERIMENTS RELATING TO DR.
HODGSON SINCE HIS DEATH.

In the previous article I mentioned the most striking inci-
dents affecting the personal identity of Dr. Richard Hodgson
and which were hardly explicable by the most obstinate scep-
tic on any ordinary grounds. There were many incidents
which those who are familiar with the Piper phenomena and
Dr. Hodgson's policy in life could very well believe were
supernormal, but it is hardly advisable to press them into too
confident a service in favor of undoubted supernormal knowl-
edge, especially when we may call into use much more strik-
ing incidents than such as made up the previous paper. The
present article will extend the important incidents so as to
exclude more effectively the appeal to ordinary explanations
of all kinds and to implicate other persons than Mrs. Piper in
the results.

One of the first set of incidents in the previous paper was
one of the type to which special reference will be made in the
present collection. I mean incidents which we call cases of
"cross reference." These are incidents and statements ob-
tained through two or more mediums who do not know the

126 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

facts so obtained. Thus, for example, suppose I obtain a
" message " through the mediumship of A and then have an
experiment with B who does not know that I have had a sit-
ting with A, and suppose I received the same " message "
through B, I am entitled to conjecture the same source for
both " messages." This will be true on any theory of them.
The importance to be attached to such results is this : the
possibility of establishing a certain kind of personal identity
independently of the communication of past memories, which
are the first step in proof of a theory of spiritistic sources.
What we must demand, as already explained, is the obtaining
of incidents which any living and surviving consciousness
would naturally report in proof of personal identity when that
is questioned. When this is once done — and it can be done
only through memory of the person " communicating " — we
may resort to all sorts of watch-words given us by a specific
person and communicated through other mediumistic sources
in proof of identity where we can exclude all other human
knowledge of the facts. It would very naturally require a
larger number of incidents to prove the personal identity of
a deceased person through one source than to prove its
identity in a second case after it has been established in the
first. The reasons for this we need not emphasize, and may
be apparent to all who have paid any attention to the difficul-
ties encountered in the study of an individual case. The
primary reason, however, is that we can most assuredly iso-
late the medium's possible knowledge in such cases and ren-
der it less probable that the explanation is due solely to indi-
vidual idiosyncracies of the person through whom the " mes-
sage " comes in the first place.

It is these circumstances which make " cross reference "
incidents especially cogent and important. I gave but few of
them in the previous paper and propose to give more of them
here, as they have been obtained since the experiments which
were quoted before. I shall also include some incidents,
which are not cases of " cross reference." I shall summarize
those of cross reference first as they are the stronger type.

I first give some incidents which I obtained through aj
psychic who is not in any respect professional. I have al-

Further Experiments Relating to Dr. Hodgson. 127

ready explained the value of such cases. It is that of one
whose name and identity I am required absolutely to conceal,
as the lady has such social standing as would be affected by
the intolerant and uncharitable attitude of the public. I am
sorry, of course, that I am not able to mention names, but I
recognize the duty of secrecy in this case and for more rea-
sons than the one which I have indicated. Primarily I must
say no one is safe from the modern curse of newspaper re-
porters and editors, who have no respect for any of the cour-
tesies and humanities of life. I repeat that this lady is not
only not a professional psychic, but does not privately experi-
ment outside the innermost circle of her intimate relatives
and friends. I shall not give any clue to the part of the coun-
try in which she lives with her husband and children. I shall
call the lady Mrs. Quentin.

I received last spring some samples of her work which
was with the Ouija board and was so pleased with it that I
was permitted to be present at an experiment on the date of
October 4th, 1906. There wer^e five persons present in all;
except myself, none but intimat;je relatives, of the same social
rank as Mrs. Quentin. The manner of " communicating " is
as follows.

Mrs. Quentin holds her finger tips on a piece of glass like
the bottom of a tumbler. There is no special reason why it
should be glass. Under some " influence *' the fingers move
the glass to the letters of the alphabet which are arranged
about a central square. After indicating a letter in the pro-
cess of spelling out " messages " the hand returns to this
central square, and then, often after a pause, goes to another
letter of the word which is in the process of spelling. Usually
a word or sentence is spelled out before a pause takes place.
Various causes of apparent embarrassment occur to deter-
mine a pause, but it is not necessary to remark this fact. The
important circumstance is that the hand moves about over the
Ouija board pointing out letters which spell out intelligent
" messages " purporting to come from deceased persons.
With this conception of what goes on the reader will be pre-
pared to understand the interest that attaches to some of the
incidents of the process duplicated through Mrs. Piper.

128 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

At this experiment the " communicator " purported to be
George Pelham. This is the published name of a friend of
Dr. Hodgson's who succeeded in establishing his personal
identity to Dr. Hodgson through Mrs. Piper and was the
main subject of the Report on that case by Dr. Hodgson in
1898. George Pelham gave the same initials through Mrs.
Quentin that he had given through Mrs. Piper, tho no value
can be attached to that fact since Mrs. Quentin knew it, as she
had read this Report. He had been ** communicator " some
time previous to my experiment. On this occasion of Oc-
tober 4th he gave some evidence of his own identity in mat-
ters pertaining to " communications " at my first sitting with
Mrs. Piper in 1898. Mrs. Quentin had not read my Report
on these sittings and so had no knowledge of the facts. After
some incidents had been given that were not relevant to the
matter of " cross references " associated with Dr. Hodgson
the following colloquy took place in the manner described.
I put in parentheses what was said by myself and the rest is
what was spelled out on the Ouija board.

" (Well, George, have ypu seen any of my friends re-
cently?)

No, only Richard H.
(How is H?)

Progressive as ever.

(Is he clear?)

Not very.

(Do you mean when he communicates or in his normal
state ?)

Oh, all right normally. Only when he comes into that
wretched atmosphere he goes to pieces. Wonder how long
it will take to overcome this.

(Do you see Hodgson often?)

Yes, our lives run in parallels."

On the loth of October I had an experiment with Mrs.
Piper, and of course kept absolutely secret both that I had
had this sitting of October 4th and the contents of it. The
following is what occurred in reference to the sitting of Oc-
tober 4th, as the incidents will suggest. I shall have to quote
the record at considerable length. I adopt the same form as

Further Experiments Relating to Dr. Hodgson. 129

before. The square brackets indicate that the matter en-
closed consists of explanatory notes or comments added after
the experiment or at the time and do not indicate anything
that was said on the occasion. After the preliminaries by the
" control/* who claimed to have the assumed name of Rector,
the following took place on the appearance of what claimed
to be Dr. Hodgson.

" I am Hodgson.

(Good, Hodgson, how are you?)

Capital. How are you, Hyslop, old chap ?

(Fine.)

Good, glad to hear it. Did you receive my last message ?

(When and where?) [I of course had in mind the inci-
dents from which the previous quotation is taken.]

I told George to give it to you.
(Was that recently?)

Yes, very.

(I got something about you from George. May be he
can tell.)

[I was here thinking of George Pelham.]

Oh, yes, well I told him to tell you. I mean George D

[name written in full at the time.]

(No, he did not write to me.)

Too bad. Ask him about it, or better still I will tell you
myself. I said I tried to reach you and another man whom I
thought to be Funk.

(No.)

I heard you say Van.

(I do not recall that word, but I think I know what place
it was.)

You called out Van. I heard it and tried to give a mes-
sage through him.

(I was not experimenting with a man, but you might have
seen a 'light ' in him.) [The man present on the occasion
was in mind.]

Yes, I did, and I thought I could speak but I found it too
difficult. He did not seem to understand.

(DidG. P. try?)

Yes, George did and said I was with him. Get it?

130 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

(I did not get any message of that kind, but he said some
things.)

He said he would help and he did so. You must bear in
mind that I am constantly watching out [for] an opportunity
to speak or get at you. Did I understand the name right ? I
heard him say something about light.

(Yes, that's correct.) [Reference had been made by
G. P. ^t that experiment to the Smead case.]

Do not think I am asleep, Hyslop. Not much. I may not
understand all that goes on, but I hear more than I explain
here.

(Yes, I understand.)

Therefore you must get what I can give here and try to
understand why it seems so fragmentary. I do not feel your
lack of interest, but I do feel great difficulties in expressing
[myself] through lights [mediums].

(Yes, what * light ' was it that George spoke about?) [I
thought of the Smead case, expecting something would be
said about it.]

He spoke about this [Mrs. Piper.] and the woman you ex-
perimented with."

[G. P. did spontaneously speak of the Piper case at that
sitting from which I quoted above, and also made some perti-
nent and true statements about the Smead case agreeing with
what he had said about it through Mrs. Piper some years ago,
the facts not having been published and hence not known by
Mrs. Quentin.]

The thread of the communications was interrupted at this
point by a change of subject not relevant to the " cross refer-
ence " incidents which concern us at present. Some minutes
later the matter was spontaneously resumed as follows.

" Did you hear me say George ?

(When?)

At the lady's.

(No.)

I said it when I heard you say Van.

(Was that the last time I had an exepriment?)

Yes, we do not want to make any mistake or confusion in
this, Hyslop.

Further Experiments Relating to Dr. Hodgson. 131

(Did G. P. communicate with me there?)

He certainly did. Wasn't that FUNK?

(No^ Funk was not there.)

Was it his son ?

(No, it was not his son.)

It resembled him I thought. I may be mistaken as I have
seen him with a light recently.

(Do you know anything that George said to me?)

I cannot repeat his exact words, but the idea was that we
were trying to reach you and communicate there.

(Do you know the method by which the messages came
to us ?)

We saw [Mrs. Piper's hand ceased writing and began

to move about the sheet of paper exactly as did the hand of
Mrs. Quentin when she spelled out the words by the Ouija
board. The most striking feature of this identity was the
tendency of Mrs. Piper's hand to move back to the center of
the sheet as Mrs. Quentin's. always did after indicating a let-
ter.]

(That's right.)

You asked the board questions and they came out in let-
ters.

(That's right.)

I saw the modus operandi well. I was pleased that
George spelled his name. It gave me great delight. I heard
you ask who was with him and he answered R. H.

(I asked him how you were.)

He said first rate or very well. I am not sure of the exact
words. Do you mind telling me just how the words were
understood. Was it very well or all right ?

(The words were ' progressive as ever.')

Oh yes! I do not exactly recall those words, but I heard
your question distinctly, Hyslop. I leave no stone unturned
to reach you and prove my identity. Was it not near water ?

(Yes.)

And in a light room ?

(Yes, that's correct.)

I saw you sitting at a table or near it.

(Yes, right.)

132 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

Another man present and the light [medium] was near
you.

(Yes.)

I saw the surroundings very clearly when George was
speaking. I was taking it all in, so to speak."

At this point the subject was spontaneously dropped and
the communicator did not recur to it again. The reader will
easily observe the features of identity in the two cases. In
the case of Mrs. Quentin, G. P. did mention Mrs. Piper and
made some pointed remarks about Mrs. Smead, " the woman
that I experimented with/' and mentioned Dr. Hodgson.
The description here of the method of communicating
through Mrs. Quentin is perfectly accurate, tho wholly un-
known to Mrs. Piper. Mrs. Quentin was opposite me at the
table on which the Ouija board rested, and at my immediate
right was a gentleman aiding in the reading of the messages.
He had no resemblance to Dr. Funk. Two other men, how-
ever, were present sitting farther off. One of them might be
mistaken by obscure perception for Dr. Funk, as his iron gray
beard and hair might suggest the man named, but only to a
mind which did not have clear perceptions and was prepos-
sessed with the idea of the person he thought he saw.

It will be as apparent to the reader also that there is much
confusion in the communications and that the communicator,
on any theory of the phenomena, cannot make the " mes-
sages " as definite as we desire them. The recognition of
this fact by the communicator himself is an interesting cir-
cumstance, and it is noticeable that he says that he -knows
more than he can explain. Students of this problem and the
fragmentary nature of many messages will discover the truth
of the statement, as it is evident that far more is in the mind
of communicators than is registered through the writing and
communications generally, a fact which would be much more
natural on the spiritistic theory than any other, assuming
that there are both mental and other difficulties on the other
side when communicating. But this aspect of the problem
is not the primary one in this paper.

In connection with the passages which I have just quoted
I saw my chance to test another " cross reference." t had

Further Experiments Relating to Dr. Hodgson, 133

previously made arrangements to have an experiment with
another psychic in Boston, and as soon as I got the chance I
indicated it, and the following is the record. I was at the
sitting with Mrs. Piper.

" (Now, Hodgson, I expect to try another case this after-
noon.)

SMITH. [Pseudonym.]

(Yes, that's right.)

I shall be there, and I will refer to Books and give my
initials R. H. only as a test.

(Good.)

And I will say books."

I was alone at the sitting with Mrs. Piper. She was in a
trance from which she recovers without any memory of what
happens or has been said during it. Three hours afterward
I went to Mrs. Smith, who did not know that I had been ex-
perimenting that day with Mrs. Piper. After some general
" communications " by the control and a reference to some
one who was said to be interested in Dr. Hodgson, came the
following. In this case it was not by automatic writing as
with Mrs. Piper, but by ordinary speech during what is ap-
parently a light trance.

" Beside him is Dr. Hodgson. It is part of a promise to
come to you today as he had just been to say to you he was
trying not to be intense, but he is intense. I said I would
come here. I am. I thought I might be able to tell diflferent
things I already told. Perhaps I can call up some past inter-
views and make things more clear. Several things were scat-
tered around at different places. [I have several purported
communications from him through four other cases.] He
says he is glad you came and to make the trial soon after the
other.

[I put a pair of Dr. Hodgson's gloves which I had with
me in Mrs. Smith's hands.]

You know I don't think he wanted them to help him so
much as he wanted to know that you had them. You have
got something of his. It looks like a book, like a note book,
with a little writing in it. That is only to let you know it."

At this point the subject was spontaneously changed and

134 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

I permitted things to take their own course. A little later
he returned to the matter and the following occurred.

" There is something he said he would do. He said : * I
would say like a word.' I said I would say — I know it's a
word [last evidently the psychic's mind.] Your name isn't
it? [apparently said by psychic to the communicator.] I
said I would say: — Each time the word slips. [Pause.] I

am afraid I can't get it. It sounds Looks as if it had

about seven or eight letters. It is all shaky and wriggly, so
that I can't see it yet.

Can't you write it down for him so I can see? [appar-
ently said to the communicator.] C. [psychic shakes her
head.] [Pause.] [Psychic's fingers then write on the table.]
Would it mean anything like ' Comrade' ? (No.) He goes
away again. (All right. Don't worry.) [Pause.] Let me
take your other hand. [Said to me. I placed my left hand
in the psychic's.] No good. [Pause.] I'm trying to do it.
I know that he has just come from the other place, and kept
his promise to say a word."

The reader will notice that I got the reference to books,
the promise to say a word, and an apparent attempt to give
the other promised message which was not successful. It is
noticeable that the word " initials " has seven letters in it.

The message is not so clear as the most exacting critic
might demand, but we must remember that we are not deal-
ing with well established methods of communication involv-
ing perfect command over the mental and cosmic machinery
for this purpose. The main point is that there is a coinci-
dence of personality and message in the case where it was not
previously known that any such reference to books would be
relevant. For those of us who are familiar with this type of
phenomena it is perfectly intelligible to find a rambling and
incoherent manner in referring to the subject. We assume
as a fundamental part of the hypothesis an abnormal mental
condition of the medium through which the communications
come and also of the agent that is instrumental in sending
them. That, if true, may well account for the confused way
in which the message is obtained and its setting of delirious
and irrelevant matter. The reference to a promise, to its

Further Experiments Relating to Dr. Hodgson, 135

having been made that very day, to my having been at the
other " light," to the correct name of the party, all but this
name being absolutely unknown to the medium, when asso-
ciated with the reference to books, makes a striking coinci-
dence which hardly seems due to chance or guessing.

I should add in this connection another important inci-
dent which will strengthen the coincidence involved in the
facts just told. I had another experiment the same evening
with another young lady who is not a professional and with
whose mother I had been in correspondence for some time.
I had arranged some time before to have a sitting for that
evening. I did not give the slightest hint that I was to be in
Boston for any other business and no one of the family was
informed of my arrival two days previously or of my inten-
tions of having sittings with Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Smith.
When I arranged to go out to the house with the mother I
made it appear that I had arrived from New York only a half
hour before. Hence it was not known to the mother or to
the young lady that I had had any other experiments that
day.

At the experiment with Mrs. Piper I had used a pair of
old gloves which Dr. Hodgson had worn, — the same being
used for purposes which experimenters in this field under-
stand— and I had placed the same articles in the hands of
Mrs. Smith when I got the reference to books. When I had
my experiment with the young lady mentioned later in the
evening of the same day it was some time before I placed the
same gloves in her hands. When I did she paused a few
minutes, made a general remark, and then said : " I get books
in connection with these."

The coincidence again is apparent and whether it is to
have any casual significance will depend upon the judgment
of each reader who is capable of estimating the character of
such phenomena-.

There was another coincidence which involved a " cross
reference." At the experiment with Mrs. Piper that day,
Dr. Hodgson referred to a " stylographic pen" which he said
he wished me to have. The probable object of this refer-
ence was to a circumstance connected with similar experi-

136 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

ments elsewhere, as it seems- to be an important part of these
experiments that we should hav some article of the communi-
cator's to " hold *' him, whatever that means. But this aside,
the fact is that Dr. Hodgson had a special stylographic pen
which was necessary whenever a certain one of the trance
personalities controlled the writing of Mrs. Piper's hand.
He had several fountain pens which he used for his own pur-
poses, but his stylographic pen was necessary when Imper-
sonator, the chief of the trance personalities, influenced the
automatic writing. But whatever his object in alluding to
this pen and saying that he wanted me to have it, at this later
sitting on the same day an allusion was made to '' a pen
which he earned in his pocket " and the statement was made
that " it had a little ring around it." I do not know whether
the stylographic pen had a ring around it or not, as I was not
able to obtain the pen, all of these little trinkets having been
given to his friends as mementos. But there was the coinci-
dence of this apparent reference to the same thing at both
sittings.

Allusion was also made at both sittings to the Institute
and characteristic references with statements about our co-
operation in it which was not known by either medium. One
was to a letter which Dr. Hodgson wrote to me a few weeks
before his death about an intended meeting in New York to
consider the plans of the Institute. Similar allusions were
also made to the organization of an independent Society and
its relations to the English body.

• But a more important instance occurred. If the reader
will turn to the February number of the Journal (p. io6) he
will find there an important allusion to a man in Washington
who was said to be a medium and to a letter which the com-
municator, Dr. Hodgson, said he may not have written to
me about the case. The facts represented by this incident,
the reader will recall, were not known by me and were only
accidentally learned afterward. This allusion was made in
the spring, but it was locked up in my record and the lady
with whom I was now holding a sitting knew nothing of this
Ment. But, after an allusion to a lady who was closely

Further Experiments Relating to Dr. Hodgson. 137

connected with Dr. Hodgson in the experiments with Mrs.
Piper, there apparently came from him the following :

" Have you been to Washington lately ? '*

(Not specially.)

" Is there any psychological work there ? I see people
who are interested and who will help you in your work.
May not be able all at once^ but will do it in time.''

There is no absolute assurance that the incidents are
identical in their import, but they are close enough to sug-
gest their probable meaning. The very mention of Wash-
ington in both sets of experiments and associating it with my
experimental work is at least a suggestion in the same direc-
tion, tho we should desire clearer indications of identity.

While referring to this experiment in which the " cross
references" occur I might allude to other incidents which
apparently represent supernormal knowledge and purporting
to come from Dr. Hodgson. Their value lies in the fact that
they are incidents obtained independently of Mrs. Piper.

There was a fair description given of George Pelham, the
deceased friend of Dr. Hodgson and who had, after his death,
convinced Dr. Hodgson of his survival. It was not eviden-
tial, but certain statements about his being around at experi-
ments was made which is confirmed by evidence of his pres-
ence at various other experiments which I have had and
which are not known to any one but myself.

It may be worth remarking also that an allusion was made
to " a little boy four or five years old " and it was said also :
** He is grown up. He wears a little blouse and little pants
like knickerbockers," followed by a reference to the family
circle. I had a brother who died in 1864 at four and a half
years of age. The clothes that he wore are correctly de-
scribed here and we have always kept a picture of him in this
suit. His name and death are mentioned in my Report
published in 1901, but no allusion was made to his dress
there. It was later, in sittings with Mrs. Piper, that practi-
cally the same reference was made to this dress, and the
records of that allusion have not been published.

Another instance possibly involves a " cross reference "
and certainly suggests supernormal knowledge of an inter-

;:;^ '.-urnal of the Atnerican Society fjr Psyckkai

i^^-rrr^ kzr^^i Mr. Frederic \V. H. Myers purported to

T^-rr-.-LTi w tb me at this same meeting. Having- in nxiod is
,-:=ic^^ r. rr-mnnication with me through another medizDii.
' ..-^. ^ r:^-a± mentioned in the January number of the Jonnul
V V . I i.-*.ed a question when he purported to be prases:
i : > .mrrx neid the same day as the one with Mrs. Piper.
" I . /„ T n:r 1? what occurred with Mrs. Smith :

• — -: - "trrs iVes) You ♦ ♦ [incomplete notes]
'. -f fii -Ti:iies. We are brothers."
— -. rit^-t:. Mr, Myers?)
e. T^.v ncre."

-.--: Have you tried to communicate w^ith me?)

t-- -- .^rt; Anoiher place where there is a yotmgcr

^- . u . r.z.. r..r T'iner, another place in a city. Don't get

- ^-^ -r-' _-. \ *na: we all want is unity of expression

., ... .,^ . ^-^,. -uuiiums ^nr/>\\aycd by their personality,

^, .*- : - : .:■ :::i- wcL ihron^'h two or three, AVc shoold

-,.»-., ••■\. ';.'.v-: ...-:u tlui: :li-oiii:'h one casc~ '

^ ■*- k- • * .: \v*i mnx: tio i: ^c-*e";i' timeN 'vVc don*t

^^ ' , -":-- ."»: *-.:, ::.a: i: r;,r Kc t-'onc \'\ e mcscr iia.Tc

'''v 1.- . '^\. .1, : 'Tv ncTv(M,;,;-.*\ o' the meduin;.. r^e- saxs

1^

^; -r.r.cw ":;-^n ...ir.T^r

*c \ :i< i. u."tir-::* rce

''. . vi rv x\ hn 1' "I

r.i*', V : .'-t<c ! ;.-.,

T' ^---^.'c^tTr TT ~*-i

1 .» :- \\-i r. n,^ ^- • .-.

t. -..-•...< T'nt rt\z-'

. ^.r,^ ;-\"-i{ • '' .. '-. ■-"

' — .. n^r.-t " ;.r urc

' ^ Ki t ' '^- ^ '*^^

> -^•- \ -. M- xctsnzzT'

.* *. !• '^^^ r^ 1 ' '". * '

^ ,.,. <:ar-Tnrfn^

» / I ,^ ' \i ' 1*,^ ■•*'v.

'-»;■- r *-., nf ::n^* -a:

*" ■ ^ t, V. ' ' . »* * '

- '.* ".••"..-;.T'v vnit

■■ * ' -•' " '• a-1 wTi*

.,.*..

«- ' '^■.'.*' TTC

>.!.,, I. .

■ -- . ^ '.• t-,^ n;::

" ' ' >.. ** -

- -^; - ?- ':• roT^—-^^

.1 , . ,' . .,

s ^ •* T'' " ^^ r***-

1.x. -^

•» .-v^ ^ -'TTi;

Further Experiments Relating to Dr, Hodgson, 139

and stated that it was private and advised me against the
project. The facts were known to but three other persons
then living. Dr. Hodgson had not known it when living.
I kept the facts so communicated absolutely secret, not re-
porting them to those who keep the Piper records, but filing
the matter in my own iron box.

A few weeks later my wife, who passed away some years
ago, purported to communicate through Mrs. Smead and
spontaneously alluded to the same project, approving of it.
Mrs. Smead knew nothing of the facts and nothing of allu-
sions to them through Mrs. Piper.

Through another private medium, not a professional in
any respect, in another city, whose psychic powers suddenly
came to her knowledge all unwittingly last spring, my father
purported to communicate, and alluding to the same facts
approved of the project in the identical language which he
used in life regarding such matters. As a test of the case,
and thinking of what Dr. Hodgson had communicated
through Mrs. Piper, I asked him what Dr Hodgson thought
about it. His immediate reply was that he was opposed to
it and that he had frequently spoken to him about it. In giv-
ing what was alleged to be Dr. Hodgson's opinion on the
matter he used an expression which was exactly the senti-
ment that Dr. Hodgson had expressed to me some years be-
fore his death when we were returning on a boat from Nan-
tasket Beach. Presently Dr. Hodgson purported to take the
place of my father as communicator and showed an attitude
of disapproval, but was argued by myself at the time into a
half-hearted acceptance of the facts, as a test of the mental
attitude of communicators. In the process of our communi-
cations he showed exactly the mental attitude which he had
always taken on these matters.

Another instance which is not so complicated and hence
not so strong, is interesting. On November 22nd, 1906, I
had an experiment with Mrs. Quentin again and the first com-
municator purported to be Dr. Hodgson. He did not suc-
ceed in getting anything evidential through. He was fol-
lowed by my father who was quite successful in several inci-
dents, and he by my wife who succeeded in one suggestive

138 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

esting kind. Mr. Frederic W. H. Myers purported to com-
municate with me at this same meeting. Having in mind his
alleged communication with me through another medium,
Mrs. Smead, mentioned in the January number of the Journal
(P- 39)> I asked a question when he' purported to be present
at this sitting held the same day as the one with Mrs. Piper.
The following is what occurred with Mrs. Smith :

" Mr. Myers. (Yes) You * * [incomplete notes]
Myers. He smiles. We are brothers."
(Are you there, Mr. Myers?)

" Yes, right here."

(AH right. Have you tried to communicate with me?)

" Yes, not here. Another place where there is a younger
guide, a man, not Piper, another place in a city. Don't get
name through. What we all want is unity of expression
through different mediums [un] swayed by their personality,
if it helps us to do this well through two or three. We should
do it many times."

(Good, you have done that through one case.)
" Yes I know, but we must do it several times. We don't
have any question but that it can be done. We must have
the key to shut out the personality of the medium. He says
he will do that."

The kind of experiment here alluded to was a favorite one
in the plans of Mr. Myers when living and some experi-
ments were performed by himself and Dr. Hodgson in this
direction, tho the facts were never made public. The char-
acteristic may have been generally known and hence I do not
refer to it as evidential, but only as suggestive of his identity.
The important points, however, are the correct statements
that he had communicated with me elsewhere and neither at
this case nor at Mrs. Piper's. He never communicated with
me at Mrs. Piper's, a fact which was not known by any one
but myself. He did purport to communicate with me
through Mrs. Smead, where the control was a young man.

I come now to a complicated series of " cross references "
of which I cannot give the exact details, as the matter is pri-
vate and personal, tho not so to myself. At the last sitting
with Mrs. Piper, Dr. Hodgson spontaneously alluded to it

Further Experiments Relating to Dr. Hodgson, 139

and stated that it was private and advised me against the
project. The facts were known to but three other persons
then living. Dr. Hodgson had not known it when living.
I kept the facts so communicated absolutely secret, not re-
porting them to those who keep the Piper records, but filing
the matter in my own iron box.

A few weeks later my wife, who passed away some years
ago, purported to communicate through Mrs. Smead and
spontaneously alluded to the same project, approving of it.
Mrs. Smead knew nothing of the facts and nothing of allu-
sions to them through Mrs. Piper.

Through another private medium, not a professional in
any respect, in another city, whose psychic powers suddenly
came to her knowledge all unwittingly last spring, my father
purported to communicate, and alluding to the same facts
approved of the project in the identical language which he
used in life regarding such matters. As a test of the case,
and thinking of what Dr. Hodgson had communicated
through Mrs. Piper, I asked him what Dr Hodgson thought
about it. His immediate reply was that he was opposed to
it and that he had frequently spoken to him about it. In giv-
ing what was alleged to be Dr. Hodgson's opinion on the
matter he used an expression which was exactly the senti-
ment that Dr. Hodgson had expressed to me some years be-
fore his death when we were returning on a boat from Nan-
tasket Beach. Presently Dr. Hodgson purported to take the
place of my father as communicator and showed an attitude
of disapproval, but was argued by myself at the time into a
half-hearted acceptance of the facts, as a test of the mental
attitude of communicators. In the process of our communi-
cations he showed exactly the mental attitude which he had
always taken on these matters.

Another instance which is not so complicated and hence
not so strong, is interesting. On November 22nd, 1906, I
had an experiment with Mrs. Quentin again and the first com-
municator purported to be Dr. Hodgson. He did not suc-
ceed in getting anything evidential through. He was fol-
lowed by my father who was quite successful in several inci-
dents, and he by my wife who succeeded in one suggestive

138 Jour

esting ki:.
municate
alleged c
Mrs. Sni«

(p. 39). '
at this s.

The for

"Mr
Myers.
(Arc

"^•

(A-

guide.
name
throT
if it 1

do i*

tin-
he

ill

fwtkr

^ LLiUs Relating to Dr. Hodgson.

141

and stated that a vi; t-*-^^^ case, and tho the lady was not a
project. The iacj it- — ' idence of Dr. Hodgson's presence.
then living, in. hc-u" - &^^ ^^ attach any special weight to it,
I kept the facu >: r.— -^ .luiky style of writing and the form
porting them to 1L-- icteristic of what was done in the

the matter in ir ■
A few ween-
ago, ptirpone-
spontanecusi} ^
Mrs. Smead k:.-
sions to therr -
Through _•
any respect
came to he-
purported :
approved r.*
used in H^*
and thini—
through ?
about it
it and t! • ' -

. J. ;)orted to communicate. His name

. . . eristic manner, and when I asked how

,.. . * Fine.** This was the word that he

. .n the Piper sittings some months ber

.. could not have any special weight by

ii.iitant of manner and phrase that were

■ i'l have a place in the record of attempts

.1 him. The chief value of this and simi-

light which they throw upon the difiicul-

. lentlal matter in support of the theory

...ciia seem to favor.

jt more weight than it would have by itself

.cader's attention to a circumstance that oc-

.! a short time after my return from this ex-

. west. This experiment was near the end of

• !! October loth, at Mrs. Piper's, Dr. Hodgson,

communicate, and after an allusion to an ex-

l;e summer, out west, said: "I saw you experi-

': another lady. I tried to say Hodgson. Did

It was his full name that I got with the word

• ^ r to my greeting. The lady, of course, knew

v:(l away and that I would be experimenting

ijis allusion to another lady than the one in

•1 the name tends to suggest that the incident

• cross reference." Its value, if it be what it

- in the multiplication of the references that

■rongth to the evidence of the supernormal

.i;nion is obvious when we have excluded fraud

irv i>ersonality.*

•' * hciter and much more complicated instance of "cross refer-

liut as it docs not affect Dr. Hodgson or his personality I

:• atures here. It involves the prediction through two differ-

ncdiums of the death of a specific person indicated with per-

'itionship to me and another person being stated. I did not

I. at the person was dangerously ill at the time. Also, through

142 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

I shall pass now from incidently involving " cross refer-
ence " to those which do not, and confine myself to what
came through Mrs. Piper on October loth. They may be
more specific than the type which I have just illustrated,
and must be adjudged by the reader according to his tastes.

Immediately after the description of the incidents con-
nected with the Ouija board experiment. Dr. Hodgson,
through the automatic writing of Mrs. Piper, said :

"I saw you recently writing up all I have said to yon.

(That's right, Hodgson.)

And it pleased me very much.

(I am going to print it in the Journal.)

Amen, You have my consent. I wish the world to
know that I was not an idiot.

(All right. That's good.)

Do you remember a joke we had about George's putting
his feet on the chair and how absurd we thought it.

(George who?)

Pelham, in his description of his life here.

(No, you must have told that to some one else.)

Oh, perhaps it was Billy. Ask him."

This, as I said, was on October loth. During the summer,
some time in August, I had been writing out the first and the
third papers which are being published in the Journal on Dr.
Hodgson's purported communications. The fact was known
only to myself and one or two other persons. The attitude
of Dr. Hodgson in approval of it was entirely characteristic.
He was anxious, when living, to have his judgment in the
case vindicated, and while he might not have used the exact

both mediums I was told that a certain deceased person was watching over
him and would meet him. i hrough three mediums who did not know of his
death and only a few weeks after it, two of them private cases and the other
a respectable public medium, this person was mentioned with the most of his
name, and the fact that he met the person who, I was told, would meet him as
he crossed the* border.

The value of the incidents depends mainly upon the reliability of the
sources through which they came, and I shall urge that less here than I shall
its evidential value, if the trustworthiness of the facts can be accepted. 1
cannot explain here why they can be trusted, but shall do so when the de-
tailed record is published. But their hypothetical importance can be con-
sidered from the standpoint of "cross reference" while we await th» guar-
antees that normal knowledge of the facts was not possible.

Further Experiments Relating to Dr. Hodgson. 143

language employed in this connection he would have ex-
pressed himself plainly in the matter. The use of " idiot "
is quite characteristic of George Pelham's ways, and he may
have been an intermediary.

The other incident I knew nothing about. But I knew
what " Billy " referred to. This was the name by which he
had always called Prof. Newbold, and so I made inquiry of
him regarding the pertinence of the incident. He replied
that he and Dr. Hodgson had laughed heartily at some state-
ments of George Pelham, when he was trying to communi-
cate after his death, about the way he did when he was com-
municating. He claimed that he was in the medium's head
and his feet on the table while he was trying to communi-
cate through her hand. The description is ludicrous enough,
but the incident, perhaps, is good enough to prove identity,
and the best part of its value is that I did not know the
facts.

Perhaps a more interesting incident is a fragmentary and
confused message whose meaning at the moment I did not
detect, but it became apparent soon afterward. The follow-
ing was communicated in the same manner as previous quo-
tations :

" Do you recall the man I referred to now?

(You did not ) [My sentence not finished as writ-
ing continued.]

The clergyman whom we saw at Pa. San, whose wife was
anxious about his trances.

(No, you did not mention him.)

I did some time ago. Do you remember him ?

(What was his name?)

It was San. . San. . Oh what was it. He was a young
man and had not been married long."

The facts are these : The Rev. Stanley L. Krebs invited
me to take part in some experiments in a certain town in
Pennsylvania (Pa.) in which he was to have present a certain
clergyman, whose name I must not reveal at present, and
who had come thither to test certain incidents that had been
mentioned through him in a previous trance. He was a
young man and had not been long married. His wife was

144 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

opposed to his going into trances. We tried some experi-
ments at table tipping and one with this clergyman's trance.
I reported the facts to Dr. Hodgson and Mr. Krebs had some
correspondence with Dr. Hodgson regarding the case. There
was every reason to believe the phenomena were genuine.
But the man's name has no resemblance to " San," and Dr.
Hodgson was not present with me at the experiments and I
suspect never saw the clergyman. But he knew all about the
case and its phenomena. Apparently " San " is a confused
and fragmentary attempt to give the name " Stanley," a part
of Mr. Krebs' name, this latter part of it having failed to be
recalled by the communicator. It can be safely assumed
that Mrs. Piper never heard of the case, and if she had, the
incidents should never have taken the form which they did.
The confusion and fragmentary character of the allusions
make them interesting and important.

Another brief incident has much interest, as reflecting the
natural action of an independent mind rather than that of a
telepathic agent. It is a request that I remember him to a
friend whom I did not know, and most probably never saw.
He said to me near the close of this same sitting: " Do you
remember a friend of mine, George Goddard, at the camp?
Give him my love and tell him I live to send it."

I have learned from Prof. James that Mr. Goddard had
been a member of Putman's Camp in the Adirondacks where
Dr. Hodgson usually spent a part of his summer vacations.
I called twice on Dr. Hodgson while he was there spending a
couple of hours there with him each time. But I do not
recall meeting Mr. Goddard there, and it is improbable that
Mrs. Piper ever knew anything of the man or his relation to
Dr. Hodgson at this camp. The main point of the incident,
assuming that it is supernormal, is that it is too much like
the action of a real living friend to be attributed to a mechan-
ical agency like telepathy, which, in fact, does not seem to me
to be deserving of serious consideration in such incidents.
A simple and more natural interpretation, if we are going to
be sceptical about the most obvious explanation, is Mrs.
Piper's previous knowledge of the fact, a supposition which

Further Experiments Relating to Dr. Hodgson. 145

it is hardly necessary to make in the light of the proved super-
normal character of most of her work.

The explanation of these facts takes us beyond the case of
Mrs. Piper as every intelligent reader must observe. That
has been the purpose of grouping together the instances of
" cross reference " in this article. Members of the Society
for Psychical Research have constantly reproached us for
having no other oracle than Mrs. Piper and for making our
case depend upon her phenomena alone. That reproach
cannot be cast against the contents of this paper. We have
involved here five other cases of similar phenomena. More-
over it should be noticed in this connection that the reproach
made against the limitation of the case to Mrs. Piper was
based upon an entire misunderstanding of the problem and
of the reason for talking so much about her. It was not the
nature of the phenomena that was the reason for laying
so much weight upon it, but the conditions under which they
were obtained. Genuine phenomena may be plentiful
enough, but scientific credentials may be very scarce. What
the Society has been searching for so strenuously was scientific
proof and this requires such conditions as exclude the possi-
bility of certain well known objections which the sceptic has
the right to have answered, tho he too frequently entertains
them without making himself responsible for the evidence
that they are in fact applicable. But we shall never secure
our case until it is made impossible rationally to suggest the
common objections to the genuineness of mediumistic phe-
nomena.

Now it is the scientific security of the Piper case against
all possible objections of fraud that has occasioned the per-
petual appeal to it as evidence that the ordinary objections
to the nature of^he facts do not apply. Nevertheless it is im-
portant, both for the further exclusion of the right to suspect
fraud and for the complication of the phenomena, that we
should not only secure other and similar cases, but also a
complex system of " cross references," both of which this
paper supplies. ' Whatever explanation be proposed must
reckon with these facts. Besides I have quoted cases of a
private nature only, save one, Mrs. Smith, who was protected

146 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

against suspicion by the small in^terval of time between the
sitting with her and that of Mrs. Piper, as well as the reserva-
tion of facts which I made in the matter and the limitation
to myself of the knowledge which it was necessary for her
to have in order to simulate the supernormal. In all other
cases I was dealing with private psychics, and private also in
the sense that they are not practicing their art even for their
friends in any general way, as well as not receiving any pay
for their experiments. The one case which is not private has
no suspicions raised against her, and even if they were they
could not apply to the experiment from which I quote, for
the reasons mentioned. Consequently we must at least sup-
pose that we are dealing with facts less exposed than is
usually the case to sceptical criticism.

There are just three hypotheses which are capable of dis-
cussion in connection with such facts. They are (i) Fraud;
(2) Telepathy, and (3) Spirits. Secondary personality
would not be presented as an alternative by any one who
knows what that phenomenon is. Secondary personality, in
respect of the contents of its mental action, claims to be lim-
ited to the normal action of the senses, and is distinguished
from fraud in that its whole character is unconscious, while
fraud is properly conscious deception by the normal subject.
If fraud in this case be excluded from view there can be no
doubt that such facts as have been enumerated are super-
normal, whatever the specific explanation. But secondary
personality never assumes the supernormal acquisition of
knowledge. It is limited to what has been .obtained in a
normal manner by the subject. Hence it is excluded from
view by virtue of that fact.

As to fraud, that has been excluded from consideration in
the Piper case for fifteen or twenty years, and only unintelli-
gent men would talk about it any longer. It has come to
pass where any one who insinuates it must be held respon-
sible for the evidence of his hypothesis. As far as possible I
endeavored to conduct the experiments in most cases in a
manner that would require the critic to implicate myself in
any fraud suspected, and in any case of that possibility I am
hardly competent to investigate myself. But some of the

Further Experiments Relating to Dr. Hodgson. 147

facts make it necessary to implicate me in any theory of
fraud. In so far as the mediums are concerned, I think it
cannot even be suspected without evidence, unless the one
case which is professional be conceded to the sceptic. For
that reason I think it can be dismissed from the account,
especially as the one case which certain types of minds would
desire to except does not figure in any incidents where criti-
cism of any kind is possible.

I do not think that telepathy as an explanation will fare
any better. In fact I should be ashamed, as one who has
tried to be scientific, to advance telepathy as an explanation
of any such facts. Any man who knows what he means by
the use of this term would not venture to suppose it an ex-
planation. As I expect to discuss the nature of telepathy in
a later article I shall not give any special reasons for rejecting
it in such facts as have been collected here. I merely say
that really scientific men who know what they are talking
about, would not, in the light of the evidence, have the temer-
ity to propose it as an adequate theory of phenomena involv-
ing such a system of " cross references " illustrative of the
personal identity of deceased persons and nothing else. I do
not think the hypothesis worthy of serious defense. It is an
hypothesis worthy only of intellectual prudes. I should
much prefer fraud as an explanation ; for we have analogies
and experiences enough to make that intelligible, but for
the kind of telepathy necessary to cover such facts we have
no adequate scientific evidence whatever. It cannot be tol-
erated as an hypothesis in such cases until its claims have
been established for such selective work.

As to the third hypothesis, namely, that of spirits, I shall
not undertake any dogmatic defense. It is obvious to me
that it is the most rational hypothesis after eliminating fraud
from such matters, and my own stand in various publications
would indicate what position I would preferably assume.
But it is not my desire in this article to argue for this con-
clusion. My main purpose has been to present the facts
and to leave the reader to form his own conclusion, but to do
this without concealing the preference which every one per-
haps knows I would make. I am quite willing to concede

148 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

to many who have not spent a long time in the investigation
of this complex subject the right still to be sceptical, and
especially to doubt the conclusiveness of the facts making for
the theory which seems to me the most plausible. I can
only say to them that I have not made up my mind upon
these facts alone, but upon the whole mass of published and
unpublished records of psychical research. What I here
publish is but an illustration of some of the most interesting
and perhaps most cogent facts. But I shall not insist that
they should be conclusive for the sceptic. The utmost that
I shall urge upon him is that they make adequate investiga-
tion imperative, and seeing that the phenomena illustrate the
selective reference to the personal identity of deceased per-
sons I think almost any one will admit that, assuming fraud
to have been excluded, they make out a forcible case for the
further investigation of spiritistic theories.

SPIRIT SLATE-WRITING AND BILLET TESTS.*

By David P. Abbott.

FIRST ARTICLE.
I.

Having been requested by Prof. Hyslop to write a paper on
the above subject, I shall give to the readers of this article a
description and explanation of a few of the best slate-writing
feats and billet tests that are being performed by mediums and
conjurers of the present day. I shall make no attempt at explain-
ing a complete list of the many tricks of the kind, for should I do
so it would require a large volume to contain them all.

* The reader will understand that the word " Spirit " used in the title of
this article, merely indicates certain phenomena known under tHat name,- and
that " Spirits " in the common acceptance of the term have nothing whatever
to do with the performances described herein. Also the word " Medium "
used in this article merely indicates the usual person traveling as a " profes-
sional " and performing mysterious feats, claiming to do so with the aid of
spirits of the dead. In reality, his performance is based on deception, and his
eflFects are produced by methods used in conjuring. Such persons call them-
selves ** Mediums " and it is in this sense that the term is used here. I do
not mean by the term any person possessing supernormal powers of any kind

spirit Slate-^IVriting and Billet Tests. 149

There are certain dealers who supply secrets of this kind to
mediums and others desiring them, at what may be considered
by some as a very high price. There are also books on the sub-
ject describing many such feats ; but those which are really the
best have been very generally kept out of the book on the ques-
tion. Some can only be secured from the dealers, while some
have been guarded by certain mediums so closely that I do not
think the dealers have yet obtained the secrets.

The tricks to which I shall devote the most attention are those
used by such mediums, and those supplied by the dealers, they
being those which are, I think, the best and most deceptive of the
kind.

Prof. Hyslop requested especially that I describe tricks where
the performer does not touch the slates, or where he does not
appear to touch them. I will state that there are no slate tricks
where some one does not touch the slates. This would be a
miracle. The readers of this paper must understand that the
most essential part of any trick is the psychological part. This
consists in the operator absolutely controlling the subject's atten-
tion. This is termed, in the parlance of the profession, " misdi-
rection." A thorough master of the art of misdirection has his
subject entirely at his mercy. The subject sees only what the
operator desires him to see, even though much of that which is
hidden is performed before his very eyes.

I do not mean to convey the idea that the operator employs a
power an3rthing like h)rpnotism, but merely that he is an actor ;
that he controls the attention of the subject entirely by skilfully
directing his own eyes, his own gestures, and his own attention,
to the point where he desires the attention of his subject to be
concentrated. Wherever the operator looks and points with one
hand, there will the subject most certainly look if he be inter-
ested. It is possible then for the performer to execute with the
other hand any maneuver he desires, entirely unseen by the sub-
ject; but he must in no way look at such action himself, or he will
be instantly discovered.

A magician once remarked to me, " If I can only get your at-
tention intently, an elephant can pass behind me and you will not
see it." This may have been a little strong, but not so much so
as one who is not himself a performer might suppose. The at-
tention is like the field of vision, — it can only be concentrated on
one thing at a time.

If any one, reporting slate-writing, where he took his own
slates, says that he did not let them go out of his hands, and that
he allowed no one to touch them in any manner, he is surely mis-
taken, if truthful. There has been something which occurred,
and which he does not relate, for the simple fact that it escaped
his attention at the time — something that to him seemed a mere

ISO Journal of the Ainerican Society for Psychical Research.

incident, a little thing, an accident, or that he did not perceive at
all ; but that was really the vital point, as it concealed the trick.
This is the verdict of all the reliable conjurers who have ever in-
vestigated the subject

Conjurers are always looking for things of this kind; and if
they hear of such a trick, immediately manage to see it if pos-
sible. They always see it with different eyes than do other per-
sons. This is simply because they are fitted by education to
detect a trick. A conjurer is a specialist that is fitted to detect
trickery.

We hear many tales of marvelous slate tricks, but can never
find them. It is something like the marvelous tales we hear of
in " Indian Magic." We hear them related second or third hand,
and far from the places where they occurred. When one of our
magicians makes a journey to that country to see these things, he
can not find them. He can only find a number of tricks that are
really inferior to the tricks of our own performers at home.
There is one little difference, however, and that is the setting
given these tricks by the pretensions of the performer. In our
country, the performer, unless he be a professional medium,
claims only that it is trickery; while in that country, as a rule,
the spectators are allowed to believe the performance genuine.
This greatly enhances the effect of any trick.

The slate tricks in which the performer appears not to touch
the slates, are by no means the best or most certain of success;
but a good performer must be able to perform all kinds, and to
adjust himself to the conditions with which he is confronted.

I personally perform most of the tricks I am going to describe,
and I assure the reader that the explanations are given very ac-
curately ; so that the reader can, if he so desire, reproduce the ex-
periments. All the tricks given are thoroughly practicable, and
can be successfully performed with a little practice.

In justice to myself I wish to state that I have always used
these experiments for purposes of entertainment or instruction,
and that I have never imposed on the credulity of any of my spec-
tators. I have never laid any claims to mediumistic powers, but
have always acknowledged that the experiments were pure
trickery.

The reader must remember that when a trick is explained it
immediately becomes commonplace, and that it is only the mys-
tery of good tricks that lends a charm to them. To properly ap-
preciate a good trick, one should by all means see it performed
before reading the explanation, if it be possible to do so. When
the explanation is read without seeing the trick performed, it is
rarely held at its true value in the reader's estimation. I assure
the reader that the tricks which follow appear very mysterious,
and that they are the best of their kind in existence. The reader

spirit Slate-Writing and Billet Tests. 151

has only to give a few of them a careful trial to be convinced of
this statement.

I would advise the reader who desires to thoroughly under-
stand these tricks, to read the explanations carefully, and to form
a good mental picture of all the details of the performance.

II.

I shall first describe a very excellent slate trick which is per-
formed most successfully by a few professional mediums of the
present day. This is usually done with a number (usually eight)
of bound slates, size five by seven, and one large slate, size eight
by eleven inches inside measure. This trick is very easy to per-
fonn and very deceptive. Any reader of this article can perform
it successfully with a very few trials.

I generally have the subject take a seat near a small table, and
I remain standing at his left side while I perform the trick. I
first step to an adjoining room as soon as the spectator is seated
and get the slates. I come forward with the slates arranged as
follows, — in my left hand and partly resting on my wrist and arm
is the large slate with the small ones on top of it.

I present the top small slate to the subject for inspection and
cleaning, if he so desires. When he is through with it, I take it in
my right hand and place it on the table directly in front of hint.
I repeat this with each of the remaining small slates, placing each
one inspected on top of the others, thus forming a stack. I do
not even up the edges of the slates, but leave the stack in a rough
and unsymmetrical form. When the last small slate is in posi-
tion, I bring the large slate in front of the subject, and giving him
a pencil, request him to rvrite on the large slate his name and the date
of his birth. If he desires to examine the large slate before
writing this, I allow him to do so. As soon as he has done the
writing, I place the large slate in his lap and request him to hold
it by the ends. I then take a large rubber band and snap it
around the stack of small slates, after evening up the edges. I
now place this stack of small slates in his lap on the large slate,
and request him to place his hands on it.

After sufficient time has elapsed, I request him to examine the
slates for a message. When he does so he finds a long " spirit "
message written on one of the small slates, completely covering
one side of it. The message is written with a soapstone pencil,
and appears bright, and heavily written. It is addressed to him
by name, and is frequently signed by the name of some departed
friend whom I do not know.

This effect is secured by very simple means. I use nine
small slates instead of eight. I prepare the message in advance
and sign it. The slate containing this message is underneath the
^rge date when I come forward with the slates. As I take my

152 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

position at the left side of the spectator, and tilt the slates slightly
towards him, the message-slate can not be seen. The subject
naturally supposes that all of the small slates are on top of the
large one; and when he has examined all of the small slates in
view, and I have stacked them in front of him, he never dreams
that under the large slate in my left hand is another small slate
which he can not see.

I now bring this large slate into position right over the stack
for an instant, with its front edge tilted downward and resting on
the stack. I allow the small bound slate under the large one
silently to drop upon the stack, and at the same time I take his atten-
tioft by giving him a pencil with my right hand and requesting
him to write on the large slate. I say, " Write your name, etc.,
right there," pointing with my right fingers to the centre of the
large slate. This takes his attention so that he does not notice
the fact that the large slate pauses over the stack of small slates
for a moment. In fact this is done in a natural manner, as if I
were merely holding the large slate in that position to show him
where to write, and he thinks nothing of it.

When the large slate is removed and placed in his lap, he does
not notice that there is now one more slate in the stack, for the
reason that where so many slates are used the addition of an extra
one can not be noticed unless the subject first counts the slates.
Of course counting is never mentioned. The small slate with
the message on it has the message side downwards, so that the
message can not be seen after it is dropped on the stack.

I always keep the slates in my left hand until they are in-
spected and stacked on the table, for the reason that if the slates
be laid on the table the small slate imder the large one will make
its presence known by preventing the large slate from touching:
the table. I allow the slates partly to rest on my arm until the
weight is reduced so I can hold them in the hand, at which time
I hold those that remain in the left hand only. This enables me
to press the concealed slate tightly against the lower side of the
large slate.

As soon as the large slate is placed on the sitter's lap, I op
edge the stack of small slates so as to even them up. I take fror:
the table a large rubber band and snap it around the stack. A?
the stack is on the side edges of the slates when I first up-edge
them, I next bring them upon the end edges, while I put the band
in place. It is now easy to place the stack of slates upon the lai^«
slate message slate dozvn, and to attract no notice to this fact. Th'5
is because the position has been changed a time or so in placing
the band on ; and I then take the stack in my hands by the edges
of the slates, and simply place what was the top side of the stack
in the beginning, at the bottom. This way the spectator neve:
suspects that the stack has been turned over ; and when he does

spirit Slate^Writing and Billet Tests. 153

find his message, he finds it on the bottom slate, and on its upper
surface, which greatly heightens the effect. His memory is es-
pecially good about cleaning the bottom slate, and also about the
upper surfaces of the slates being free from writing ; as he could
see them all on the upper surface as the stack was formed. The
message thus appears as if it had come by magic, or some super-
human power.

The secret of success with this trick is perfect self-assurance.
The operator must not act timidly, but must perform the experi-
ment himself and direct the sitter what to do. He thus makes his
own conditions and must never act in any backward or embar-
rassed way, but must be perfectly at home in the performance of
the experiment.

There are a number of tricks performed where a stack of slates
is used and an extra slate adroitly added to it, or else one of them
exchanged for another.

There is an improved form of this trick which I use. It is very
superior and I will give it a little further on. It requires a little
more skill at one point, and also requires a knowledge of certain
moves which I explain in the trick described in Part V of this
article. In Part VI. I will again refer to this trick, and give the
improved method ; as the reader will then have mastered the
moves required for its production. The means by which I obtain
the name of the deceased friend of the spectator may be one of
several, some of which I will describe in this article.

III.

I shall now describe a method I use for secretly reading a
billet, when using a variation of this slate trick. This trick con-
sists in secretly obtaining possession of a billet on which is writ-
ten a question, addressed to some spirit, and signed by the sitter.
The subject writes the question out of view of the operator, and
folds it. The operator now places it in an envelope right before
the eyes of the spectator, without making any exchange; and
then proceeds to bum the envelope and th^ paper on which ques-
tion is written entirely to ashes.

The appearance of this experiment is that it is one of absolute
fairness in which there can be no trickery ; yet the real question
is not burned, but is retained and afttrwards read by the operator.

This is accomplished partly by a trick envelope which I pre-
pare as follows : I take a medium-sized envelope and cut a slit in
Its face about one and one-half inches in length. This slit is
situated half way between the two edges of the envelope and runs
parallel with its length. It can not be seen from the Tear side of
the envelope, as it is cut just low enough to be out of view from
the rear side when the flap is opened up.

I next take a small piece of blank paper and fold it to a size of

154 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

three-quarters of an inch by one inch and a quarter. I place this
in the prepared envelope in a vertical position, at the envelope's
centre, and touch the side of it that is away from the slit or next
to the rear side of the envelope with library paste. This keeps
the slip in position. I place this slip low enough in the envelope
to have its upper end out of view when the flap is raised.

This prepared envelope is in a box with some others in such
position that I can readily select it; yet it appears when viewe.l
from the flap side as an ordinary envelope. During the experi-
ment this envelope is handled in such manner that its face, or
slit side, is always away from the subject.

I now give the spectator a small pad of blank paper and re-
quest him to select a sheet from it, and to write on that sheet any
question he desires answered, and to address the same to some
spirit and sign his own name to it. When this is done I direct
him to fold it a number of times so that when he is through its
size will be the same as that of the " dummy " slip concealed in
the prepared envelope.

When he has done this, I reach and take the billet out of his
hands with my right hand. At the same time with my left hand
I take from the box of envelopes the prepared one. I take this
envelope in my left hand with the face or slit side next to my
palm, and with my left thumb I open up the flap. I hold it so
that the spectator can see me place his billet in this' envelope ;
which I do right under his eyes, using my hands so that he can
see that all is fair and no exchange made. In reality, I slip the
lower end of his billet through the slit on the face of the envelope
next to my palm. I push this billet in just far enough so that its
top end remains in view, and immediately moisten and seal the
flap over it.

Just as I finish sealing the envelope, I take it in my right
hand ; but by pressing the fingers of my left hand against the protruding
end of the billet, it is drawn completely out of the slit and remains
in my left hand. As I make this move I direct my own gaze
towards my right hand and the envelope in it, and call the atten-
tion of the spectator to the fact that his billet is still within the
sealed envelope. I hold the envelope towards a window or a
light, and he can see the shadow of the dummy billet within,
which also conceals the shadow of the slit. While I make this
move and direct the subject's attention towards my right hand in
this manner, at the instant that my right hand takes it from the
left hand, making the succeeding moves, my left hand goes into
my pocket in a natural manner to get a match with which to light
the envelope and burn it. The billet in my left hand is of course
left in my pocket with the surplus matches.

This should all be done in a natural manner, and the attention
called to the fact that the billet is still within the envelope ; at the

spirit Slate-lVriting and Billet Tests. 155

same time exhibiting its shadow, or rather that of the " dummy,"
and remarking, " We will take a match and will now burn the
envelope." As I say this I strike the match and light the enve-
lope, holding it over a small vessel on the table until it is en-
tirely consumed.

There should not be too many thicknesses of the dummy bil-
let in the envelope, as this retards it too much in burning. Dur-
ing all these maneuvers I always keep the face or slit side of the
envelope from the spectator.

I now retire to an adjoining room to get some slates, and
while out, I secretly read and memorize the question and names.
I then enter with eight small slates and one large one. I lay
them on the table and request the subject to examine and clean
them all. As this is done I have him stack the small slates on
the centre of the table, and when they are all thus placed, to lay
the large one on top of the stack.

I now take a seat opposite him at the table, and we place our
palms on this slate for a time ; after which we make an examin-
ation in search of a message, but of course, find none. This is
repeated a few times; when finally I seem dissatisfied, pick up
the top slate, and holding it upright in front of me, proceed to
write an automatic message just as " automatic writers " do.

What I really do is this, — when I pick up the large slate I
also pick up with it, underneath and pressed tightly against it, the
small slate on top of the stack. I tilt the large slate in handling
it so as to conceal from the subject the fact that I have picked up
a small slate, and he merely thinks that I have only the large one
in my hands. The small slate is pressed against the large one on
the side next to me. As the spectator sits opposite me at the
table, he can see nothing.

I now write on the small slate a message, answering his ques-
tion, and using the proper names, etc. I next proceed to read to
him what I have written, or rather pretend to do so; but in fact I
repeat something entirely foreign to the subject. I then ask him
if this is a satisfactory answer to his question. He, of course,
informs me that it is not; whereupon, seeming dissatisfied, I
moisten my fingers and apparently erase the message from the
slate. This is of course a mere pretense. I leave the message
on the small slate; and when I have appeared to erase it, I re-
place the large slate on the stack. This I do without showing
him the side next to me. Of course the small slate, being under
the large one, unseen by him, is replaced at the same time mes-
sage side down.

We now replace our palms, and after a time examine the large
slate for a message, but find none. I may incidentally remark
that this last examination unconsciously verifies in the sitter's
mind the fact that I erased what I wrote automatically.

156 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

I now look on some of the smaller slates for a message but
find none. When I do this I do not turn these slates over and
look on the under sides, but merely take off the top slate to see
if there be a message on the upper surface of the one under it, I
merely say, " Well, there is nothing on that slate," indicating the
second one from the top; and at the same time I drop the top
slate now in my hand upon the table beside the stack. I im-
mediately take off the second slate and repeat this same per-
formance, dropping it on top the first one. I keep on until I have
removed four or five of the slates, when seeming discouraged, I
remark, " I guess there is no message ; and I replace the second
stack on the first one. This places the message slate four or five
slates down in the stack ; as the bottom slate of the second stack,
being the top slate of the original stack, is the message slate.

I next up-edge the small slates and place a rubber band
around them, placing them in the sitter's lap. I, of course, place
what was the top side of the stack downwards, as in the forego-
ing slate trick. In due time I tell the subject to make an exam-
ination for a message, and of course three or four slates down he
finds a message on the upper surface of one of the slates.

This seems very miraculous, as the slates have been so repeat-
edly examined and nothing found. The message answers his
question which was apparently burned, and he entirely forgets
that at one time I wrote on the large slate and erased the writing.
Finding the message on the upper surface of a middle slate makes
the effect seem very marvellous. The subject having cleaned and
stacked these slates himself, and having seen them examined so
many times, naturally feels impressed that the message comes
by some super-human power.

There is another trick with a stack of slates which is very
effective. In this trick no large slate is used. The message is
prepared in advance on a small slate, and this slate is concealed
on the floor under the end of a small rug behind the table. As
the spectator cleans each slate, the operator takes it and places it
on the rug directly over the concealed slate. When all of the
slates are cleaned, the operator picks up the stack from the floor;
and secretly inserting his fingers under the concealed slate be-
neath the rug, he draws it out and picks it up with the other
slates.

The move is made so that it appears as if the operator merely
picks up the slates on top of the rug, and the subject never sus-
pects that a concealed one is drawn at the same time from under
the rug. This concealed slate has the message side upwards, and
the stack of slates are now evened up and laid on the chair;
where, after holding the palms on them for a time, the subject
examines them and finds the message.

Sometimes, when I perform this trick, I have the message

spirit Slate-Writing and Billet Tests, 157

slate on a table under a newspaper. When we take our seats at
the table, I remove the newspaper out of my way, and lay it on
the floor, a chair, on another table. I then lay the slates on the
table to be cleaned. Of course, I secretly remove the concealed
slate under the newspaper when I remove it, and lay both on the
floor, chair, or table.

As the spectator cleans the slates I stack them on this news-
paper, and when I pick up the cleaned slates, I draw out the
message slate as in the preceding trick.

There is another means of secretly securing knowledge of a
subject's questions, or, as is sometimes done by mediums, of a
confession of some secret thing which such subject has done, or
in which he desires help, and yet is anxious to keep secret. Here
a stack of small slates, with one large one, is again used.

In the latter case the medium informs the subject that he does
not care to know what the subject may confess; but that it is
necessary for him to write out a full confession, giving all names,
etc., if he desires spiritual aid: that, however, he is at perfect
liberty to keep the confession entirely secret.

The subject is then given a slip of paper, or. he may use his
own ; and he is directed to write out his confession, or questions,
as the case may be, and to seal the same in an envelope lying on
the table. While he is doing this the medium is sitting and writ-
ing on the large slate, as if busy with some matter of his own.
He sits side-wise to the subject and does not appear to watch him.
When the subject has written as he is directed, the medium
instructs him to seal his paper in the envelope and to lay it on
top of the stack of small slates which are on the table in front of
him. When he has done so, the medium places the large slate on
top of the stack of small slates, and asks the sitter to write on this
large slate the name of some dead relative. When this is done,
the medium lifts the large slate off the stack, secretly carrying
under it the top small slate. At the same time he asks the sitter
if this name be that of a dead relative.

Now, on the second small slate from the top, the medium has
previously secretly placed a duplicate envelope with a sheet of
paper in it ; so that when the top slate is carried away secretly,
under the large slate, and bearing on its upper surface between
it and the large slate the envelope containing the writing of the
sitter, this duplicate envelope on top of the remaining slates will
appear to be the one the sitter has just sealed and placed there.

The operator usually has some paper and other loose objects
on one end of the table, so that he can lay down the large slate
with the concealed one under it ; and so that the concealed slate
will not make its presence known by preventing the large slate
from touching the table, as would be the case were it laid flat
upon it.

158 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

The operator now asks the subject to lay his envelope on the
table to one side, and to select two of the slates. This he does,
and the medium now has the subject place his palms on these
selected slates and try for a slate writing. He remarks that he
does not feel quite right just now, and fears that he can not suc-
ceed, as conditions do not seem favorable. After a short trial
and failure, he generally tells the subject that he will have to give
up at present ; but for him to return tomorrow or later in the day,
and he will make a second effort, when conditions will doubtless
be more favorable. He says, " Remember your questions (or
confession) " ; and reaching, he takes up the duplicate envelope
which the subject thinks contains his writing, and says, " I shall
let you take this with you — no, I shall not, either ; as that would
not be right. I shall just bum it up." Suiting the action to the
word, he takes a match and burns the duplicate envelope and
paper entirely to ashes, allowing the latter to fall on one of the
slates. He now dismisses the subject, after making an appoint-
ment for a second trial.

As soon as the subject has departed, the medium lifts the large
slate; and taking up the original envelope on top of the con-
cealed small slate, he opens and reads the confession, or ques-
tions, as the case may be. He thoroughly memorizes all, and
prepares a fine message, answering everything ; so that when the
subject returns, he will have all of his writing answered very
completely.

The medium with whom I am acquainted, and who works
this fine trick very frequently, generally has the subject depart
and make a second visit as herein described ; but if he prefers, he
can, after failing to produce a message, and after burning the
duplicate envelope, conduct his guest to some other apartment
for some other experiment, and return later for a second trial for
a message. In this case an assistant enters the room, reads the
writing, and prepares the message during the absence of the
medium and his guest.

If the medium has a dark chamber, he can have taken the
subject into it for some dark sitting manifestations; as the ab-
sence of light waves is very conducive to success with the " spir-
its," and is very helpful in " establishing favorable conditions and
harmony." After some experiment here, they return and again
try for a slate writing; and this time the subject is thoroughly
satisfied and convinced.

If, when a sitter receive a slate writing, from a dear one who
is dead, he receive in addition thereto a token of love in the shape
of a flower, a handkerchief of soft silk, or some other object, the
performance has a very emotional effect on him ; and such token
is usually preserved throughout life. Now, in working any of
hese tricks using a stack of slates, if a large number of small

spirit Slate-Writing and Billet Tests. 159

slates be used, such as twelve or more, two slates can be added or
removed under the large slate instead of one, and will attract no
notice, if removed or added when a sufficient number are in the
stack. These two may contain between them, in addition to the
message, such flower or token, as the medium may desire.

If the performer be able deftly to hold the token against the
lower side of the concealed small slate, and adroitly to insert it,
he need not have more than one small slate under the large one.

IV.

One other variation of this trick is being worked at the present
time by a very noted medium. The slates are placed in a stack
on a small table directly in front of the sitter. He is requested
to clean them one at a time. As he does so the operator, who
stands at his left, takes the slates in his left hand, and stacks them
on the left corner of the table.

There is a mantel just back of the operator and his subject,
on which lies concealed behind some object a duplicate slate with
a message on its under side. As soon as the fourth or fifth slate
is cleaned and in place on the stack, the performer, who stands
somewhat behind the subject, takes secretly with his right hand
the slate from the mantel. Just as the sitter finishes cleaning
the next slate, the performer takes it from him with his left
hand ; but, just before placing it on the stack, he makes a pass,
leaving this slate in his right hand and carrying away from his
right hand the message-slate. This pass can be executed in-
stantly, and is immediately followed by placing the message-slate
on the stack, message side down, with the left hand ; while at the
same instant the right hand returns, to the position on the man-
tel, the slate the sitter has just cleaned.

As soon as the stack is formed, the medium up-edges the
slates, evens them up, and slips a rubber band around them, giv-
ing them into the sitter's lap to be held. The stack is turned as in
the preceding tricks, and the effect on finding the message is just
as great.

In regard to making the pass with the slates, the operator
should partly face towards the sitter's chair and stand at the left
side of the sitter, so that his right hand is far enough back to be
out of the angle of vision of the sitter. The slates should be
taken with the left hand and placed on the stack at the left.
When the exchange is made, the left hand, on taking the slate
from the subject, should move for the merest instant back of the
range of his vision, meeting the right hand and making the ex-
change. It should do this and zvithout pause place the message
slate on the stack. The whole move should take but a fraction of
a second, using about the same length of time that is used in
placing the other slates in position. Some remark about the next

160 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

slate to be cleaned, just at this instant, helps to divert the sitter's
attention and make the exchange more impossible of detection.

I shall now describe how to make the " switch " as well as I
can without drawing, and any reader wishing to try these tricks
should master this move thoroughly. It is used in the next
trick which I am going to describe, and which is one of the very
best of slate tricks. The move is made in this manner: The
slate in the left hand is taken between the thumb and index
finger, and rests in a horizontal position on the side of the finger
facing the thumb. The remaining fingers of the left hand do not
touch the slate, but are below the index finger; so that they, as
well as the hand, forms a right angle with the surface of the
slate. The middle finger is spread apart from the index finger,
thus forming with it an opening into which the slate from the
right hand is to be slipped. The slate taken in the right hand is
also taken in a similar position ; but just the instant before making
the pass, I always brine the index finger on top of the slate and
hold the slate pressed between the index finger and the middle
or large finger. I keep the right thumb elevated, or separated
from the index finger, and bring the two hands together, passing
the slate in the right hand below the slate in the left hand until
the latter is directly over the former. The slate from the right
hand enters between the index and second fingers of the left
hand, which should immediately g^asp it tightly ; and the fingers
of the right hand holding it should at the same time release their
g^a^ on it.

The index finger of the right hand passes below the slate in
the left hand when the above maneuver is made, and the right
thumb passes over this slate. These should instantly grasp the
left hand slate while the left thumb and index finger release it.
The hands should be instantly separated, the right now carrying
away the slate held before in the left hand, and the left hand
carrying away the slate held in the right hand. This move does
not require over a tenth of a second and is very simple and easy
to execute, if one will but try it. Without figures it requires
some little description, but it is very simple nevertheless.

If any reader of this paper will take two small padded slates
and try this move for five minutes, constantly passing the slates
from one hand to the other and back again, the " switch " can be
made many times a minute; and in five minutes' practice the
hands will do the work almost by reflex action, without looking
at them at all, and the reader will then be able to execute the
trick which I shall describe in the next article.

(To be continued.)

Editorial. 161

EDITORIAL.

We begin in this issue of the Journal a series of articles by
Mr. David P. Abbott on "Spirit Slate-writing and Billet
Tests." They will continue through several numbers of the
Journal Mr. Abbott is himself an expert prestidigitator and
has invented some tricks of the character here described.
In the letter which announced the sending of his articles he
said :

" I do not know what interest this paper may have for the
general reader, but I do know that magicians and conjurors
will regard it as one of the best collections of such secrets
which has been given to the public, for the reason that the
secrets which were published were not very practical and not
much used. All of these described in this paper, however,
are being used at the present time with the greatest success,
and they represent the most improved methods of the present
day."

Mr. Abbott adds that he is constantly meeting magicians
who add to his collection of tricks. The circumstance is
worth noting because the influence of the work of the Society
for Psychical Research has been to revive expectations which
the Report of the Seybert Commission tended to remove,
and the public needs to be warned or educated against ad-
venturers that prey upon the credulity of all who are looking
for the " supernatural." One of our most important tasks
will be to expose the claims of all who act as adventurers or
allege physical miracles without adequate evidence for their
pretensions.

The first number of the Proceedings has recently ap-
peared. The articles consist of a History of the Campaign
for the Institute ; the republication for permanent record of
the Prospectus of the Institute ; the reprint of an important
letter ( 1837) by Mr. William L. Stone, who was once a prom-
inent man in New York state and its history and was closely
connected with the Commercial Advertiser — the pamphlet
being a record of an important case at that day ; a review of

162 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

a case of' alleged partial dematerialization of the body of a
medium ; and a paper on Parallelism and Materialism. It is
hoped that, in an early number to follow this one, we shall be
able to publish the detailed record of some experiments with
the Smead Case.

In order that there may be no misunderstanding, the
statement which is made in the circulars is also made here,
namely, — that Associates receive only the JournaL In order
to receive the Proceedings an additional fee of $5.00 a year is
required. This arrangement will be necessary at least until
an endowment has been obtained. The Proceedings will con-
tain the more detailed investigations and records of the So-
ciety, while the Journal will contain the less important mate-
rial connected with the work of the Society.

I wish to call the attention of readers of the Journal to a
society in New York city calling itself " The American
Institute for Psychical Research," which has assumed a name
nearly enough like that of the American Institute for Scien-
tific Research and of the American Society for Psychical Re-
search to be mistaken for them. Readers already know that
the American Society for Psychical Research is simply a Sec-
tion of the American Institute, and so linked with it as to be a
part of it and its plans. Apparently the appropriation of the
title " American Institute for Psychical Research " would
confuse the public regarding its relation to the body of which
the Journal and Proceedings are the organs. I do not know
what motives induced this body to use the title which it has
adopted- But we must say to readers of this Journal and to
members of the American Society for Psychical Research
that the American Institute for Psychical Research has noth-

to do with either the American Institute for Scientific Re-

or the American Society for Psychical Research. It

Ily independent body whose aims and methods are

and it is necessary to make this public statement of

Editorial. 163

the fact to prevent any misunderstanding of the real nature
of this local body assuming so misleading a name.

It may be proper to explain definitely in a few words what
the scientific object and conception of psychic research is.
From the criticism which is often directed against the Society
by those who have already been convinced of the super-
normal it can be inferred that we are too sceptical and critical.
In fact, many assume that science is convertible with scepti-
cism and critical complaining. It may be that many stu-
dents of psychic phenomena are to blame, or at least partly
to blame, for this impression of its work. But whether this
be true or not, it is certain that the primary object of the
Society is often misunderstood by all who assume that sci-
ence must accept its facts without criticism. I admit that the
scepticism of some people is as irrational as the credulity of
others, but that fact is no excuse for misconceiving the nature
of scientific method.

The primary object of science is observation of facts and
the determination of evidence. Explanation, which many
people thinks its main purpose, is purely secondary. No
doubt the chief interest in facts, on the part of most people, is
in the theories assuming to assign their causes. But for
the really scientific man theories and explanations occupy a
subordinate place, and facts the first place. To assure him-
self of what the facts are and whether they come under ac-
cepted explanations he has to adopt definite and rigid criteria
of evidence. Hence scientific problems are primarily occu-
pied with evidence when the hypothesis of any new agencies
is involved. As psychic research is concerned with the ad-
mission of new causes into human belief and knowledge its
main object at present is to ascertain the credibility of certain
alleged facts. This will require the application of the most
rigid methods of weighing evidence and the criticism of all
alleged phenomena which do not easily fit into the scheme of
admitted knowledge. I do not mean to assume in this that
the present scheme of knowledge is at any time an absolute
criterion of truth by any means; for nothing is more certain

L

164 Journnl of the American Society for Psychical Research.

than the fact that we are constantly making accessions to the
conquests of the past and almost as constantly altering the
conceptions and the theories of our predecessors. But that
alteration must always be made with the least amount of fric-
tion and variation from accepted doctrines. Hence we are
necessarily concerned with the study of evidence, so that for
our purposes we might even define scientific method as the
application of criteria for the determination of assured data
of fact, and explanation must await that result.

Another point in this determination of evidence, also, is
the fact that scientific method requires us to validate our facts
in such a way that personal experience of the believer will not
be the only evidence for his convictions. Science is not per-
sonal experience, nor does it depend for establishing convic-
tion upon personal witness of the facts. It consists in so
determining its facts that those who cannot experience the
same must accept them and the conclusions drawn from them.
This was what was done with Roentgen rays, radio-active
phenomena, wireless telegraphy, evolution, gravitation, Co-
perhican astronomy, and nearly all similar scientific beliefs.

The consequence is that the field of science in psychic re-
search is much narrower than the popular mind supposes. It
cannot accept every alleged fact that ifmeets. It must in-
vestigate, and validate by the severest methods of investiga-
tion and criticism that it can apply.

Incidents, 165

INCIDENTS.

The Society assumes no responsibility for anything pub-
lished under this head and no indorsement is implied except
that it has been furnished by an apparently trustworthy con-
tributor whose name is given unless withheld at his own

request.

In the case of "Collective Hallucination," published in the
February Journal, one sentence is not clear from the omission
of several words. In line 28, after the word " anywhere " the
reader should understand or insert: "The pockets of my
clothes," this having escaped notice in the original copy. The
idea which the author wished to convey was that coins could
not have fallen from these pockets owing to the fact that they
were inclined upwards and not downwards. The correction
suggested will make the sentence clear.

A CASE OF PREMONITION.

The following incident was mentioned to me by the sister
of the gentleman who reports it, and on writing to him about
it he sent me the following account. The sister confirms the
experience. The gentleman referred me to a friend who
could also corroborate it, but communication with him re-
sulted in a letter from a friend who told me that the man was
suffering from illness that made it unlikely that he could ever
answer my inquiry. The reader will remark that the inci-
dent occurred long ago, but the circumstances were appar-
ently such as to make it worthy of record, especially as it
comes from perfectly intelligent sources.

Mount Vernon, N. Y., November 14th, 1906.
Mr. James H. Hyslop :

Dear Sir: — ^In 1849 when I was seventeen (17) years old, I
was on a vacation visit to my home in Glens Falls, New York.
On the 5th of July in company with another boy, George Fergu-
son, I started out to hunt pigeons. As I had no gun, I hired a
double-barreled shot gun of a gunsmith. When we reached what
we considered good hunting ground, Ferguson and I separated

166 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

with an agreement to meet on the main road, he going to the
north of said road and I going to the south. I had shot several
pigeons when a number alighted on a tree within range of my
gun. The country about was covered with scrub oak and pine
with here and there a few trees. Concealing myself in the brush
I fired the left hand barrel of my gun, bringing down three or
four birds. As the others did not fly, I raised my gun for an-
other shot, but it missed fire. This did not surprise me, as I
was using percussion caps, and accustomed to finding a defective
one occasionally. Putting on a new cap I again raised my gun
to fire, when I heard in a plain voice the words, " Don't shoot."
I was as sure as I possibly could be that no human being was
anywhere near me, and cold chills ran down my back. I hesi-
tated, turned my head, and looked about, and then using a coun-
try boy's phrase, said to myself, " Well, I would not be brought
up in the woods to be scared by an owl." I again raised my gun,
when I heard " Don't shoot, don't shoot," as plainly as it could be
spoken, but I did shoot. I heard a humming in my ears which
grew fainter and fainter until I was unconscious. How long I
remained so I do not know. Consciousness came back very
slowly and when it did I felt weak and sore, and endeavoring to
take in the situation and finding that I could not see, fainted.
On recovering consciousness, I felt around and, securing my
gun, found that it had burst, tearing out a piece from the breach
about six inches long. I knew that I was near a fence that ran
north and south and that almost opposite where it joined the
fence on the main road was a house which I managed to reach.
The woman who lived there was so frightened at my appearance,
though she was well acquainted with me, that she ran screaming
into the woods. I felt all about till I found a pail of water and
after cleaning my head and face as well as I could was just able
to distinguish light a very little with my left eye. I started on
the road homeward, and was soon joined by Ferguson, who as-
sisted me. From secondary inflammation I became totally blind
for a few weeks and it was nine months before I could read at
all, I have only one good eye now. Who or what told me not
to shoot? . CHARLES HILL WILLSON.

The reader may notice that the incident is an old one,
having occurred in 1849, fifty-seven years ago. We might
suppose, if we were willing to do so without evidence, that an
illusion of memory in regard to the phenomenon might have
occurred to give it a premonitory color. But we should have
to account for the physical effects on the eyes and the actual
shooting of the gun, which are ordinary events and capable of

Incidents. 167

more or less verification. Such an objection would have to
limit its application to the single incident of the apparent
voice which is said to have preceded the accident. AH the
other details would excite no scepticism in any case, and it
would not seem natural to suppose that the incident of the
voice would be interpolated in the case by an illusion of mem-
ory, since it is not a natural accident of such events in human
experience.

I am sure, however, aside from other instances of premo
nition, that it would stretch the case considerably to suppose
it to have been occasioned by an illusion of memory. Fortu-
nately we have the testimony of the sister that she was told
of the fact soon after the accident. Consequently the fifty-
seven years do not interfere so appreciably with the integrity
of the narrative. I quote the sister's letter :

352 Lexington Ave., New York,

December 6th, 1906.
Mr. Charles Hill Willson is my brother and immediately after
the bursting of his gun he told me of the accident and the voice
he twice heard, saying " don't shoot," as he now writes you re-
garding it. Very sincerely yours,

. (MRS.) CHARLES WATROUS.

We should have to suppose two illusions of memory in
regard to the incident, which would be extremely unlikely.
We, of course, are not concerned with the nature of the
"voice," whether objective or subjective. That is a point
that need not be considered. The primary question is
whether anything occurred in the mental life of Mr. Willson
that he might denominate in this manner, and if we should
accept it as purely subjective it would not alter the question
of its real or apparent significance. The sceptic need not
object to its objective or real nature as an impossibility ; for
we do not require to suppose the " voice " as more than hal-
lucinatory or apparent in order to assume its possible signi-
ficance for an objective meaning. The real question is
whether any such mental event took place, and the objection
to its being " real " will not apply to such a possibility. Only
an illusion of memory seems to be relevant as an objection

168 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

to its apparent significance, since the supposition that some
one not seen had shouted at Mr. Wilson and had not revealed
himself afterward, tho possibly con jectur able, seems very far
fetched. The coincidence of the " voice " as a warning with
the accident to Mr. Willson rather makes such a conjecture
doubtful, especially when he had himself suspected this and
looked for the person.

There are other instances of similar phenomena which
show that this one is not isolated, and hence suspicion of the
facts may not be so defensible. ■ Only the explanation seems
open to consideration and I do not venture upon tKat for iso-
lated instances.

AN UNRECORDED CASE OF PREMONITORY
WARNING.

The present instance was recorded, as the reader will
observe, a little more than a year after its occurrence. The
peculiar character of it and the details prevent its being ex-
posed to the conjectural objection of the previous case. Dr.
Hager who reports it as his experience is a practicing physi-
cian and apparently of good standing.

For a number of years previous to the happening of the fol-
lowing incident I had been reading in the "Scientific American "
of the superiority of the " Whaleback " type of lake boats, and
because of this I was very much interested in their construction.
On June 22nd, 1895,* I had an opportunity to take a trip on the

♦ I wrote to a friend in Chicago to verify the dates and incidents of the
accident in the Chicago papers and the reply was that no such incident was
reported in the papers for July or August, tho the writer remembered both
the accident and the name of the steamer, I then wrote to Dr. Hager of the
possible error in date, and the following letter explains the matter :

James H. Hyslop, Feb. i6th, 1907.

Secretary American Society for Psychical Research,
Dear Sir:

My attention has been called to the fact that the dates given in reference
to the Whaleback affair were not corroborated.

As I had never written about the incident before and did not record it at
the time I always associated it with the day after a conspicuous day of the
year, and so had the 4th of July on my mind. Since my attention has been
called to this matter I have looked up the exact dates, especially the refer-
ences thereto in the Chicago papers and Hnd that I was mistaken in the date,
and that it was the day after the longest in the year, viz., June 22d, or about

Incidents. 169

**Whaleback Christopher Columbus," then run as a separate
excursion boat in opposition to the " Virginia," of the Goodrich
line, from Chicago to Milwaukee and return, and I gladly availed
myself of the opportunity.

It was the " Whaleback's " first trip for the season and there
were only a comparatively small number of passengers on board.
It had been hinted during the 1894 season that there was con-
siderable rivalry between the two boats as to which was the
better in speed, but no definite conclusion arrived at. (The
" Whaleback " is now and for the past five years has been in the
commission of the Goodrich line and I understand that it is con-
ceded that she is by far the better and faster boat of the two. )

We arrived in Milwaukee about one hour late of the sched-
uled time and we were notified that the boat would return
promptly at scedule time the same evening. I had about one
and a half hours to visit in Milwaukee and therefore hurried
through the principal streets. As I was returning and when near
the docks I met my old-time friend, Max Hoffmann, and his trav-
eling companion. Mr. Hoffman is a spiritual medium or clair-
voyant and had several times before given me so-called tests.
Our meeting was a surprise to each, but cordial, and we both
entered a restaurant for light lunch before the boat's return trip.
Mr. Hoffmann expressed himself very glad to see me, as also to
have the pleasure of my company on the return trip to Chicago,
but I interrupted him with the inquiry as to which boat he would
return on, and when he stated that he would return on the " Vir-
ginia," I informed him that I had return passage on the " Chris-
topher Columbus," and that he should secure his return ticket on
that boat. He requested me to change my ticket to the " Vir-
ginia," to which I replied by requesting them to change their
tickets and go with me on the " Whaleback," which was by far
the best boat, but he did not want me to return on it as something
told him there was something the matter with the boat, but he
could not determine just what it was. In a pleasant way I rid-
iculed this and persisted that as mine was by far the best boat

two weeks before the date fixed in my mind. This makes the date of the
accident June 22d, 1805.

I ask you to kindly attach this to the original communication and make
it a part of the record.

Respectfully,

DANIEL S. HAGER. M. D.
i8i West Madison St, Chicago, 111.

I have myself personally examined the Chicago papers, as indicated in
connection with the story below, and can verify the allusions to the accident in
two of the leading newspapers.

JAMES H. HYSLOP.
February i^, 1907.

170 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

they had better return on the " Whaleback." He became very
persistent in wanting me to return on the " Virginia," because
he said he saw bad conditions about me on the '' Whaleback.'* I
was just as persistent about returning on that particular boat be-
cause it was the better of the two.

What happened to the " Whaleback " upon her return voyage
that evening is history that is recorded in extra local editions of
the Chicago Sunday papers of June 23rd, 1895, and in the Asso-
ciated Press dispatches to the daily morning papers of June 24th,
1895. The bursting under an immense steam pressure of the
elbow of the large pipe which conveys the steam from the boilers
to the engine, with the result that thirteen people were scalded,
two seriously, and d)ring within ten hours after our arrival at
Chicago on Sunday morning, June 23rd, is the history of that
eventful trip. The warning was pven me about one-half hour
before the boat left the docks and the explosion occurred about
two hours afterward on the above date.

The " Whaleback " left the docks for return before the " Vir-
ginia," and when out of the harbor the " Virginia " steamed past
the " Whaleback," the people cheering and throwing taunts at
the "Whaleback." The Captain of our boat ordered an extra
boiler under steam, and it is hinted, and no doubt true, that the
safety valves of the " Columbus " were plugged and large vol-
umes of dark smoke came pouring out of her funnels. The
" Whaleback " was about four miles behind the " Virginia," but
was rapidly gaining speed under the forced pressure, when the
explosion occurred.

The interesting part to me, however,.! will now relate. I
stood by the ponderous engine until nearly every one had left
and gone to the front of the upper deck; then I went upstairs
into the round tower where the large steam pipe comes up from
the boilers and makes the bend toward the engines. At this
bend is a large cast iron elbow, which, because of a flaw in the
casting, as well as the increased pressure, burst. I stood in
this tower about five or ten minutes looking down through the
grating and watching the stokers shoveling coal into the fur-
naces. Then I went out towards the forward part of the ship
and took a camp stool and sat down upon it. I had barely sat
down when there was an explosion with an immense volume of
steam rushing out of the round tower from which I emerged
only about two minutes previous. As soon as we could penetrate
through the steam we discovered the burst elbow within three
feet of where I had previously stood. If this had occurred while
I had stood there, of course I would have simply been held in the
tower by the force of the steam (182 pounds, from five boilers)
and cooked into fricassee.

Of all the passengers and crew, I had by mere chance per-

Incidents. 171

haps, escaped from being in the greatest danger of all. I called
upon Mr. Hoffmann on Monday, June 24th, and he seemed very
anxious and glad to see me, as he had forgotten my name, and
as the extra papers chronicled two deaths from the explosion he
thought one might have been myself. He stated at this time,
that as the " Virginia " passed the " Whaleback " a few miles out
of the harbor of Milwaukee, and as the thick smoke from the
"Whaleback" silhoutted against the sky, he saw clairvoyantly
the words " explosion " in the smoke, and that he remarked at
that time to his companion that he was very sorry that he had
left me go at all on that boat.

The warning and accident in this case occurred within three
hours of each other, and the facts can hardly be explained by
telepathy, so I have always regarded it as a clear case of premon-
itory warning. DANIEL S. HAGER, M. D.,

181 W. Madison Street, Chicago, 111.

Sworn to and subscribed to before
me this i8th day of November, 1906.

GEO. A. SEARL, Notary Public.

Medium Max Hoffmann, 988 N. Western Ave., Chicago, 111.
Hoffmann's companion, John F. Eichen, Shoe Store, 3056
Wentworth Ave., Chicago, 111.

Chicago, 111., Jan. 14th, 1907.
Dr. James H. Hyslop :

Dear Sir: — Yours of Nov. 19th, 1906, came to hand in due
time, but as I have not been quite well, and my time so much
taken up with other matters, that I have found it impossible to
answer your favor of the 19th of Nov., 1906. In the first place I
must let you know that I am a friend of Mr. Max Hoffmann, in
fact I have travelled with him for years as his secretary, and I
remember Dr. Hager very well. In fact, it was some years be-
fore this" incident happened to which you refer in your last letter
— ^the year I don't exactly know, but I think it must be over six
years ago. It was at a time when Mr. Hoffmann and myself
were taking a trip to Milwaukee, Wis., on the Goodrich steamer
" Virginia,'^ The " Whaleback " leaves the dock before the
" Virginia " does, here at Chicago, and the same at Milwaukee.
We had arrived at Milwaukee, and had spent quite a pleasant
time, and were returning to the steamer, when we met Dr.
Hzgev. Now, Mr. Hoffmann seemed to think a great deal of Dr.
Hag-er, and in the conversation which followed Mr. Hoffmann
persisted in the Dr. going home to Chicago on the " Virginia "
instead of the " Whaleback," even wanting to get his ticket for
him, and tried everything to induce him not to go back on tKe
" Whaleback." But the Dr., for some reason or other, would

172 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

not go with Mr. Hoffmann, but wanted to know why Mr. Hoflf-
mann did not want him to go to Chicago on the same boat in
which he came to Milwaukee, and Mr. Hoffmann told him tfiat
something would happen on that boat — and that there would be
an accident, and great confusion, and a great many people would
be injured, and then Dr. Hager smiled and wanted to know if he
would be among those who would be injured. Mr. Hoffmann
hesitated a short while and seemed to be looking over a scene,
in a sort of a trance. [Now all this conversation was carried on,
on the street leading to the dock, where the " Virginia " lay,
ready to leave in an hour or so,] when in answer to the Doctor's
question, he said, " No ; but," he said, " I see you very busy with
lots of people around you who are injured, and the excitement for
a while is something awful, but it won't last long, and then every-
thing is settled again, but the groaning is still going on." Well,
Dr. Hager said he was going back on the same boat, so he could
be of some use to those who would get hurt, but the tone of
voice in which he said it implied he thought there was nothing in
it. Well, the " Whaleback " left about half an hour or twenty-
five minutes before the "Virginia," they being rivals and be-
longing to different companies, though they are now owned by
one company. The " Whaleback " had quite the start, and they
were both firing up in great shape. All were on deck watching
the race — for it was considered a race by every one until the
accident happened — amid great excitement and cheering, and
the "Virginia" seemed to be gaining all the time, and the
" Whaleback " doing the jocking across the " Virginia's " course
— till finally some one on our boat looking through a field glass
shouted, " Something has happened to the * Whaleback.' " In a
few minutes or more, the " Virginia," after signalling to the
" Whaleback," slowed down and kept slowing down until we
arrived in Chicago over an hour late, and a large inquiring crowd
looking for friends that had taken the boat for Milwaukee. The
accident happened off Waukegan, but it had been telephoned into
Chicago long before the boat arrived. Now, that is about what
I can tell you of the accident to which the Doctor refers. I
could tell you more, but it would be only what I heard about the
accident, and I think the Doctor has given you the particulars,
for he was there on the spot, and knows whereof he speaks. As
I remember, the " Whaleback " burst a six or eight inch steam
pipe* and it being an excursion quite a number of people were
burned and scalded by the escaping steam. Others were over-
come from excitement. Trusting this will be of interest to the
-^lety and yourself, I remain, yours,

JOHN F. EICHIN,
I Wentworth Ave., Chicago, 111.

Incidents, 173

I myself verified the references to the accident in two of
the Chicago papers, the Tribune and the Inier-Ocean. The
Chicago Tribune for Sunday, June 23rd, 1895, on its first page
gives an account of an explosion on the Christopher Colum-
bus and states that it took place about 8 P. M. the previous
evening oft Waukegan. It also states that the boat was a
rival of the Virginia.

The Chicago Inter-Ocean of the same date makes a similar
statement. It describes the bursting of a steam pipe on the
Christopher Columbus off Waukegan while racing with the
Virginia, and calls it a Whaleback steamer, fixing the acci-
dent at about 8 P. M. of the previous day. Both articles are
long ones and give many details of the accident.

The fact that an illusion of memory occurred in regard to
the date of the accident and experience is a good illustration
of what we have to watch for in such narratives, and, in many
a critic, will awaken a cautious spirit with regard to the more
fundamental features of such cases. Fortunately the inci-
dents are corroborated by another person and hence, with
other records of similar phenomena, we may regard the in-
stance as deserving a place in a record of collective experi-
ence. It would not so readily occur that the memory would
invent or distort the relation between the main incidents of
the story, tho it mistook the date. But at all events, the case
shows what demands we have a right to make upon the na-
ture of the evidence which seems to forecast future events.
It is hoped that people having such experiences will record
them at times which will free them from this simplest of sus-
picions.

TELEPATHY.

Jan. isth, 1907.
I sat down to read proofs a moment ago, and, in the sentence,
" I had hoped by the article to begin the task of crystalizing," the
syllabic " izing " beginning the next line, I read the word " crys-
talizing " as " crystal gazing " twice, and being puzzled by its
irrelevance I looked a third time and found that it was a most
distinct illusion. I had a few minutes — perhaps ten or fifteen —
before been occupied with the subject of classifying crystal vis-
ions.

174 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

Immediately I resolved to test my secretary and, taking the
proofs around to her asked her to read the sentence aloud, with-
out saying what I wanted. At the same time I willed that she
should say " crystal gazing " instead of '' crystalizing," which she
did twice. As soon as it was over she told me that just a second
or two before I asked her to read the sentence she saw an appari-
tion of a crystal and thought of crystal-gazing several times.
She could not have seen or known what I was thinking about.

JAMES H. HYSLOP.

P. S. — I have tried several times since to consciously impress
the mind of my secretary telepathically and have not succeeded.

BOOK REVIEWS.

Dreams and Their Meanings. By Horace G. Hutchinson.
Longmans, Green & Co.

Although this book has now been out some time, it is appar-
ently little known to persons interested in psychical research-
certainly not so well known as it should be. It is a book of great
interest and importance, for the reason that it covers a certain
field not hitherto traversed in the literature of the subject—
which is both poor and scanty. Considerable matter of interest
is to be found in Greenwood's Imagination in Dreams, in Jcwett's
Sleep and Dreams, in Kingsford's Dreams and Dream Stories, in
Stanton's Dreams of the Dead, in Marie de Manaceine's Sleep, in
the Proceedings and Journals of the Society for Psychical Re-
search, London, and other publications. The interest of the
present book lies in the fact that it considers certain matters con-
nected with sleep and dreams not dealt with in other books on
the subject. What these special questions are we will consider
presently, — after first taking a rapid glance at the contents of the
book as a whole.

The last two chapters are devoted to telepathic and clairvoy-
ant dreams, and, though they have great interest to the psychical
researcher, I pass over them here for the reason that the cases
quoted are almost exclusively drawn for the Journals and Pro-
ceedings of the English S. P. R., and the cases can all be seen in
the original publications by anyone taking the trouble to refer to
them. The chapter on " Interpretations " is of less interest, be-
ing practically a classified list of dreams interpreted in the same
manner as they are interpreted in the popular Dream Books, and
hence of no scientific value. The rest of the book may be
called scientific in character, and more directly interests us now.

The first chapter, then, is devoted to " What Science has to
Say About Them " (dreams) and considers and summarizes the

Book Reviews. 175

various theories that have been put forward to account for nor-
mal dreams — conditions of blood supply, sensory stimulation,
bodily conditions, etc., — as well as considering certain psycho-
logical questions of general interest. Of these, the most impor-
tant are the length or duration of dreams, the comparative vivid-
ness, the influence of the daily life and thoughts upon the con-
tent of the dream, etc., — all of which has been pretty fully dis-
cussed elsewhere. One remaric, however, calls for special men-
tion because of the important conclusion that can be drawn from
the statement made. It is : " We cannot determine what they
shall be about, by fixing our mind on any particular subject
before we drop off to sleep, nor can we, after waking out of a
pleasant dream, prolong it, by thinking of its incidetfts, when we
again fall to sle^p. I am well aware that there are exceptions to
this rule — ^people who claim, and no doubt justly, to be able to
influence in a great measure the course of their dreaming
thoughts, but they are in a very small minority. . . .'* (p. 15)
This brings before our minds clearly the fact that here is a world
of which we do not know the laws, and over which we have prac-
tically no control. We cannot tell what may or may not happen
in that world, when once we enter it, nor can we control our
thoughts in it, though we may be perfectly rational beings, and
capable of willing to do so. Just in a similar manner it may be
that, in the Piper case, e, g., the " controls " are alive and active,
but when they come in contact with the " light," and more or
less lose control of their faculty of thinking and willing volun-
tarily, many things are apt to occur over which they have no
control, and for which they are not responsible. The point I wish
to make is that we are not entitled to say what " spirits " should
or should not do, in the next life ; or when, how and what they
ought to communicate, without knowing anything of that other
life — ^its laws and possibilities, and the amount of control the
various spirits (granting that they exist) have over their own
thoughts and actions. When communicating, they may be just
as incapable of controlling their thoughts as we are our dreams.

The question of the remembrance of dreams is another ques-
tion which our author has touched upon in an interesting man-
ner,— though all too briefly, considering the importance of the
problem. Many authors consider it a sign of disease, if we ever
dream ; others on the other hand assert that we constantly dream
during sleep, and that no sleep is absolutely dreamless! That
sleep which appears to be so is merely a sleep in which the
dreams are not remembered On this theory, we dream con-
stantly, but only a few of them are remembered, on waking. To
dream, then, is perfectly normal, and it might even be urged that
dreamless sleep is abnormal. Is it ,then normal to dream or not?
I myself have thought about this problem much, and it has oc-

176 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

curred to me that a possible solution of the problem is to be found
in the combination of both theories : i. e., both are right and both
are wrong, to a certain extent. It might be suggested that we do
constantly dream during sleep, and that this is a normal process,
the abnormal factor being its remembrance. Thus we should dream,
but we should not (normally) remember these dreams. The
abnormal event would be the remembrance — and this might be
due to some sort of hyper-penetrability of the " psychical dia-
phragm," as Mr. Myers put it ; the screen that usually exists, as a
wall, between the conscious and sub-conscious lives. The ab-
normal penetrability of this is the diseased state or condition to
be rectified.

The ne^rt chapter deals with the association of dreams with
ideas of immortality, and how the belief of a future life might
have originated in their study. The chapter contains much of
interest; but this, as well as the next chapter, must be passed
over, as containing more; of value to the anthropologist than to
the psychologist or the psychical researcher. I accordingly pass
on to consider Chapter IV, which is the real kernel of the book.

The author, Mr. Hutchinson, had found, some years before,
that certain dreams had a tendency to occur far more frequently
than others ; and, further, that almost every person who dreams at
all had experienced certain types of dreams at one time or another
in his life, and he conceived the idea of collecting a large number
of cases of just such dreams, with the object of finding out, if
possible, their general form, their causes, variations, and general
effects: — in short to make a careful study of these particular
dreams.

The dreams that were found to occur most frequently, and
which were most carefully studied were the following: —

1. The falling dream.

2. The flying dream.

3. The dream of inadequate clothing.

4. The dream of not being able to get away from some beast,
or injurious person or thing, that is pursuing you.

5. The dream of being drawn irresistibly to some dangerous
place.

6. The dream that some darling wish has been gratified.

7. The dream of being about to go on a journey, and being
unable to get your things into your trunks, etc.

As the author argues, since these dreams are so frequent,
there must be some uniformity of physical or mental conditions
that would produce these dreams in all persons alike : 1. e., there
must be some law at work. To find out what that law is, is the
object of the author, and it must be acknowledged that if he has
solved the problem, he has added much to our knowledge of

Book Reviews. 177

dreams and dream states, from any point of view, and that the
inquiry is at least important, and interesting.

Let us now consider some few of the cases that were sent the
author, before attempting to consider their explanation or psy-
chological significance. Take first the " falling dreams." It is
commonly supposed, at least it has frequently been said, that,
though many persons have dreamed that they were falling, none
have ever dreamed that they arrived at the bottom of the fall — for
" if they did, they would die.*' This would seem to bear out the
Irishman's remark that "it was not the fall that hurt him, but
the sudden stop at the bottom." However, there appears to be
as little foundation for this current opinion as there is in the
majority of such beUefs, for Mr. Hutchinson collected accounts
of several cases in which the dreamer had reached the bottom of
the fall, and even dreamed that he was smashed into little bits as
the result, — but yet lived to tell the tale ! This is very instruc-
tive. The ego, which in this case appears to have a kind of
onlooker, " picked up the pieces and glued them together again."
(p. ii8.)

Many interesting cases of flying dreams are given — these
dreams being, for the most part, cases in which the dreamer
thinks he is skimming along the ground in a horizontal position,
with or without a swimming movement of the arms. To some,
this sensation is like swimming, to some like skating, to some
like gliding, to others like flying (proper), and in other cases it
more nearly resembles the falling dream. In some cases the
sensation is pleasant, in others distinctly unpleasant. But it
would be impossible for me to give instances of all the dreams
here, since that would take a book as big as the original. I can
only refer my readers to the book itself, assuring them that there
is sufficient of interest in the book to warrant its perusal.

What are the causes of such dreams, which occur so fre-
quently and to so great a diversity of people ? It may be stated
at once that the author did not succeed in tracing the causes of
these dreams in most instances or in showing clearly the psycho-
logical laws that govern them. This was due partly to lack of
the requisite material, and partly to the fact that not enough is
yet known about dreams, their causes and psychological laws, to
enable any such generaHzed explanation being made. What the
author has done, therefore, is to collect the dreams, classify them,
and then to offer a number of possible explanations, — some orig-
inal, some gathered from other sources, and leave the reader to
form his own conclusions in the matter. After all, perhaps this
is the wisest course. Thus the book is disappointing in one
sense, as showing us how little is really known about dreams and
dream states, but very useful in another, for the reason that it
clears away many of the prevailing erroneous beliefs connected

178 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

with the subject, and anything that does this is to be commended.

Having said so much it but remains lor me to summarize the
theories that have been advanced by way of explanation of the
various dreams — though it cannot be hoped that this portion of
the subject will contain anything new or of great interest to the
psychologist. To the average reader, however, some of the the-
ories may be of interest, since theories of dreams are not so well
known as they should be — I mean even normal dreams.

Take, then, the " falling dreams." These may be due to a
number of causes. The common explanation is " indigestion "—
this producing pressing on the heart and consequent sending of
blood to the brain in a jerk. But is this really any explanation
at all ? Why should this give us the sensation of falling from a
great height — since we none of us know what that sensation is?
It can readily be imagined that this would have the eflFect of wak-
ing the dreamer with a start, but why should it arouse the idea of
falling? The explanation evidently does not explain. Can it be
that we merely itnagine ourselves falling (or flying as the case
may be) ? If it be contended that this is the explanation, how
can we imagine a thing or a sensation we have never experienced,
since we cannot possibly tell what it would be like ? It may be
pointed out, parenthetically, that these dreams completely dis-
prove the assertion so frequently made that we cannot possibly
dream about any thing or sensation which we have not experi-
enced in our waking lives. As we have not fallen from great
heights or flown, while awake, how are the dreams to be ac-
counted for? One ingenious correspondent suggests that this
sensation is a relic of our prehistoric days, and represents ex-
periences and memories carried over from our " monkeyhood "
state ! I shall not do more than refer to the suggestion. The
author rather inclines to the belief that the eyes or optic nerves
play a great part in the explanation of such dreams. They are
supposed to give us the sensation of things moving upward past
us, and this would indirectly suggest the fact that we were fall-
ing. The author contends that these sensations are frequently
experienced in waking life, and might be the basis of our dreams
of falling, when asleep. For reasons it would take too long to
specify here I can only say that this explanation does not appear
to me to cover all the facts, or to explain many of the dreams in
any complete manner.

The most rational explanation of such dreams is probably the
following: By lying too long in one position, the blood suppjy
on the lower surface of the body is cut off, producing a certain
peripheral anaemia, with loss of sensation in these parts. This
loss of sensation would be coupled with the feeling that there
was no support beneath the body, and hence the idea that the
body was falling. through space. The imagination of the dreamer

Book Reznews. 179

would supply the rest of the dream data, so long as the primary
sensation is aroused.

But I cannot now stop to consider the causes of all dreams
in this detailed manner ; space forbids. * " Dreams of flying " have
been discussed in the Journal of the English S. P. R. (Vol. I, pp.
229, 356: Vol. IX., p. 95) ; in Phantasms of the Living, Human Per-
sonality and elsewhere ; and our author adds nothing to the the-
ories there advanced. Those of my readers who desire fuller
information as to the psychology of dreams should consult the
chapter on " Sleep," and other passages, in Myers' Human Per-
sonality; the chapter on " Dreams " in Hyslop's Enigmas of Psy-
chical Research^ etc. It is certain that very little is known about
dreams — ^their causes and phenomena — and the present book
makes that fact obvious. If it has done no other service, there-
fore, it will at least have drawn our attention to, and stimulated
our interest in, these most bewildering phenomena. It is to be
hoped that such books as the one under review will, in time, en-
able us to understand the laws governing dreams and dream
states, — ^for the subject is surely important no less than interest-
ing from any point of view whatsoever.

HEREWARD CARRINGTON.

180 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

ADDITIONAL MEMBERS.
Fellows.

Arkell, Mrs. James, Canajoharie, N. J.

Barrett, Prof. W. F., 6 De Vesci Terrace, Kingston, County Dub-
lin, Ireland. (Honoraiy Fellow.)
Quinby, John W., Box 68, East Bridgewater, Mass.

Members.

Anderson, O. W., 512 Masonic Temple, Minneapolis, Minn.

American Journal of Psychology, Clark University, Worcester,
Mass.

Annals of Psychic Science, no St. Martin's Lane, London, W.
C, England.

Annales Des Sciences Psychiques, 6 Aue Saulnier, Paris, France.

Banner of Light, 17 Fayette Street, Cambridge, Mass.

Dorr, G. B., 18 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, Mass.

Harbenger of Light, Melbourne, Australia.

Higbee, C. G., The Murray Iron Works Co., Burlington, Iowa.

Hopkins, Mrs. Dunlap, 31 East 30th St., N. Y. City.

International Journal of Ethics, 1415 Locust Street, Philadel-
phia, Pa.

Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Old Corner Bookstore, 27-29
Bromfield Street, Boston, Mass.

Journal of Pathology, 28 West 126th St., N. Y. City.

Journal of Philosophy & Psychology & Scientific Methods, Sub-
Station 84, N. Y. City.

L' Heureux, L., Reserve, La.

Light, no St. Martin's Lane, London, England.

Literary Digest, 44-60 East 23rd Street, N. Y. City.

Means, Miss Evelyn B., 104 Woodfin St., Ashville, N. C.

Rice, Mrs. Ellen E., Care L. W. Oakes, Bradford, Pa.

Satterlee, F. L. Roy, M. D., Ph. D., 6 West 56th St., N. Y. City.

Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D. C.

Society for Psychical Research, 20 Hanover Square, London, W.,
England.

Occult Review, 164 Aldersgate St., London, E. C, England.

Associates.

Bailey, Caroline F, 126 Turin Street, Rome, N. Y.
Ballard, Mrs. Gayton, 51 Jefferson Ave., Brooklyn, N. Y.
Barker, Mrs. Clarence F., 3942 Ellis Ave., Chicago, 111.
Bebee, George M., EUenville, Ulster Co., N. Y.
Bennett, S. B., Box 16, Pittston, Pa.

Additional Members. 181

Berryhill, Virginia J., iioi Pleasant Street, Des Moines, Iowa.

liozzano, Ernesto, Salita Emanuele Cavallo, N. 92, Genoa, Italy.

Carter, Dr. C. C, 302 East Long St., Columbus, Ohio. Free
Associate.

Centeno, Mrs., 25 Hyde Park Gate, London, S. W. England.

Cole, E. C, 4730 Greenwood Ave., Chicago, 111.

Corbin, G. C, 176 So. Main St., Danville, Va.

Cox, J. Cromwell, 281 Lanier Ave., East, Ottawa, Canada.

Crowell, Mrs. J. Hedges, 1044 Fifth Ave., N. Y. City.

Cushing, Miss Eleanor P., 76 Elm Ave., Northampton, Mass.

Densmore, Emmet, M. D., Hotel Astor, N. Y. City.

DillhofF, Mrs. Amy C, 823 Jefferson Ave., Brooklyn, N. Y.

Drake, Mrs. A. J., Aubumdale, Mass.

Friendlich, F., 239 West 141st St., N. Y. City.

Gale, Edward Courtland, 59 First Street, Troy, N. Y.

Gittermann, Rud. C, Odessa, South Russia.

Griffin, Mrs. Josephine, Mounts Crossing, Lakewood, N. J.

Hastings, Thomas J., i Wauchusett St., Worcester, Mass.

Hild, Madame Amelie, 401 Charles Block, Denver, Col.

Hoegelsberger, Mrs. Nora, 1305 Q St., Washington, D. C.

Keyser, Miss Annie T., 58 Jay Street, Albany, N. Y.

Krebs, G. W. C, Perryville, Md.

Librarian, City Library Association, Springffield, Mass.

Lutz, R. R,. San Juan, Porto Rico.

McCain, George Nox, 4008 Pine Street, Philadelphia, Pa.

McStreet, Ida, 308 Ogden Ave., Milwaukee, Wis.

Madocks, Maj. H. J., Sydney, N. S. Canada.

Magazine of Mysteries, 22 William St., N. Y. City.

Marks, Arthur H., 45 Arch St., Akron, Ohio.

Medico-Legal Journal, 39 Broadway, N. Y. City.

Mitchell, William, 602 W. 146th St., N. Y. City.

Palmer, E. C, Charlotte, Mich.

Perry, Mrs. Edward B., 2278 Kenmore Ave., Chicago, 111.

Poage, John N., College Hill, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Posthumus-Meyjes, Mme. R., 25 Laan Copes, The Hague, Hol-
land.

Rockwell Dr. A. E. R., Worcester, Mass.

Schmid, H. E., M. D., White Plains, N. Y.

Simonds, Mrs. F. M., Westover, Colden Ave., Flushing, L. L.
N. Y.

Thompson, E. O., 10 Winthrop Street, Watertown, N. Y.

Van Leer, Mary T., East Downingtown, Chester Co., Pa.

Weber, Mrs. Nita B., 806 F. Beach, Bilox, Miss.

Weeks, R. W., Tarrytown, N. Y.

Woodward, Fred E., Box 832, Washington, D. C.

YoL L-No. 4.

April, 1907.

JOURNAL

OF THE

American Society for Psychical Research

CONTENTS

GtKBMAL AKTICLBS: PAQB

Coodnfllan of Experiments Relative to
Dr. HodffBon and Theories - • - 183

Bditoriaz. : paob

Exposure of Hugh Bfloore 229

Nature of the Problem of Psychic Rfr>

search ZI9

The Sea-Serpent's Vindication - - Z32

TXBASURBK*S Rbport ----- 235

CONCLUSION OF EXPERIMENTS RELATIVE TO
DR. HODGSON; THEORIES.

By James Hervey Hyslop.

I have hitherto presented matter which may be supposed
to have claims for evidential character, that is, something
supernormal whatever the theory intended for their explan-
ation. It may be interesting to take up some of the noii-
evidential matter in illustration of features which we have to
ignore when dealing with scientific scepticism and which yet
represent important psychological material in the record.

The reader must remember two things in sucK a record
as that of Mrs. Piper, (i.) There is much material that no
scientific man would suspect to have a spiritistic source on
its superficial appearance. (2) The communications also
exhibit usually a certain kind of confusion and fragmentary
nature that perplexes scientific men and the public generally.
In dealing with the supernormal phenomena we have often
to ignore these facts and this may as often give a false im-
pression of the real character of the communications for
which we are asking credence as coming from a transcend-
ental world. It is, therefore, only fair to all persons and im-
portant to science that we should understand what the mat-
ter is upon which no stress can be laid in the argument for
the supernormal. The facts which impress us as evidence

184 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

of the transcendental are scattered about in a matrix of
alleged communications which we cannot treat evidentially
as such at all. But, altho many communications are of such
a type as not to be conclusive evidence of the supernormal,
there are many which are confirmatory and have g^eat value
as illustrating what we should most naturally expect on some
hypothesis of their explanation. For this reason they will
have an interest scarcely less important to science than the
actually evidential incidents. I shall, therefore, devote some
space to a brief account of some of these data in the records
just quoted. I shall only repeat to the reader that I am not
quoting this matter in any respect as evidence of either spirits
or the supernormal. If we have any reasons for believing it
to have the same source as the actually supernormal facts
this conviction must have other grounds than their superficial
claims. After the evidential demands of the supernormal
have been satisfied, the unity of all the phenomena with this
conclusion may be sufficient to make a respectable claim for
that source in the non-evidential statements, but I shall not
urge this view of the communications which I expect to
quote now. Readers may entertain whatever view they
please. I shall insist only that the statements are a part of
the record making a claim for the existence of spirits.

One of the first things that the trance personalities wished
to do at the sittings referred to was to talk to me about my
plans. They assumed the role of superior guides and ad-
visors and undertook to smooth down my temper which had
been considerably ruffled by the ruthless disregarding of
plans which had been formulating for several years to put
the work upon a better basis than it had ever been. There
can be no question of the patience and tact with which these
personalities handled the matter, tho I do not know how
much it had been discussed by other sitters prior to my ex-
periments. It is probable that the whole mass of advice is
attributable to the suggestions of other sitters. But I am
less concerned with this or any other explanation than with
the bare fact of psychological fitness and reality about it. I
will say, however, that only one or two persons knew my
^tate of mind and one of these was far distant from Boston.

Conclusion of Experiments Relative to Dr. Hodgson. 185

It was therefore interesting to sec how clearly the trance
personalities knew my mental condition. They wanted to
know what I was worrying about, and the answer on my part
to this query led to a thorough threshing out of the matter
in a perfectly intelligible manner representing all the play of
reality not less interesting to the psychologist than the phe-
nomena having better claims to a supernormal source.

When Dr. Hodgson took his turn to communicate, I
badgered him a little for going before I did when he had ex-
pected to have the pleasure of hearing from me first. I had
broken down in health some years before and did not expect
to recover. After a little chivalry on his part, as if aware of
the mood in which I was at the time, namely, that of a reso-
lution to abandon the work forever, he said : " Stick to it,
Hyslop. I hope you will not give up the ghost." He then
broke out with the statement : " I shall not stop to talk
rubbish, but let us get down to facts," thus characteristically
recognizing that it was evidence, not mere communication
which we wanted. At once, therefore, he asked me if I re-
membered the difficulties which we had in reference to my
Report, the fact being that we had many long discussions
about it. I asked him presently if he remembered the word
which he said he would have expected me to communicate in
proof of identity. It was a word that I had used oftener
than he liked, tho he admitted that it described exactly what
the facts needed. He had said he would never believe it
was I if I did not communicate that word. It was quite to
the point, therefore, when his reply was: " I do not at the
moment, but I will recall and repeat it for you. I remember
how we joked about it.^' In fact, we had joked about it con-
siderably. I have never mentioned the circumstance or the
word to any other living person, and I shall not mention the
word to any one. In reply I told him to take his time and
then came the following: —

" Surely I am not going to make a botch of anything if I
can help it. It is so suffocating here. I can appreciate their
difficulties better than ever before. Get my card? " alluding
in the question to the fact that he had prepared his usual
Christmas cards for his friends, but they were not sent out

186 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

until after his death. The mention of the difficulties in com-
munication was quite characteristic, as representing the
problem which we had often discussed together and which
we wished to have presented more thoroughly before the
public.

After some further references to experiments which we
had wished to carry out while living he interrupted the com-
munications with an allusion to an unverifiable experience af-
ter death. He said : " It is delightful to go up through the
cool ethereal atmosphere into this life and shake off the mor-
tal body." He had himself believed that the spiritual world
was ethereal and we have in this passage one of the many
interpolations of communicators which represent possibili-
ties but not evidence of what these phenomena purport to be.

I come now to a passage which shows a number of inter-
esting and important characteristics. The one to which I
wish to call special attention is the abrupt change of subject
that so often occurs in these phenomena. It is one that
serves more or less as evidence of the theory that the mental
condition necessary for communication, at least in the " pos-
session " type of mediumship, is like a delirious dream or a
wandering and dreaming secondary personality. Besides
this abrupt change of topic the reader will notice also inter-
polations of various sorts which indicate the same conception
of the process. A more important observation, however, to
be made is one that no reader will realize who did not know
Dr. Hodgson personally and intimately. It is the expression
of thoughts which he would not have expressed while living
in the way they are done here. There is an emotional color
in the communications at times that would have been in-
hibited in his natural conversation. The presence of this in
them points to the existence of a trance condition on the
" other side " as necessary for communication with this. I
do not say that it proves this, but that it consists with the
hypothesis made on other grounds, tho it does not explain all
the perplexities which accompany phenomena of this kind.
The passage which I wish to quote began with a more or less
evidential reference to an incident connected with my brother
in my Report published in 1901. My brother had taken seri-

Conclusion of Experiments Relative to Dr. Hodgson. 187

ous objection to what I had said there and hence I put on
record with Dr. Hodgson the facts confirmed by the testi-
mony of three other persons as a check against any possible
criticism of them. Let me note also for the reader that I
never " told " him about it, but I wrote out the facts and de-
posited the documents with him by mail. This feature of
the communications is one of those mistakes which are so
common and so natural to a dream like mental state that the
form of the messages when evidential at all makes them espe-
cially cogent against the unscientific objection of telepathy
in the case. To come then to the passage.

" Do you remember telling me about some objections
your brother made because these good friends told about
him?

(Yes, I remember that well indeed.)

I cannot forget anything if you give me time to recall.
You must have great patience with me as I am not what I
hope to be later.

(All right, Hodgson. Do you find that we conjectured
the difficulties fairly well?)

We did surprisingly well. I was surprised enough. Is
my writing more difficult than it used to be ?

(It is about the same.)

Do you remember anything about it?

(Yes, I do.)

I remember your comments about it, and much was left
me to explain.

(Yes, that is true.)

Of course it's true. Think I am less intelligent because
I am in the witness box ?

(No, I understand the difficulties.)

I hope you do, but this is the happiest moment of coming
over here. I mean in meeting you again.

(All right, Hodgson. I feel that it would have been bet-
ter for you to lead on this side.)

Perhaps, but I am satisfied. Do you remember how I
said to you I sometimes longed to get over here.

(Yes, I expect that was true and I have heard persons
say you said it.)

188 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

■ i did often. I longed to see this beautiful country if I
may so express it.'* Then followed the incident of our meet-
ing in New York mentioned above.

Now the reader should know that Dr. Hodgson never
once expressed to me the desire to pass to the other side.
But as my statement implies I have heard others say that he
had this wish. It was an intense wish of Frederic W. H.
Myers, and from the privations which Dr. Hodgson had to
suffer in his work I can well imagine that he may often have
wished to be where " the wicked ceased from troubling and
the weary are at rest." But in asking me if I remembered
his saying it, his memory lapsed, as would be natural in the
" suffocating " condition of which complaint is made by more
than one communicator.

The reader will remark that he admits the hypothesis
which we had applied to the communicator's condition while
communicating. Then he suddenly changes to the question
of his own handwriting which has some relation to the point
br issue which I had raised about the difficulties of commu-
nicating. But the form of his question points to a recollec-
tion, which, tho explicable by Mrs. Piper's knowledge of the
same, suggests on any theory a wandering consciousness.
His handwriting was a very difficult one for me to read and
others of his friends recognized that it was very scrawUy.
The allusion to my comments on it is perfectly true. As we
wrote to each other on important matters, and as I could not
read his writing at times I had on several occasions to re-
turn his letters and ask for his interpretation of his own
writing, and I indulged in some humorous observations
about it referring to what a time I would have with it when
he came to be a communicator, if our hypothesis about the
difficulties of communication were true. Then as if under
the excitement of recognition be becomes perfectly clear and
eaks out into a natural tone of banter for supposing that
^at he says may not be true, tho the very clearness of his

Uigence at the time indicates a marginal conviction that
\ not always so in the attempt to communicate. Then
lucid moment runs into an emotional outburst about his

|}jness at meeting me, a mood which might be natural

Conclusion of Experiments Relative to Dr. Hodgson. 189

enough for the time and place and perhaps reflecting in the
message the impossibility of hindering the passage of mental
states from beyond into the automatic consciousness or sub-
consciousness of Mrs. Piper^ but certainly also indicating
what his friends would recognize as an interest which he
would not express in words while living.

At the next sitting when he turned up to communicate he
began to reproach me for losing my grit in this work, as it
was known in some way that I meant to abandon it unless
some reasonable spirit of co-operation was shown by those
managing affairs. In the process of our interview on this
matter he became greatly excited and confused and the hand
wrote so heavily and rapidly that it tore the paper and when
we managed to have it calm down the following came and
was most likely the interpolation of the control or trance per-
sonality.

" In leaving the body the shock to the spirit knocks every-
thing out of one's thoughts for awhile, but if he has any de-
sire at all to prove his identity he can in time collect enough
evidence to prove his identity convincingly/' Then Dr.
Hodgson began with his reference to our experiment with
the voice case. (See above p. lOO.)

In connection with this passage explaining the effect of
death, a view quite consistent with what we know of physical
shocks to the living consciousness, it might be well to quote
what the trance personality said to me at a sitting nearly a
month later. To try a question which was designed to test
the possibility of our getting marginal thoughts of the com-
municator instead of the main ones intended, I asked at this
later sitting if some of the thoughts came through that he
did not intend to send. The answer and colloquy was as
follows :

"At times they do and then again his thoughts are some-
what changed. They are not exactly what they were when
in the body.

(Very good, I understand.)

The change called Death which is really only transition is
very different from what one thinks before he experiences
ft. That in part explains why Myers never took a more

190 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

active part after he came over here. He had much on his
mind before he came which he vowed he would give after he
came over, but the shock [was such] that many of his de-
terminations were scattered from his living memory. This
is a petty excuse but a living reality — a fact. It is unmis-
takably so with every one who crosses the border line.

(Yes, I can understand how this would take place from
similar shocks among the living.)

Amen. Well then we need give no further explanations
on this point if it is understood by you. However when ex-
pecting the best results the poorest may be given, unless
this is fully understood by those living in the mortal life. It
is only by simple recollections that real proof of identity can
be given."

If I could take any special incident and compare it with
the exact facts as known to the living there would be much
in them to confirm such an explanation of the difficulty and
confusion connected with the process of communication, as-
suming the spiritistic hypothesis to be a legitimate one. The
explanation here given by the trance personality is certainly
plausible tho we have no direct means of verifying it. But
when we find from internal evidence of the supernormal in-
cidents that confusion of some kind is present we may well
entertain the possibility of a semi-trance on the other side,
as a means of studying the phenomena as a whole, and
hence I quote the above passages as a sample of statement
which must engage the attention and respect of the psycholo-
gist, if for no other purpose than to show its tenability in
case that can be done.

A passage from Dr. Hodgson points in the same direc-
tion as that which I have quoted from the trance personali-
ties. He says: —

" It is I find most difficult to use the mechanism and reg-
ister clearly one's recollections. I have much sympathy for
George whom we badgered to death, poor fellow. He gave
me all I had to hope for in spite of my treatment of him.
Now just keep your patience with me and you will have all
you could ask for. Understand ? "

" George " refers to the man whom Dr. Hodgson called

Conclusion of Experiments Relative to Dr. Hodgson. 191

" George Pelham " in his Report on the Piper case and who
was instrumental after his death in proving to Dr. Hodgson
the truth of the spiritistic hypothesis. " George " was his
Christian name, but " Pelham " was not his surname. It
was after Dr. Hodgson tried the hypothesis of a dream like
state as necessary to communicate that he began to under-
stand the difficulties in the theory. He then came to the
conclusion that the best course to take in the experiments
was to let the communicator have his own way and not to
" badger him to death." He often remarked to me that we
could not get what we wanted if we kept nagging at the
communicator. Here is the repetition of this conception at
a moment which the detailed record shows to have been one
of confusion and excitement.

As further illustration of the rapid movement of the mem-
ory from incident to incident, occasioned possibly partly by
the uninhibited process of thinking on the other side and by
the slow mechanical process of the writing compared with
this rapid thought in their world, we may continue the
passage which I have just quoted. When he asked me to
have patience with him and I would get all I could ask for,
I went on : —

" (Yes, I am quite willing to let you have fully your own
way.)

I shall take it in spite of you. I am determined to do
what I think best. Do you remember the tussle I had with
you about getting that book in order?

(Yes, we had many tussles.)

Indeed we did. I am wondering if you recall some lines
I wrote you once a year or two before I came when you were
in the mountains for your health ?

(I do not now recall them, but it is likely that I can find
out because I have absolutely all your letters. Can you men-
tion a few words of the lines?)

You remember the lines I used to quote often, running
like this : ' patience is a blessing/ and your answer, and the
subject of the rest. You were pleased and replied they were
apropos of your condition."

Now just as I had said I had kept absolutely every line

192 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

Dr. Hodgson ever wrote me from the time I arranged for my
sittings with Mrs. Piper in 1898 until his death at the end of
1905. There was therefore a fine chance to verify what
was said here. Consequently I examined every letter writ-
ten me after I broke down in June in 1901 until I left the
mountains in April, 1902, and not a trace of any such lines
appear in the correspondence. In fact not a word of counsel,
consolation and spiritual reflection occurs in it. Nor do I
recall any mental attitude of the kind in any other part of
the correspondence. Dr. Hodgson's habit of indulging in
sentiment of this kind, so far as I knew him, was in his
Christmas cards which he regularly sent out to his friends
each year at the holidays. We have then a promise to prove
his identity as George Pelham had done, and in fulfillment of
it an incident that is wholly false in relation to me, tho pos-
sibly true in relation to some one else, as in the instance of
the " nigger talk " first referred to Myers and then corrected
to Prof. James (p. 97). We can well understand why the
trance personality should indicate the shock which death
may occasion to the memory in the attempt to come back
and communicate. The incident here quoted has the same
characteristics which a delirium would have reproducing a
mosaic of one^s past experiences, telling enough to show
that the facts are at least partly correct, as in the allusion to
my being in the mountains for my health — a fact most prob-
ably known to Mrs. Piper — and another which represented
a probable trait in his character but not exhibited toward me
in the manner stated. I have myself witnessed just such
phenomena in the deliria of the living.

Another passage has a striking interest as showing an
appreciation of the problem. I have said previously that he
was always on the alert for the type of fact that could not be
explainel by telepathy and that the message with reference
to Prof. Newbold (p. 105) was not explicable by that hypoth-
esis as applied to my mind. At my last sitting after I had
ascertained from Prof. Newbold that the allusion was cor-
rect, I had also had some correspondence with a Dr. B -,

who had had a sitting and to whom Dr. Hodgson had made
a similar statement with other incidents of what had hap-

Conclusion of Experiments Relative to Dr. Hodgson. 193

pened in the conversation between Dr. Hodgson and Prof.
Newbold on the ocean beach. At this last sitting Dr. Hodg-
son brought up the subject spontaneously and soon showed
what relation it had to the telepathic hypothesis by the way
he spoke of it, as the reader will perceive in my quotation.

" Did Dr. B. prove my message ?

(Dr. B found that your message to Billy about some

conversation that you and he had the last time you saw him
was exactly correct and he was delighted with it.)

Amen. (Yes Hodgson, and you told me the same thing

twice.) What thing? Before I came over? Do you

[remember it?]

(Yes, Hodgson.) Oh yes, I remember it well. (Good.)

There is no telepathy in this except as it comes from my
mind to yours.

(Good. Then telepathy is at least a part of the process
by which you communicate with me.)

Most assuredly it is and I had a vague idea before I came
over.

(Yes, you did.)

You remember our talks about the telepathic theory of
our friends' thoughts reaching us from this side telepath-
ically."

We did have several conversations on this point and the
reader may interpret for himself the psychological interest
and importance of the allusion to telepathy in this connec-
tion, especially when it is related to an incident not known
to myself at the time it was first alluded to (p. 105).

As I have already remarked I cannot produce this as
proof of the existence of spirits, tho I think many readers
will think it of the type of evidence that would constitute
good proof if it were not complicated with the personal ac-
quaintance of the communicator with the medium before
his death. I have been careful to quote the incidents which
certainly border on the evidential while they as certainly
appear characteristic of the alleged communicator with such
modifications as might naturally occur both from the un-
natural conditions under which the communications must be
made and from the amnesic and disturbed mental state of

— ~ ' rsirn:.

I.

1

Conclusion of Experiments Relative to Dr. Hodgson. 195

how it can account for the psychological peculiarities of the
phenomena imitative of deliria and dream-like states on the
other side and yet press this limitation against the only the-
ory that can give a rational explanation of them. If the ad-
vocate of telepathy really knew anything about that process
or hypothesis at all he would be ashamed to urge it with so
much confidence. He would find a most imperative duty to
investigate it more carefully to see if, in the real or alleged
communications between the living there were traces of im-
perfect memories and delirious mental states on the part of
agents. I shall not deny the possibility of this, but until it
is shown to be a scientific fact, which the present record of
alleged telepathic phenomena does not suggest, we are not
privileged scientifically to urge such a process in explanation
of the record under discussion. The spiritistic theory may
not be the right one. With that I am not at present con-
cerned. But it is entitled to such possibilities as commend
it against the inferior claims of other hypotheses. That
is all that I am urging for the moment. Hence it is, I think,
that the really scientific man prefers the simple theory of fraud
as the more difficult one of the three to displace. Secondary
personality he sees does not account for the supernormal
part of the phenomena, however it might appear to account
for the non-evidential matter. It would be a curious theory
which limited the explanatory functions of its process to
what was relevant to spirits and wholly exclude this from
matter which, tho not evidential, is characteristic of the con-
jectured source supposed in this case. Hence I think we
may present, at least provisionally, the hypothesis of dis-
carnate agency while we press for an investigation equally
thorough with that of the past, and perhaps even more pro-
longed and extended in order to understand the limitations
of the communications.

I have here merely hinted at the explanations of the con-
fusion and limitations of the incidents purporting to be mes-
sages from a spirit world. I have been trying to confine
the subject and the evidence to what purports to come from
Dr. Richard Hodgson, but the issue at this point is so im-
portant and the misunderstanding so great that I think it

1% Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

proper in this last article to diverge somewhat from the mate-
rial affecting the personality of Dr. Hodgson and to discuss
what is apparently the most important difficulty in the prob-
lem and in doing so to introduce general evidence from other
communicators and other psychics.

I shall begin this part of the discussion by an allusion to
the difficulty which it seems both laymen and scientific men
encounter when asked to believe that we are communicating
with spirits. This dUficulty, which is usually stated as an objec-
tion, is due to the triviality and confusion of the cofnmunications.
It occasionally takes the form of complaint that we have
nothing to show regarding the conditions of life in a spiritual
world. I wish to take up these matters and to deal with
them as thoroughly as limited space will permit.

I think I may best take as illustrative of this difficulty
some remarks of the editor of an intelligent newspaper
which were published in reference to my article in the Feb-
ruary Journal. They put into definite shape a number of
points such as I constantly meet when discussing the ques-
tion, and as the editorial treatment of the matter, tho critical
and sceptical, was entirely friendly to the investigation, it
may conduce to a better understanding of the whole problem
to make it the subject of a careful and friendly reply.

After alluding to some statements of my own explana-
tory of what is necessary in proof of personal identity, which
is the primary issue for the scientific man, namely, trivial in-
cidents of a past earthly life that are verifiable, the editor of
the Providence Journal went on with the following re-
marks : —

" It is perhaps best to judge the evidence present by Pro-
fessor Hyslop upon this ground, altho to many persons it will
seem that this is fundamentally an error. To such persons the
obvious possibility of the absorption of such ' trivial incidents '
by telepathic communication with the * spirit ' before his or her
departure from the flesh, however impossible might be any the-
ory of acquaintance with the facts by the ordinary means of in-
tercourse, will serve as a serious if not a definite deterrent to
the acceptation of the relation as a proof of anything. But even
lasting aside this basic objection and admitting the conception
:>t Professor Hyslop to be correct, it is still impossible to see

Conclusion of Experiments Relative Jo Z>r- Hodgson. 197

wherein this narrative of experiments — ^interesting as it is— estab-
lishes the slightest link in the chain, which, in all sincerity, the
investigators headed by him are endeavoring to forge. Every-
portion of it relates solely, in a more or less confused manner, to
the interests of Dr. Hodgson on earth. There is not the faintest
indication of ' supernormal information.' It must be said frankly
that neither in quantity nor quality does the information pre-
sented lead even to the suggestion of a ' spiritistic theory.' If
spirits, who in life possessed the intelligence of Dr. Hodgson, talk
such muddle-headed nonsense the moment they discard the flesh,
then Heaven help the foolish ones of this earth."

I shall first discuss the entire misunderstanding of the
problem which this writer exhibits; a misunderstanding,
however, which is shared by many others.

In the first place the telepathy which this writer assumes
and refers to " absorption " by the living of the thoughts of
others has absolutely no scientific evidence whatever for its
existence. You cannot quote the facts purporting to be
from spirits in proof of it, because they bear so definitely on
the personal identity of deceased persons. You will have to
get evidence not so related and there is absolutely none such
of a scientific character. The thing you have to explain, is
not the remarkable nature of the facts, but their uniform
relation to deceased persons. Telepathy which can acquire
incidents about dead people but cannot acquire any about
the living is a curious capacity and perilously near being
devilish. It may be so, of course, but face that issue when
you propose the assumption. Apropos of this I may ask
also how you are going to account for the trivialities and
confusion on such* a remarkable faculty? A power infinite
in everything but access to important facts is a worse
anomaly in human knowledge than spirits can possibly be.
In fact you cannot rationally account for the limitation to
triviality at all on the telepathic hypothesis, while this is per-
fectly simple on the spiritistic.

But no scientific man believes in the kind of telepathy
here supposed. He will only ask for independent evidence
that it is a fact before using it as a substitute for a spiritistic
interpretation of facts related only to the personal identity of
deceased persons. We shall simply throw upon the adher-

198 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

ent of it the responsibility for the evidence of his assump-
tion and if that is forthcoming we shall consider it dispas-
sionately.

In the second place, the writer's conception of the " su-
pernormal " is wholly different from that of the scientific
man and he strangely demands as proof of a future life com-
munications which are absolutely unverifiable in the present
stage of the inquiry. He complains that the evidence is con-
fined solely to Dr. Hodgson's earthly life. This is precisely
where the cogency of the facts and argument lies. We could
not at present verify scientifically any statement whatever
about the conditions in a trenscendental world. " Super-
normal " does not mean knowledge of things in a spiritual
world ; nor does it necessarily imply anything spiritual what-
ever. Many confuse it with the " supernatural," but psychic
researchers adopted it to eliminate all the associations of that
term and to mean something not acquired in a normal way.
It is a purely negative term, implying nothing definite about
either the " supernatural " or anything in a transcendental
world. In other words; " supernormal " means and only
means beyond or transcending normal sense perception. It
does not mean any special view of what is beyond and it does
not in any respect imply the spiritual, even tho this happen
to be included in it after the investigation has gone far
enough to justify that belief. It means nothing more than
the fact that we have gotten something which cannot be ex-
plained as having a sensory origin, that is, an origin in normal
sense perception. All that is verifiable must either have been
acquired by the sense perception of the subject or must exist
in the memory of living persons. The nature and conditions
of a spiritual world and its life are not so verifiable, and no
intelligent man would expect or demand, as evidence, com-
munications of this kind in proof of a spiritual world, to say
nothing of the impossibility of making it intelligible if com-
munication about it were tried.

It is the last objection which always seems the most
cogent to the sceptic. The writer thinks that intelligent per-
sons like Dr. Hodgson would not or ought not to talk such
" muddle-headed nonsense." I shall confidently reply at this

Conclusion of Experiments Relative to Dr. Hodgson. 199

point that the best part of our evidence for the spiritistic
hypothesis is just this nonsense. What the critic thinks is
a fatal objection is our best proof. That is a contention
which may surprise many an objector, but it is one that I
advance and I am certain that it will put the sceptic to his
wits to sustain his assumption that intelligent men would do
much better than the evidence seems to indicate. I shall
boldly challenge any successful defense of the writer's posi-
tion.

Now if Dr. Hodgson was so intelligent a person how
would the critic account for the " absorption by telepathy
while in the flesh '' of exclusively trivial incidents ? On the
critic's assumption we ought to have had very intelligent
messages^ intelligent after the type of his conception. But
instead of that we have what are alleged to be exclusively
trivial facts. On the other hand, if the alleged communicator
had not been an intelligent man, according to the critic's
point of view we might explain the limitations of the mes-
sages. But he concedes that Dr. Hodgson's earthly life was
intelligent and admits the exclusive limitation of the incidents
to that life.

But I shall not dwell on dialectics of this kind as they are
not important. What we have to realize is two or three
fundamental things in this problem, which I shall have to
reiterate again and again in order to have the point made in
the spiritistic hypothesis that is here defended.

I recur again to the conception of the supernormal. I
said and I repeat that it denotes the acquisition of informa-
tion by some other means than normal sense perception.
With this view in mind I shall again define the problem which
is before the advocate of the spiritistic theory.

There are three fundamental conditions of a spiritistic
hypothesis, (i) The information acquired must be super-
normal, that is, not explicable by normal perception. (2)
The incidents must be verifiable memories of the deceased
persons and so representative of their personal identity. (3)
The incidents must be trivial and specific — not easily, if at all,
duplicated in the common experience of others. Any other

200 Jotirnal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

kind of facts will be exposed to sceptical objections which
may be unanswerable.

The point of view which the psychic researcher has to
take is that of the materialist. That is, he must assume that
the materialistic theory has the first claim to consideration
and that the facts must at least be inconsistent with its claims
in order to obtain any fulcrum for the spiritistic view. Now
the materialistic theory maintains that consciousness is a
function of the brain and so perishable with it. This view is
universally conceded for the various functions of the bodily
organsim, such as digestion, circulation, secretion, etc. All
these are admittedly organic functions and so perishable with
the body. If consciousness is a similar function it has the
same fate. Now since we have no evidence, apart from the
alleged phenomena on record by psychic researchers, that
consciousness can exist without a bodily organism, we have
to ascertain, if possible, if the phenomena so alleged point to
its survival. If they do, the materialistic theory cannot be
sustained and the case is proved. Men may differ as to the
nature of the facts, but, their supernormal character once ad-
mitted, the issue is clearly defined and open to discussion.
Any facts, no matter what their character and no matter what
the logical consequences, that supply the three characteris-
tics mentioned, supernormality, relevance to personal iden-
tity of deceased persons, and specific triviality, will be rele-
vant to the conclusion which the spiritist draws and must be
entitled to fair consideration. But we cannot assume that
alleged communications should be anything more than proof
of identity, and we are entitled to assume that they must be
this because it is a primary and essential condition of believ-
ing in the existence of spirits. The messages may be insane,
if you like, but they must be supernormal, specific and rele-
vant to the identity of deceased persons. What we shall
make of such a life is not our business as scientific men at
the outset of our problem. What use it may be does not
enter into any conception of the matter at first except that of
intellectual snobs and aesthetes. We have to explain the
facts and accept the consequences. We shall show the use
of the conclusion later in the work. At present the question

Cmichision of Experiments Relative to Dr, Hodgson, 201

is, not whether we are beings of superior intelligence after
death, but whether consciousness survives death at all, and
once convinced of that we can take up the problem of the
nature of that survival, its limitations, if any, the perplexi-
ties attending the kind of messages, their confusion and
triviality, and the rarity of the phenomena. But these char-
acteristics are not objections to the hypothesis ; they are only
additional issues li'itliin it. They are questions only after
admitting it, not facts opposed to it. This I think can be
made clear in the sequel.

Now admitting that fraud has been excluded from con-
sideration of such facts as this series of articles records I
think every intelligent reader will admit that they conform to
the three conditions of a spiritistic hypothesis. I shall not
here urge that they prove it. I simply say that these three
conditions have been satisfied. \\'e may have to satisfy
other conditions. I leave that matter to those who do not
start with the assumed truth or possibility of the materialistic
theory of things. I am here testing only the theory of ma-
terialism. I think, therefore, that the satisfaction of these
three conditions at least throws a doubt upon materialism as
an explanation of consciousness, and the next question is to
account for the peculiar character of the facts which seem to
refute that theory.

I think every one who reflects a moment will admit that
only trivial facts will prove personal identity, whether of the
living or of the dead. If it be doubted the experiment has
only to be tried, and in a large system of them some years
ago with Columbia University students and professors I
showed that rational men would select incidents quite as
trivial, or even more trivial, to prove their identity over a
telegraph wire. This circumstance, I think, removes all
force of the alleged objection to spirit messages on the
ground of mere triviality.

But I am going frankly to concede that it is not the bare
fact of triviality that gives the trouble. It is the two facts of
(i) persistent triviality, and (2) confusion in the incidents,
presumably suggesting a degenerated personality very differ-
ent from the living person we knew in his best estate. This

202 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

is the perplexity which we have to face and which is implied
in the article which I have quoted from the Providence
Journal.

It is here that I propose to urge the fundamental feature
of a spiritistic theory, one that is an essential part of that
hypothesis for certain types of mediums. I shall call them
the " possession " type as distinguished from the subliminal
type. The term is tentative, tho it represents a distinction
between the phenomena which I have neither time nor space
here to discuss, and I make it in order not to be taken as as-
serting or supposing that the view which I shall present
assumes a universal condition of the phenomena. But I want
to emphasize the adjunctive hypothesis which I mean to elab-
orate somewhat as one which explains away all the objections
and difficulties that the sceptic has been in the habit of pre-
senting against the spiritistic theory. Hitherto there has
been no opportunity to present and discuss this aspect of the
problem in a public way. The popular periodicals want sen-
sational matter, and care little for important truths. The
scientific journals have lived in such contempt of the whole
subject that they would not permit the dicsussion of it, and
so we have had to remain silent for lack of means to discuss
this fundamental feature of the theory before intelligent
readers. Fortunately we have now an opportunity to present
it and to ask consideration of it.

What I refer to is the explanation of the persistent trivial-
ity and confusion of the communications which purport to
come from the discarnate. I shall premise, however, that
this accusation that the communications are always so trivial
and confused is in fact not true. No doubt it appears so from
the examples which we publish and discuss. On this account
I can respect the difficulty on the part of all who have not
made a special study of the phenomena. But the fact is that
the communications are not always trivial as is supposed.
There are two decided limitations to this accusation. The
first is that the question of triviality depends wholly upon the
point of view assumed in the problem. If the communicator
realizes that he has his identity to prove he will necessarily
limit himself to trivial recollections, assuming that he can

Conclusion of Experiments Relative to Dr, Hodgson. 203

control his state of consciousness at the time of his com-
munications. Those who read the Piper case carefully will
discover that the phenomena have all the appearance at least
of being organized efforts on the " other side " to prove the
identity of those who have passed away. The triviality thus
becomes so important as to lose all the imputations implied
by that term and so show a rational effort to solve the prob-
lem, an effort adjusted to the very needs of the issue. This
is particularly noticeable in the communications of Dr. Hodg-
son. If the reader will simply study the facts in this series of
articles in a careful and patient way he will find that there is
a characteristic consciousness of this view of the matter
which has not so clearly characterized any other communi-
cator, unless we except George Pelham. The second lim-
itation to the accusation is the fact that the statements which
are not trivial and confused, very often, if not generally, lack
evidential character. AH communications about the other
life, about the first experiences after death, about the laws of
life and action on the " other side " are worthless as evidence
of the supernormal, and the student of abnormal psychology
would consign us to bedlam if we put this sort of thing for-
ward as evidence of spirits. Consequently we have to select
the incidents which have a supernormal character and which
cannot be explained by abnormal psychologfy in order to
present any support whatever for the existence of spirit.
The argument is that^ having been acquired from some ex-
ternal source, the information, owing to its relation to the
personality of deceased individuals, can best be attributed to
that source. * The non-evidential matter has to be ignored
until we are obliged to recognize its unity with the super-
normal incidents. This non-evidential matter exists in large
quantities in the Piper and similar records, but cannot be
used in discussions affecting the integrity of spiritistic the-
ories. The assertion, therefore, that the matter is always
trivial is not exactly true, and the circumstance gives us a
vantage ground when the time comes to discuss other than
evidential problems.

I agree, nevertheless, that it is natural to complain of the
triviality and confusion in the evidential matter. The want

204 Journal of th€ American Society for Psychical Research,

of a satisfactory explanation of them keeps back the accept-
ance of the spiritistic hypothesis from many a scientific man,
and hence I shall here state a view of the phenomena which
I think completely removes the perplexity. Whether it is
true or not remains to be shown in the future, but it can be
put forward as a working hypothesis and its applicability to
the facts on record and tested by the extent of its fitness
thereto.

The general supposition which, to the mind of Dr. Hodg-
son and myself, explains the persistent triviality and con-
fusion of the messages is that the communicating spirit at the
time of communicating (not necessarily in his normal state in the
spirit Xivrl(l), is in a sort of abnormal mental state, perhaps resem-
bling our dream life or somnambulic conditions. We cannot de-
termine exactly what this mental condition is at present and
may never be able to do so, but it can be variously compared
to dream life, somnambulism, hypnosis of certain kinds,
trance, secondary personality, subliminal mental action, or
any of those mental conditions in which there is more or less
of disintegration of the normal memory. Ordinary delirium
has some analogies with it, but the incidents are too pur-
posive and too systematic in many cases to press this an-
alogy to any general extent. But the various disturbances
of the normal consciousness or personality in the living offer
clear illustrations of the psychological phenomena which we
produce as evidence of spirits when these phenomena are
supernormally produced.

But this hypothesis does not explain all the confusion in-
volved. There is the more or less unusual condition of the
medium, mental and physical. The medium through which
the messages purport to come is in a trance condition, and
when not a trance the condition is one which is not usual,
and perhaps in the broad sense may be called abnormal, tho
not technically this in any important sense. This condition
offers many obstacles to perfect transmission of messages.
It is illustrated in many cases of somnambulism in which the
stream of consciousness goes on uninhibited, and when this
is suppressed, as it is in deep trances, the difficulty is to get
systematic communications through it. Add to this the fre-

Cmclusion of Experunents Relative to Dr. Hodgson. 205

quently similar condition of the communicator, according to
the hypothesis, and we can well imagine what causes trivial-
ity and confusion. The student of abnormal psychology will
recognize the applicability of this view at once, even tho he
is not prepared to admit that it is a true theory.

There are two aspects of such an hypothesis which have to
be considered. They are its fitness or explanatory character,
and its evidential features. They are quite distinct from each
other. The hypothesis might fit and yet have no evidence
that it was a fact. I think, however, that all who are familiar
with abnormal mental phenomena will admit without special
contention that the hypothesis will explain the triviality and
confusion of the alleged messages, but they will want to know
what evidence exists for such a view. It is to this aspect of
the theory to which we must turn.

Dr. Hodgson had discussed this supposition in his Report
on the Piper case in 1898. It is therefore not new, and some
incidents in his communications seem to point to the influ-
ence of this view on his messages. I shajl quote one passage
from his Report in illustration of the hypothesis and of some
of his evidence for it.

*' That persons ' just deceased/ '' says this Report, (p.
377), *' should be extremely confused and unable to com-
municate directly, or even at all, seems perfectly natural after
the shock and wrench of death. Thus in the case of Hart, he
was unable to write the second day after his death. In an-
other case a friend of mine, whom I may call D., wrote, with
what appeared to be much difficulty, his name and the words,
* I am all right now. Adieu,' within two or three days after
his death. In another case, F., a nearrelative of Madame
Elisa, was unable to write on the morning after his death.
On the second day after, when a stranger was present with
me for a sitting, he wrote two or three sentences, sayings, * I
am too weak to articulate clearly,' and not many days later
he wrote fairly well and clearly, and dictated also to Madame
Elisa, as a manuensis, an account of his feelings at finding,
himself in his new surroundings. Both D. and F. became
very clear in a short time. D. communicated later on fre-
quently, both by writing and speech, chiefly the latter, and

206 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

showed always an impressively marked and characteristic
personality. Hart, on the other hand, did not become so
clear till many months later. I learned long afterwards that
his lilness had been much longer and more fundamental than
I had supposed. The continued confusion in his case seemed
explicable if taken in relation with the circumstances of his
prolonged illness, including fever, but there was no assign-
able relation between his confusion and the state of my own
mind."

The allusion in this passage to the effect of the shock of
death recalls the passage quoted above (p. 189) and repre-
senting Rector, the control, as remarking this effect to me as
an apology for the confused and fragmentary communications
from Dr. Hodgson himself. But as Mrs. Piper at least had
the opportunity to read, and perhaps actually did read the
whole of Dr. Hodgson's Report, we cannot speak of the inci-
dent as evidential. It is merely consistent with an hypothe-
sis based on other grounds. But the allusion to Mr. Myers
in this connection, jls the reader will see by referring to the
passage quoted, has some pertinence. It is true that Mr.
Myers never accomplished by way of communication what
was expected of him and what he himself expected before his
death to do. The explanation of his- failure is perfectly ra-
tional, tho not evidential.

But the proper evidence for this dream life or semi-trance
and somnambulic condition will be found in incidents which
also contain supernormal facts. I quote one of remarkable
interest. A man who had had sittings with Mrs. Piper before
his death, some time after his decease, which took place in
Paris, turned up as' a communicator without Mrs. Piper
having known of his death. He had always been perplexed
by the confusion and fragmentary nature of the messages of
his deceased friend George Pelham. When he himself be-
came a communicator it was some time before he was able to
communicate clearly. When he could communicate he de-
livered the following message to Dr. Hodgson :

" What in the world is the reason you never call for me?
im not sleeping. I wish to help you in identifying myself,
im a good deal better now.

Conclusion of Experiments Relative to Dr. Hodgson. 207

(You were confused at first.)

Very, but I did not really understand how confused I was.
I am more so when I try to speak to you. I understand now
why George spelled his words to me."

The allusion to George Pelham's spelling out his words is
an evidential incident, as it was verifiable and recognizes after
death the explanation of confusions which he could not un-
derstand while living. A similar tho not evidential passage
came from this George Pelham himself. It represents the
point of view which I am advancing to account for the
curious nature of the messages, and was perhaps the com-
munication which suggested the theory to Dr. Hodgson. I
quote it from the latter's Report.

" Remember we share and always shall have our friends
in the dream life, i. e., your life so to speak, which will attract
us for ever and ever, and so long as we have any friends
sleeping in the material world ; — ^you to us are more like as we
understand sleep, you look shut up as one in prison, and in
order for us to get into communication with you, we have to
enter into your sphere, as one like yourself asleep. This is
just why we make mistakes as you call them, or get confused
and muddled, so to put it H."

At this point Dr. Hodgson read over the automatic writ-
ing to indicate that he had gotten the message and how he
understood it. The communications then went on.

" Your thoughts do grasp mine. Well now you have just
what I have been wanting to come and make clear to you, H.,
old fellow.

(It is quite clear.)

Yes, you see I am more awake than asleep, yet I cannot
come just as I am in reality, independently of the medium's
light.

(You come much better than the others.) Yes, because
I am a little nearer and not less intelligent than some others
here."

At one of Dr. Hodgson's later sittings the same communi-
cator, George Pelham, used the word " prisoned " in a pas-
sage in which " prisoning " was in Dr. Hodgson's view the

208 Journal of tlie American Society for Psychical Research.

more correct term, and he suggested the correction. George
Pelham broke out with the reply : —

" See here, H., ' Don't view me with a critic's eye, but pass
my imperfections by.' Of course I know all that as well as
anybody on your sphere. I tell you, old fellow, it don't do
to pick [out] all these little errors too much when they
amount to nothing in one way. You have light enough and
brain enough I know to understand my explanations of being
shut up in this body [that of the medium] dreaming as it
were and trying to help on science."

The possibility of all this every reader must admit, when
he has once felt the force of the supernormal matter in favor
of the spiritistic theory, tho he will rightly hold that it is not
evidence of any conclusive kind. But it hangs together well
with the character of the messages in all cases, and when we
recall our own power to tell something of the mental status
of a man who is talking to us or whose book we are reading
we may well admit that the confused and fragmentary nature
of the messages suggest and confirm the view taken in these
communications.

I go next to some of the communications from Dr. Hodg-
son, as narrated in this series of articles. I need refer only to
the incident of the '* nigger talk " (February Journal, p. 97),
in which the amnesia, or disturbance to memory, was clearly
illustrated, unless we can assume that the cause of the con-
fusion was the mental and physical mechanism of Mrs. Piper
through whom the message had to come. A better instance
is the following:

A certain gentleman was a member of the Board of
Trustees of the American Institute for Scientific Research
and Dr. Hodgson knew both the man and this fact of his
membership. This gentleman resigned from the Board some
months after the death of Dr. Hodgson, a fact which was
most probably not known to Mrs. Piper. In one of my sit-
tings the following occurred :

'' Is X. with you?

(No, he resigned.)

What for? I thought so.

(Well, Hodgson, it is best not to say publicly.)

Conclusion of Experiments Relative to Dr, Hodgsoft. 209

I am not public, am I ?

(Well, it would stand in my record, Hodgson.)

Oh, of course, I understand."

Now the interest of this incident lies in this simple fact.
Dr. Hodgson was familiar for eighteen years with the record
of Mrs. Piper's sittings, and for ten years with the careful
record of what was done in both speech and writing. Here
he is apparently wholly unaware of what is going on in the
communications. His mental condition has apparently made
him oblivious to the fact of record, or what the trance person-
alities or controls call '* registering " a message. Amnesia
had come on as an accident or concomitant of the condition
necessary for communicating, at least for all that affected the
unnecessary parts of his communications. The control of
the stream of consciousness is not so perfect as in the earthly
life. The reasons for this cannot be made clear here, but the
psychiatrist will understand it from his knowledge of unin-
hibited mental processes.

One of the best illustrations of this is Rector's statements
of the reason for the difficulties of communicating, as the
reader may have noticed above (p. 189). The passage, of
course, is not evidential, but when the spiritistic hypothesis
has been rendered rational by evidential matter it is not un-
reasonable to examine statements of this kind with patience
and to give them the status of a working hypothesis to ascer-
tain whether it may not be confirmed by other characteristics
of the phenomena.

I quote some statements communicated at the sitting of
February 27th, 1906. After a question that I had asked re-
garding a certain word that would bear on his identity, Dr.
Hodgson alluded to the danger of '* making a botch " of his
messages and broke out with the statement : " It is so suffo-
cating here. I can appreciate their difficulties better than
ever before." Here he was intimating ideas which he held
as to the difficulty of communicating before he himself passed
away, and he had often compared the influence of the con-
ditions to that of mephitic gases, and we know what effect
they have on the integrity of consciousness. A few minutes
after the deliverance of this statement, and wMth it in mind, I

210 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

asked if we had conjectured the difficulties fairly well. The
reply was : " We did surprisingly well. I was surprised
enough/' and then at once passed to communications about
his own handwriting which had often been illegible to me
when he was living. The admission here of suffocation
points to the hypothesis which I have advanced, tho in no
way proving it, and his manner of admitting the correctness
of our view regarding the difficulties is a fact consistent with
the hypothesis.

We have only to study dreams and deliria in order to un-
derstand the influences which tend to produce confusion and
fragmentary messages. If accidents and shocks in life which
are less violent than death disturb the memory, as we know
they do, the student of abnormal psychology being perfecdy
familiar with the phenomena in numerous cases, would
expect that so violent a change as death would disturb mem-
ory and reproduction still more seriously. Add to this the
mind's freedom from the body with all the physiological in-
hibitions cut off, and we might well expect less control of the
processes which recall the past in the proper way for illus-
trating one's identity. This disturbance might not last in-
definitely. The individual might fully recover from it in a
normal spiritual life, tho the time for this recovery might
vary with individuals and with the circumstances of their
death. But the recovery of a normal mental balance in the
proper ethereal environment on the " other side " would not
of itself be a complete guarantee of its retention when coming
into terrestrial and material conditions to communicate.
We may well suppose it possible that this " coming back "
produces an effect similar to the amnesia which so often ac-
companies a shock or sudden interference with the normal
stream of consciousness. The effect seems to be the same as
that of certain kinds of dissociation which are now being
studied by the student of abnormal psychology, and this is
the disturbance of memory which makes it difficult or impos-
sible to recall in one mental state the events which have been
experienced in another.

For at least superficial indications in the records that this
is the case I shall simply repeat my reference to the first part

Conclusion of Experiments RelaHve to Dr. Hodgson. 211

of this article in which I quote at such length the fragmentary
and confused messages purporting to come from Dr. Hodg-
son. I need not requote them here. They at least appar-
ently illustrate in a clear manner the point I am making.

Nor do I rely upon the Piper case alone for evidence of
the conditions here conjectured. I have had similar state-
ments made through two other private mediums, whom I
have quoted in this series of articles. In some cases the lan-
guage is identical with that used through Mrs. Piper, tho its
use in Mrs. Piper was not known by the other person
through whom it came.

One good illustration of this abnormal mental condition
on the part of communicators is found in an incident told me
by Dr. Hodgson before his death and which I have men-
tioned elsewhere in another periodical. It was the incident
of a communicator telling through Mrs. Piper a circumstance
which he said had represented some act of his life. But in-
quiry showed that no such act had been performed by him
when living. But it turned out that he had made the same
statemetit in the delirium of death. It is especially noticeable in
certain forms of communication of the " possession " type
that the last scenes of the deceased are acted over again in
their first attempts to control or communicate. The mental
confusion relevant to the death of my father was apparent in
his first attempt to communicate through Mrs. Piper, and
when I recalled this period of his dying experience this con-
fusion was repeated in a remarkable manner with several
evidential features in the messages. Twice an uncle lost the
sense of personal identity in the attempt to communicate.
His communications were in fact so confused that it was two
years before he became at all clear in his efforts. He had
died as the result of a sudden accident. Once my father,
after mentioning the illness of my living sister and her name,
lost his personal identity long enough to confuse incidents
with himself and his earthly life with those that applied to
my sister and not to himself. The interesting feature of the
incident was that, having failed to complete his messages a
few minutes previously, when he came back the second time
to try it again, Rector, the control, warned me that he was a

212 Journal of the Aftterican Society for Psychical Research.

little confused, but that what he wanted to tell me certainly
referred to m)'^ sister Lida. Then came the message claiming
experiences for himself when living that were verifiable as
my sister's. On any theory of the facts a confused state of
mind is the only explanation of them, and when associated
with incidents of a supernormal and evidential character they
afford reasonable attestation of the hypothesis here sug-
gested.

I shall give one long and complicated instance of this con>
fusion in an incident having great evidential value and yet
showing remarkable confusion involving apparently the loss
of the sense of personal identity and the correction of the
error in the first allusion to the incidents.

At the sitting of June 6th, 1899, (Proceedings, Vol. XYI,
pp. 469-470), I thought I would test the telepathic theory by
asking of my father incidents that had occurred before I was
born and that my two aunts, then living, would know. I
made this request and was told at once that this would not
be so difficult a thing to do. In a few moments several
things were communicated, one of which was verifiable and
one of which came within my memory as an incident told me,
not as remembered personally. Then one of the aunts was
mentioned by name, Eliza, and an incident told which I could
not verify. Then the communicator at once broke out into
the following clear statement, purporting to come from my
father : — x

" I have something better. Ask her if she recalls the
evening when we broke the wheel to the wagon and who
tried to cover it up so it would not leak out, so to speak. I
remember it as if it happened yesterday, and she will remem-
ber it too."

When interrogated as to the truth of this my aunt said
that no such accident had ever occurred in the life of my
father and herself. The consequence was that in my Report
on the Piper case, published in 1901, I had to say that the
incident was wholly false or unverifiable. No ascertainable
meaning was then to be obtained with reference to its real
pertinence.

On February 5th, 1900, at another sitting this aunt was

Conclusion of Experiments Relative to Dr. Hodgson. 213

again spontaneously mentioned by my father purporting to
communicate and I made some statement about my difficulty
in getting verification for some of the incidents he had told
of their early life, telling him of her dislike and opposition to
the whole subject. There came the following response
through the automatic writing of Mrs. Piper: —

" Oh, I understand. Of course, I see clearly. Well, tell
her I do not intend to say anything which would be distaste-
ful to her, but if she will only help me in my recollections of
our childhood days it will be doing nothing but right, and it
will help to prove my true existence to you. James, I am
your father, and there is no gainsaying it.

What I would now ask is that Eliza should recall the

drive home and — let me see a moment — I am sure but

it was one of shafts, but the wagon broke, some part of it,
and we tied it with a cord. I remember this very well. Do
you remember old Tom ?"

Now Tom was the name of a horse in my time and long
after the childhood of my aunt Eliza, and he died somewhere
about 1880. He had no connection with any drive that my
father could have taken before I was born. The reader, how-
ever, will remark the abrupt play of memory in this matter,
the exhibition of uninhibited association which is character-
istic of a dream like state of consciousness.

But when I asked my aunt Eliza about the accident it was
again denied as never having occurred in her life with my
father, nor with any one else so far as she knew. I had,
therefore, to declare this false.

On June 3rd, 1902, I had another sitting with Mrs. Piper
and my uncle, who had been such a confused communicator
in my earlier experiments, turned up, so to speak. He began
some confused messages and I determined to ask a test ques-
tion of his identity. But before continuing the statements
of the record I should detail an incident that occurred with
this uncle and myself the day after my father's death. He
had married this aunt Eliza, my father's sister.

My father died on Saturday. On the Sunday following,
while my father was lying a corpse in this uncle's house, a
telegram came from Chicago which had to be delivered in

214 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

the country. My uncle and I took a buggy and went into
the country to deliver the telegram. While passing a neg^o
boy with a goat and wagon the horse shied, turned the buggy
over, dragged it over both of us — my uncle holding on to the
lines — injured the wheels, broke the shaft and the harness,
and we had to tie them up with straps and strings. When
we got home it was dusk, and we resolved to say nothing
about the accident to any one in the house. But both of us
were so badly injured that we could not conceal it longer
than the next morning, that of the funeral. I was six months
getting over the effects and my uncle perhaps as long.

When my uncle came to communicate on this occasion of
June 3rd, 1902, I had these incidents in mind when I resolved
to ask my test question. I now quote the record.

'* (You and I took something together, you remember,
just after father passed out.)

You are thinking of that ride, I guess I do not forget it.
My head is troublesome in thinking. I hope to be clearer
soon. This is my second attempt.

(You can tell what happened in that ride when you can
make it clear.)

I will. Do you remember a stone we put together. Not
quite right. Til see you again. Farewell. He has gone
out to think." [Last remark by Rector in explanation of
the confusion.]

The next day this uncle returned to the task and began
with incidents that were not verifiable in my experience and
that were as confused and erroneous as that which I have
been quoting. I repeated my question to bring him back to
the subject.

'* (Please to tell me something about that ride just after
father passed out.)

Your father told you about it before, but had it on his mind,
Eliza,

(If you can tell it, please to do so.)

Do you remember the stone we put there. (Where?)
At the grave.

(Whose g^ave?) Your father's. You mean this ride.
(No.)

Conclusion of Experiments Relative to Dr. Hodgson, 215

I think we are thinking of different things. You don't
mean that Sunday afternoon, do you?

(Yes, that's right.)

Yes, I remember well the breakdown, etc."

The communicator then went on in the most frag-
mentary way and alluded to breaking the harness, the wheel,
said we had a red horse and that it had been frightened by a
dog [it was a goat], that we tied the broken harness with a
string and got home late in the evening, remarking: "Oh, I
am your uncle all right."

It would take up too much space to give the detailed ac-
count which is very confused. But the communicator speci-
fied the main events in the incident of our experience at the
time mentioned. They were all substantially correct, except
the reference to the dog, most of them exactly correct.

The most important thing to remember about this set of
incidents is that they correct an error in my original Report
and do it in a way to indicate that the first attempt was as-
sociated with an unusual mental state on the part of the com-
municator. Of course, the whole incident depends for its
value on the exclusion of fraud from its character, and as we
assume that this has been done we do not take that hypothe-
sis jnto account here in the discussion. Accepting the ex-
clusion of fraud the incidents represent one of the best evi-
dential cases that I know for the exclusion of telepathy from
their explanation. The event, too, explains the meaning of
the confused statements by my father. My uncle, if I may
state the matter constructively in regard to the " other side,"
had given the incident to my father who was a better com-
municator, thinking that it would identify him to me and his
wife, my father's sister Eliza. But in his mental confusion
my father gave as an incident in his own life before I was
bom one that had occurred with me and his brother-in-law
the day after his own death, and this error is corrected by
my uncle long afterward and amidst nearly as much mental
confusion as that in which the original error was committed.
There is here more or less evidence of the loss of the con-
sciousness of personal identity, a condition quite closely re-
sembling that of delirium, and that certainly characterizes

216 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

most of our dreams. Only the relation of the incidents is
wanting in the first mention of it to indicate its meaning- and
that relation is concealed by the failure to indicate that the
experience was that of some one else than the narrator.

What first strikes one in the incident is the absurdity of
explaining it by any form of telepathy, assuming that the
facts guarantee the existence of supernormal information,
and with the exclusion of that hypothesis we have no alter-
native to the admission of the spiritistic with its accompani-
ment, in this instance, of some other difficulty than medium-
istic obstacles to the transmission of the message. No doubt
there are hindrances to clear communications in the physical
and mental conditions of the medium. But in this instance
the claim, implied in the message as I received it from my
father, that the incidents were personal experiences associ-
ated with his life before I was born and the abruptness of
their introduction in connection with events with which they
were not historically associated indicates a phenomenon ex-
actly like dreams and deliria, recognizable by any one who
has studied psychology. Assuming then that this instance,
with others, indicates some unnatural mental state as a con-
dition of communicating, at least in " possession " types of
mediumship, we have a perfectly rational explanation of the
persistent triviality and confusion in the messages. In fact
the detailed records of such phenomena have only to be pa-
tiently studied in order to give the phenomena that intelligi-
bility and rationality as spiritistic communications which
cannot be appreciated on any other hypothesis, and this be-
cause the nature and limitations of the communications are
such as we might expect from human personality laboring
under difficulties which are not so apparent on other the-
ories, especially as the assumption of telepathy must face the
contradiction between its immense powers to account for the
true facts and its limitations in the errors.

One incident in the communications by George Pelham
about Dr. Hodgson bears on the main point. There is evi-
dence— too complicated to detail in this paper — that the com-
municator is less disturbed mentally (and perhaps not at all
after a certain period of time) in his normal state on the

Cottclusiofi of Experiments Relative to Dr. Hodgson, 217

" other side " than when communicating. I quoted the in-
stance (p. 128) in which George Pelham said regarding Dr.
Hodgson, that " normally he is all right, but when he comes
into our wretched atmosphere he goes all to pieces." If we
take the various records in my possession representing ap-
parent attempts on Dr. Hodgson's part to communicate
through other mediums than Mrs. Piper it is clear that this
statement of George Pelham is perfectly true, and that he
does better through Mrs. Piper than elsewhere, tho he. has
more difficulty even there than many other communicators.

But instead of producing evidence of this sort which many
may question altogether, we may look at the situation in an-
other way. We may concede for the sake of argument that
all this is not proof, tho some of the incidents containing
supernormal information and characteristics of mental con-
fusion at the same time can hardly be refused evidential value
in reference to the claim here made. But not to insist on
this way of discussing the hypothesis, there is one method
that the scientific man cannot dispute. This is to present
the case in the light of a working hypothesis. This means
that we shall simply ask if the hypothesis does not actually
fit the facts and then try its application to see if it will remain
consistent with them throughout. That is to say we may
say to ourselves, " Let us see if it will actually explain the
perplexities which are suggested by all this triviality and
confusion." If we find the hypothesis fitting the facts we
recognize that it is the correct one to entertain until we find
reason to reject it.

Now if intelligent people — and this means those who are
familiar with secondary personality, with dream states and
deliria, and with abnormal psychology generally — will only
imagine the possibility of what is here supposed and then
study the detailed records with a view of ascertaining
whether it fits enough of the facts to explain their perplex-
ities on the points mentioned, I am confident that they will
find the whole subject clear up, and its perplexities yielding
to a perfectly simple conception of their cause, tho they will
find the same difficulties in explaining certain specific details
that any hypothesis has to meet.

214 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

the country. My uncle and I took a buggy and went into
the country to deliver the telegram. While passing a negro
boy with a goat and wagon the horse shied, turned the buggy
over, dragged it over both of us — my uncle holding on to the
lines — injured the wheels, broke the shaft and the harness,
and we had to tie them up with straps and strings. When
we got home it was dusk, and we resolved to say nothing
about the accident to any one in the house. But both of us
were so badly injured that we could not conceal it longer
than the next morning, that of the funeral. I was six months
getting over the effects and my uncle perhaps as long.

When my uncle came to communicate on this occasion of
June 3rd, 1902^ I had these incidents in mind when I resolved
to ask my test question. I now quote the record.

" (You and I took something together, you remember,
just after father passed out.)

You are thinking of that ride. I guess I do not forget it.
My head is troublesome in thinking. I hope to be clearer
soon. This is my second attempt.

(You can tell what happened in that ride when you can
make it clear.)

I will. Do you remember a stone we put together. Not
quite right. FU see you again. Farewell. He has gone
out to think." [Last remark by Rector in explanation of
the confusion.]

The next day this uncle returned to the task and began
with incidents that were not verifiable in my experience and
that were as confused and erroneous as that which I have
been quoting. I repeated my question to bring him back to
the subject.

" (Please to tell me something about that ride just after
father passed out.)

Your father told you about it before, but had it on his mind,
Eliza,

(If you can tell it, please to do so.)

Do you remember the stone we put there. (Where?)
At the grave.

(Whose grave?) Your father's. You mean this ride.
(No.)

Conclusion of Experiments Relative to Dr. Hodgson. 21S

I think we are thinking of different things. You don't
mean that Sunday afternoon, do you ?

(Yes, that's right.)

Yes, I remember well the breakdown, etc."

The communicator then went on in the most frag-
mentary way and alluded to breaking the harness, the wheel,
said we had a red horse and that it had been frightened by a
dog [it was a goat], that we tied the broken harness with a
string and got home late in the evening, remarking: "Oh, I
am your uncle all right."

It would take up too much space to give the detailed ac-
count which IS very confused. But the communicator speci-
fied the main events in the incident of our experience at the
time mentioned. They were all substantially correct, except
the reference to the dog, most of them exactly correct.

The most important thing to remember about this set of
incidents is that they correct an error in my original Report
and do it in a way to indicate that the first attempt was as-
sociated with an unusual mental state on the part of the com-
municator. Of course, the whole incident depends for its
value on the exclusion of fraud from its character/ and as we
assume that this has been done we do not take that hypothe-
sis into account here in the discussion. Accepting the ex-
clusion of fraud the incidents represent one of the best evi-
dential cases that I know for the exclusion of telepathy from
their explanation. The event, too, explains the meaning of
the confused statements by my father. My uncle, if I may
state the matter constructively in regard to the " other side,"
had given the incident to my father who was a better com-
municator, thinking that it would identify him to me and his
wife, my father's sister Eliza. But in his mental confusion
my father gave as an incident in his own life before I was
bom one that had occurred with me and his brother-in-law
the day after his own death, and this error is corrected by
my uncle long afterward and amidst nearly as much mental
confusion as that in which the original error was committed.
There is here more or less evidence of the loss of the con-
sciousness of personal identity, a condition quite closely re-
sembling that of delirium, and that certainly characterizes

216 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

most of our dreams. Only the relation of the incidents is
wanting in the first mention of it to indicate its meaning and
that relation is concealed by the failure to indicate that the
experience was that of some one else than the narrator.

What first strikes one in the incident is the absurdity of
explaining it by any form of telepathy, assuming that the
facts guarantee the existence of supernormal information,
and with the exclusion of that hypothesis we have no alter-
native to the admission of the spiritistic with its accompani-
ment, in this instance, of some other difficulty than medium-
istic obstacles to the transmission of the message. No doubt
there are hindrances to clear communications in the physical
and mental conditions of the medium. But in this instance
the claim, implied in the message as I received it from my
father, that the incidents were personal experiences associ-
ated with his life before I was born and the abruptness of
their introduction in connection with events with which they
were not historically associated indicates a phenomenon ex-
actly like dreams and deliria, recognizable by any one who
has studied psychology. Assuming then that this instance,
with others, indicates some unnatural mental state as a con-
dition of communicating, at least in " possession " types of
mediumship, we have a perfectly rational explanation of the
persistent triviality and confusion in the messages. In fact
the detailed records of such phenomena have only to be pa-
tiently studied in order to give the phenomena that intelligi-
bility and rationality as spiritistic communications which
cannot be appreciated on any other hypothesis, and this be-
cause the nature and limitations of the communications are
such as we might expect from human personality laboring
under difficulties which are not so apparent on other the-
ories, especially as the assumption of telepathy must face the
contradiction between its immense powers to account for the
true facts and its limitations in the errors.

One incident in the communications by George Pelham
about Dr. Hodgson bears on the main point. There is evi-
dence— too complicated to detail in this paper — that the com-
municator is less disturbed mentally (and perhaps not at all
after a certain period of time) in his normal state on the

Conclusiofi of Experiments Relative to Dr, Hodgson. 217

"other side" than when communicating. I quoted the in-
stance (p. 128) in which George Pelham said regarding Dr.
Hodgson, that " normally he is all right, but when he comes
into our wretched atmosphere he goes all to pieces." If we
take the various records in my possession representing ap-
parent attempts on Dr. Hodgson's part to communicate
through other mediums than Mrs. Piper it is clear that this
statement of George Pelham is perfectly true, and that he
docs better through Mrs. Piper than elsewhere, tho he has
more difficulty even there than many other communicators.

But instead of producing evidence of this sort which many
may question altogether, we may look at the situation in an-
other way. We may concede for the sake of argument that
all this is not proof, tho some of the incidents containing
supernormal information and characteristics of mental con-
fusion at the same time can hardly be refused evidential value
in reference to the claim here made. But not to insist on
this way of discussing the hypothesis, there is one method
that the scientific man cannot dispute. This is to present
the case in the light of a working hypothesis. This means
that we shall simply ask if the hypothesis does not actually
fit the facts and then try its application to see if it will remain
consistent wMth them throughout. That is to say we may
say to ourselves, " Let us see if it will actually explain the
perplexities which are suggested by all this triviality and
confusion." If we find the hypothesis fitting the facts we
recognize that it is the correct one to entertain until we find
reason to reject it.

Now if intelligent people — and this means those who are
familiar with secondary personality, with dream states and
deliria, and with abnormal psychology generally — ^will only
imagine the possibility of what is here supposed and then
study the detailed records with a view of ascertaining
whether it fits enough of the facts to explain their perplex-
ities on the points mentioned, I am confident that they will
find the whole subject clear up, and its perplexities yielding
to a perfectly simple conception of their cause, tho they will
find the same difficulties in explaining certain specific details
that any hypothesis has to meet.

218 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

I have occupied attention regarding the conditions af-
fecting the communicator in the process of sending messages
from a transcendental world. These were supposed to ac-
count for the confusion and triviality of the messages. I
shall say, however, that the dream-like trance of the com-
municator is not the only cause of the characteristics in the
messages that have so long given rise to objections against
the spiritistic hypothesis. There is another and just as im-
portant a source of the confusion and possibly of the error in
the communications. This is the mental condition of the
medium. That this should in some way affect the com-
munications would, perhaps, be admitted without dispute by
any one who was familiar with psychology, especially of the
abnormal type. But the point to be decided would be that
which regards the nature of that influence and in what special
respect the communications are affected by that mental con-
dition. In general the simple answer to this query would be
that it would most naturally vary with the condition in which
the medium was at the time.

We must remember that the idea of a trance is not a fixed
and clear one. Trance is but a name for an exceedingly
fluctuating condition and that is not exactly the same in
different mediums. The effect of this condition on messages
intromitted into the psychic's mind will vary with the nature
of that trance. If the medium remains normally conscious
the first question to be raised would be whether the cleavage
between the supraliminal or ordinarily normal consciousness
and the subliminal or subconscious mental activities is great
enough to exclude the normal interpreting and other pro-
cesses from modifying the thoughts introduced into the mind
from the outside. In some cases the messages enter the
normal consciousness either as a condition of their delivery
or as an incident of it. In others they are delivered without
any apparent knowledge of their coming or of their nature.
On the other hand if the supraliminal consciousness is sus-
pended the subconscious action of the mind may reproduce
all the influences of the normal mind except its memory of
their occurrence or of the messages. Only when the trance
extends to the subconscious processes can we expect the re-

Canclusian of Experiments Relative to Dr. Hodgson, 219

moval of the interpreting action of the mind through which
messages otherwise come. Even then we generally or
always find the existence of limitations determined by the
habits and experience of the medium, such as the spelling,
style of writing, and even the use of terms. I have often seen
the same message through different mediums expressed in
different terms characterized by the difference of mental
habits in the cases. Thus a medium who is in the habit of
using the word " Sunday " in her normal life will most likely
employ this term — not always, as much depends on the depth
of the trance — while one used to the term " Sabbath " may
employ that for the same message. I know one that was
accustomed to spell the word " coughs " thus, " caughts " in
her normal state, and it was so spelled in the trance, tho the
communicator would never have so spelled it, and in this case
there were many supernormal incidents accompanying the
language and automatic writing through which they came.
In another the term " agoing," which was the natural expres-
sion of the medium's normal life for the idea conveyed, was
given in the same sentence which had " going " in the case
of Mrs. Piper. In still another the automatic writing would
produce one word and the normal consciousness would think
of another and synonymous or similar word.

All these when they occur show unmistakable influences
from the mind of the medium upon messages intromitted
into it. All that remains after the admission of the fact of
this influence is the determination of the extent of it by the
study of actual and concrete instances. I shall devote a little
time to the study of the phenomena of Mrs. Verrall which
were published in the last Report of the English Society. It
is one of the most important documents in this respect that
has been published by the Society, tho it does not give as
much of the detailed record as is desirable.

The important fact to remember is that Mrs. Verrall does
not go into a trance, but remains normally conscious when
the automatic writing is done. It is also just as important
to remember that we do not require to hold any special
theory of interpretation regarding the phenomena occurring
in her case. We may accept telepathy as an adequate ex-

224 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

of abnormal mental conditions affecting the character of the
messages.

We have, therefore, the following conception of the pro-
cess in communications purporting to come from deceased
persons, at least in one type of medium, namely, the " pos-
session " type. First the communicator is in a dream-like or
somnambulic state, and communicating his thoughts to the
trance-personality or " control." Then there is the " con-
trol," whether spirit or subconscious state, representing also
a trance condition on any theory and receiving the super-
normal information and transmitting it through the mental
conditions of the medium. Then there is the trance condi-
tion of the medium involving the suspension of the normal
mental functions with all the disturbances usually affecting
such a condition. Sometimes also the communicator pur-
ports also to have another intermediary through whom the
messages are sent to the " control " and subjecting them to
still further modification. This was the case quite frequently
in some of my experiments when one of the communicators
had George Pelham to act as this intermediary between him-
self and the " control." It matters not what theory we hold
of the phenomena this is the psychological form which they
took, and it is this which I am emphasizing rather than the
spiritistic hypothesis.

In addition to these general conditions there are various
degrees and stages of them, along with inter-cosmic con-
ditions affecting the transmission of messages from spirit to
medium or personality to personality. For instance, in the
possession type of medium the trance is a deep one and the
communicator seems to be affected very distinctly with some
form of fluctuating amnesia or defective memory, and the
difficulty is to control one's mental processes sufficiently to
communicate at all. On the other hand, there is the sub-
liminal type of medium which represents a less deep condi-
tion of trance, if, indeed, there is any of this at all. In such
cases the mind of the medium is less in rapport with a trans-
cendental world than the possession type and so naturally
modifies the communications by all sorts of perceptive and
interpreting processes. Apparently the communicator in

Conclusion of Experiments RekUive to Dr. Hodgson, 225

such cases is clearer and less affected by the conditions of
communicating. But what he gains by this situation is lost
by the amnesia when he comes to communicate through the
possession type. When we add to these circumstances the
fact that all sorts of cerebral complications in the transmis-
sion are involved and may avail to disturb the integrity of the
communications we may well wonder how any form of com-
munication whatever is possible. The confusion might well
be much worse than it is.

Then again the mode of communication is not what it
commonly seems. In the possession type it is usually auto-
matic writing that serves as the process of transmission, in
so far as we know it on this side. What it is on the other
is not apparent on the surface, but seems, after a study of a
large record, to involve something like telepathy between
the spirit and the medium. For instance, communicators do
not always refer to it as speakings but often as thinking. The
distinction is often implied in the phrase " this way of speak-
ing," and various hints and statements indicate that the
process of communication between the living has no clear
analogies with that necessarily assumed in these phenomena.
Whatever they are, they indicate on their surface something
different from the familiar, and various circumstances suggest
the existence of analogies with telepathic agencies and the
presence of a dream-like mental state in the real or alleged
communicator. On the other hand, if the subliminal type of
medium is studied we find more definite evidence of an inter-
esting and unusual condition affecting the messages. If the
communications take the form of descriptive speech by the
medium it is noticeable that they seem to be describing what
they see, and odd enough are the implications, very often, of
these descriptions. The medium seems to be looking at
objects and describing them as in real life. It is precisely
this simulation of the material world and the real or ap-
parent reproduction of " spirit clothes " and various material
characteristics that we should naturally suppose were cast off
by death that gives so much offense to the man of intelli-
gence and common sense, especially if he has any sense of
humor.

226 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

But it is not at all necessary to take these descriptions as
they appear. They may be the result of telepathic messages
from the living or dead converted into phantasms or halluci-
nations by the subliminal activities of the medium through
whom they come. This view does not require us to suppose
more than a thought world beyond the grave converted into
apparent reality by the process necessary to establish a con-
nection between the material and the spiritual world. In the
dream, somnambulic, or hypnotic life of all persons the sub-
conscious processes reproduce ideas or mental states in the
form of hallucinations. They are, of course, not of that per-
sistent type that indicates a morbid condition, but they are
just as apparently representative of reality as normal sense
perceptions. Now, if ideas from outside minds can be trans-
mitted to the living, whether in trance or other unusual
condition, as the process is not one of sense perception^ but
some supernormal action, it would be most natural to look in
subliminal mental action for the agency through which the
extraneous thought is transmitted or expressed, and as sub-
liminal action is so closely associated with hallucinatory
functions foreign thoughts might appear as realities just as
hallucinations do and yet not represent those realities any
more than do hallucinations. Suppose, then, a dream-like
state of the dead when trying to communicate and a subcon-
scious state of the medium through which the thought must
be transmitted, and we might well expect all the appearance
of realities, as they are described in mediumistic phenomena.
The incidents of one's past life may be simply thought on
the " other side " and as their telepathic impression on the
subliminal mind of the medium results in a phantasm, an ap-
parent reality to the medium, we ought to expect descrip-
tions reproducing the features of a material world, without
its characterizing such as a fact.

Let me take as an example the message which I received
through Mrs. Smith (Cf. p. 137). "Another person is here
from the family circle ; a little boy four or five years old. He
is grown up. He wears a little blouse and little pants like
knickerbockers." Superficially such a communication, which
exactly describes my brother and his clothes when he died

Conclusion of Experiments Relative to Dr. Hodgson. 227

forty years ago, represents an apparently material world of
an absurd sort. The circumstances enable me to treat the
incident here as not wholly due to chance. But if I am ex-
pected to believe that ghosts have clothes I should have great
difficulty in accepting and defending such a belief. But sup-
pose that the communicator was simply thinking and that
the medium was getting the message telepathically, —
whether from the living or the dead matters not for our pur-
poses,— and that the subconscious mind simply converted the
transmitted ideas into hallucinatory phantasms, we could
easily understand in this message a reference to the boy at
the time he died, a recognition of maturity now — and this
seems to be a characteristic of all such phenomena — and a
phantasm of his dress reproduced from the thoughts of the
communicator. In that view of the matter there would be
no difficulty in giving a rational interpretation of tlie facts,
and one that most easily consists with the spiritistic theory.

If, then, we suppose that the communicator is in a dream-
like state ; that the trance personality is also in more or less
the same condition, and that the medium is also in a morbid
condition of some kind, if that term is not too strong to ex-
press it, we can well understand how trivial and confused
messages would be the result of communication from an
ethereal world, and much more would the result be affected,
if telepathy be the process of communication, a process that
is extremely rare and difficult between the living. All of the
influences together which I have mentioned would explain
easily enough the perplexities of those who cannot make up
their minds on such phenomena as we have been discussing,
and ought to show that the apparent inconsistencies in the
various hypotheses are in reality not such, but are caused by
the confusion incident to the operation of the several factors
involved in the process of communication.

In the present article it has been necessary to speak and
think more positively regarding the spiritistic theory than in
the previous papers. In them I was primarily interested in
giving the facts, and I should have continued that policy in
the present article, if the triviality and confusion could have
been explained in any rational way without trying the ap-

228 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

plication of the spiritistic explanation. I have, therefore,
imagined the spiritistic point of view as entitled to a test in
its application to the very facts which give rise to the sceptics
most trusted objections. I do not put it forward as anything
more than a working hypothesis, and shall unhesita'tingly
abandon it if a better and simpler hypothesis can be obtained
and supported by evidence. I should, of course, not abandon
it to the ipse dixit of any one who can talk glibly about what
" might be.'* I want to know whether there is any evidence
that a particular " might be " is in reality a fact. As this is a
scientific problem every hypothesis must have its evidence,
and those that are supported by respectability and scepticism
are quite as much under obligation to produce evidence as
any spiritistic interpretation. All that I should ask is that
any theory advanced must produce sufficient evidence in its
support to render it more probable than another, and I
should not listen to a priori possibilities in this or any other
matter pretending to be a scientific problem. The question
here concerns the best hypothesis in the light of the facts, and
if any better than the spiritistic can be evidentially sustained
I shall be the first to accept it. I am interested only in dis-
covering a clue to the perplexities which all admit cannot be
explained by the ordinary theories.

Editorial, 229

EDITORIAL.

For the past few years a man representing himself as the
"Rev. Dr." Hugh Moore, has been givmg spiritualistic
seances, mainly of the " materializing " type, in New York.
Recently one of the chief assistants in the performances con-
fessed to the nature of the whole affair. The matter has
been fully reported in the daily papers. We have taken
pains to inquire of the editor of the Nciv York World regard-
ing the incidents, and he states that, allowing for possible
inaccuracies of the reporters, the details of the exposure are
perfectly correct. The performances were the usual form of
" materializing ^* exhibition, consisting of apparatus and dim
lights, for representing " spirits." The " Rev. Hugh Moore "
seems to have immediately left the city. However this may
be, the performances have apparently ceased.

We have called attention to this affair in order to use it
for the purpose of divesting all readers of the notion that
psychical research has any primary interest in " phenomena "
of that kind. We are obliged by the nature of our work to
give due attention to them, if only for exposing their worth-
lessness. But, without considering their nature, whether
genuine or false, they are not the kind of phenomena that
will ever offer a hopeful field for scientific research, and the
sooner that those who are interested in genuine psychology
assign such things to a secondary place, the better for an in-
telligent conception of our problem. No apology for " ma-
terializing " seances can be made until the persons engaged
in that sort of thing will submit to a rational investigation,
and all rational investigations of the past in such matters
have invariably terminated, so far as our knowledge goes, in
the detection of fraud or illusion.

NATURE OF THE PROBLEM OF PSYCHIC
RESEARCH.

I think a good illustration of what the general problem of
psychic research is may be found in an editorial of the Nezv
York Evening Post of May 21st, 1906. The subject, as the

230 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

reader will remark, is Sea Serpents. No other topic perhaps
can illustrate in all its aspects the manner in which our prob-
lem has to be viewed. Sea serpents have been a time-
honored source of ridicule and so has the question of psychic
research. Sea serpents, if they exist, certainly represent a
very sporadic phenomenon, so also do the alleged facts of
psychic research. Sea serpents, if they exist, also would add
materially to the knowledge*of biological records, and if the
supernormal exists it is of vast interest and importance in the
fields of psychology. Hence equally for humor, seriousness,
and method the two subjects may be compared.

A most interesting circumstance to be noted is the fact
that a paper like the Evening Post can seriously consider the
evidence for the existence of sea serpents in the midst of the
universal ridicule which that topic has and has had in journal-
ism and elsewhere for many years. It is quite aware of the
humorous aspects of the question, and in fact recognizes it,
perhaps as a foil to protect its own intelligence against too
serious a treatment of the matter. It is right that it should
do so. But one wonders why a problem that has a million
fold the evidence for its nature and importance should not
receive at its hands the same considerate treatment. It can-
not plead the importance of the question of sea serpents in its
defence, for there is no matter of practical importance at-
tached to it. It is much like North Pole expeditions which
have some slight scientific interest, but none of social, eco-
nomic or ethical importance. Psychic research can present
such a mass of evidence, far superior to that for sea serpents,
even tho it is not conclusive, and lays claim to such practical
importance, that editorials on sea serpents would justify a
good deal of irony and sarcasm in comparison. But we shall
be content with an allusion to this and actually use the in-
stance of its serious discussion as an illustration both of the
problem before us and of the method which it is necessary to
se in the solution of it.

I do not mean here to suggest that we are to approach the
icstion of sea serpents with any more seriousness than we
ould that of psychic research; for both may have to be ap-
oached with as much sense of humor as the amount of

Ediiarial. 231

illusion regarding both of them may justify. Nor do we feel
it necessary here to think favorably of the evidence in one
more than the other. All that we require is to show that the
subject of psychic research has at least as good claims to
encouragement and serious discussion as any that have been
so closely associated with sailors' yarns and the visions of
inebriates. If the question of sea serpents deserves scientific
investigation and discussion, so does that of psychic research.
If the latter is to be ridiculed, so much more the former. But
we may treat both with as much critical judgment as the case
requires without sacrificing our sense of humor or exagger-
ating the gravity of the issues involved. But we must plead
something more than respectability, if we are to justify the
consideration of sea serpents and ridicule that of psychic
phenomena.

There are just three points of interest to be remarked in
the editorial which we quote. The first is the fact noticed
by it that the stories of sailors for four hundred years coin-
cide sufficiently to enable the student to remark a character
common enough to describe a unique feature in sea serpents.
Tho we cannot regard such a coincidence as proof in any
respect, it would naturally seem that descriptions for so long
a time would hardly unite in so distinctive a trait in a sea
serpent as a mane of a certain character. This coincidence
during so long a period is hardly due to chance however we
may explain it. Whether it originated by a common tradi-
tion among. that ignorant and imaginative class or not may
not be determinable, but it does not seem to be a chance
phenomenon. The second point is the fact that certain
stories of a collective nature originate in a locality which
might be the more natural habitat of the sea serpent, if geo-
logical history be taken as a measure of the matter. Besides
remark the presumption from geological remains of just such
phenomena. The third point is that made regarding the
okapi, if this be not a newspaper yarn. Here we have stated
the fact that phenomena can exist in our very midst in great
numbers and be so neglected as to appear non-existent to the
sceptical and indolent mind. If these points have any value
in estimating the evidence for the existence of sea serpents

232 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

they have an a fortiori cogency in favor of the claims for psy-
chic research, because the alleged evidence for them is with-
out comparison greater in quantity than that for seaserpents.

THE SEA SERPENT'S VINDICATION.

Dr. Raphael Blanchard's proposal that the Government
of Cochin China should promptly fit out an expedition to
hunt and investigate sea-serpents, has been spoken of as " the
first sea-serpent story of this year,'* on the assumption that
the sea-serpent story is an annually recurring bit of harmless
imagination, like the failure of the peach-crop and the
Thanksgiving-turkey famine. As a matter of fact, however,
it is becoming less easy to dismiss the sea-serpent in this
simple way. Uncouth and terrifying creature that he is, he
has made great progress in the last few years toward recog-
nition by scientific men and a respectable place among clas-
sified creatures.

In the first place, it should be noted that the popular
belief, such as it is, in a sea-serpent has no standing whatso-
ever. If there be any sea-serpents at all, there are a good
many; in other words, this is a species like the whale, but
rarer. It may not be generally known that the monster has
already been dignified by Latin generic and specific names in
due form, Megopliias viagophias. Since M. Oudemans pro-
posed that name, the creature certainly has ceased to be a
scientific outcast. What, then, are the evidences of its ex-
istence ?

In the first place, a biologist who compared the sailors'
yarns published in all languages for four hundred years,
found such a striking agreement on certain points, like the
shape of the head and the method of swimming, that he could
draw an accurate composite picture of the beast as a basis for
his description. The hypothetical Mcgophias may be roughly
described as a four-flipped, bottle-shaped creature, smooth-
skinned, but with a sort of mane or crest down the long neck,
and a compact head rather like a seal's. Its range of size
appears to correspond roiighly to that of the whales. Very

Editorial. 233

soon after these conclusions were published, the most circum-
stantial sea-serpent stories yet heard began to come from
Tonkin. The French gunboat Avalanche, commanded by
Lieut. Lagresille, in July, 1897, sighted two strange creatures
in the Bay of Fai-tsi-long. Their size he estimated at sixty
metres long by two or three in diameter. When he fired at
them at a range of 600 metres they dove and did not come
into sight again. On Feburary 15, 1898, the same vessel
sighted another pair of similar creatures, and made chase for
an hour and a half, giving up, as the gallant lieutenant put it,
because the sea-serpent had " greater endurance than the
Avalanche." Less than a month later, when the Avalanche
had on board some officers of the Bayard, the interesting
swimming creatures were sighted a third time and pursued
up to a closer range than on any of the previous occasions.
While it might be objected that a group of naval officers
engaged in entertaining their brethren from another ship do
not make ideal scientific observers, it is recorded that ob-
servers on a third vessel, the Decidee, sighted the timorous
monsters in the same waters no longer ago than the spring
of 1904.

One does not have to accept the conclusion of the scien-
tist, M. Racovitza, who read a paper not long ago before the
French Zoological Society, that the sea-serpent is not only
existent but comparatively common in the Bay of Along, to
agree that the stories thus far collected suggest some ex-
tremely interesting possibilities. There was certainly a time
when the sea swarmed with creatures which we should now
call sea-serpents. Have any of them survived? That, of
course, is the whole question; but it must be remembered
that the garpike, substantially as he swims today, was an old
and established resident of the earth when the icthyosaurus
first raised his head above the water, just as the surviving
Australian duck-bill belongs to a very much older type than
the extinct mastodon or sabre-toothed tiger. Zoologists
scouted the Kraken myth until they actually found huge cut-
tlefishes that were quite as satisfying to the appetite for
prodigies.

It may be true that neither a competent scientist nor a

234 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

man with a preestablished reputation for accuracy and ver-
acity has ever seen a sea-serpent. Kipling tells a tale of three
modern journalists who arc granted a glimpse of the " blind
white sea-snake " in mid-ocean and fairly lacked the nerve to
write their amazing experience. But it is not in the least
remarkable, even granting the essential truth of the sea-
serpent stories, that men of the right sort have never been on
the spot. We have postulated here an exceedingly rare and
elusive animal, scattered over enormous areas in the less-
frequented oceans. On the mere theory of probabilities, the
chance of any ship meeting one of them is exceedingly small.
Scientists do not go to sea,, and the only observations made at
all are set down, discredited in advance, in the log-books of
ignorant and yarn-spinning skippers.

This morning's dispatches bring the news of the first cap-
ture of a live okapi in Africa, and in this occurrence a certain
parallel may be seen. Here was a large species of striking
appearance, whose habitat was in a populous and much-
hunted continent, yet its existence was not so much as sus-
pected till Sir Harry Johnson found a dead one, some five
years ago. The skull and skin of the sea-serpent may con-
ceivably be the next museum prize. Yet in the absence of
such material trophies we fear the proposed expedition will
need to carry an international board of scrupulous veracity,
composed, say, of President Eliot, Marquis Oyama, and Mr.
Roosevelt, to secure acceptance of its conclusions, if it only
sights the quarry.

Treasurer's Report 235

TREASURER'S REPORT.

The following is the Treasurer's Report for the quarter
beginning December ist, 1906, and ending March 5th, 1907:

Receipts.

Grant from the American Institute $1,800.00

Ebcpenses.

Publications $750.51

Investigations 308.55

Salaries 425.00

Publications of Old Am. S. P. R., Records,

etc 299.65

Postage stamps 100.00

Sundries 180.59

Total $2,064.30

The item representing " Publications of the Old S. P. R."
can be treated as an asset and the amount will ultimately be
recovered from sales. Salaries represent the sums paid to
the two Assistants in the work. There were about $256 in
bank when the grant was made, so that receipts and ex-
penses nearly balance.

JAMES H. HYSLOP,
Secretary and Treasurer.

236 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

ADDITIONAL MEMBERS.
Fellows.

Dessoir, Prof. Max, W. Goltzatrasse, 31 Berlin, Germany. (Hon-
orary Fellow.)

Janet, Prof. Pierre, College de France, Paris, France. (Hon-
orary Fellow.)

Moore, Harry L, 804 State St., Erie, Pa.

Members.

Edwards, Mrs. Edward, Weston, W. Va.

Larkin, Charles H., 137 Hodge Ave., Buffalo, N. Y.

Larkin, John D. Jr., care Larkin Company, Buffalo, N. Y.

Lyon, Rev. Yale, Hoosac, N. Y.

Scott, Henry P., 902 Market Street, Wilmington, Delaware.

Scott, Mrs. William C, Ardmore, Pa.

Smith, Wilbur L., D. O., Loan & Trust Bldg., Washington, D. C.

Wallis, Lee N., Anadarko, Okla.

Walker, Miss Florence, 70 Gore Street, Montclair, N. J.

Wilson, Floyd B., 30 Broad St., New York City.

Associates.

Blydenburgh, Miss Florence E., 122 Park Place, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Clapp, Mrs. Emma A., 3941 Ellis Ave., Chicago, 111.
Clifford. Mrs. Nt.llie Cabot, 18 Tremont Street, Boston, Mass.
Johnson, Mrs. Arthur M., Corcoran Manor, Mt. Vernon, N. Y.
lones, Mrs. Jennie F., Martinez, Contra Costa County, Cal.

ce E, Ombra, Via Cappuccini, 18, Milano, Italy.
Vtanger, Marct?!. 102 Rue Erlanger, Paris, France.
laiikelU C. G.. f>3 Linwood Ave., Buffalo, N. Y.

^1 WtlHani, 3053 i6th St., Washington, D. C.

JaiHt E., Rosemary Hall, Greenwich, Conn.

^i3 10 49th Street, Borough Park, Brooklyn, N. Y.
!., 186 West Madison St., Chicago, 111.
(\., 130 Lawton Ave., Oakland, Cal.

Vol. I.— No. 5. May, 1907.

JOURNAL

OF THE

Aflierican Society for Psychical Research

CONTENTS

Gbobal Akticlbs: paob

Hjpotlwsis Conoerainff Soul Substance
Together with Experimental £▼!•
dcnoe of the Existence ci Such Sub-
stance ----.-- 237

Spirit SUte-writin« aiid Billet Testa • 244

Edxtokial : paob

Making of Records 2S5

Weiffhinff the Soul 259

iMCXDBirrs -------261

COKRBSPOlfDBIfCB : 2b3

On Dr. MacDouvall^s Experimeiita - 276
Book Noticbs Z83

HYPOTHESIS CONCERNING SOUL SUBSTANCE
TOGETHER WITH EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE
OP THE EXISTENCE OF SUCH
SUBSTANCE.*

By Duncan MacDougall, M. D.

If personal continuity after the event of bodily death is a
fact, if the psychic functions continue to exist as a separate
individuality or personality after the death of brain and body,
then such personality can only exist as a space occupying
body, unless the relations between space objective, and space
notions in our consciousness, established in our consciousness
by heredity and experience, are entirely wiped out at death
and a new set of relations between space and consciousness
suddenly established in the continuing personality, which
would be such a breach in the continuity of nature that I
can not imagine it.

It is unthinkable that personality and consciousness con-
tinuing personal identity should exist, and have being, and
yet not occupy space. It is impossible to represent in
thought that which is not space occupying, as having per-
sonality, for that would be equivalent to thinking that noth-
ing had become or was something, that emptiness had per-

*This article is published simultaneously in American Medicine.

240 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

balance. Inspiration and expiration of air as forcibly as pos-
sible by me had no effect upon the beam. My colleague got
upon the bed and I placed the beam at balance. Forcible in-
spiration and expiration of air on his part had no effect. In
this case we certainly have an inexplicable loss of weight of
three-fourths of an ounce. Is it the soul substance? How
else shall we explain it ?

My second patient was a man moribund from consump-
tion. He was on the bed about four hours and fifteen min-
utes under observation before death. The first four hours
he lost weight at the rate of three-fourths of an ounce per
hour. He had much slower respiration than the first case,
which accounted for the difference in loss of weight from
evaporation and respiratory moisture.

The last fifteen minutes he had ceased to breathe but his
facial muscles still moved convulsively, and then, coinciding
with the last movement of the facial muscle, the beam drop-
ped. The weight lost was found to be half an ounce. Then
my colleague auscultated the heart and found it ^topped. I
tried again and the loss was one ounce and a half and fifty
grains. In the eighteen minutes that elapsed between the
time he ceased breathing until we were certain of death, there
was a weight loss of one and one-half ounces and fifty grains,
compared with a loss of three ounces during a period of four
hours during which time the ordinary channels of loss were
at work. No bowel movement took place. The bladder
moved but the urine remained upon the bed and could not
have evaporated enough through the thick bed clothing to
have influenced the result.

The beam at the end of eighteen minutes of doubt was
placed again with the end in slight contact with the upper bar
and watched for forty minutes but no further loss took place.

My scales were sensitive to two-tenths of an ounce. If
placed at balance one-tenth of an ounce would lift the beam
up close to the upper limiting bar, another one-tenth ounce
would bring it up and keep it in direct contact, then if the
two-tenth were removed the beam would drop to the lower
bar and then slowly oscillate till balance was reached again.

This patient was of a totally different temperament from

Hypothesis Concerning Soul Substance. 241

the first, his death was very gradual, so that we had great
doubt from the ordinary evidence to say just what moment
he died.

My third case, a man dying of tuberculosis, showed a
weight of half an ounce lost, coincident with death, and an
additional loss of one ounce a few minutes later.

In the fourth case, a woman dying of diabetic coma, unfor-
tunately our scales were not finely adjusted and there was a
good deal of interference by people opposed to our work,
and although at death the beam sunk so that it required from
three-eighths to one-half ounce to bring it back to the point
preceding death, yet I regard this test as of no value.

With my fifth case, a man dying of tuberculosis, showed a
distinct drop in the beam requiring about three-eighths of
an ounce which could not be accounted for. This occurred
exactly simultaneously with death but peculiarly on bring-
ing the beam up again with weights and later removing
them, the beam did not sink back to stay back for fully fif-
teen minutes. It was impossible to account for the three-
eighth of an ounce drop, it was so sudden and distinct, the
beam hitting the lower bar with as great a noise as in the
first case. Our scales in the case were very sensitively bal-
anced.

My sixth and last case was not a fair test. The patient
died almost within five minutes after being placed upon the
bed and died while I was adjusting the beam.

In my communication to Dr. Hodgson I note that I have
said there was no loss of weight. It should have been added
that there was no loss of weight that we were justified in
recording.

My notes taken at the time of experiment show a loss of
one and one-half ounces, but in addition it should have been
said the experiment was so hurried, jarring of the scales had
not wholly ceased and the apparent weight loss one and one-
half ounces, might have been due to accidental shifting of
the sliding weight on the beam. This could not have been
true of the other tests, no one of them was done hurriedly.

My sixth case I regard as of no value from this cause.
The same experiments were carried out on fifteen dogs, sur-

242 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

rounded by every precaution to obtain accuracy and the re-
sults were uniformly negative; no loss of weight at death.
A loss of weight takes place about twenty to thirty minutes
after death which is due to the evaporation of the urine nor-
mally passed, and which is duplicated by evaporation of the
same amount of water on the scales, every other condition
being the same, e. g, temperature of the room, except the
presence of the dog's body.

The dogs experimented on weighed from fifteen to sev-
enty pounds and the scales with the total weight upon them
were sensitive to one-sixteenth of an ounce. The tests on
dogs were vitiated by the use of two drugs administered to
secure the necessary quiet and freedom from struggle so
necessary to keep the beam at balance.

The ideal test on dogs would be obtained in those dying
from some disease that rendered them much exhausted and
incapable of struggle. It was not my fortune to get dogs
dying from such sickness.

The net result of the experiments conducted on human
beings is that a loss of substance occurs at death not ac-
counted for by known channels of loss. Is it the soul sub-
stance? It w^uld seem to me to be so. According to our
hypothesis such a substance is necessary to the assumption
of continuing or persisting personality after bodily death,
and here we have experimental demonstration that a sub-
stance capable of being w^eighed does leave the human body
at death.

If this substance is a counterpart of the physical body, has
the same bulk, occupies the same dimensions in space, then
it is a very much lighter substance than the atmosphere sur-
rounding our earth which weighs about one and one-fourth
ounces per cubic foot. This would be a fact of great sig-
nificance, as such a body would readily ascend in our atmos-
phere. The absense of a weighable mass leaving the body
at death would of course be no argument against continuing
personality, for a space occupying body or substance might
exist not capable of being weighed, such as the ether.

It has been suggested that the ether might be that sub-
stance, but with the modern conception of science that the

Hypothesis Coftcerning Said Substance. 243

ether is the primary form of all substance, that all other
forms of matter are merely differentiations of the ether hav-
ing varying densities, then it seems to me that soul substance
which in this life must be linked organically with the body,
can not be identical with the ether. Moreover, the ether is
supposed to be non-discontinuous, a continuous whole and
not capable of existing in separate masses as ether, whereas
the one prime requisite for a continuing personality or indi-
viduality is the quality of separateness, the ego as separate
and distinct from all things else, the non-ego.

To my mind therefore the soul substance can not be the
ether as ether, but if the theory that ether is the primary
form of all substance is true, then the soul substance must
necessarily be a differentiated form of it.

If it is definitely proven that there is in the human being a
loss of substance at death not accounted for by known chan-
nels of loss, and that such loss of substance does not occur
in the dog as my experiments would seem to show, then we
have here a physiological difference between the human and
the canine at least and probably between the human and all
other forms of animal life.

I am aware that a large number of experiments would re-
quire to be made before the matter can be proven beyond
any possibility of error ,^ut y, fj|jther and sufficient experi-
mentation proves that there is a loss of substance occurring
at death and not accounted for by known channels of loss,
the establishment of such a truth can not fail to be of the
utmost importance.

One ounce of fact more or less will have more weight in
demonstrating the truth of the reality of continued existence
with the necessary basis of substance to rest upon, than all
the hair splitting theories of theologians and metaphysicians
combined.

If other experiments by other experimenters prove that
there is a loss of weight occurring at death, not accounted
for by known channels of loss, we must either admit the the-
ory that it is the hypothetical soul substance, or some other
explanation of the phenomenon should be forthcoming. If
proven true, the materialistic conception will have been fully

244 ' Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

met, and proof of the substantial basis for mind or spirit or
soul continuing after the death of the body, insisted upon as
necessary by the materialists, will have been furnished.

It will prove also that the spiritualistic conception of the
immateriality of the soul was wrong. The postulates of
religious creeds have not been a positive and final settlement
of the question.

The theories of all the philosophers and all the philoso-
phies offer no final solution of the problem of continued per-
sonality after bodily death. This fact alone of a space occu-
pying body of measureable weight disappearing at death, if
verified, furnishes the substantial basis for persisting per-
sonality or a conscious ego surviving the act of bodily death,
and in the element of certainty is worth more than the postu-
altes of all the creeds and all the metaphysical arguments
combined.

In the year 1854 Rudolph Wagner, the physiologist, at
the Gottingen Congress of Physiologists proposed a discus-
sion of a " Special Soul Substance," the challenge was ac-
cepted, but no discussion followed, and among the five hun-
dred voices present not one was raised in defence of a spir-
itualistic philosophy. Have we found Wagner's soul sub-
stance ?

SPIRIT SLATE WRITING AND BILLET TESTS.
By David P. Abbott.

SECOND ARTICLE.

[All rights reserved.]

V.

This trick, which we mean now to describe, depends upon the
" s^vitch " of slates mentioned in the previous article. I tell my
subject to take a seat near a small table, and meanwhile I have
two slates in my hands as above described. The message is
already prepared on the under side of the slate held in the left
hand.

The message is written in such manner that the left index
finger does not erase it while holding the slate. 1 carelessly hand

spirit Slate-Writing and Billet Tests. 245

the spectator the slate in my right hand, with the request that
he " examine this slate on both sides." I do not tell him what
I intend doing in any manner; and although I hold the other
slate in my left hand, I say nothing about intending to use it.
I merely say to him, "Examine this slate, will you, please?"
handing him the one in the right hand. Just at the instant that
he is through with it, I take it from him with my right hand ; and
at that very instant I remark, " I must use a chair in this experi-
ment." At the same time I direct my gaze to a chair on my
right that is slightly out of reach, and say, " I will use that."
The subject can not help glancing at the chair as I say this, and
at that very instant the " switch " is made. Having made the
change of slates I instantly hand him the slate in my left hand
before getting the chair, saying, " examine that slate also." As
T say this I lay the slate in my right hand on the table in front of
him — ^but some distance away from him. This slate was the one
before held by my left hand and the message is on its under sur-
face. The slate the subject is examining is the same one he
f'xamined in the first place.

I quickly get the chair, keeping my eye on the subject to see
that he gives his attention to the slate in his hands ; and instantly
taking my seat opposite him, I quickly take the slate from him,
sajring, " I will now place this slate on top of this one." As I
say this I lower his'slate over the one on the table, and place my
palms on my end of them requesting him to do the same at his
end of them. All of this, which it takes so long to describe, does
not require half a minute to execute.

After a time I lift off the top slate and look for a message
between them. I do not turn the top slate over, although there
is nothing on its lower side ; but I merely look on the upper sur-
face of the lower slate. As I do this I have the top slate in my
right hand by its right edge, and I have pi<jked up the other by
its left edge with my left hand, and raised It about an inch from"
the table. As I remark, "There is nothing on that slate," I
bring the two slates again together. But this time I bring the
slate in my right hand wider the one in my left hand.

It is merely passed under it as I bring the hands together and
this fact is not noticed by the spectator. In fact, in the first
place, as I lift off the top slate with my right hand, my left grasps
the lower slate so soon after the right hand grasps the top slate
that the top slate is not more than an inch removed to the right,
before the left hand has the lower slate and the two are sepa-
rated ; that is the left hand moves to the left as much as the right
hand does to the right, and neither hand is lifted more than an
inch or two from the table.

I remark, " There is nothing on that slate," instantly passing
the right slate under and die left slate over, bringing the hands

246 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

together. If the move be made as just described, the subject will
never notice that the slate which was the top one in the first
place, is now the bottom one, and vice versa.

We replace the palms and wait a few moments, when I again
separate the slates exactly as I did in the first place. The mes-
sage is now on the under side of the upper slate, and can not be
seen as I do not turn this slate over. I make the remark, " No
message yet," as if surprised and dissatisfied; and I bring the
two hands together again as in the first instance, except that this
time / leave the message slate on top.

I do not place the slates on the table flat; but up-edge them
instead, and pinch them tightly together with my left fingers;
while with my right hand I take from my right vest pocket a
small piece of slate pencil. I remark, " Maybe if we had a pencil
we would get something; and separating the slates the slightest
bit at the top with my left hand, I drop the piece of pencil
between them with my right hand, quickly closing the slight
opening.

I now lay the slates flat on the table ; but this time / lay them
.^0 that they are turned over, or so that the message slate is now under-
neath with the message on its upper surface. We instantly replace
our palms on the upper slate. Now all of this maneuvering has
been for th£ purpose of bringing the message slate to the bottom, mes-
sage side upwards; and also, for shozving the sitter the upper surface
of the lower slate repeatedly, and always free from writing. This
greatly enhances the after eflFect of the trick. I, of course, do
not tell him why I am thus maneuvering, in fact, he does not
know I am maneuvering, and afterwards merely remembers
my separating the slates and looking on the upper surface
of the lower one repeatedly, but finding nothing. As a re-
sult, when next we look at the slates, he is deeply impressed
on finding a message where but an instant before there was none.
I do not separate the slates this time myself, but merely remove
my palms and ask him to examine them.

A subject's memory is so poor at recalling little details, that
all he can remember afterwards is that he examined both of the
slates, that they never left his sight, and that he repeatedly
looked at them and saw no message; that finally, on separating
them, he found a message where but an instant before there was
none.

The reader at first sight might not give to all this maneuver-

the proper importance, and might consider the trick per-

ed when the slates are first examined and placed on the

^ but T will say that this subsequent maneuvering is what

this trick the superb effect which it is, and makes it really

the best of slate tricks for a single spectator.

reader will please remember the moves just described

spirit Slate-Writing and Billet Tests. 247

which I execute after the exchange of the slates, and after I lay
the slates on the table one on top of the other. These moves
are the closing part of the trick which I shall next describe, and
which I made mention of in Part II of this article.

VI.

I shall now refer the reader to the trick described in Part II,
wherein nine small slates and one large slate is used. In this
trick I use the same slates, but the modus operandi is somewhat
changed.

I do not enter with the eight small slates on top of the large
slate as in the trick described in Part II ; but I have the slates
arranged after the following manner: The nine small slates are
stacked one on the other, with the message slate on top, message
side down. On top of this stack is the large slate.

I enter with these and place them on the table directly in front
of the sitter. I stand at his left and with my left hand I remove
the large slate from the stack, carrying under it secretly the top
small slate. This small slate bears the message; so I tilt the
top surface of the large slate towards the spectator so as to
prevent his seeing the concealed slate, which my left fingers
press tightly against the far side of the large slate. With my
right hand I now give the sitter the stack of eight small slates,
telling him to place them in his lap, clean them one at a time,
and stack them on the table in front of himself.

As I thus direct him, my left hand still holds the large slate
a few inches above the table top and a few inches farther from
the subject than the position where I first placed the slates. I
now state that while he cleans his slates, I will write on the large
slate any mental impression which I may receive. I allow the
lower edge of the large slate to rest on the table, and taking a
pencil in my right hand I proceed to write some name. I try to
write one that the sitter will recognize ; but if unable to do so, it
makes no difference. Meanwhile, I see to it that, while I am
writing, the sitter continues to clean and stack the slates in front
of himself.

I time my writing so as to finish the name just as he cleans
and stacks the fourth slate. At this instant I bring the large
slate directly in front of him (and right over the stack he is form-
ing), and pointing to the name I have written I say: " Do you
recognize that name?" This takes his attention; and at that
instant I allow the concealed message slate behind the large one
to secretly drop upon the stack from under the large slate. The
large slate is resting with its forward edge on the front edge of
the stack, and its rear edge elevated some thirty degrees, when I
execute this maneuver.

248 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

The subject proceeds to read the name; and if he happens to
recognize it, I give him a verbal reading while he continues to
clean and stack the remaining slates. If he does not recognize
the name, I instruct him to go ahead ; as my " impressions do not
seem to come readily, owing to improper conditions."

Just as he stacks the last slate, I take the stack in my hands
like a pack of cards and spread them out quickly, fan- wise, just
as a person playing cards does the cards which he holds. I,
however, keep them in a horizontal position near the table.

Now, if the message slate be the fifth one down from the top,
I allow the fourth one to remain on top of it in such position that
the edges of the two slates coincide. All of the slates are
spread except these two, which accidentally (?) remain as if
fastened together. I now with my fingers secretly push these
two forward a good inch, in advance of the other slates, and
direct the sitter to " take two of these slates." As he starts to
obey, I push these two right into his hands ; and just as he draws
them out, I remark, " Any two that you wish." I really " force "
these two slates, just as a magician " forces " the selection of a
desired card.

As the subject draws the two slates, I instantly tell him to
lay them on the table, which he does. The message is on the
under side of the lower slate, and I see to it that they are not
turned over. I now close the trick with the same maneuvers I
use in closing the trick which I described in the previous section.
The effect is beyond description ; as the sitter thinks he has just
cleaned all of the small slates, and that he of his own free will
chooses two of them at random ; that of these two, we repeatedly
look on the upper surface of the lower one for a message, finding
none ; and then, suddenly, without these slates leaving his sight,
he finds a message on the upper surface of the lower slate.

VII.

I shall here describe a means of secretly reading a question
written on a slate by a sitter. The performer uses nine small
slates and one large one as in the preceding trick. The slates are
brought in and placed on the table in front of the sitter, and the
operator takes his seat opposite to him at the table.

The operator now takes up the large slate from the stack and
secretly takes a small slate underneath it, as in the slate-writing
trick. There is no message on any of the slates and they are all
perfectly clean. The operator begins figuring in small figures,
or hieroglyphics, on the upper portion of the large slate. This
is a mere excuse for taking up the large slate.

As he does this he requests the sitter to take a small slate and
write thereon such questions as he may desire answered and to

spirit Slate-lVriting and Billet Tests. 249

sign his own name thereto. This the sitter does ; and as he faces
the operator and holds the slate in front of his face, vertically, the
operator can not see his writing. While the subject writes his
questions, the operator takes the stack of small slates with his
right hand and places them in his lap. As he does this he retains
the large slate in his other hand with the concealed small slate
behind it.

When the subject has finished his writing, the operator
directs him to place his slate face downward on the table. This
he does. The operator now asks, " What was your birth month,
please?" or some similar question, and appears to make some
kind of a mark on his large slate. He then, with his other hand,
takes the slate on the table which contains the questions on its
lower side, and places it face downward on the stack in his lap
without in any way looking at it. He now places the large slate on
the stack, and places his palms on it for a moment while he gives
a few verbal impressions to the sitter.

He now takes up the large top slate in one hand, but does not
this time carry up a concealed slate behind it. The subject nat-
urally supposes that the top slate of the small ones is the one
bearing the questions ; but it is not, for the reason that when the
operator placed the large slate on the stack just after placing the
/question slate on it, he of course placed the concealed small slate
on the stack at the same time. The question slate is therefore
the second slate from the top instead of the top one.

The operator now lifts off the top small slate with the other
hand face downwards, and places it on the table without looking
at its under surface. The subject supposes that his questions
are on its under surface, but they are instead on the under sur-
face of the top small slate of the stack.

The operator now places over the slate on the table a news-
paper which is at hand, at the same time laying down on the stack
in his lap the large slate in his other hand. He now requests
the sitter to place his hand on top of the newspaper which rests
on the slate that he supposes bears his questions. The operator
requests him to close his hand tightly and allow his fist to rest
on the paper as " this makes the magnetism better." This pre-
vents the subject from lifting up the slate and examining it
which sometimes happens if such precautions be not taken.

The operator now takes up the large slate again from the
stack in his lap and appears to again figure in its top corner. He,
of course, secretly carries up behind it the slate with the sub-
ject's questions on it. While appearing to figure, he quickly
reads and memorizes these questions and names. He now asks
the subject to remove his hand, and he quickly takes the small
slate under the paper on the table and replaces it on the stack, at
the same time placing the large slate in his other hand on top ot

250 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

it. This secretly places the question slate on top of all the small
slates, just as it should be, and as the subject has supposed it to
be all of the time.

The operator now asks some other question of the sitter, as,
" What star were you born under?" or something of the kind and
makes a few hieroglyphics on the large slate ; and then he places
the entire stack on the table, requesting the sitter to clean the
slates. The sitter does so, and of course finds his questions on
the under surface of the upper small slate as it should be. The
operator requests the subject not to let him see the writing, and
now proceeds with the reading. He can give a fine verbal read-
ing with the information he now possesses, or he can produce a
message, as I have before described, wherein a stack of slates is
used and the message written in the subject's presence.

It is thus easy for an expert performer to sit down to a table
and have the subject write his questions in the operator's pres-
ence, to write the answers in the sitter's presence, to do all before
his very eyes and yet not be detected in any of it, as the secret is
so subtle. Such performer must, however, be an actor and a
master of the art of " misdirection."

VIII.

There is another trick that is very effective, wherein two
slates are used. I shall give the explanation and effect together
in this case.

I have the message prepared on one of the slates, and I use
a small centre table, such as has a shelf attached to the legs about
a foot above the floor. I lean the prepared slate on the floor
against this shelf, and out of view on the side of the table oppo-
site where the subject is to sit. I have a chair near that side of
the table on which I will later take my seat.

On the centre of the table a number of newspapers lie care-
lessly. I place a chair near the side of the table where I desire
the spectator to sit. I now seat him on this chair and stepping to
a drawer, I bring him a small slate with bound edges ; one that
looks just like the one containing the message. I ask him to
thoroughly examine or clean it ; and as he does so, I seat myself
at the opposite side of the table. I now request him to place his
slate flat on the table, and to place his palms on it. I then re-
quest him to rest his face on his hands while they lie on the slate
for a half minute, and to close his eyes and make his mind passive
while so doing.

While he does this I secretly reach to the floor, lift the mes-
sage slate and lay it flat on my knees under the table, message
side up. I now place my palms on the table and in a few mo-
nents ask the subject to examine his slate for a message. He.
)f course, finds none; and I seem disappointed at this, but re-

spirit Slate-tVriting and Billet Tests. 251

quest him to hold it for a time on the table and try again. This
all lends an air of great honesty to the performance, and tends
to throw the subject off his guard. On examining the slate again
he finds nothing, so I take the slate from his hands and examine
it to see if there actually be no sig^ of writing. Finding noth-
ing, I place the slate under the table near the centre, with my
right hand, in a rather hurried manner; and I request him to
reach his right hand under the table and grasp the slate and to
press it to the table above it. I tell him to leave his left palm on
the table ; and I take his attention sufficiently in telling him how
to place his left palm on the table, that it prevents him from
looking under the table in any manner. I immediately bring out
my right hand, leaving him holding the slate with his one hand.

I suppose that it is hardly necessary to state that as I lower
my right hand with the examined slate below the table, I leave
this slate on my lap and instantly, without pause, carry up under
the table the prepared slate which is on my knees.

Now, that the subject is holding the message slate in proper
position with his other palm on top of the table, I make a move
as if to place my right hand on the centre of the table. Mean-
while my left hand has dropped out of sight, apparently, by my
side, I seem annoyed by the newspapers in the centre of the
table, and remark, " I will clear these out of the way." As I say
this I take a number of them in my right hand and pass them
to my left hand, which comes up near the height of the table top
to meet my right ; but it secretly contains the slate which was
left on my lap. The papers in my right hand are moved towards
my left hand so as to conceal this slate, and my left hand grasps
them on top of the slate which it contains. The left hand should
not be high enough for the back edge of the slate to be in view
of the sitter, until after the papers are passed over it and grasped
on top of the slate. As I make this move I am rising from the
chair; and with my right hand I pick up the remaining papers
and pass them also to my left hand, but this time I pass them under-
neath the others; so that the slate is now between the papers in my
left hand. At the same time I take hold of my chair with my
right hand and set it back out of my way.

I now quickly place the papers on a table just through a fold-
ing door and secretly place the discarded slate in a concealed
position. I do this very quickly and return ; but meanwhile I am
mtructing the sitter how to press his right hand to the table with the
Ungers spread apart, but with thumb contacting the first finger, etc. I
keep my eyes on him except for an instant, and take his attention
so that there is no danger of his examining the slate the mere
instant I am out of view. I instantly return to the table, stand-
ing this time, and placing my palms on each side of his. In due
time he brings out his slate and finds the message.

252 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

Should he examine the table nothing can be found, neither
can anything be found on my person. This trick is very effect-
ive; and the sitter usually forgets that I placed the slate under
the table for him, and states afterwards that the slate never left
his hands after he cleaned it.

When I place the slate under the table in the first place, I
remark, " Maybe if the slate is under the table we will get some-
thing ; " at the same instant placing it under in a natural manner,
and requesting him to pass his right hand under the table and
grasp it. I make no pause in changing the slates on my lap, and
the use of slates with bound edges prevents all noise.

This trick may seem difficult to the reader, but I assure him
that it is very simple. It only requires that the details be well
fixed in the mind of the operator, and that he have ample courage
to try it and direct all operations himself. He must be perfectly
at home and not in the least embarrassed, and must ^ct with per-
fect self-confidence.

IX.

I shall now describe one of the best slate tricks extant. In
this trick I never leave the sight of the sitter at all. I seat him
at one side of the table, but sidewise to it, so that his left side
faces the table. On the table are two unbound slates, size five by
seven inches. I ask him to thoroughly examine and clean them ;
and as he does so I take a seat at the opposite side of the table
but sidewise to it, so that my right side is toward the table. The
subject and myself are thus both facing the same direction.

After he finishes cleaning the first slate and begins cleaning
the second slate, and just before he finishes cleaning it, I take the
first slate cleaned in my right hand, instantly passing it under
the table. At this same instant I direct him to place the other
slate under the table with his right hand, and also, to grasp my
slate with his left hand. This he does and I instantly withdraw
my right hand, placing both hands on the table top. In due
time the sitter brings out the slates and finds on one of them a
lengthy message. The table and my person can be examined;
but no third slate, or anything suspicious can be found. My
right hand grasps the slate in placing it under the table for the
merest instant only, and is immediately thereafter placed on the
table top; while the sitter grasps the slate with his left hand.
The sitter during the time he waits for the message, naturally
turns facing the table, and at the same time presses a slate under-
neath the table top with each of his hands. I also gradually turn,
facing the table, with my palms on its top.

The effect of this trick is very bewildering, yet the secret is
mpHcity itself. I use three slates instead of two, but the sub-
ct sees but two of them at one time. When I place the first

spirit Slate- Writing and Billet Tests, 253

slate under the table, I of course make an exchange of slates un-
known to the sitter. Where do I find the ^prepared slate, and
where do I leave the duplicate? Merely in the chair I sit on,
under the seat, on two little padded shelves. The chair is of the
variety known as " box seat," such as is sold by most furniture
dealers as a good grade dining chair. The seat is usually of
cane ; but this I remove, and replace it with a beautiful leather
cobbler seat. It is necessary to saw the opening in the seat of
the chair into a circular shape for this.

The cobbler seat hides from view anything under the chair
seat, and at the same time gives the chair a much finer appear-
ance. I, of course, prepare the chair which the subject uses in
the same manner ; but I also make some changes under the seat
of the chair I use, which of course, I omit from the subject's
chair. The box strips running around the seat of the chair
under it are about two inches wide. The strip on the right side
I hang on hinges so that it can be lifted like a trap door, thus ad-
mitting my hand to two thin padded shelves under the seat.
When this strip is lowered the shelves are invisible ; but when it
is up they can be seen from that side of the chair, and the right
hand can reach them easily in this position.

In preparing the chair I first take a fine-tooth saw, and neatly
saw the ends of this strip where they enter the legs of the chair,
so as to sever their connection with the legs. This is done so
neatly that it can not be noticed. I next remove the screw on
the inner side of the centre of this strip which fastens it to the
seat, and remove the strip. This strip is too thick for my use ; so
I split it lengthwise with a saw, leaving it but one-half inch
thick. I of course leave it full width. I am careful in no way to
mar the finish.

I now hinge this strip back into its original position, using
three small brass hinges at its top. I countersink the hinges so
that they will not show. If they be screwed on a trifle out of line
so that the strip works a little stiffly, it will remain in an ele-
vated position when lifted by the right hand until it again be
lowered. As the strip is now but one-half inch thick, when it is
in the elevated position, it does not obstruct access to the shelves,
which must be crowded into a very limited space. These shelves
are made of very thin wood covered with black felt, and are
placed on suitable blocks, and screwed to the bottom of the chair
underneath.

I place the prepared slate on the lower shelf of this chair,
message side up. This chair, as before explained, is placed with
its right side next to the table. The table prevents the spectator
seeing this portion of the chair and the lower portion of my per-
son. When he begins to clean the first slate, I raise the side trap
with my right hand ; and when I bring the first slate below the

254 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

table top to plkce it under the table, I quietly slip the unprepared
slate upon the top shelf, quickly drawing out the message slate
from the lower shelf and placing it under the table next to the
table top. At the same instant, with the left hand, I lower the
side strip and partly turn my person so as to face the table. At
this instant I am directing the subject to place his slate under
the table and also to grasp my slate with his hand, which takes
his attention completely; and I quickly remove my hand to the
table top.

After the experiment the subject seldom remembers that I
placed one of the slates under the table myself, and he usually
states when relating his experience to others, that he cleaned and
placed the slates under the table himself and that I never in any
way touched them.

After the experiment I usually turn the table over that he may
see there is no trickery, and even offer my person for examina-
tion. No one has ever yet suspected the chair.

When performing for a company, I seat the company in an
adjoining parlor, and place the sitter and table just through the
folding doors. I also use a drape on the table, which with the
sitter's person, hides my chair seat and my right hand from the
view of the spectators.*

* The reader is referred to the author's article, " Mediumistic Reading of
Sealed Writings," in the Open Court of April, 1906, for an excellent method
of working this trick.

(To be continued.)

Editorial. 255

EDITORIAL.

MAKING OF RECORDS.

At the last meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Ameri-
can Institute for Scientific Research a resolution was passed
to the effect that arrangements should be made for filing
private and personal records in locked boxes which should
be in the custody of the Secretary alone and to which access
could be had only by this officer of the American Society for
Psychical Research.

The object of this resolution was to encourage the collec-
tion of important matter throwing light upon the problem
which we are investigating, but of too private a nature to
receive publication or to be accessible to general students.
We have a few such records which it is impossible to make
public in any way, even if permitted to do so. They are ex-
tremely valuable to a proper knowledge of the problem, and
in fact we can not be expected to form or pronounce a judg-
ment upon certain features of it without such a collection on
a large scale, and hence it is desirable that we shall have pro-
vision for the protection of private and confidential experi-
ences, but which are invaluable in the investigation of
psychic research. The scientific man cannot be expected to
have an explanation of private experiences unless he can
have them submitted to his scrutiny in large numbers, and
he must be granted the opportunity to penetrate into the
phenomena with all the care and thoroughness of the physi-
cian who has to treat his patients. The system of private
and locked files will supply the Society with a means of en-
couraging the record of phenomena which may be more im-
portant than all others in our custody. It is hoped, there-
fore, that members who have private and personal experi-
ences of great importance will consent to have them filed for
preservation and future usefulness. Everything so filed will
be treated as the private property of the parties trusting the
matter to us and no use of it made that is not stipulated in
the transfer. The primary object is to have a record made
of experiences that will otherwise be lost to the scientific
Icnowledge of the human race. An indefinite keeping may

256 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

be necessary in many cases before even the type of phe-
nomena should be mentioned. But in any case we need
means for protecting important facts from being lost.

The subject of private records suggests the importance of
some remarks on the matter of records generally. There are
several points to be emphasized in this connection.

In the first place I would call readers' attention to the fact
that the scientific value of an experience dies with the per-
son who has had it, unless it is put on record and subjected
to such investigation and verification as may be possible.
Second-hand stories do not have the same value as first-hand,
and any one who has had an experience that may be im-
portant to his fellows should think of this fact and make
some sacrifices to the needs of science and the welfare of the
race. No higher duty exists than to see that one's experi-
ence can be made helpful to others and to the sum of human
knowledge. Each has it in his power to add to this result
if he has any important experience to record. It is easy to
eliminate the personal aspect of such from the account by
concealing the identity of the reporter. All that is required
is that the subject of the phenomena submit to the proper
inquiry and then ask for the reservation of his or her iden-
tity from public knowledge. Of course it is all the better if
the individual be able or willing to have his name used. But
this is not necessary in most cases, while the importance of
his experience may often be so great as to justify large sac-
rifices for the benefit of human knowledge.

In the second place, there is one important fact which
should not be lost to view in emphasizing the value of spor-
adic experiences. It is the simple fact that all human prog-
ress depends on making records of one's experience. No
progress whatever was ever made until the race began to
record its experiences. Picture writing, hieroglyphics, papy-
rus and parchment writing, cuneiform inscriptions, etc., are
all indicative of what was the antecedent condition of all
transmitted knowledge, and civilization never rose to any
high stage until some method was obtained for accumulating
and preserving knowledge. The most important advances
in medicine were made on the records of its special cases

Editorial. 257

which serve to enable me to understand the laws of physi-
ology. If medicine had not recorded its special cases it
would have still been in the condition it was in the
time of Esculapius and Hippocrates. The same gen-
eral fact may be noted in astronomy and its knowledge of
meteors. A careful record of the facts had. to precede a
scientific view of the phenomena. The facts of psychic re-
search should not go to waste on the ground that people do
not give them adequate attention. They can be made to
consider them if recorded in sufficient numbers. As re-
marked above, unless recorded they die with the person who
experienced them, and they are too valuable to let pass in
this way. For thousands of years the human race has ne-
glected these phenomena which are adapted to throw more
light on the meaning of things than any other class of facts,
and has made it all but impossible to get scientific considera-
tion of them. As they require to be collected in large num-
bers the only hope of securing evidence of some important
conclusion lies in recording such facts as they occur. This
once done the future is so much the gainer thereby.

It matters not what this experience may be, provided it
seems unusual. There are many more problems to solve in
psychology than the existence of a soul or a future life.
There are the questions of the mind's own influence on what
purports to be supernormal, and to understand this we need
to collect and study all types of residual phenomena of mind,
including illusions, hallucinations, dreams, deliria, morbid
mental states, hypnosis, somnambulism, unconscious mental
action, secondary personality, and all such phenomena as
may show what the mind does in its exhibition of residual
events. All these should be recorded and collected at the
time of their occurrence, if we are to make any progress in
the study of the most important of all psychological prob-
lems. We cannot be asked to explain individual or isolated
incidents unless we have means of forming some conception
of a g^eneral principle which shall be related to them, and the
primary condition of securing this general principle is the
collection of well established facts. It takes time to do this
when the phenomena are comparatively sporadic. It re-

258 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

quires a long period to obtain them in sufficient quantity to
impress the scientific mind with their importance. Each
individual may have his share in this final result by recording
his experience at once and sending it to the Secretary of the
Society where it may receive a permanent protection.

People should remember in considering their experiences
that they have an opportunity to contribute to the advance-
ment of human knowledge and the benefit of the human race
by recording the facts. It is not the primary desire on our
part that we should rush into the publication of experiences
of any kind, especially of the personal and private type. But
it is important that we should have them at hand for study
and the formation of opinions regarding them. Once re-
corded and investigated, and authenticated scientifically, they
preserve their value permanently, and those who possess in-
formation which may help to throw light on the wider mean-
ing the world should esteem it a favor to have an opportunity
to help their fellows in the distant future by submitting their
experiences to examination and preservation. It can be con-
sidered one of the highest privileges and duties, and certainly
the failure to do so is a wholly unnecessary selfishness. We
cannot expect others to treat us justly unless we are dis-
posed to do the same to them. If we demand of the world
that it give us its knowledge for our welfare we owe it to this
world that we contribute as much as we demand. When
publicity and notoriety are not involved it is easy to perform
the service of helpfulness in this manner.

One of the strangest features of the present is the will-
ingness of hundreds to write their experiences to the news-
papers when it is a waste of time to do so and a waste of ink
to print them, since no sane person would attach the slight-
est value to unsigned and uninvestigated statements of any
one. And yet the same persons resent the study and record
of these experiences by the only men who are able to give
them value ! It is hoped that the publications of the Society
may encourage the habit of reporting all such experiences
and that the accumulation of them may result in a recon-
struction of our knowledge of nature that may reward each
one with the consciousness of having served well his race.

Editorial. 259

" WEIGHING THE SOUL."

We are publishing in this number of the Journal a paper
by Dr. Duncan MacDougall on some experiments represent-
ing an attempt to test the claim that the soul might have
weight. It was not his intention that his experiments should
obtain public notice at present, but an unauthenticated pub-
lication of his attempts, with the usual distortion that every-
thing gets in the papers, has resulted in this prompt effort to
correct the misrepresentation. The correspondence between
Dr. MacDougall and Dr. Richard Hodgson is printed below,
with a letter to the Editor of the Journal which explains itself.
The frank explanation is made by Dr. MacDougall that he
had a theory to start with and that he was testing it. He as
frankly indicates that his theory, with which he started, may
be false, and that the assumption that the soul is ponderable
may be a wrong one. These facts it is important to bear in
mind when considering his experiments. They make it
wholly unnecessary to enter into discussion with Dr. Mac-
Dougall about his position, since he can be indifferent to the
outcome of his experiments.

It may be important, however, to remark a few precau-
tions for the psychic researcher in this connection. It should
be observed that the problem of psychic research" is not af-
fected by either success or failure in such experiments as Dr.
MacDougairs. One might even contend that success in
proving the loss of weight by death in some way not ordi-
narily accountable by physical theories would not prove that
the residuum was a soul. It might be some vital energy, and
the soul yet remain an imponderable form of substance. It
might even be that vital force, if such there be other than
the orthodox chemical theory of life, is also imponderable,
and that the residuum of such experiments as Dr. Mac-
DougaU's would be some form of matter not yet known. All
that successful experiments would prove would be that there
was some form of energy unaccounted for by known agen-
cies, and not necessarily that this residuum was the subject
of consciousness. The problem of psychic research, in so
far as it represents the search for a soul concerns the evi-

260 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

dence that consciousness survives death, and that is a psy-
chological, not a physical problem. Even after we proved
that something survived death, we should still have to prove
that it was conscious and also to prove that it was the same
consciousness that we had once known as a living human
person. That can be determined only by communication
with the discarnate, and any conclusion established by that
method would be indifferent to the question whether the sub-
ject of consciousness was ponderable or imponderable. Fail-
ure to prove that the residuum in such experiments as Dr.
MacDougall's is ponderable would not affect this question
of personal identity. It would remain a legitimate suit or
question in any case, especially as we are privileged to as-
sume imponderable and space occupying substances. As for
myself, I have no objections to the Leibnitzian or Bosco-
vitchian point of view which is that the ultimate nature of
substance is spaceless. I do not accept that view, but I have
no facts or philosophy that require me to contradict it. I
simply ascertain facts and accept the conclusions which they
make imperative, and hence I make no a priori assumptions
as to what the substance of the soul or of anything else must
be. That has to be determined by the facts, not by hypoth-
eses antecedent to facts.

This does not mean that such experiments as Dr. Mac-
Dougall has undertaken are not highly important. They
will be extremely valu&ble whether the result be negative or
affirmative, whether a ponderable residuum can be found or
not. Either conclusion will be an important one. But the
recognition of that fact does not subordinate the problem of
psychical research to the outcome of such efforts. It is an
independent question.

Funds of the Institute, except those loaned on security,
are deposited in the United States Trust Company and can
be drawn only on order of the Board of Trustees on the joint
signature of its President and Treasurer.

Incidents. 261

INCIDENTS.

The society assumes no responsibility for anjrthing pub-
lished under this head and no indorsement is implied except
that it has been furnished by an apparently trustworthy con-
tributor whose name is given unless withheld at his own

request.

Dream, (Coincidental.)

The following experience is signed by three persons,
the lady, Mrs. S. A. C , who had the dream, her daugh-
ter, Mrs. J. C. J , and the latter's husband, Mr. J. C.

J . I know Mr. and Mrs. J. C. J personally and can

vouch for their intelligence as witnesses. It is desired by
all parties that no names should be mentioned or places that
would lead to their identification.

JAMES H. HYSLOP.

Aug. 7th, 1906.

Dear Dr. Hyslop:

It has taken some time to find dates connected with the dream
I mentioned to you, hence the delay. I have at last gathered the
facts as follows:

Mrs. D , my father's sister, had, with husband and fam-
ily, removed from our home in Indiana to Nebraska, in 1882, and
in November, 1885, she and her husband returned to visit the old
home. They had spent but a day or two with us, when a special
invitation came from friends ten miles distant, which they ac-
cepted, promising to return to us about November 13th. On

November 13th, about 8 A. M., my mother, Mrs. S. A. C ,

dreamed that Mary, the youngest daughter of Mr. and Mrs.

D , who had been teaching in Nebraska, was very ill, and

could not live, and that a message had been sent to her father and
mother to come home at once. My mother was so impressed by
the dream, that she awoke and slept no more that night. As
soon as we arose, she told us of the dream, and of her anxiety —
but we made light of her fears — thinking it was only a slight
attack of indigestion.

However, we learned later, that at 3 A. M., on the 14th, just
twenty-four hours after the dream, the message came — " Mary
was very ill, come home at once " — and still later — that she died
the evening of the 14th, many hours before her parents reached
home.

262 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

If there is anything you would like to ask further about this,
we shall be glad to answer if possible.

Sincerely, *

(Mrs.) Sarah A. C .

J. C. J .

(Mrs.) J. C. J .

The following letter was sent to me in response to further
inquiries regarding important details not made clear in the
first letter :

My Dear Dr. Hyslop:

Yours of 2 1 St of December reached us, and in reply to your
questions will say for my mother, (i) That she remembers
telling her dream to no one except Mr. J and myself be-
fore the telegram came.

(2) William C , her brother-in-law, who lived near

where the D 's were visiting, was the messenger who

brought the news of the telegram, in the dream. That incident

also came true, as Mr. C and family were the only ones in

that vicinity who attended our church, and we had no telephone
in those days, and the next day after the telegram came being
Sabbath, they waited and told us at church.

(3) We knew that Mr. D 's daughter had not been ven-

well, but as she was still teaching we had not given it much
thought.

We forgot one rather important detail when I wrote you be-
fore. It is this — that the telegram had been sent to the wrong

place, and did not reach Mr. D *s for a day or two after it

was sent — and two or three letters telling of his daughter's ill-
ness had been sent in care of friends who were awaiting an op-
portunity to deliver them — and this was the second telegram tli;r
was sent, so that the dream was possibly about the time of the
first telegram.

We can think of nothing further at present. Mother, Mr.

J and I will sign the statements. If you would like to have

the exact time which elapsed between the two telegrams, I could
get the facts from my aunt, no doubt, but we do not know
exactly. Sincerely,

(Mrs.) Sarah A. C .

(Mrs.) J. C. J

Desiring further information regarding the two telegrams
I wrote to Mrs. J. C. J. to know more definitely what the
second telegram was and whether it could be obtained at this
date or not. The following reply explains itself :

Correspondence. 263

April loth, 1907.

My Dear Dr. Hyslop : —

After receiving your request for dates I wrote my aunt at
once, but did not hear from her for a very long time, owing to
sickness in her family. She mentions only one telegram. If I
said there were two it must have been a mistake. As I remem-
ber, I said one or two letters had been sent and failed to reach
them, stating that their daughter was worse. This is what my
aunt writes: —

" We received the telegram at 4 P. M., November 13th, 1885.
It was sent from Ewing, Nebraska, at 1 1 A. M. same day. The
depot at Ewing was burned some years afterward and I suppose
all records destroyed." J. D .

So you see the telegram had not been delayed as long as I
had thought, but the letters had been on the road long enough
to have reached them at the time the dream occurred.

Sincerely,

(Mrs.) J. C. J .

CORRESPONDENCE.

The newspapers have recently contained a good deal of
matter with reference to the problem of " weighing a soul,"
and have so misunderstood and misrepresented the work of
Dr. Duncan MacDougall that we have offered to him the
space for a correction of them. It will be apparent to any
reader that Dr. MacDougall has not made any such extrav-
agant pretensions as those ascribed to him by the papers, and
it is with a view to removing the false impression which
newspapers invariably give that the matter has been taken
up here. The Editor of the Journal does not share the hopes
which many entertain regarding the possibility of " weighing
a soul," but this does not preclude his recognition of the
value of experiment, whatever its outcome. The main point
is to have a definite conclusion established, whether it be
negative or affirmative.

The following letter was received from Dr. McDougall
soon after the story appeared in the papers. It explains it-
self. It is followed by the correspondence between himself

264 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

and Dr. Hodgson, which occurred some years ago, and before
the latter's death. Both will make clear the scientific atti-
tude maintained in the problem.

Haverhill, Mass., March 13th, 1907.
Dr. James H. Hyslop :

Dear Sir : — I thank you for your interest in the experiments.
It is unfortunate that they have received publicity first through
the newspapers, as it was my intention to collect the data and
complete my argument in a paper to be made public before some
scientific body. That I judge, is out of the question now. The
premature publication is unfortunate because of another matter.
I had lately become connected with a hospital and was thereby
winning the confidence of those in charge, and hoped that within
this year I might be able to resume my experiments. This pre-
mature newspaper publication ends that hope. In response to
your letter and also at the suggestion of Miss Lucy Edmonds,
the former Secretary of the late Dr. Hodgson, I enclose a type-
written copy of my communications with Dr. Hodgson, with the
request that some time you will return them. You may make
copies of them if you like. These communications to Dr. Hodg-
son contain practically the whole substance of my experiments.
The salient features of the whole matter are as follows :

1. We did find by rigid experimentation a loss of substance
from the body not accounted for by known channels of loss, occurring
at death, in some cases exactly coinciding with death, in others
shortly after death.

2. The loss of substance was from three-eighths or one-half
an ounce, up to one and one-half ounces.

3. In the first case we had ideal conditions, viz. : no friction
on the part of officials of the institution, and opportunity of
watching the patient four hours before death. The movement
of the beam in his case was remarkable. It dropped to the
lower bar with a thud exactly at the moment of death. In the
other cases we had more or less friction on the part of officials
which worried me very much. In the case of the woman this
friction and annoyance were so great, that I threw that test
out. In one other case the patient was on the scales just a few
minutes before death, and while in the communication which I
made to Dr. Hodgson I have written there was no loss of
weight in that case, I should have written that there was more
than two ounces in fact, but the whole thing was done so hur-
riedly in this case, that I was dissatisfied, though the weight
might have slipped, or the beam, and so I threw out the experi-
ment.

4. All the cases with the exception of the woman, died of

Correspondence. 265

tuberculosis. Consumptive cases were selected because they
fulfilled the conditions requisite for a delicate test to a nicety,
I. e. — ^a consumptive dying after a long illness wasting his ener-
gies, dies with scarcely a movement to disturb the beam, their
bodies are also very light, and we can be forewarned for hours
that a consumptive is dying.

S. In the case of animals (dogs) the results of the tests were
negative, but I have this to say, that the tests on the dogs were
vitiated by the necessity of using two drugs in order to secure
the necessary muscular relaxation— quiet and stillness, so that
the beam would remain at balance. They were all healthy dogs.
The ideal dog test or other animal test would be that of one
dying of an illness, that produced great exhaustion and no mus-
cular movement. Of course a theory preceded the experiments
and some are foolish enough to think that because I had a theory
to begin with I would be therefore a biased observer. I hardly
think so. •

If personal identity (and consciousness and all the attributes
of mind and personality) continue to exist after the death of the
body, it mtist exist as a space-occupying body, unless the relations
here in this world between the conscious ego and space, our
notions of space as fixed in our brain by inheritance and experi-
ence are wholly to be set aside and a new set of space relations
to consciousness suddenly established, which would be such a
breach in the community of nature that I cannot imagine it.
At any rate we are now limited to the conception that for per-
sonal identity or personality, or individuality, to exist and have
being, is only possible in a space-occupying body. To think of
personal identity or personality existing and yet not occupying
space, is equivalent to thinking that something can be nothing
or if not that absurdity, then the equal absurdity that space and
personality are one and the same thing. If we continue to exist
then as Tom, and Dick and Harry, having personal identity
intact, with the separateness of personality, it can only be as
space-occupying bodies. The question arises, what is this sub-
stance-occupying space which contains the personality and con-
sciousness of Tom, and Dick, and Harry. Is it substance having
weight, ordinary gravitative matter; is it the ether, or is it a
middle soul substance, neither ether, nor gravitative matter?
Most everyone believes that Tom, and Dick and Harry and all
the rest of us do continue to live after the death of the body. It
is the central idea of all the great religious beliefs. Out of these
cogitations arose the desire to test by experiment if anything left
the body after death that could be detected by a balance, and our
experiments appear to prove that there is a substance ivhich goes
from the body at death not accounted for by known channels of loss,
I wish to note further that if this substance lost at death is really

266 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

the soul substance and if it is in dimensions a counterpart of the
physical body then its density is very much lighter than the
atmosphere surrounding the earth, which would be rather a
significant fact. Now, Dr. Hyslop, it may be that other investi-
gators— if the matter is ever taken up— will prove that I have
discovered a mare's nest. If they do, that will not prove, by any
means, that man is mortal, for the soul substance may not be
gravitative matter and yet be a substance.

I am well aware that these few experiments do not prove the
matter any more than a few swallows make a summer, but yet
the results should at least provoke further experiments. Now
that the cat is out of the bag, by the least desirable method-
newspaper publication — after being securely kept in for five or
six years, if you care to publish this letter, I have no objection
to your doing so. I dislike the sensational publication of the
facts, but have not been able to prevent it, and perhaps the pub-
lication of this letter would do much to remove the misconcep-
tions that have arisen, as it is the only written statement I have
made concerning the matter since I last wrote to Dr. Hodgson
five years ago. Sincerely yours,

D. MacDOUGALL.

The following letters represent the correspondence be-
tween Dr. MacDougall and Dr. Richard Hodgson on the
same subject. We have omitted such parts of the corre-
spondence as was purely personal and irrelevant to the theo-
retical and experimental problem at hand.

November loth, 1901.
Richard Hodgson, M. D. :

Dear Doctor : — While travelling to Europe on board the Ces-
trian of the Leyland Line this summer, a discussion arose one
evening among a group of passengers concerning the question of
immortality, materialism or spiritualism.

At the end of the conversation I related an experiment which
I had made which I thought of great importance in its bearing
upon the subject. Dr. Herbert L. Burrel, of Boston, was one
of the group and after I had related the experiment, he advised
me to inform you of it, I had thought of you as one who might
*^e interested, and the Doctor's recommendation determined me

write to you after I had returned.

In the first place I want to state the steps of reasoning that

red me on to making the experiment.

irst. If personal continuity after the event of death is a fact,
che psychic functions continue to exist as a separate individu-

Correspondence. 267

ality after the death of brain and body, then it must exist as a
substantial material entity, for: —

Second. It is unthinkable that personality and consciousness
can be attributes of that which does not occupy space and is
absolutely imponderable — nothing. It is impossible to repre-
sent in thought, that which is neither space-occupying nor pon-
derable (in the sense of having weight) as having personality or
consciousness, or any other quality, for that would be thinking
of nothing as being something, which is a manifest contradiction.
Since therefore, it is necessary to the continuance of personality
and consciousness after death, that they must have some sort of a
material basis, the question arose in my mind — Why not weigh
on accurate scales a man at the very moment of death? Per-
haps this material basis may be ponderable to sensitive scales
even now at my command, perhaps it is so delicate that it may
escape me, but nevertheless the experiment has never been done
before. To settle the question it must be done.

On the loth day of last April, my opportunity came. On a
Fairbanks Standard platform scales, I had previously arranged a
frame work of wood, very light ; on top of this I placed a cot bed
with clothing in such a manner that the beam was not interfered
with in any way.

At 5 130 P. M. the patient, a man dying in consumption, was
placed on the bed. He lived until 9:10 P. M. During those
three hours and forty minutes he lost weight at the rate of an
ounce in one hour, the sixtieth part of an ounce in one minute,
so that every ten or fifteen minutes I was compelled to shift the
sliding weight back upon the beam in order to keep the beam end
up against the upper limiting bar, which I wished to do for the
sake of making the test of sudden loss all the more marked and
decisive, if such loss should come. This loss of weight, one
ounce each hour or one sixtieth of an ounce each minute, was due
to evaporation of moisture from the nasopharyngeal and broncho-
pulmonary and buccal mucous membrane accompanying respira-
tion, and also to the evaporation of moisture from cutaneous per-
spiration.

At 9 :o8 P. M. my patient being near death, for the last time I
sent back the shifting weight on the beam so that for the last ten
minutes the beam end was in continuous contact with the upper
limiting bar. Suddenly at 9:10 P. M. the patient expired and
exactly simultaneously with the last movement of the respiratory
muscles and coincident with the last movement of the facial
muscles the beam end dropped to the lower limiting bar and
remained there without rebound as though a weight had been
lifted off the bed. Later it took the combined weight of two
silver dollars to lift the beam back to actual balance. On weigh-

268 Journal of the Atnerican Society for Psychical Research.

ing these they were found together to weigh three-fourths of an
ounce.

This sudden loss of weight could not be accounted for by
evaporation of cutaneous or respiratory moisture, that had
already been determined to be at the rate of a sixtieth of an
ounce in one minute, whereas this loss was at the rate of three-
fourths of an ounce momentarily.

The bowels did not move. If they had moved the weight
would have remained upon the bed excepting for a slow loss by
evaporation of moisture depending of course upon the fluidity
of the faeces.

The bladder moved slightly about one or two teaspoonfuls of
urine escaping exactly at death. This remained upon the bed,
and could only have influenced the result by slow gradual evap-
oration, and could in no way have accounted for the sudden loss.

There remained but one channel of loss to explore, the expira-
tion of all but the residual air in the lung.

Getting upon the bed myself, my colleague, Dr. Sproull, put
the beam at actual balance ; I then forcibly inspired and forcibly
expired all the air possible for several times, but this had no
influence upon the beam.

Changing places with Dr. Sproull I watched the beam myself
while he forcibly inhaled and exhaled all the air possible; the
result was the same — no effect whatever upon the beam.

Here then is a loss of weight — three-fourths of an ounce
occuring simultaneously with death not accounted for by known
channels of loss. What is the meaning of it? Have I really
weighed the soul substance? — the thing that carries with it in
its flight, personality, individuality, consciousness.

I was looking up an Encyclopaedic Dictionary tonight on the
subject of Materialism and I saw where Rudolph Wagner at a
Congress of Psychology in 1854 had proposed a discussion of
" soul substance " but not one of the five hundred voices present
was raised in defence of a spiritual philosophy. Have I dis-
covered Wagner's " soul substance " with my weighing machine?
I think so, and I mean to verify and re-verify and re-re-verify,
if I live long enough.

I would like you to be present at some one of the tests, and if
disproof comes I shall be as ready to admit it as verification.

I feel sure that from you I shall have an impartial judgment,
and I hope you will consent to be present at some one of the
tests that must surely come this winter.

Very sincerely yours,

D. MacDOUGALL.

P. S. — Since writing the above my second experiment has
been done. The following are the details:

Correspondence. 269

The patient, a man moribund from consumption, was placed
upon the bed of the weighing machine at 12:10 A .M. He was a
larger man than my first case. He slowly lost weight at the
rate of three-fourths of an ounce per hour until 4:10 A. M., when
he apparently ceased breathing. For fifteen minutes after there
was twitching of the eyelids and twitching of the lips only,
during which time there was no loss of weight, the beam remain-
ing constantly against the upper bar, then in a few moments after
the last twitching the beam began to sink slowly until in fifteen
minutes more it had touched and remained at the lower bar. A
weight of one-half ounce moved it back again to the upper. At
this point Dr. Sproull, my colleague, auscultated the heart and
finding it stopped, the one-half ounce having been previously
lifted oflE and the beam end at the lower bar, I tried again when it
took one ounce and a half and fifty grains to lift it back to the
upper bar. Inside of three minutes with all channels of loss
closed a loss of one ounce and fifty grains took place. In the
whole eighteen minutes, the total loss with all channels of loss
closed that amount of loss took place, whereas in four hours with
respiration and perspiration active the total loss was three
ounces. No bowel movement took place. The bladder moved
but the urine remained upon the bed, and could not have evap-
orated enough through the thick bed clothing to have influenced
the result.

The beam at the end of the eighteen minutes immediately
after the loss was determined was placed again with the end in
slight contact with the upper bar and watched for forty-five
minutes but no further loss took place.

My scales are sensitive to two-tenths of an ounce. If placed
at balance, one-tenth of an ounce will lift the beam end close to
the upper bar. A second one-tenth of an ounce will place it in
contact with the upper bar ; if then both are removed gently the
beam will drop down nearly to the lower bar and then slowly
oscillate until balance is reached again.

This patient was of a totally different temperament from the
first; his death was very gradual so that we had great doubt,
from the ordinary evidence to say just at what minute he died.

It is not however pure coincidence of loss that I am after;
it is to determine if a loss of weight takes place at or near death
which cannot be explained or accounted for by known channels
of loss. This second test was as conclusive in support of my
thesis as was the first. I beg of you to keep this private in the
meantime. I am arranging to begin on animals.
Very sincerely yours,

D. MacDOUGALL.

The foHowing is Dr. Hodgson's reply to the above letter:

270 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

Boston, Mass., November 29th, 1901.

Dear Doctor: — I was very much interested in your letter,
begun apparently on November loth but not finished or
despatched till about November 2Sth. I congratulate you heart-
ily on the experiments which you are making. I suppose it
might be a little queer if I were to say that I hoped you would
have enormous opportunities for your special experiment with
the patients that come under your charge. I hope, however, that
circumstances will enable you to take advantage of every oppor-
tunity that does arise. Your letter at once reminded me of a
story in the Atlantic Monthly, which would doubtless interest
you. It appeared in June, 1887, called " Crucial Experiment."
Some of the characters appeared in a previous story in November,

1886, I think. The story is by J. P. Q , who is the father

of the former of Boston. The professor in the story

says that he hopes to " show that approximating the time when
the soul leaves the body, there is an alteration in its weight
which is capable of registration, I have caused the bed to be
supported upon an exquisitely poised balance which will show
any remission of the downward pressure." You would, I think,
be interested in reading the two stories, which are not so much
stories, perhaps, as means of expressing special views. In
Quincy's article, however, the corpus vile does not die, so that the
experiment is off, and no details are given. The possibility of
the occurrence of some other form of disturbance at the moment
of death, is also suggested in the story. I should like indeed to
see experiments which cover this point also. It would be ver)'
interesting, e. g., if it should be found that there was some evi-
dence of a special disturbance in the ether in the neighborhood of
the dying body.

I am not sure that on philosophic grounds I entirely agree
with the argument in your brief preamble. I should venture to
urge that we are not justified in denying the existence of per-
sonality except as an attribute of a space-occupying material
body, but a discussion on this point would be impossible as it
would lead us into all the deepest realms of philosophy generally.
There is another point where I think that you will probably agree
with me. You may perhaps admit the possibility that there may
be a physical correlate of consciousness, which physical correlate
may nevertheless consist not of what is known as gross ponder-
able matter, but of the ether. It is thinkable that there should
be some kind of ethereal body, and there is apparently a general
consensus of opinion among physicists that the ether is impon-
derable. Any theory, however, is independent of your valuable
experiments. I doubt if my assistance will be of any value at all
to you in these, but I should of course be glad to do anything in
my power.

Correspondence. 271

I shall keep your communications private. As it occurs to
me that it would be desirable to have as large a number of cases
experimented with as possible, have you thought of obtaining
help from other doctors or hospitals, e. g,, in the investigations
or are you particularly anxious to make all the experiments your-
self ? I should be glad if you thought it advisable to try to enlist
other workers in your behalf if possible, and have the results of
your work handed over to you. I should like also, with your per-
mission, to consult on your experiments with some of my med-
ical friends here, on the understanding, of course, that it was a
private matter and that it was your investigation. I should like

to talk with , of Harvard Medical School, but of course I

shall not do this, if you have any objection.

I agree with you very strongly, of course, as to the extreme
importance of the investigation whatever results may be finally
reached. Yours sincerely,

R. HODGSON.

To this Dr. MacDougall replied as follows :

Dec. 5th, 1901.
Dear Doctor Hodgson :

I thank you for your kind letter of November 29th. Yea,
verily, I do wish that the hope you express for enormous oppor-
tunities might be fulfilled, but I must bear myself with patience
and wait for cases as the gods may send them. It is very sin-
gular that I should have carried out even to the point of com-
pletion, the experiment of J, P. 's fictitious professor. I

have sometimes wondered if the idea of such an experiment had
ever been entertained by others. But your information settles
that point. I am rather glad to find that I have not been alone.
Yes, it would be interesting to demonstrate if there is a disturb-
ance in the ether at death, but I cannot imagine how such a dem-
onstration might be made.

In regard to your second point. Doctor, I think we are more
justified in assuming that that which is the container of the
totality of the psychic functions, including consciousness and per-
sonality, and still persisting after the death of our bodies, is much
more likely to be a material, organically linked with the body
than the hypothetical, yet necessary ^ther-substance, which has
never been demonstrated to be a necessary part of our living
organism although necessary to our ideas of space and the action
of energy, inter-planetary and inter-stellar.

My soul substance, which eludes me the moment I demon-
strate it, is of course of such weight that it is totally different
from the ether. Perhaps some genius will apply a spectroscope
to it some day and demonstrate its composition. If we admitted

272 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

your proposition that consciousness and personality might exist
in a body of ether, then we would still be fulfilling one of the
principal parts of my thesis, because ether is a space occupying
body. It really is unthinkable that consciousness and person-
ality or individuality could exist in that which is not space-occu-
pying, for that is practically attributing these qualities to space
itself.

Going back to your theory of ether substance having con-
sciousness and personality for its content, while I cannot con-
ceive, yet it may be that there is a middle substance which is the
soul substance, and which resembles the ether in being non-
gravitative and therefore not weighable, but which resembles
ordinary matter in being discontinuous or capable of existing in
separate masses, which is a necessary condition for the existence
of individual consciousness or separate consciousness having
personal identity. However, I may be mistaken in my con-
ception of this point of difference between matter and ether, i. e.,
the continuity of the ether, and the discontinuous quality of mat-
ter. I realize that if my results are experimentally confirmed by
others, then these results have a positive scientific bearing upon
the doctrine of human immortality. If on the other hand I am
proven to be in error in my experiments, the question remains as
it was before — the absence of weight loss is no proof against
human immortality.

And now, Doctor Hodgson, I want to thank you for your
kindly interest. If you would like to meet me and my colleague,
Dr. Sproull, I would be glad to drop in on you any day before
Thursday next week at whatever time you may set, in order that
he or I may answer any question you may have to put on the ex-
periments, and in order that we might more fully explain the dif-
ficulties one has to contend with in doing the human experiment
Before Thursday of next week I shall have opportunity to go to
Boston, after that I shall be held here for a time.

Sincerely yours,

D. MacDOUGALL.

P. S. — I forgot to say that if Mr. would like to be

present to question me or to make suggestion — ^provided you are
able to meet me — I shall be glad to meet him.

Dr. Hodgson then replies in the following:

Boston, Mass., Dec. 9th, 1901.
Dear Doctor:

Thanks for yours of December 5th. The possibility of as-
certaining any unusual disturbance in the ether in the neighbor-
hood of a dying body would have to be tried by various forms of

Correspondence, 273

experiment. They might indeed all fail even if there were such
a disturbance, but the kind of experiment to begin with would
be with instruments sensitive to slight electric changes, con-
nected perhaps with a galvanic needle.

I suppose we must be content for the present to join issue as
to the a priori probability as to the constitution of the physical
analogue of consciousness, ether or gravitational matter. How-
ever, this will of course make no difference to the form of your
actual experiment.

As regards your other point, it is a philosophic one. You
say that it is unthinkable that consciousness could exist in that
which is not space occupying. The real fact is that space is
mental, and altho it may not be as Kant maintained, the form of
all thought, it is the form of some thought ; but here again, any
view that we may hold on this point makes no difference to your
actual experimental work.

I shall be glad to know of your later experiments and your
publication. Yours sincerely,

R. HODGSON.

It is apparent from the next letter of Dr. MacDougall that
Dr. Hodgson had written a letter on the 3rd of January, 1902,
but this is not included in those sent to me.

January 6th, 1902.
Dear Doctor Hodgson:

Yours of 3rd inst. received. I have no objection to your com-
municating with Mr. , and relating the matter to him, for

I feel sure that at your request, he will preserve the privacy of
the matter.

I would have no objection to your relating it to Dr.

at this time, but for the fact that I wish a third test before broach-
ing the matter to positioned and entrenched scientific authority.
I have had two rebuffs already from such a quarter.

I had hoped to communicate the result of the third experiment
to you before this time, but a foolish misunderstanding barred me
from what would have been an excellent test case. The misun-
derstanding has been cleared away and I am now free to go on
with my observations whenever the opportunity presents.

I shall be interested to know what Dr. thinks of the

discovery. It is odd that his thought and mine should have co-
incided so remarkably. The idea struck me sometime in the
winter of '96-97, and I am sure I never even read a copy of the
Atlantic Monthly which is an admission I probably should be
ashamed of.

The coincidence of thought but shows that after all there is

274 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

nothing more likely to happen than particular aspects of the en-
vironment— the objective forcing themselves upon the conscious-
ness of the mind — ^the subjective.

Just as soon as the third experiment is recorded I will mail
you the facts of the case. With many thanks for your kind
interest. Sincerely yours,

D. MacDOUGALL.

The present letter is a continuation of an account of ex-
periments and is not especially a reply to any particular
letter :

May 22nd, 1902.
Dear Doctor Hodgson:

Since I wrote you last I have had four more experiments on
human subjects.

In the first of these four, there was a loss of half an ounce
coincident with death, and an additional loss of an extra ounce
a few minutes later, but in the interval there was a jarring of the
scales and a movement of the beam that might have caused the
sliding weight to shift acidentally on the beam. This jarring
was caused in examining the heart with a stethoscope to deter-
mine whether or not the heart had ceased to beat.

In the second of the fpur, the patient dying of diabetic coma,
unfortunately our scales were not finely balanced, and although
there is a descent of the beam requiring about three-eighths to
half an ounce to bring it to the point preceding death, yet I con-
sider this test negative.

The third of the four cases shows a distinct drop in the beam
registering about three-eighths of an ounce, which could not be
accounted for; this occurred exactly simultaneously with death,
but peculiarly, on bringing the beam up again with weights and
removing them again, the beam did not sink back to stay back
for quite a period — about ten or fifteen minutes. It was however
impossible to account for the three-eighths of an ounce drop ; it
was sudden and distinct, hitting the lower bar with a noise as
great as in the very first cases. Our scales in this case were very
sensitively balanced.

The fourth case of this series was negative. Unfortunately

owing to complications which we could not prevent the patient

was but a few minutes on the bed before he died, and whether I

had the beam accurately balanced before death or not I cannot

' sure of. I am inclined to believe that he passed away while I

3 adjusting the beam. At any rate there was no loss of

ght.

Correspondence. 275

I have to add that the same experiments have been carried out
on twelve dogs surrounded by every precaution for accuracy, and
that the results have been uniformly negative — no loss of weight
at death. A loss of weight takes place about twenty or thirty
minutes after death, which is due to evaporation of the urine in-
variably passed, and which loss is duplicated by evaporation from
the same amount of water on the scales, every other condition
being the same, except the presence of the dog's body.

I feel that there is justification for others to go to the trouble
of making these tests, and if you feel as well disposed to enlist
others with opportunities for doing them as formally, I shall be
glad to aid in any way from my experience.

An apparatus of mine is now in Boston, and I am willing to
place it at the disposal of any one who has the opportunity and
the desire to make the tests.

My chief reason for holding back on this before was the fear
that after all I had discovered a mare's nest, and that I might put
others to trouble for nothing.

It may be now that other experimenters will discover it to
be a mare's nest ; but at any rate we have sufficient grounds to
warrant putting others to the trouble of proving the matter.

I forgot to mention that the dogs experimented on weighed
from twenty to sixty-five pounds, and that the scales with total
weight on them were sensitive to the sixteenth of an ounce, or
thirty grains, yet no loss was demonstrable.

If it is definitely proven that there is a distinct loss of weight
in the human being not accounted for by known channels of loss,
then we have here a physiological difference between the human
and the canine at least (and probably between the human and all
other forms of life) hitherto unsuspected.

You are most kind to offer to try eo enlist others in the ex-
perimental work, and to relate the experiment to Dr. , but

I would like to make the third experiment before you did that,
after it I shall welcome such aid. I want to first publish the dis-
covery as a fact in the physiology of death, stripped, as a good
friend of mine has said, of its " psychical significance," because to
insist ypon the latter might raise prejudice in the minds of many
of our present day scientific men, and prevent repetition of the
experiment by others.

After the fact has been acknowledged and proven, it will be
time enough to insist upon its meaning.

Many thanks for your kind interest. I will surely inform you
at once after the third test. Sincerely yours,

D. MacDOUGALL.
(This concluded the correspondence.)

276 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

ON DR. MacDOUGALL'S EXPERIMENTS.

The Editor:

Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research:

I should like to insert a letter in the Journal, partly by
way of self-justification, and partly in the hope that I may
contribute some few items of interest — having had the good
fortune to observe a number of experiments bearing more or
less directly on this question of the loss of weight, — ^to which
I shall refer later on. First of all, however, I should like to
say a few words with regard to the newspaper stories that
are going the rounds, containing a statement supposed to
have been made by me relative to the MacDougall experi-
ments. The facts were these: a reporter asked me what I
thought of the idea of placing a criminal who had been sen-
tenced to death on the scales — death chair and all — and I
stated that the experiment should certainly be tried ; that it
would prove most interesting as a test, and indicated certain
precautions that would have to be taken in order to prevent
losses from normal causes — ^through expired air, &c. I
suggested placing a glass hood over the head of the criminal
a few seconds before the electric current was turned on, as
in that manner the air forced from the lungs would be re-
tained in the air-tight cover, and would be weighed — this
being all the more necessary in all cases of electrocution,
where it is probable that the electric current would cause a
violent spasmodic contraction of the muscles of the body,
and hence a great contraction of the lungs — forcing out a
quantity of air. I did not say that I considered that would
be " conclusive proof," but was careful to indicate that, many
possible sources of error would still have to be guarded
against, even of the purely physical sort ; nor did I state that
" in discovering that the human soul has actual weight, and
is therefore materialistic, (sic) Dr. MacDougall has made the
most important addition to science that the world had
known." I think that, if established, it would be one of the
most important, but I did not state even that much to the
reporter — merely stating that the experiments would have to

Correspondence. 277

be repeated a number of times to induce belief by the scien-
tific world, especially as all the experiments that had been
conducted in this direction heretofore had led to the opposite
conclusion. It has very frequently been asserted that this
experiment has been tried, and in Hibbert's Life and Energy
will be found a Chapter entitled " Is Life Matter?'' in which
this question is considered, and the aufhor comes to the im-
mediate conclusion that life is not matter owing to this very
fact — ^that the dead body does not weigh less than the same
body, alive. I am unaware of any first-hand accounts of such
a series of experiments having been made, however, and it
would be amusing if it should turn out that such experiments
never had been made — after science has stated so dogmatic-
ally for so many years that the question had already been
settled past all dispute! If any reader knows of any such
first-hand accounts, he will confer a favor upon the writer by
communicating them to him.

Having now made clear my position (I hope) I wish to say
a few words on the experiments themselves, more especially
in view of certain experiments and observations of my own.
For, after all, the whole question is one of actual experiment,
and can never be settled by speculations of any sort — ^philo-
sophic or otherwise. Whether the soul is or can be a space-
occupying body or not is beside the question, it seems to me,
and should not enter into any argument based upon observed
facts; or, if so, it should be allowed weight only as a per-
sonal opinion, and in no wise influence the conclusions drawn
from a study of the facts. Taking the experiments, then, as
Dr. MacDougall has described them, the question arises:
granting that the facts exist, as stated, would these results
prove the contention that the observed loss of weight was
due to the exit from the body of some hypothetical soul-
substance, or may the facts (granting them to exist, as
stated) be explained in some such manner as to render Dr.
. MacDougall's hypothesis unnecessary?

I must say that Dr. MacDougall seems to have provided
pretty thoroughly against all normal losses of weight. His
papers (which I have had the privilege of reading) indicate
this clearly. The only channel that need be taken seriously

278 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

into account is the lungs ; i. e., the loss of weight due to ex-
pired air. It therefore becomes a question of the amount of
air the lungs may contain, and its consequent weight, —
granting, for the sake of argument, that every particle of air
is forced out of the lungs at death. A cubic foot of air, at
the ordinary temperature, and at sea-level, weighs about
iM ounces, we are told — a statement that is confirmed by the
Encyclopaedia Britannica and other authorities. In the cubic
foot there are 1728 cubic inches. Now, we know tlvat the
average capacity of the lungs of a healthy human being is
about 225 to 250 cubic inches (Kirke. Physiology, p. 262);
but let us say 300 cubic inches to be on the safe side. This
is, as nearly as possible, one-sixth oz., granting that all the air
is expired at death — for which we have no evidence — and that
the lungs contained as much as 300 cubic inches of air. This
is also a practical impossibility, in such cases as those quoted,
for the reason that this represents the state of healthy lungs
at the moment of the fullest inspiration. The majority of
persons, however, could not inhale 200 cubic inches (the
twelfth of an oz.) while consumptive patients, dying, and in
the last stages of the disease, would not contain within their
lungs anything like 100 cubic inches — the eighteenth of an
oz. When, therefore. Dr. MacDougall tells us that more than
a whole ounce is lost instantaneously, at the moment of
death, we must seek elsewhere than in this direction for the
explanation of the facts.

First of all : may it not be that there are some etheric or
electrical conditions of the body which are no longer present
after death, ceasing at that moment, yet in no way connected
with any form of thought or consciousness? It does not
seem to have occurred to Dr. MacDougall that, coincident
with life, there may be present certain electric or other activi-
ties of the body, which cease at the moment pf death, but are
in no sense causal of the thought and consciousness, that are
also coincident wth life in the body. Both conditions may
be present in a living body, though one may not be causal of
Ihc other in any degree. Both are merely coincidental. It
is quite possible — not to say probable — that consciousness
^s on some sort of etheric medium, which in turn acts upon

Correspondence. 279

the nervous mechanism, and that, at death, consciousness
(itself spaceless and weightless) withdraws at once from the
organism, while the etheric medium withdraws more or less
gradually, according to the condition of the organism at the
time — ^this, in turn, determined by the duration and the
severity of the attendant disease. In some cases, such as
consumption, where we might almost say the body has died
before it dies, we might assume that this etheric medium
would leave the body rapidly, and be noticed immediately,
while in other diseases, this withdrawal would be much
slower, and would not be registered by the balance until
some considerable time after the death; and in such cases
would have no evidential value, since, (like apparitions of
the living, as opposed to apparitions of the dead), there
would be no coincidence to form the striking event. Such
a withdrawal would account for the facts, perhaps, without
resorting to the supposition that consciousness was in any
way that which caused the loss of weight indicated by the
balance.

However, all the above speculations are purely hypo-
thetical, of course, and would have no weight with the ma-
terialist— ^who does not accept either consciousness as an
entity, or the hypothetical etheric medium I have postulated.
He has, however, to explain the facts, which seem to be
pretty well established. Is it possible to form some sort of
explanation without even resorting to the " biological meta-
physics " in which I have just indulged ? Some experiments
I have made, and some observations of certain cases, cause
me to think that these losses and gains of weight might, per-
haps, be accounted for in other ways. I present some facts
for the reader's consideration.

I have been enabled to watch the progress of a number of
cases of patients who have had their health restored to them
by means of the Fasting Cure — i. e., the process of abstaining
entirely from all solid and liquid food for a number of days —
thirty, forty, fifty, and longer — with the almost uniform
result that health has been restored to these persons, though
they had previously been given up to die by the physician
in charge of the case. I have embodied the results of these

282 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

which I have been driven to adopt, none other seemingly
covering the facts.

There are also cases in which an extraordinary loss oi
weight has been noticed. I have known of one case in which
the patient lost 40 pounds in three weeks, while fasting three
days at a time, and eating one meal on the fourth. More
remarkable still is another case in which the patient lost 75
pounds in 21 days of an absolute fast — an average of almost
35^ pounds per diem. Still, these cases might perhaps be
accounted for, since the patients were both very stout
women, and, in all such cases, weight is very rapidly lost.
Still, how are cases to be explained in which great loss of
weight is noted through purely menial trouble — though the
person may have, throughout this period, all the food he
cares to eat; and loses weight, moreover, at a greater rate
than if he ate nothing at all? Probably the most remark-
able case of this kind — one that cannot be explained by any
of the ordinary laws of physiology — is that recorded by Rear-
Admiral George W. Melville, U. S. N., and published in his
Report to the Smithsonian Institute. The passage runs as
follows :

" It is on record that one individual in a New England
town several months ago, actually entered a metallic burial
casket and was sealed up for a period of one hour. He
simply demanded that the glass plate over the head piece be
not covered, and that the individuals conducting the test
should look through the head-plate at intervals, so that he
could smile at them. It was rather a ghastly test, but it was
a successful one, although the individual undergoing the
operation lost 5 pounds in the undertaking! In this test the
man did not probably have 2 cubic feet of air to draw upon."
(The Submarine Boat, p. 723.) Here then, we have a loss of
weight that — if recorded correctly — cannot be explained by
known laws of physiology, since the person undergoing the
test took no bodily exertion, and the loss cannot be due to
any of the known channels of loss. Would such a test indi-
cate that soul-substance had been lost ? Evidently not, since
the man continued to live. In such a case, then, we have a
decrease in weight that cannot be explained by present-day

Book Notices. 283

physiology ; and, until such cases are in some measure ac-
counted for, it is at least premature to assert or even propose
that an observed loss of weight, at the moment of death, is
due to any soul-substance, or that it has any necessary con-
nection with soul or consciousness at all. While, then, I
think that Dr. MacDougall has certainly made some most
interesting and important discoveries, and that further
experiment along these lines is greatly to be desired, we
cannot hold out much hope that we shall, by such means,
ever demonstrate that the human soul weighs an ounce
— even though the reality of the losses be proved. The con-
ditions attendant upon death are so little known, and the
human organism is subject to such queer variations in
weight, even when alive, that many and positive proofs will
have to be forthcoming before his interpretation of the facts
—even though they themselves should be established— can
be accepted by science.

Yours Sincerely,

HEREWARD CARRINQTON.

BOOK NOTICES.

Up to the present time it has been mainly studies in abnormal
psychology that have emphasized the interest and importance of
subconscious mental phenomena. But such studies should be
merely pioneerings of the way, preparatory to investigations of
the role of subconsciousness in the normal human mind. A
recent analysis of creative imagination — " Poetry and the Indi-
vidual" by Dr. H. B. Alexander, (Putnam, 1906)— finds the clue
to the interpretation of the instinct for beauty in the concealed
rather than the revealed forms of mental action, and explains the
aesthetic experience on the basis of the subconscious factors evi-
denced in it. Attention is paid to the ethical and the meta-
physical as well as the psychological aspect of the problem, thus
subjecting the concrete results to the test of a fairly compre-
hensive philosophical view.

284 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

The Law of Suggestion, By Stanusy L. Krebs.
The Science Press, Chicago, 1906.

This little book is a summary of the facts of Hjrpnotism, and
attempts to give them a definite law. This law is said to be as
follows : —

" Iteration produces a tract or line of least resistance in con-
sciousness which functions, when it functions at all, along this
very line/'

This is probably true, but it does not diflFer from the law of all
phenomena whatsoever, mechanical or otherwise, and so can
hardly be recognized as throwing any light on hypnotic
phenomena.

The main portion of the book is occupied with illustrations
and discussions of various aspects of the phenomena, and for a
manual that can acquaint the general public with the elements of
h3rpnotism the book can be commended.

Additional Members. 285

ADDITIONAL MEMBERS.
Fellows.

Lodge, Sir Oliver J., The University, Birmingham, England.
(Honorary Fellow.)

Members.

Costa, Jose, 1926 Pine Street, San Francisco, Cal.
Crichton-Clarke, W. H., 321 West 79th Street, New York City.

City.
Hawley, C. A., D. D. S., 206 E. State Street, Columbus, Ohio.
MacDougall, Duncan, M. D., 131 Main Street, Haverhill, Mass.
Madden, W. J., 220 Garfield Place, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Phillips, Mrs. John C, 299 Berkeley Square, Boston, Mass.
Powell, Mrs. H. M., 105 Hamilton Ave., Columbus, Ohio.
\\ ilson, Mrs. Adela C, 161 West 130th Street, New York City.

Associates.

Bennett, Edward T., The Rock, Port Isaac, Cornwall, England.

Blome, Frederick C, 27 Grand River Ave., Detroit, Mich,

Cole, Fremont, i Madison Ave., New York City.

Cox, Mrs. John Watson, 11 East 38th Street, New York City.

Dugan, R. G.

Edmunds, Miss Lucy, 5 Boylston Place, Boston Mass.

Emerson, W. H., City Treasurer's Office, Brockton, Mass.

Hall, Mrs. Willard P., 2615 Forest Ave., Kansas City, Mo.

Heritage, L. T., Emporia, Kansas.

Hoyt, A. W., 31 16 Lyndale Ave., So., Minneapolis, Minn.

Kleberg, Rudolph, Yorktown, Texas.

Koenig, Mme. Fedele, 69 Monmouth Street, Longwood, Mass.

Library, Free Public, Worcester, Mass.

Miles, Franklin, Fort Myers, Florida.

Minassinan, Philip, 1321 Brandywine Street, Philadelphia, Pa,

Morris, Dr. E. R., Fort Logan, Col.

Murray, B. C, 112 West Main Street, Denison, Texas.

Overton, Miss Gwendolen, 2827 Harvard Boulevard, Los

Angeles, Cal.
Porter, Dr. H. L., Seneca, Mo.

Salesbury, Mrs. Lister, 316 Hudson Street, Hoboken, N. J.
Smith, Mrs. Y. C. H., 328 Valerio Street, Santa Barbara, Cal.
Smith, William Hawley, 2039 Knoxville Ave., Peoria, 111.
V'lasto, Madame, i Avenue Bugeaud, Paris, France.
Wilson, Leonard, 84 Vesey Street, Newark, N. J.
Vandell, Miss Maude, care Monroe & Co., 7 Rue Scribe. Paris,

France.

Vol. L— No. 6. June, 1907.

JOURNAL

OF THE

American Society for Psychical Research

CONTENTS

GSiCSSAI, AXTICLBS: PAOB

Some Instances of Subconscious Crea-

tiTe Ima^natkm ... -287
Telepathy 306

Editouax. :
Endowment Fund for Permanent Home 328

PAGB

Collection of Data 329

Suggestions to Members - - - 330

comibspondbncb 340

Book Rkvibw 347

Additional Members .... 350

SOME INSTANCES OF SUBCONSCIOUS CREATIVE
IMAGINATION.

By Miss Frank Miller.

The following paper was first published in the ''Archives de
Psychologie/' edited by Prof. Th. Flournoy and Dr. Ed. Clap-
arede. It has been translated for this Journal by its author,
Miss Frank Miller. Miss Frank Miller was also the subject
of the experiences and so narrates them at first hand. Miss
Miller was at one time a student under me in the depart-
ment of philosophy when I was at Columbia University and
is now employed in a private school as a teacher and lecturer.
She has been an intelligent student of the phenomena with
which the Society is occupied, and her relation to all the
work done under me exhibited the same intellectual appre-
ciation of psychological problems.

The paper is especially interesting and important as illus-
trating those mental functions which at least simulate per-
sonalities independent of the normal consciousness and it is
here published as an example of those phenomena which
many who are little acquainted with the complexities of psy-
chic research mistake for such foreign personalities. There
will be many occasions for publishing and criticizing phenom-
ena of this kind. They are most important in estimating the
nature and limitations of the supernormal, j^nd perhaps at

288 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

some more or less distant future may throw light on the con-
ditions which affect the development of supernormal experi-
ences and the influences which disturb and distort the pass-
age of foreign thoughts.

JAMES H. HYSLOP.

Contents.

Introduction by Prof. Th. Flournoy.
I. Phenomena of instantaneous autosuggestion.
II. " Glory to God," a dream poem.
III. " The Moth and the Sun," hypnagogic poetry.
iV. "Chi-wan-to-pel," a dream of hypnagogic hallucination.

INTRODUCTION.

As is well known from numerous anecdotes, cases of un-
expected apparition, when dreaming or half waking — ^works
of imagination which possess a certain esthetic or literary
value — are not extremely rare. What is rarer still, is that in-
dividuals, favored by phenomena of this kind should have
enough curiosity and psychological sense to undertake the
analysis of these products of the automatic activity of the
brain (or of their mind), to essay an elucidation of their
origin, going back to anterior impressions, sometimes very
distant which might have served as points of departure or as
food to their subconscious inspiration. Nothing, however,
would be more fitting than such attempts to unveil the se-
crets of our psychical mechanism and to make us penetrate
a little further into the obscure processes of intellectual crea-
tion. And any document which can contribute to this end is
not to be neglected. It is with this aim that we publish here-
with some fragments of autobiograhy, which may be given as
an example to many people whose mental life is more or less
fertile in cases of automatism, but who do not know how to
profit by their privileges and thus lose the precious resources
which Nature has granted for the study of themselves.

The author of these observations is a young American

Some Instances of Subconscious Creative Imagination. 289

woman, who studied for a semester at our university and
who to-day pursues a brilliant career as a writer and lec-
turer in the United States. Naturally given to introspec-
tion and of very alert intelligence, she shows at the same
time an impressionability and a vivacity of emotional re-
action which would easily border on excess, were they not
checked by a good dose of strong will and self-mastery.
Miss Miller thus combines in a most happy way something
of the peculiar temperament which the Anglo-Saxon authors
designate by almost synonymous names of " automatist,"
" medium," " sensitive," etc., and all the advantages of a
critical mind which is not satisfied with appearances ; thanks
to which fact she can interest herself in cases of Spiritism,
without becoming the prey of it like so many others. And
her intention, in taking up her pen, has been precisely to
make clear the phenomena of subconscious imagination
which unfold themselves to mediums, by analogous cases,
although less developed, that she has observed in the fast-
nesses of her own mind.

She does not possess, it is true, any special faculty of a
medium, neither crystal vision, nor power to move (raise)
tables, etc. But her very imaginative temperament, " hy-
persensitive " as she herself calls it, permits one to think
that, in a propitious center and with a little exaggeration,
Miss Miller — if she had but lent herself to it — would have
made an excellent medium and especially a medium for in-
carnation. She seems to possess all the requisite aptitude
for it, as the following case (No. 5) attests: on account of
this trait of her nature which she had so well denominated
"instantaneous autosuggestion," merely the sight of a con-
ical towel upon her head, evoking her remembrance of
Egyptian statues, plunges her into a kind of " cenesthetic "
hallucination, a total, veritable beginning of a change of
personality. It needs no more than this for persons of such
a constitution, and imbued with occultism, or of an intelli-
gence less mistress of itself and slower to re-assert itself, to
serve as the germ for those curious stories of " anteriority,"
which, once born, develop like mushrooms and invade the
entire " hypnoid " imagination. As a spiritualistic medium.

290 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

Miss Miller would certainly be the reincarnation of some
princess of historic or pre-historic antiquity (perhaps even
of several) and she would not have failed to furnish us with
interesting revelations of her Egyptian, Assyrian and even
Aztec pre-existence (to judge by the trend of her observa-
tions in No. 4). If it were only a queston of the pictur-
esque, I could not help regretting that the firmness of her
reason counterbalancing the inclination of her temperament
should have always kept her from being wrecked on the
flowery slopes of occult philosophy and would thus have
robbed us of quite a number of fine subliminal romances!
Let us console ourselves for this loss by the fragments of
sane psychological observations which we owe her and of
which the reader will find the translations below.

They number 4. The first contains some minor ex-
amples of " passing suggestions " which show with what
facility, in this very sensitive nature, that the abstract idea
or the simple recollection is transformed into vivid sensa-
tion and present reality. The three (3) others are inter-
esting cases of inspiration or of subconscious creation, most
worthy to be placed beside those of literature. •

The second piece is the history of a little poem that Miss
Miller dreamed in full day during a sea voyage. She heard it
and saw it written in her own writing. Aroused at the same
instant by a call from her mother, she immediately told her of
her dream, then wished to make note of it ; but the time to
get a pencil, and the distraction due to the presence of her
mother, sufficed to make uncertain the remembrance of sev-
eral passages. Some months afterwards, when at leisure,
she again took up her piece and modified it with the feeling
of drawing nearer to the original text of the dream; but it
is clear that this subjective feeling is not an absolute guar-
antee that it is thus and it may be considered probable that
a subconscious work of correction in the interval must have
greatly influenced the first gush of poetic output to bring it
to its second form which is notably more perfect. The ob-
servation of Miss M. embraces three (3) parts:

First, a glance over the weeks which preceded the dream,
letting one see the dominating disposition which affected it,

Some Instances of Subconscious Creative Imagination. 291

the general mental state, in a word, the emotional atmos-
phere, of which it bears the evident reflection.

Second, the recitation of the dream itself.

Third, the search for old recollections combined in its
course and which, by their meeting in a sort of kaleidoscopic
design, thus show that they have furnished all the contents
for the inspiration of the dream.

Miss Miller's conclusion is no more than a mosaic of
fragments of her own remembrances assembled under the
influence of her emotional state — in opposition to the spir-
itualistic hypothesis of foreign intervention — is assuredly in-
disputable. Nevertheless, it must not be accepted too liter-
ally nor should one allow himself to be deceived by the run-
ning comparison of the kaleidoscope, which comparison of
drawing much nearer to the original text taken from mech-
anism conceals, much more than it resolves the knot of the
psychological problem. The chance grouping of pieces
of glass at the end of a tube which is shaken, is scarcely ade-
quate to explain the really marvellous combination, and re-
modelling of some scattered memories into as well organized
a whole as this poetry of three stanzas carrying to the high-
est degree the seal of finality, of esthetic intention, of har-
mony and studied gradation which would seem the exclusive
right of a thoroughly aroused and deliberate human intel-
ligence and which does not cease to astonish us when we
meet it in the product of a dream. Thus it goes without
saying that the discovery of stored up impressions to which
creative fancy has lent its materials is far from dissipating
all the obscurities and one does not pretend to have ex-
plained by it, nor even described by it the real process by
which these materials have been chosen, disassociated from
their old surroundings and recombined into a new whole
breathing forth an original emotion and sui generis,

. Fragment III gives rise to the same reflections. The
question here is a poem which automatically forced itself
upon Miss Miller during a night on the railway, in that
special condition, mid-way between waking and sleeping,
only too well known to travellers, who, weary and stupe-
fied are always on the point of dropping off to sleep with-

292 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

out, however, losing themselves completely. The central
idea of this " desain " the heavenly aspirations of poor mor-
tals symbolized by the flight of the moth toward the §un—
has nothing new in it and it is not to be doubted that Miss
Miller must have met with it many times outside of the
two (2) occasions of which she had a precise recollection.
But if that takes away at the outset all pretext to seek an
" occult " origin for so old an idea, it does not yet explain
its incorporation into a piece of work and the development
of the general theme under the particular form of the
verses which were obtained. With much good sense, Miss
Miller raises, in this connection, (as also in cases II and IV)
the question of the leading part played by the rythmic fac-
tors, the resemblance of swing and of meter between her
hypnagogic poem and similar poetry familiar to her. It is
certain that beside the material and substantial elements so
to speak, of concrete ideas and remembrances, inspiration
bores deep into our past experience and that it offers nu-
merous abstract castings, motive schemes, habits of syntax,
of prosody, etc., in short, all sorts of beaten paths, already
well worn which cannot be kept account of in the genesis
of automatic productions.

The last example of Miss Miller's is a sort of little lyric
drama which unfolded itself spontaneously in her imagi-
nation, by visual and audible images, during the hypnagogic
phase preceding complete sleep. Complete sleep did not
come, however, for the drama having once come to a climax,
Miss Miller aroused herself to write it down immediately.
Remark the feeling of reciprocity, of passive waiting, also
the elementary phenomena of hallucination, which, with
her preceded the inception of automatism and which en-
tirely correspond to the ordinary premonitory symptoms
habitual to visions among mediums. She has also noted
that she was at this time much preoccupied to find sonxe
original literary subject; it is evidently in response to this
desire — at the same time as an assemblage of latest emo-
tional tendencies difficult to analyze — that her imagination
furnished her the unusual history, of an Aztec warrior dying

Same Instances of Subcoftsciotis Creative Imagination. 293

in search of a consort worthy of him whose long-distant
arrival he foresees.

The facts related by Miss Miller recall to us a good but
little known study of the psychology of dreams, where
Stevenson confessed all that he owed the anonymous col-
laboration of the mysterious little imps, "the little people,
the Brownies" who outlined so gently in darkness the
works of the romancer and furnished him gratis so many
precious scenes, ready made. (R. L. Stevenson, A Chap-
ter on Dreams, in "Across the Plains," etc.) For the imps
or genii of Stevenson, as also for the Muse of the classic
poets, we, who are serious people, prefer to substitute some
wise principle, such as the mechanical association of ideas,
the nocturnal dynamism of ", neurosis," the polygonal activ-
ity of inferior psychism, the unconscious factor or the sub-
liminal, etc.. Miss Miller wisely knew how to avoid both
literary metaphor and scientific pedantry, in holding fast to
the description of the phenomena such as they were, in such
a way that the only theory which arises from her analysis is
the most simple of all, — it is that she herself, and no one
else, is the author of her automatic creations; she herself,
although in a special state, different from the state of being
awake in which she composed her poetry and ordinary ar-
ticles. Thus one is brought to the problem of the variations
and diverse modality of human personality, upon which ob-
servations, precise facts in the manner of the following ones,
is accumulating, will end by giving light without there being
need — so Miss Miller has excellently well understood it — to
have recourse to an hypothesis at the same time childish and
complicated, which have credence in the best minds.

(Signed)

TH. FLOURNOY.

Phenomena of Passing Suggestion or of Instantaneous
Autosuggestion.

I so designate, for lack of a better term, a curious phe-
nomenon which I have observed in myself and which pre-
sents itself under different forms. It consists in this, that
at certain moments, and for a few instants only, the im-

294 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

pressions and feelings of another suggest themselves so
vividly to me that they appear to be mine, although as soon
as the suggestion is passed, I am perfectly sure that such is
not the case.

Here are a few examples:

1. I am extremely fond of caviar, of which the odor is,
on the contrary, most repugnant to certain members of my
family. Now if one of them, at the moment I commence to
eat some, commences to express his disgust, this same dis-
gust is immediately suggested to me so clearly that I ex-
perience, for a few instants, a complete repugnance for the
odor and taste of the dish. A minute and an effort are ne-
cessary to dissipate this impression and to make me find it
again as delicious as before.

2. Here is, on the contrary, an example of the trans-
mission of the impression of pleasure. There are certain
perfumes and colognes which aflfect me disagreeably on ac-
count of their strong odor, even to the point of nauseating
me and making me almost ill. Nevertheless, if a lady starts
to use her eau de cologne and begins telling me of its
strength and its exquisite perfume, her pleasure becomes
my own for an instant — probably for not more than from 3
to 5 seconds — after which it disappears and my customary
aversion for strong odors returns. It seems to me that it
is much easier to dispel agreeable suggestions and to feel
again my real impression of disgust, than the contrary.

3. When, with great interest I follow a story, either
read or heard, often I have the illusion which lasts for a
minute, of really participating in the action, instead of
simply reading or hearing of it. This is particularly strong
in fine theatrical productions (for example, at the plays of
Sarah Bernhardt, of Duse, or of Irving). The illusion be-
comes so complete in certain touching scenes, that in " Cy-
rano," for example, when Christian is killed and when S.
Bernhardt flies to staunch the blood of his wound, I felt a
real and poignant pain in my own heart, just where Chris-
tian is supposed to receive the blow. This kind of sugges-
tion can last a minute or a second.

4. This momentary suggestion sometimes takes on very

Some Instances of Subconscious Creative Imagination. 295

curious aspects in which the role of imagination is accentu-
ated. For example, I greatly enjoyed sea voyages and I
have a particularly vivid remembrance of crossing the At-
lantic. Now, recently some one showed me a fine photo-
graph of a steamer in mid-ocean; instantly — and the illu-
sion was of striking beauty and power — I felt the pulsations
of the engines, the roll of the waves, the lunging of the ship.
It could hardly have lasted more than a second, but during
that barely appreciable instant, it was as if I were again in
mid-ocean. The same phenomenon was repeated, although
less strongly, in seeing again the photograph several days
later.

5. Here now is an example which fully throws into re-
lief creative fantasy. One day I was in a bathroom, pre-
paring to take a plunge and was about to tie a cloth around
my head to protect my hair from the water. The cloth,
which was of thick texture, had taken a conical shape, and
I was standing before a mirror to attach it securely with
pins. The conical form recalled, no doubt, the pointed
head-dress of ancient Egypt, be this as it may, for a mo-
ment, and with an almost stupefying clearness, it seemed to
me that I was on a pedestal, a real Egyptian statue, in all its
details — rigid members, one foot in advance of the other,
insignia in hand, etc. It was truly superb and it was with
regret that I felt the impression fade away as does a rain-
bow, and like it to reappear more faintly before entirely dis-
appearing.

6. Still another phenomenon. An artist of a certain
celebrity wished to illustrate some of my publications. Now
in this matter I have my own ideas and am difficult to please.
Well, I succeeded in making him portray landscapes, such as
those on Lake Leman, where he had never been, and he also
claimed that I could make him draw things that he had never
seen and to give him the feeling of an ambient (or atmos-
phere) that he had never felt; briefly, that I used him as he
used his pencil, that is to say, as a simple instrument.

I do not attach much importance to these divers in-
stances of which I have told — they are so fleeting and so
misty — and I think that all persons of a nervous, imagi-

2% Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

native, sympathetic temperament which vividly feels ex-
ternal impressions have similar experiences. In themselves
they do not appear to me to be of great consequence, but
they can help one to understand other less elementary facts.
I think that the sympathetic temperament in people of the
most normal health, plays a large role in the creation or the
possibility of these '' suggested " images and impressions.
And now could it not be that under certain favorable condi-
tions, something as yet unheard of should come to cross the
mental horizon, something as dazzling and splendid as a
rainbow; and as natural, nevertheless, in its origin and
cause? For surely these curious little experiences (I speak
of the following) differ from the course of daily life as a
rainbow differs from the blue heaven.

The aim of the preceding observations is to serve as an
introduction to two or three more important cases which
follow; which in their turn, seem to me to be of a nature to
throw some light upon the more complicated and mystifying
phenomena of other persons who allow themselves to be
taken in because they do not know how— or do not wish-
to analyze the abnormal, subliminal or subconscious func-
tions of their minds.

II.
" GLORY TO GOD." Dream poem.

Nothing imaginable is more delightful than an ocean
passage from Odessa to Genoa, in winter, with short but
lovely stops at Constantinople, Smyrna, Athens and the
ports of Sicily and the western coast of Italy. One must be
a Philistine, devoid of all esthetic sense, not to be trans-
ported with admiration before the glory of the Bosphorus,
or not to feel one's very soul vibrate at the memory of
Athens' past. — This is the trip which I had the privilege to
take, aged 20 years, with my family, in 1898.

After a long, hard voyage from New York to Stockholm,
then on to St. Petersburg and Odessa, it was a genuine de-
light to leave the world of great cities, noisy streets and
business, — in a word to leave the bustling earth to enter into

Some Instances of Subconscious Creative Imagination. 297

the sphere of silence, blue sky and waves. I remained for
long hours dreaming on the bridge of the boat, stretched out
in a steamer chair; the history, legends and myths of the
different countries seen in the distance came to me, as con-
fused,— fused into a sort of luminous mist, through which
actual things seemed to exist no longer, while dreams and
ideas seemed the only veritable reality. At first I avoided
everyone and kept apart, lost in my dreaming while every-
thing truly great, beautiful and good came to my mind with
new life and vigor. I passed also a good part of my days in
writing to absent friends, in reading or in scribbling short
verses as souvenirs of the different places that we visited.
A few of these pieces were rather serious.

But when the voyage drew to a close, the officers on
board were most kind and amiable and I spent many amus-
ing hours in teaching them English.

On the coast of Sicily, in the port of Catania, I wrote a
** Sailor's Song," which was hardly more than an adaptation
of a well known song of the sea ^' brine, wine and damsels
fine." In general all Italians sing well; and one of the
officers singing at night, during his watch on the bridge
made a great impression on me and gave me the idea of
writing some words which could be adapted to his melody.

A little while after this, I just missed reversing the old
proverb " See Naples and die," for in the port of Naples I
commenced by being, though not dangerously, most pain-
fully ill; then I recovered enough to be able to land and to
visit in a carriage, the principal sights of the town. The
day's trip greatly tired me and as we intended to see Pisa on
the morrow, I went back early to the boat and soon went to
bed, without thinking of anything more serious than the
handsome officers and hideous in Italy.

From Naples to Leghorn takes one night by boat, during
which I slept none too well — for my sleep is rarely deep or
dreamless — and it seemed to me that my mother's voice
aroused me just at the end of the following dream, which
must have taken place, as a consequence, immediately before
my awakening.

At first I had a vague consciousness of the words, "when

^

298 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

the morning stars sang together " which served as a prelude,
if I can so express myself, for a confused idea concerning the
Creation and for powerful chorals which re-echoed through
the whole universe. But with the characteristic confusion
and strange contradiction which is the quality of a dream, all
this was mixed with choruses of oratorios given by one of
the best musical societies of New York and with indistinct
memories of Milton's " Paradise Lost." Then, slowly, dis-
tinct words arose from this chaos and they then appeared
in three verses, in my writing on a piece of ordinary writing
paper, blue-lined, on a page of my old note book in which I
write my verses and which I always carry with me ; — briefly
told they appeared to me precisely as they were in truth a
few minutes later.

It was then that my mother called to me, " Here, here,
wake up! You can not sleep all day and see Pisa at the
same time!" That made me jump from my berth exclaim-
ing, " Don't speak to me ! Not a word ! I have just had
the most beautiful dream of my life, a real poem ! I saw and
heard the words, verses and even the refrain. Where is my
old note book? I must write it this minute before I forget
what it was." My mother, accustomed to see me writing at
all hours, took my whim in good nature and even admired
my dream, which I poured forth to her as fast as" I could
form my phrases. Several minutes were necessary to find
my note book and a pencil and to slip on a garment; but
short as was this delay, it sufficed to slightly dissipate the
immediate remembrance of the dream, so that when I was
ready to write, the words had lost some of their clearness.
Nevertheless, the first strophe came readily, but the second
was found with more difficulty, and a great effort was neces-
sary to recall the last one, abstracted as I was with the idea
that T was a rather ridiculous figure, scratching away,
perched half dressed in the upper berth of my stateroom
with my mother making fun of me. The first form leaves
much to be desired. My duties as cicerone then occupied all
my tune, until the end of our long voyage (it was several
lonths later, while studying in the University of Lausanne)
lat the thought of the dream came to haunt me in the calm

Same Instances of Subconscious Creative Imagination, 299

of solitude and I made a second and more exact wording of
ray poem and I wish to say one much more faithful to the
original than the first. I give its two forms here.

First form :

When God had first made Sound
A myriad ears sprang into being
And throughout all die Universe
Rolled a mighty echo:
"Glory to the God of Somid !"

When beauty (light) was first given by God,
A myriad eyes sprang out ^ to see
And hearing ears and seemg eyes
Again gave forth that mighty song:
"Glory to the God of Beauty (Light) !"

When Ck)d has first given Love

A myriad hearts leapt up;

And ears full of music, eyes full of Beauty,

Hearts all full of love sang:

"Glory to the God of Love !"

Second form (more exact) :

When the Eternal first made Sound
A myriad ears sprang out to hear,
And throughout all uie Universe
There rolled an echo deep and clear:
"All glory to the (k>d of Sound!"

When the Eternal first made Light
A myriad eyes sprang out to look.
And hearing ears and seeing eyes
Once more a mighty choral took :
"All glory to the Ck>d of Light!"

When the Eternal first gave Love,
A myriad hearts sprang into life;
Ears filled with music, eyes with light.
Pealed forth with hearts with love all rife:
"All glory to the God of Love!"

Never having been an adept of Spiritism nor of the Con-
tranatural (which to me is distinct from the Supernatural) I
started to work some months later to try to discover the
probable cause or necessary conditions for such a dream.

What struck me the most and what is yet an inexplicable
fantasy is that contrary to the incomplete narration in which
I strongly believe, my poem put the creation of light in the
second place instead of the first. It may be interesting to

300 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

recall that Anagoras also makes the cosmos come from the
chaos by means of a whirlwind — ^which in general is accom-
panied by a production of sound. But at this time I had
not studied philosophy and knew nothing of Anagoras nor
of his theories of the views which I unconsciously followed.
I was equally ignorant of the name of Leibnitz and conse-
quently of his doctrine of " dum Deus calculat fit mundus."
But let us come to what I was able to discover as probable
sources of my dream.

To begin with, Milton's " Paradise Lost," of which we
had a fine edition at home, illustrated by Gustave Dore and
with which I was familiar from childhood, the Book of Job
which was read to me as far back as I can remember. Now
if my first verse is compared with the first words of " Para-
dise Lost," they are seen to be the same meter.

Of man's first disobedience —

When the Eternal first made sound —

Moreover the general idea of my poem slightly recalls
various passages of Job, also one or two pieces from Haydn's
oratorio, " The Creation " (which figured confusedly at the
beginning of the dream). I remember that at the age of 15
I was much excited by an article which my mother read me
on " The Idea spontaneously creating the object," so excited
that I passed nearly the whole night without sleeping, won-
dering what it all could mean. From 9 to 16 years I at-
tended a Presbyterian church, which had for pastor a most
scholarly man, at present the president of a well-known
Seminary. Now one of my earliest remembrances of him
was when a very little girl, seated in our big pew and forcing
myself to keep awake, without being able for all the world to
understand what he said about the " Chaos," the " Cosmos "
and the " Gift of Love."

As to dreams, I remember that once at the age of 15
years, during my preparations for an examination in geom-
etry, having gone to bed without being able to solve a prob-
lem, 1 awoke in the middle of the night, sat on my bed and
repeated a formula which I had just found in a dream, then
fell asleep again and on the morrow all was clear in my

Some Instances of Subconscious Creative Imagination. 301

mind. Something exactly similar happened with a Latin
word which I tried to find. A thousand times I have
dreamed that very distant friends wrote me and this just
before the arrival of their letters which I explain very sim-
ply by the fact that in my sleep I calculated approximately at
what time they should have written me, and that the idea of
the real arrival of the letter was substituted in a dream for
my waiting for its probable arrival. I draw the con-
clusion from the fact that several times I dreamed that I
received letters which did not come later.

To summarize : When I think of the preceding consider-
ation and of the fact that I had just written a certain number
of verses at the time of my dream, this one does not appear
to me as extraordinary as at the first moment. It seems to
me to result from a mingling in my mind of " Paradise Lost,"
of Job, and of the *' Creation," with notions of the " Idea
creating spontaneously its Object," of the " Gift of Love,"
of the " Chaos," and of the " Cosmos." Just as little irregu-
lar pieces of colored glass in a kaleidoscope form rare and
magnificent designs, so, in my opinion, the fragments of
philosophy, esthetics and religion which were combined in
me, — under the stimulation of the voyage and all the coun-
tries seen, joined to the great silence and the intangible
charm of the sea — to produce this beautiful dream. " Only
this and nothing more ! "

" THE MOTH TO THE SUN." Hypnagogic poem.

My last day before leaving Geneva for Paris had been
most exhausting. I took a trip to Mont Saleve, and on my
return, found a telegram which obliged me to pack my
trunks, put my affairs in order and leave in two hours. My
fatigue was so great that in the train I could hardly sleep an
hour. It was terribly hot in the ladies' compartment.
About 4 A. M. I raised my head from my valise which
served me as pillow, sat up and stretched my stiff limbs. A
little moth fluttered toward the light which shone across the
window upon the glass partition ; and the waving of the cur-
tain I noticed by the movement of the train. I lay down
again and tried to sleep ; I almost succeeded ; that is to say

302 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

I found myself as near asleep as it is possible to be without
losing consciousness. It was then that the piece of verse
below suddenly came to me. It was impossible for me to
banish it from my mind, despite repeated efforts. I took a
pencil and wrote it down immediately.

The Moth to the Sun.

I longed for Thee when first I crawled to consciousness.
My dreams were all of Thee when in the chrysalis I lay.
Oft myriads of my kind beat out their lives
Against some feeble spark once caught from Thee.
And one hour more — and my poor life is gone;
Yet my last effort, as my first desire, shall be
. But to approach thy glory ; then, having gained
One raptured glance, FU die content.
For I, the source of beauty, warmth and life
Have in his perfect splendor once beheld!

Note Written by Prof. Floumoy.

Miss Miller showed me her original text, written in pen-
cil and most irregularly as a result of the movement of the
train. It bears one or two words crossed out or corrections
of details, the same scribbling as the whole and which she
made immediately in re-reading the piece as soon as it was
finished. The only noteworthy correction being in the first
verse of which the first form was " I longed for thee when
consciousness first woke," these last three words are con-
nected by a long line which leads to the bottom of the page
where is found the variation " first I crawled to conscious-
ness."

(Signed) T. F.

This little poem made a great impression on me. At the
outset I did not succeed in finding a sufficiently clear and
direct explanation. But a few days afterward, having taken
up a philosophic article which I had read the preceding win-
ter in Berlin, and which greatly delighted me and reading it
aloud to a friend, I fell upon these words :

" The same passionate aspiration of the moth toward the
star, of man toward God." I had entirely forgotten them,
but it seemed to me most evident that it was they which
leapt out in my dream poem. Besides a drama entitled

Some Instances of Subconscious Creative Imagination. 303

" The Moth and the Flame/' which I had seen a few years
since, likewise came to my mind as another possible cause
for my piece. It is easy to see how many times the word
" MOTH " had been impressed upon me. I may add that
in the spring I read a collection of selected pieces from
Byron which I greatly enjoyed, and which I often had with
me. Now there is a great similarity in rhythm and feeling
between my last two verses,

" For I, the source, etc.," and these two of Byron's :

"Now let mc die as I have lived in faith
Nor tremble tho' the Universe should quake I"

It is possible that having so often read this piece it may
have had an influence on me and contributed to prepare my
inspiration as much in the point of view of the meaning as in
the rythmic form.

In comparing this poem which came to me in the state of
half-dream on the one hand with those which I write being
fully awake ; and, on the other hand with the preceding piece
which came to me in complete sleep, these three categories
appear to me to form a perfectly natural series: the inter-
mediary case forms a simple and easy transition between the
two extremes and thus removes all suspicion of " occult "
intervention which one might have had in regard to the
piece which was composed while fully asleep.

CHI-WAN-TO-PEL, a hypnagogic drama.

Borderland phenomena, or if you prefer, the composi-
tions of the brain in a state of half-dream interest me par-
ticularly and I believe that an intelligent and minute investi-
gation of them would do much to clear up mysteries and to
dissipate the superstition of so-called " spirits." It is with
this in view that I send you a case which in the hands of a
person not inclined to give the exact truth and having no
scruples, would allow himself to amplify and touch it up, and
could perfectly well have been given a fantastic or romantic
form to rival the cycles of your mediums. I have compared
the following observations as faithfully as possible, with my
notes taken immediately after the half-dream in question and

304 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

I confine myself to place between brackets one or two re-
marks and letters referring to the subsequent explanatory
notes.

Observation of 17 March, 1902, 12:30 A. M.

1st Phase. After a troubled and restless evening I went
to bed at 11:30. I was most agitated, incapable of sleep,
although very tired. I had the feeling of being in a recep-
tive mood. There was no light in the room. I closed my
eyes and had the feeling of waiting for something to happen.
Then I relaxed entirely and remained as completely passive
as possible. Lines, sparks and fiery spirals passed before
my eyes, symptoms of nervousness and ocular fatigue.
Then the impression that something was about to be com-
municated to me. It seemed to me that these words were
repeated within me, " Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.
Open thou my ears." A sphynx's head suddenly appeared
in the field of vision, with an Egyptian setting; then it was
effaced. At this moment my parents called me and I replied
to them in a perfectly coherent manner; a proof that I was
not asleep.

2d Phase. Suddenly the apparition of an Aztec person-
age, complete in all details, an open hand with large fingers,
head in profile armed, a head-dress resembling the feathered
one of the American Indians, etc. The whole was like the
carvings on Mexican monuments (see note A). The name
" Chi-wan-to-pel " was formulated, syllable by syllable and
it seemed to belong to the personage just mentioned, son of
an Inca of Peru (note B). Then a swarm of persons,
horses, a battle, the sight of a dream city (note C). A
curious pine with knotted branches, of pointed sails upon a
bay of purple water, a perpendicular cliflf, a confusion of
sounds such as Wa-ma, Wa-ma, etc. (A break.) The
scene changed into a wood. Trees, brushwood, hedges, etc.
Chi-wan-to-pel leaps up from the south, with a blanket of
bright colors, red, blue and white, around him. An Indian,
in a costume of deer skin with beads and trimmed with
feathers (note D) advances crouching, and prepares to draw
his bow against Chi-wan-to-pel, who presents his breast in

Some Instcmces of Subconscious Creative Imagination, 305

an attitude of defiance (note E) and the Indian, fascinated
at the sight of this, steals away and disappears in the forest.
Chi-wan-to-pel sinks upon a hillock, lets his horse graze at
the end of his tether and delivers himself of the following
soliloquy (all in English) :

" From the end of the spinal column of these continents
(probable allusion to the Andes and the Rocky Mountains),
from the extremity of the lowlands, I have wandered during
a hundred moons, after having left my father's palace (note
F) always pursued by my mad desire to find * her, who will
understand.' With jewels I have tempted many fair ones;
with kisses, I have tried to pluck the secret from their hearts/
with acts of prowess I won their admiration. (He reviews
the women whom he has known.) Chi-ta, the princess of
my race — ^was silly, a fool, vain as a peacock, thinking of
nothing but jewels and perfumes. Ta-nan, the young
peasant girl, bah ! a sow, nothing more than breast and belly
and thinking of nothing but pleasure. And then Ki-ma, the
priestess, a parrot, repeating the empty phrases learnt from
the priests ; all of which showed her to be affected and dis-
trustful, a hypocrite, with no learning nor sincerity. Alas!
Not one who understands me, not even one, akin to me, nor
a soul sister to my soul (note G). There is not one among
all of them who has known my soul, not one who could read
my real thoughts, far from it — Not one capable of mounting
with me to luminous heights, or to spell with me the super-
human word of Love ! "

(A break.) He cries out in grief: " In the entire world,
there is not even one ! I have sought in an hundred tribes.
I have grown old in the hundred moons since I began my
search. Will there never be ten who will know my soul.'*
Yes, by the sovereign God ; — yes ! But one thousand moons
will wax and wane before her pure soul will be born. And
it is from another world that her fathers will come to this
one. Pale will be her skin and hair. She will know pain
before her mother has brought her forth. Suffering will
accompany her; she too will search — and will find no one
who understands her. Many suitors would wish for her
favor but there will not be one who will understand her.

306 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

Temptation will often assail her soul — ^but she will not falter.
In her dreams I will come to her and she will understand
(note H). I have preserved my body inviolate (note I). I
am come ten thousand moons before her and she will come
ten thousand moons too late. But she will understand! It is
not but once in all ten thousand moons that such a soul as
hers is born ! "

(A break.) A viper issues from the brushwood and
glides to him and bites his arm, then attacks the horse, who
succumbs first. Then Chi-wan-to-pel to the horse : " Fare-
well, faithful brother! Enter into thy rest! I have loved
thee and thou hast served me well. Farewell I will soon
rejoin thee ! " Then to the serpent : " Thanks, little sister,
thou hast *put an end to my pilgrimages ! " Then he cries
out in grief and voices his prayer: " O Sovereign God, take
me soon ! I have sought to know thee and to keep thy law !
O allow not my body to stink and to serve as food for
eagles! " A smoking volcano is seen in the distance, (note
K) the rumbling of an earthquake is heard, followed by a
land-slide. Chi-wan-to-pel cries out in the delirium of suf-
fering, while the earth engulfs his body — " I have preserved
my body inviolate — Ah ! she will understand ! Ja-ni-wa-ma,
Ja-ni-wa-ma, thou dost understand ! "

Remarks and Explanatory Notes.

You will admit, I think, that as a work of the imagination
this dream fantasy merits some attention. It is not lacking
in complexity and strangeness in its form and it can be said
to possess a certain originality in the combination of themes.
It could be made into a sort of melo-drama in one act. If I
were a person inclined to exaggerate the importance of com-
positions of this kind, and incapable of recognizing in this
curious dream-medley many familiar elements, I could allow
myself to go so far as to regard Chi-wan-to-pel as my " con-
trolling spirit," my spirit guide as so many mediums have
done. It is hardly necessary to tell you that I do nothing
of the sort. Let us look for the probable sources of this
little romance.

First as to the name Chi-wan-to-pel: One day, fully

Some Instances of Subconscious Creative Imagination. . 307

awake, the word A-ha-ma-ra-ma surrounded by Assyrian
decorations suddenly came to my mind, and I had only to
compare other names already known to me, such as Ahazu-
erus, Asurabama (the second who manufactured cuneiform
bricks) to divine its origin. Just the same; compare Chi-
wan-to-pel with Po-po-cat-a-pel, the name of a volcano of
Central America, as we had been taught to pronounce it:
the resemblance is striking.

I note also that the evening before, I received a letter
from Naples, on the envelope of which was a view of
Vesuvius smoking in the distance (K). In my childhood, I
was particularly interested in Aztec fragments and the
history of Peru and of the Incas (A & B). Recently I had
visited a very fine Indian exhibit with their costumes, etc.,
which have found a mention in my dream (D). The cele-
brated passage in Shakespeare (Julius Caesar, Act IV, scene
3) where Cassius presents his bared breast to Brutus fur-
nished me with an easy explanation from the scene (E) and
the scene (F) recalls to me both the story of Bhudda leaving
the paternal house and the history of Rasselas, Prince of
Abyssinia of Samuel Johnson. There are also many details
which make one think of the Song of Hiawatha, the Indian
epic of Longfellow, whose rythm has been tmconsciously
followed in several passages of Chi-wan-to-pel's soliloquy.
His ardent desire to find some one like unto him (G) shows
the greatest analogy with the feelings of Siegfried for
Brunhild, so marvelously expressed by Wagner. Finally
(I) I had recently heard a lecture by Felix Adler on the
" Inviolate Personality."

In the fevered life of New York, a thousand diverse ele-
ments are often fused with the impression of only one day or
week; concerts, lectures, books, reviews, theatres, etc.,
enough to put one's brain into a ferment. It is alleged that
whatever enters into the mind is never completely lost, that
the association of ideas, or a certain combination of circum-
stances suffices to bring back the faintest impression. This
can apply to many cases. For example, the details of the
dream city (C) reproduced almost exactly those of the cover
of one of the magazines which I had seen recently. And it

308 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

is possible that a summary of the whole matter is nothing
more than a mosaic of the following elements :

A. Aztec fragments and history of the Incas of Peru.

B. Pizarro in Peru.

C. Pictures and illustrations, recently seen in various maga-

zines.

D. Indian exposition, with costumes.

E. Remembrances of the passage in Shakespeare's Julius

Caesar.

F. Departure of Bhudda and of Rasselas.

G. & H. Siegfried yearning for Brunhild.

r. Remembrance of a lecture on the " Inviolate Person-
ality."
K. View of Vesuvius seen on the envelope of a letter.

And now, if I add that the preceding days I had been in
quest of an " original idea " many efforts are not needed to
conceive that this mosaic was formed of itself, by means of
the thousands of impressions which are met necessarily in a
very busy life, and that it should have taken this form of a
dream fantasy. It was about midnight and it is possible that
my fatigue and mental distress may have in a measure,
troubled or deformed the course of my thoughts.

P. S. I fear that the desire for exactness may have al-
lowed me to g^ive my observations a too personal turn. But
I hope (and this is my excuse) that they can help other per-
sons to unravel the knotty problems of cases of the same
kind which annoy them and may contribute to the elucida-
tion of the more complex phenomena presented by mediums.

TELEPATHY.
By James H. Hyslop.

Telepathy has been such a solvent of difficulties in psychic
research when people were not willing to admit what they
did not know, that it is time to " take stock " of this term.
Hardly a phenomenon during the last twenty years has ap-
peared that has not at least suggested to certain kinds of
minds the explanation of it by some sort of " telepathy." In
season and out of season it has played a prominent part in

Telepathy. 309

the attempt to escape some other and perhaps more simple
theory. But the time has come to ascertain with some
clearness what we mean by it. We think that " mind read-
ing " and " thought transference " make good synonyms for
it and so they may, but they are no clearer conceptions when
we are pressed for their exact meaning. The scepticism
which prevails in scientific quarters as to the mere facts of
" telepathy " is more than half due to the circumstance that
we can never learn from popular usage what definite limits
it is supposed to have, or what are the laws and conditions
under which the phenomena denoted by it may happen to
occur. If popular conceptions about it were clear and if the
facts which the untrained mind tries to explain by it had any
simple general characteristics which the assumed expla-
nation made intelligible we might take a charitable view of
the term. But such a medley of real or alleged phenomena
is referred to it that the term is like " special providence "
for explanation. It is assumed to explain any coincidence
that may happen to occur in the experiences of two minds,
or any class of supernormal phenomena that are mental.
This overweight of meaning attached to it is just the cir-
cumstance that makes the scientific man pause at its use and
application. We can explain the distribution of the planets
by gravitation but not the distribution of animals. Science
has some respect to relevancy when it classifies effects under
causes, but the extravagant believer in telepathy seems to
know no bounds to his credulity if only he can evade some-
thing more rational but less respectable.

In popular parlance " telepathy " is a name for a process
supposed to explain the supernormal acquisition of informa-
tion without regard to any limits whatever. If Mr. Smith
happens to learn supernormally some facts which can be
shown to have once been known by Mr. Jones, " telepathy "
is supposed to explain them, and they may even be con-
strued as evidence of this. If Mr. Jones does not happen to
know them, or to have experienced them, and we learn that
some friend of his did know them we are confronted with
" telepathy " a trais. This means that in some way Smith is
put into rapport with Jones's friend and filches the facts

510 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

from his memory telepathically. Or if Jones's friend does
not know them and they happen to be known by his friend
Barlow whom Jones does not know the rapport with Barlow
is established through the relation of his friend to Jones and
the process is as easy as before. In this way " telepathy "
is made to do anything and to indicate an cui libitum access
to the minds and memories of all living persons. That is a
capacious power which it is hard to defeat in an argument,
especially when it is assumed a priori and without one iota of
scientific evidence in its support. It is so arbitrary in its
application that it takes no account of the fact that the
process never seems to occur except when it is necessary to
simulate some other explanation and it bcomes the part of
men who have no sense of humor to believe anything rather
than confess ignorance or agnosticism.

If those who use " telepathy " so freely to explain mys-
teries would take the trouble to examine the conditions under
which it obtained currency and the facts which required
its acceptance they would have no difficulty in understanding
the limits of its use. Its original meaning was "a coinci-
dence between two persons' thoughts which require a causal ex-
planation" It is to be noticed in this conception that it is not
a name for a cause of any kind. It but denominates a fact
for which we have still to seek and find the cause. This is
a most important circumstance to keep in mind, as it assigns
a decided limitation to the usage of the term which is so pop-
ular.

The phenomena which gave rise to the employment
of the term were just what the definition indicates, namely,
coincidences between the thoughts of persons which were
not due to chance. It is probable that the performances of
Bishop and Cumberland with their claims of "mind read-
ing " gave the problem of investigating and explaining such
coincidences its emphasis and importance. But their per-
formances, with similar others described in books of magic,
were not all that suggested the idea. There were and arc
spontaneous coincidences between peoples' thoughts which
were not exposed to the suspicion of prestidigitation and so
made the question of their explanation a more serious one.

Telepathy. 311

The situation gave rise to the effort to organize the investi-
gation of such phenomena, and experiment succeeded in re-
producing similar coincidences under test conditions. The
phenomena did not seem explicable by chance, but seemed
to indicate some causal nexus between antecedent and con-
sequent, and as this was unusual the best thing to do was
to denominate it by a term which did not carry with it any
associations with known normal agencies.

There are three distinct groups of coincidences to which
the popular and unscientific mind applies the term " tele-
pathy," and only one of these to which the scientific mind
applies it. The first group of facts is that which is com-
prised of the present active mental states of the agent ob-
tained by a percipient. The agent is the person whose
thoughts are supposedly transmitted: the percipient is the
person who receives the thoughts transferred. The second
group of phenomena consists of those facts which a per-
cipient obtains and which the agent present at the experi-
ment is not thinking of at the time, but has them in his
memory. They represent experiences or knowledge which
he once had and which he may or may not recall at the time
they are reproduced for him by another person or psychic.
The third group of facts consists of those which represent
events not known by the agent or sitter present at an ex-
periment but which can be proved to have been the knowl-
edge of some other living person at the time and at any dis-
tance imaginable from the place of the experiment. This
assumes that the percipient can select at any distance from
the memory of any living person such facts as are desirable
to use for the impersonation of such persons as may suit the
medium's object, and this consciously or unconsciously.
This is the most comprehensive application which the term
obtains and is complicated with various incredible concep-
tions of rapport.

The first of these conceptions of the term is the only
one that is entitled to any scientific standing. It derived
its significance from several considerations which associated
it as a phenomenon more closely with what is known re-
garding the law of cause and effect than in any case in-

312 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

volved in the second and third group of facts. The first
thing was the coincidence between the agent's present
thoughts and those which the percipient had at the same
time. But this was only one aspect of the case. The sug-
gestive circumstance was the fact that in mechanical phe-
nomena the antecedent is supposed to be the cause of the
consequent and it is the activity of the antecedent that en-
ables us to assume causality in its relation to the consequent.
The fact that the two are associated closely in time and
space is the circumstance that enables us to prove this
causality, tho it might not actually constitute it. But it is
the analogy of telepathic with mechanical coincidences in
respect of this activity that makes it plausible at least to
suppose a causal nexus when the coincidence is observed.
If it were not for this circumstance it is possible that we
should never think of the direct causal connection in tel-
epathic phenomena. It is the present active state of con-
sciousness that we can assume to be a cause, just as any
present active state in a physical object is presumably the
cause of some event invariably associated with it. It is
probably this fact which gives telepathy its real or apparent
consistency with the materialistic interpretation of mental
phenomena. But whether this be true or not, it is the ex-
istence of mental coincidences between different persons
taken in connection with the assumption that active con-
ditions of a subject may be causal of invariable consequents
that makes the idea of a causal relation of a supernormal
type between mind and mind a reasonable assumption.

Now the evidence of some causal relation is apparent in
such records as the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical
Research, and I shall not illustrate them here. I shall either
refer those who are not convinced of the phenomena to
those records or take for granted that the phenomena are
numerous enough to justify the assumption of a nexus not
due to chance in such cases, and then proceed to indicate
what " telepathy " means when applied to them. All that
" telepathy " means and meant in reference to these facts is
that they are not due to chance, but that some causal rela-
tion exists between the antecedent and consequent. It does

Telepathy. 313

not explain the phenomena in any respect. It is not a name
for a cause of any kind whatever. It only indicates that the
normal causes are not present or at least not discoverable.
In so far as causality is concerned the term denotes no posi-
tive agency, but is purely negative in its import. It does
not name a known cause, but indicates that the known
causes do not explain the facts and that some as yet un-
known cause must account for what is not due to chance and
so they bear the marks of having some causal agency yet to
be found.

This limitation of the meaning of the term should be em-
phasized and repeated. It is not the name of any cause or
of any process by which the causal nexus between persons'
thoughts is established. It does not explain the phenom-
enon, as is too frequently supposed, but actually leaves it
wholly unexplained. It is merely a convenient expression
to denote that we have gone beyond the normally explicable
and are still seeking the explanatory cause. Hence so far
from explaining thought coincidences it explains nothing
whatever. It only names the facts which require explana-
tion and any attempt on the part of a psychic researcher to
deceive the reader with the assumption that phenomena are
explained by it deserves the severest scientific reprobation.
It may well indicate that a phenomenon is not explained in
some other way, or at least is not evidence of that explana-
tion, but it is not a name for any positive causal agency that
is known, tho it may become known under further investi-
gation. It only refers a fact to some cause yet unknown
even when it implies that a certain specific cause is not in-
dicated by the facts. The fact that it may exclude the belief
in spirit agency does not make it an explanation of the phe-
nomena concerned. It merely indicates that the phenomena
which had associated themselves with spiritistic causes are
to be explained by the same causes which were supposed to
extend beyond the normal action of sense without present-
ing evidence of these immaterial agencies.

It is because the term has been constantly used to denote
an alternative to spiritism that its original meaning has been
forgotten or ignored. The conception of spirit is actually

314 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

explanatory of certain phenomena and in criticizing the evi-
dence for this view of them the possibility of telepathy came
in to eliminate certain facts assumed to be evidence of the
former and in this comparison of the two ideas telepathy
borrowed an explanatory import which it did not and does
not possess. The reason for this is the simple fact that
every problem has two distinct aspects which we too fre-
quently forget. They are the explanatory and the evidential.
They are often so closely associated that they may be
mistaken for one another. They should be briefly examined.

The explanatory function of a conception is to denote
a cause that will account for the occurrence of an event.
Thus gravitation is supposed to explain why objects fall to
the ground, sunlight is an agent in accounting for the growth
of vegetation, heat is an explanation of expansion in bodies,
electricity names a cause in a great variety of phenomena,
and so on with hundreds of terms. Now when any new phe-
nomenon appears demanding an explanation and we refer
it to one of these we already take their existence for granted
and the new phenomenon is not an evidence of their exist-
ence. For instance I find a group of new phenomena in the
behavior of certain physical bodies, phenomena exhibiting
certain resemblances to the known action of electricity, and
I at once refer the phenomena to that source. I do so to
avoid the hypothesis of new agencies. If known causes ex-
plain the facts I have no reason to interpret these facts as
evidence of new agencies, and the new facts are not evidence
of the existence of the assumed causes. They are simply
explained by them. If they were not explained by them we
should have a right to seek new causes to account for their
occurrence. Tlie possibility of appealing to existing causes
to account for new facts makes it unnecessary to set up new
agents in the cosmos, and, tho such new agents may happen
to exist, we have to seek elsewhere for evidence of the fact
Some other reality explains the phenomena equally well and
when that is known to exist on other grounds the new facts

not appear as evidence of it. They are simply explained

evidential aspect of a problem is much narrower

j

Telepathy. 315

than its explanatory. There are fewer situations in which
facts serve as evidence of the existence of a cause than when
they are explicable by it. Facts will serve to prove the ex-
istence of a cause only when they cannot be explained by
known agencies. As long as alternative causes may exist,
the facts explicable by any one of them are not proof of any,
and especially not proof of a new cause whose existence may
possibly be questioned, or for which the evidence is less than
well known agents. Let me illustrate the evidential and
explanatory aspect of one problem, namely, the velocity
of light. A phenomenon in the eclipse of the moons of
Jupiter served to prove, or render most probable, the fact
that light had velocity. The supposition that it had ve-
locity might very well have been entertained as a corollary
of certain other facts, but proof may have been wanting.
Its transmission from the sun to the earth was an admitted
fact and that it had velocity or required a period of time
for this transmission could be explained by this velocity, if
we could show that time was involved. Consequently when
certain phenomena were observed in the eclipses of the
moons of Jupiter, they seemed to prove that this time ele-
ment was involved in the transmission of light. For in-
stance it was noticed that at one period the eclipses of a
moon was earlier than the calculated astronomical time and
at another later than this. This fact coincided with the
fact that at one of these periods the light had to traverse
the distance represented by the diameter of the earth's orbit
greater than at the other period. Consequently the differ-
ence of time was an evidence of velocity in the transmission
of light. In the ordinary phenomena of sunlight and its
transmission there is no situation in which this velocity is
indicated, and until we could bring the phenomena of light
under the law of luminous undulations there would be no
reason to suppose from that circumstance that it required
time for its transmission. But the proof that it required
this time created a presumption, if it was not proof, that
undulations were the cause of the lapse of time in the trans-
mission, in accordance with known laws in vibratory phe-
nomena, while the lapse of time was not an explanation of

316 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

the facts but an evidence of their existence. Or to take a
much simpler instance. Sunlight is the cause of vegetable
growth, at least one of its causes, but this growth is not the
evidence of sunlight. Other facts have proved to us that
the sun shines and we have found in the progress of inquiry
that the sunlight is more or less necessary to the gjrowth of
vegetation.

Now when it comes to the phenomena which gave rise
to the idea of telepathy we found a situation in which we
had new facts not explicable by known and familiar causes,
namely, sense perception of the normal type. The ordinary
explanation was excluded, but a new one was not thereby
established. We simply found a set of facts which required
some new cause and as we had no known process for render-
ing the facts intelligible we had to represent them as involv-
ing some causal connection, direct or indirect between living
minds, that still had to be determined. The facts were evi-
dence of this, but they were not explained by merely coining
a new term, as the process or causal agency was not thereby
indicated. The term was not an explanation, nor a name for
any explanation, but a name for the facts requiring a new
cause still to be determined.

The point of view of which telepathy is supposed to be
a rival hypothesis is the spiritistic. Both have their evi-
dential and both their explanatory functions. The evidence
of the spiritistic theory is, not the mere fact of the supernor-
mal, or facts not explicable by normal mental action, but in
addition to the supernormal, it is, incidents bearing upon the
personal identity of deceased persons. If we are to believe
in spirits of any kind we must expect them, if they survive,
to communicate facts which besides being supernormal must
be such as discarnate spirits would most naturally tell in
proof of their identity. I shall not undertake to tell what
such facts should be. I leave this to the reader to determine.
But the evidence of the theory must partake of the character
described in order to invoke an explanation which the theory
supposes. But this evidence must exclude an alternative
hypothesis, and hence any phenomenon classifiable with tele-
pathy will not be evidence of spirits whatever we may think

Telepathy. 317

of the latter's capacity for explaining the facts. Nothing is
clearer than the fact that the spiritistic hypothesis is capable
of explaining a certain type of phenomena, but the funda-
mental question is, whether it is the true explanation, and
this requires us to obtain the evidence for it. Whether the
hypothesis has any evidence in its support is not the problem
here, and I am not concerned with this issue, but with its
relation to telepathy either as a fact or as an hypothesis.
As remarked the evidence of spirit agency must be some
type of facts illustrating personal identity and at the same
time probably supernormal. But if such alleged evidence
can be classified with the phenomena which are termed tele-
pathic it will lose its character as proof of spirits. Hence,
tho telepathy explains nothing, it may limit or destroy the
evidence for spirits, provided it is comprehensive enough
in its application to all that is explicable by spirit agency.
It is therefore not a rival theory to the spiritistic in regard
to explanation, but only in evidential matters. •

We often speak of " explaining " certain facts by tele-
pathy and, in implying that they are explicable by the same
process, this is legitimate enough way of speaking. But
classification is never a true explanation. It only places
things in allied groups and if the cause is previously known
the explanation is implied, but if it is unknown the phe-
nomena so classified remain really as unexplained as before.
Telepathy is this sort of term. It only classifies and does
not yet imply the process by which phenomena are produced
or made to occur. It is merely a term for placing limitations
on evidence, not a term of explanation.

I have been using the word for the moment in its widest
application to include all three meanings noticed at the out-
set. I have done this as a concession for the time to the
popular conception in order to indicate the extent of its
limitations in relation to a supposedly rival hypothesis. But
it is time to show still further limitation in the use of the
term. I deny the legitimacy of the second and third mean-
ings of the term. That is, I deny that there is any evidence
of a scientific character for the mind of one person reading
another in any such way as is implied by selecting incidents

318 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

either from the memory of the person present or from the
memories of distant and unknown persons. All that we can
pretend to have scientific evidence for is the acquisition su-
pernormally of the present active mental states of the agent by a
percipient. There is a large mass of facts on record which
answer to this conception of the matter and there is as yet
in the scientific world no unanimity of opinion with regard
even to this. But such as it is, it represents the only body
of scientific evidence which can claim to represent some su-
pernormal connection between one mind and another, and
this connection in all but four or five incidents is synonymous
with the present mental states of agent and percipient, the
person whose mind is read and the person who reads it.
The four or five incidents among the thousands of facts are
not sufficient to justify the supposition that the memory is
read either in these particular instances or in the whole mass
of evidence, especially that they are referable to deferred
association which, as we know, is a very common phe-
nomenon in ordinary life. The overwhelming mass of facts
claiming to be evidence represents present active mental
states and whatever we may think of subliminal processes as
possibly involved in the results it is clear that there is no
such selective access to the mind of the agent by percipients
as would be implied in the construction of an independent
personality. The phenomena sustain an analogy with what
is known in mechanical processes, namely, the fact that the
cause and effect represent present and non-selective action.
It is this characteristic that gives the idea of telepathy its
conceivable import.

But the analogy or resemblance to mechanical coinci-
dences, suggesting or proving a causal nexus, receives a part
of its interest or significance from the circumstance that, in
mechanical phenomena, we know or suppose something
about the nature of the process involved in producing the
effect. Thus, when we strike an object, the noise produced
is supposed to be the effect of transmitted force from the
external object to the subject of the effect. In many types
of phenomena the cause is supposed to be some mode of
motion, as in the case of sound and light, or the transmission

Telepathy. 319

of motion in mechanical operations. It is not the mere fact
that we have an antecedent and consequent to contemplate
that satisfies us, but we imagine or believe that some agency
in the form of motion is involved in the total phenomenon as
rendering it intelligible and explicable. But in real or
alleged telepathy we have no such supposition to guide our
judgments. There is no scientific reason or evidence what-
ever that thought is connected with vibrations of any kind.
The prevailing belief in philosophic circles is that mental
phenomena are not modes of motion and any such assump-
tion must render mental coincidences such as are involved in
alleged telepathy quite unintelligible in mechanical terms.
This belief of philosophy may be wrong for all that I know.
It may be that consciousness is either constituted by or
associated with vibrations or undulations of some kind,
ethereal or material. I do not know, and I am willing also
to say that I do not care one way or the other. But until
there is some reason to believe that mental states are asso-
ciated with undulatory action of some kind in a way to affect
their nature and relations with each other, both in the mind
of their subject and between different minds, there will be
no ground for identifying them closely with mechanical
phenomena, and alleged telepathic coincidences will not be
assimilable with physical facts or events. All that they will
indicate is the fact of some causal relation which has yet to
be determined. That they are associated with present
active mental states of a certain person and the percipiency
of another is the only resemblance with mechanical causes
that they offer, and that may suffice to prove phenomena not
due to chance, but it does not make them intelligible to
physical science, at least in any such terms as are usually
demanded of coincidences demanding explanation in the
usual manner. They remain facts to be reckoned with, but
not physically explicable.

In the physical world it is the present active cause associ-
ated with some event directly connected with it in time and
space that gives rise to our conviction of a causal nexus.
That is to say, we must have as evidence of a rational causal
connection the coincidence between a consequent and an

320 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

antecedent and that antecedent must be some active agency
which will commend itself to our minds as the probable or
necessary fact in the phenomena. It is not the association
of an event with any passive set of conditions that we find in
proximity to it, but the presence of an active agency that
gives force to the assumed connection. Were it not for this
fact we should probably never think of a cause m a particular
case of antecedence and consequence.

Thus a flash of lightning is followed by a clap of thunder.
If this occurs frequently enough I am assured of the.causal
nexus. But I would naturally suspect it on the first occasion
if the association in time and space were close enough, and
repetition would only confirm the conjecture. But if the
thunder were to occur two or three days after the flash of
lightning I would not suspect a causal nexus between them,
unless I could discover a series of causally related phe-
nomena between the first and last experience. We have to
get some continuous connection between a nearer and re-
moter fact in a series to justify the supposition of a causal
nexus. Thus when I see and hear the action of a locomotive
whistle near by there is practical simultaneity or an imme-
diate connection between the escape of the steam and the oc-
currence of the sound. I therefore suppose them causally
related. But would I as easily suppose this connection if I
saw the steam escape a mile distant and heard the sound
some moments later? I think not. But if I have learned
that sound requires time to transmit its vibrations, to a
distance I might suspect that the difference in time between
the visual and auditory experience is accounted for by the
difference in velocity between light and sound, and I could
then suppose an immediate nexus between them for the point
of their occurrence and an apparent discrepancy at a dis-
tance. But I still trace the causal connection through the in-
tervening phenomena. The evidence, however, must begin
with spatial and temporal coincidences, and the causal idea
associated with present active agencies. It is this that
makes explanation possible in the physical world.

It is this analogy of temporal coincidence between
present active thoughts in agent and percipient that sug-

Telepathy, 321

gests a causal nexus, especially when the fact is related to
the absence of such apparent connection between latent
memories. The phenomena which suggest telepathy, or
prove it, are coincidences between present mental states,
and these coincidences must represent likeness of the con-
tents in mind. Otherwise there will be no reason whatever
to suppose a causal nexus. This is a truism, but I call at-
tention to the fact for the purpose of emphasizing a maxim
of scientific procedure in the matter. This is that similarity
of content and present active phenomena are essential to the
idea of a causal relation in cases of alleged telepathy. If we
attempt to adopt and follow any other criterion we might
trace a causal connection between any of my thoughts and
the similar thoughts of others at any time. We never at-
tempt, however, to suppose that our thoughts today are
connected either with the same thoughts others experi-
ence at the same time, under exactly similar conditions, or
with the thoughts of others like our experience at some
previous time and explicable by the ordinary processes of
acquiring knowledge. We have to exclude the ordinary
access to sense perception and assure ourselves of an identity
of thought between two subjects, under circumstances to
suggest a direct and not a parallel or coincidental connection,
in order to suspect a relation other than the normal one.

Now the only phenomena which have suggested a causal
nexus between mental states in different minds are those
which show identity and temporal coincidence along with
evidence that the coincidence is not due to similar sensory
experience. There is no other evidence of telepathy and
until we have secured evidence of some other connection we
are not entitled to apply the term telepathy to any other
conception of the case. We have to define our conceptions
by the phenomena which serve as evidence for the hypothe-
sis concerned. If the phenomena do not show that likeness
of kind which determines their classification we cannot apply
the same causal explanation. Thus we do not apply gravita-
tion to the phenomena of adhesion and cohesion. Neither
do we confuse chemical affinity with any of these. We limit
each of these causal ideas to the types of phenomena which

322 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

guarantee their existence. It must be the same with tele-
pathy. We have no evidence whatever that it occurs be-
tween the memories of an *' agent '* and the statements of a
percipient. It is not sufficient to say or suppose that the
fact told by the psychic is identical in character with the
fact in the memory of the " agent," or conjectured " agent."
There must be some reason to believe that memories are
active causal agencies, and we have no evidence whatever
of this. We have evidence that active consciousness is a
causal agent and it is this fact which gives force to the idea
of telepathy when identity and coincidence between two
minds occur independently of ordinary sensory experience.

I may express this perhaps in another way. I have indi-
cated that telepathy when first applied to mental coinci-
dences assumed the point of view that the phenomena had
their interest in the hypothesis that the explanation began
with the agent and not with the percipient. I have referred to
the analogies with the law of mechanics, that causal explan-
ation started with the antecedent phenomenon which
might be assumed to represent or to indicate the cause. In
telepathic phenomena the mental state of the agent, if any-
thing can be supposed to be the cause, might be represented
as such and the percipient is the passive recipient of what
is transmitted to him. The point of view for explanation in
this first conception of causality was the antecedent thought
of the agent, not any active function of the percipient.
Telepathy had analogies with the ordinary phenomena of the
transmission of force or motion.

But in this wider import of the term it assumes nothing
of the kind. It supposes that the percipient is the primary
factor in the work. The point of view for explanation is
completely reversed. Instead of supposing that the agent is
the primary factor ; that is, that the mind from which the in-
formation is presumably obtained is the causal agent, the
telepathy which explains phenomena having at least a super-
ficial claim to a spiritistic source assumes that the percipient
is the causal agent in the result : that is, instead of supposing
that the mind from which the facts are presumably obtained
is an influence in the result it assumes that the mind which

Telepathy, 323

obtains it selects the facts from the other. Instead of re-
maining by the conception of mechanical analogies in which
the agent is the cause and the percipient the passive recipi-
ent of the knowledge it supposes that the percipient is the
cause and the other mind the passive giver of the facts. That
is, it assumes an intelligent, not a mechanical process. The
relation of agent and percipient is completely reversed. In
the original and only legitimate application of the term
telepathy the agent was the active and the percipient the
passive factor while the new a priori conception is that the
percipient is the active and the agent the passive power in
the phenomena. In addition to this general reversion it is
noticeable that in the former the percipient is not intelli-
gently selective, while in the latter it is infinitely intelligent
and selective. The whole mechanical implications of the
older meaning are lost and abandoned. And they are
abandoned without evidence of any kind, other than that it
is not respectable to accept any other view. The fact is
that there is not a particle of scientific evidence for this
wider meaning of the term. It is not enough to find one or
two incidents which seem neither like what has passed for
the older meaning of telepathy nor appears as evidence of
transcendental agencies. Such as appear to be neither
thought transference of present mental states nor evidence
of discarnate agencies will have to be multiplied in much
larger quantities and represent much better quality than
any that we have yet seen before we are entitled to suppose
a causal relation between the memories of others and the
supernormal information which mediums give us related to
the deceased. Before we can admit a selective telepathy of
any kind we shall have to give evidence which does not coin-
cide with facts persistently and uniformly related to de-
ceased persons. We must have the limitation of the facts
obtained to experiences of living persons and not illustrative
of the identity of deceased persons. Until that is done there
can be no scientific evidence whatever for this assumed
" selective telepathy." I am not questioning the fact of it,
but denying that there is evidence for it, and no man can
pretend to be scientific who indulges in the assumption until

324 Journal of the American. Society for Psychical Research.

it can produce satisfactory evidence for itself. The circum-
stance that a supernormal fact may not be evidence of
spirits does not require us to explain it by telepathy. We
may better say that we have not found the explanation than
to assume the necessity of telepathy because the evidence is
not for spirits. We may well express our agnosticism, es-
pecially that spirits might explain much which is not evi-
dence of their existence, if once we have found consistent
evidence for them. What I remarked earlier in this paper
holds here, namely, that the explanatory function of a
theory is wider than its evidential, provided that the phe-
nomena exhibit any reasonable relation to those which admit
of a given explanation.

Briefly, then, this selective telepathy involving intelligent
action of the percipient as distinct from the passive recipi-
ence of knowledge after mechanical analogies is an illegiti-
mate extension of the term in so far as evidence is concerned,
and science can take no steps without evidence. Of course
such telepathy may be a fact, but it has no credentials at
present and must not be permitted to usurp functions which
never attached to the term as scientifically qualified. It is
far better to confess ignorance. We may fool for a while
those who are not intelligent enough to discover our equivo-
cations, but we shall soon find ourselves in the company of
those self-complacent people who have mistaken the nature
and progress of clear thinking.

All this explains why the scientific mind regards the
popular conception of felepathy with contempt. If the
public had limited its conception to the phenomena which
claimed to be evidence of it and also had not assumed that
the phenomena were explained by the term, their convictions
might have received more respect from scientific students.
But instead of this the general conception of telepathy is,
not only that it explains certain facts of mental coincidence,
but that it explains such systematic relations between dif-
ferent minds as imply subliminal and supernormal conversa-
tions of great range and complexity. It also assumes too
readily that some process of motion or undulation is neces-
sarily associated with the connection between mind an<l

Telepathy. 325

mind, or constitutes that connection. There is not one iota
of scientific evidence for the idea. It may be legitimate
speculation, but science is not speculation and it is not pri-
marily explanation. It is first the collection of facts and
evidence, and it may rest content with this result until it has
reason to accept an intelligible causal agency after it has
accumulated sufficient data to relate its phenomena to some
systematic cause. In the present status of inquiry into the
relation between different minds, it will not accept the idea
that telepathy implies any reason to believe in a transcend-
ental access to the memories of people at any distance by
any particular person. This is especially true when scien-
tific minds are called upon to believe that the mind of some
psychic can select as it pleases the person from whom it shall
obtain knowledge of the past and select this knowledge with
reference to the illustration of any particular person living
or dead. There is no scientific evidence whatever that such
supernormal intercommunication is possible. It is an inex-
cusable abuse of the term telepathy to apply it in this man-
ner. I do not believe that there is such a thing. I do not
say that I would not believe it if the evidence were produced,
but I must limit my belief to that for which I have evidence,
and I deny that there is any scientific evidence for such a
fact or process as this unlimited reading of minds supposes.

Telepathy, I repeat, is acquiring present active mental
states in a supernormal manner, and in thus defining it I do
not imply that it is a proved fact. I think there is adequate
evidence for its occasional occurrence. But I respect the
scepticism which wishes to have more evidence before ac-
cepting it, and especially do I respect the scepticism which
denies that telepathy can filch knowledge subliminally and
systematically from living people at pleasure. The process
in one case is so different from that assumed in the other
that there is no rational ground for identifying their relation
under the same term. Supernormal access to what I am
now trying to transmit to the mind of another person is one
thing, and it is a very different thing, requiring a radically
distinct type of causal action, to systematically read human
minds all over the world to collect facts illustrative of the

326 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

personality of a given person, living or dead. It will require
a great deal of evidence to prove such a thing, and the evi-
dence will have to be very different from that which we
have in illustration of something supernormal, if we are to
make it intelligible on any other hypothesis than the most
superficial one.

I must blame psychic researchers, even some who ought
to know better, for permitting this illegitimate use of the
term to gain currency. Too many have used it to blind the
vision to its relation to the various problems we h?tve to
solve. Let me summarize.

There has been a tendency to apply its meaning to
phenomena which are as distant from those which it legiti-
mately names and classifies as are chance coincidences or
clairvoyance. The temptation to do this arose out of the
desire to avoid admitting or tolerating a less respectable
theory. But it must be emphasized that it is not an explana-
tory conception of any kind. It merely classifies a certain
type of phenomena having some unknown cause. It does
not explain anything whatever, much less that group of
phenomena which illustrate the imitation or production in
some supernormal manner of the personality of others, es-
pecially the deceased. There is no longer excuse for the
vague use of the term. It is better to admit frankly that we
have no explanation of certain phenomena than to pretend
to knowledge by using a term of unlimited meaning, equal to
any difficulty we meet, in the attempt to escape a cause that
is perfectly rational and simple. It is time to insist upon the
only legitimate use of the term, and those who insist upon
employing it to explain all the mysteries of mental coinci-
dences and the reproduction supernormally of independent
personalities, must be held responsible for their action, and
evidence exacted of them that their assumption has adequate
credentials. Until this is done no tolerance can be given to
speculations based upon assumptions. Any and all exten-
sions of the term's meaning must be accompanied by the
scientific evidence that justifies it. We are not entitled to
assume the larger meaning of telepathy to be a fact because
we are not sure of its limitations. Here is where we have

Telepathy. 327

been negligent of the maxims of scientific method and the
legitimate formation of convictions. We have felt reasons
for accepting a causal connection between present active
mental states and then, from the desire to be cautious about
accepting some other explanation of proved supernormal
phenomena, and from our ignorance of the limitations of
communication between mind and mind, we have asked the
question whether the memory of a subject, regardless of
spatial and temporal limitations, might be supernormally
ascertained, and then from the habit of tolerating this as
possible have jumped to the belief that it is a facty without
any adequate scientific evidence for it. There would have
been no temptation to this procedure if it had been as re-
spectable to believe in something more intelligible.

The mental condition which makes this tendency feasible
and acceptable is one that follows the modern sceptical
method which does not always distinguish between ration-
ality and the line of least resistance. We have come to
think that any term which excludes, or supposedly excludes,
the supernormal and the " supernatural " is a clear explan-
ation of phenomena. The fact is, however, that they often
explain nothing and are but terms for our ignorance. But
the modern propensity for the " natural,'' (which does not
mean what it once did) makes us think that any term that is
associated with the " natural," tho quite mystifying in its
connotation, is a perfectly satisfactory explanation of facts.
When we want to escape some perfectly clear explanation
we have only to appeal to vibrations, telepathy, clairvoyance,
etc., to assure ourselves a place among the wise !

Denn eben wo Begriffe fehlen

Da stellt ein Wort zur rechten Zeit sich ein.

This habit was once the property of theology, but it seems
now to have afflicted the spirit of science at times. But
whatever it is, psychic researchers should be the first to cor-
rect and disillusion the popular judgment in the matter. We
gain nothing by the mere use of words whose meaning is not
clear and which only conceal our ignorance in the guise of a
pretended explanation.

328 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

EDITORIAL.

The July and August numbers of the Journal will contain
much less matter than usual. It will probably be the policy
to regularly publish less material during these two months.
The English Society does not issue any numbers during July
and August, but we desire to continue as much of our work
during this period as the circumstances will permit.

Circulars have been sent to all the members of the So-
ciety regarding a needed endowment to assure a permanent
home for its work. It is not expected that all the members
will be able to contribute to that fund. But a number of
them may be able and willing to do so and it is hoped that
all may try to interest their friends both in membership and
in the endowment of the work.

I wish to keep before the minds of members that it will
require i,ooo members paying an average of $io each merely
to meet the expenses of the work as it is being done now.
Most other enterprises can receive help from the publication
of advertisements. This is practically impossible in scientific
work of this kind. Hence the whole expense of investiga-
tion and publication must fall on contributions of members
until an endowment has been obtained. But for the initial
fund which was explained in an earlier number of the
Journal the work could not even have been begun. I have
given quarterly statements of expenses that readers may
form some conception of what the cost of the work is. The
publications alone will probably cost $4,000 a year. Salaries
at present are $2,600 a year, my own services being free. It
is extremely desirable that we should have members enough
to meet these demands and the additional expense of investi-
gation which has already cost nearly $1,000.

It is hoped that the initial fund which was secured to
assure the organization of the Society may not be used, but
at it can be converted into a permanent endowment. The
on for this is the simple one that it is extremely im-
nt that the work should not be dissolved by the acci-

Editorial. 329

dents of death as occurred with the loss of Dr. Richard
Hodgson. This is one of the reasons for the present appeal
for a sum large enough to guarantee a permanent office for
the work. The accumulation of material which came to us
from the American Branch is such that it must be properly
cared for. There is matter in it suitable for use in our pub-
lications, but it is not now accessible because it has to be
stored. A permanent home would be assured by a fund
whose income would pay the office rent, and at the same
time would save trespassing upon the fees of members for
that large expense.

Members can help in obtaining this fund in two ways.
First they may interest those of their friends who are able to
assist in the way desired. Secondly, they may help to in-
crease membership beyond the numbers necessary to pay
running expenses, and the surplus can be invested as a per-
manent fund. There is no reason why we should not have
five or ten thousand members in this country alone. A
serious appreciation of the importance of this work in an
intelligent understanding of the meaning of things to the
race ought to lead to a large membership and a ready en-
dowment of it.

A circular will soon be issued and sent to members for
the purpose of collecting data in regard to various experi-
ences and phenomena of interest to this research. It would
be desirable that members send us names and addresses of
people who have had experiences or know of phenomena
that it may be important to place on record. It should be
remembered that all reports made to us will be treated with
due confidence and no use made of them which is not permit-
ted by those who report them. There is a very important
distinction between record and publication. A Society which
has a permanent organization and archives can file for record
phenomena which it does not use publicly at all, and this
record can be used by subsequent generations without injury
to those who find it imperative at the time of their reporting
to preserve privacy. It is a part of the Society's plan to en-

330 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

courage the making of such records which may prove helpful
to a scientific understanding of our problems without divulg-
ing the identity of those who so record their experiences. It
will serve the interests of science quite as well to be able to
publish illustrations of important phenomena and to have a
large collection of similar incidents which cannot be made
public at the time. Future students may have access to
evidence that would otherwise perish.

Suggestions to Members.

It is important to remind readers and members of the
Society that a scientific investigation of the phenomena
which are classified in its circular can be made only by the
hearty cooperation of all that may be interested in it. Very
little can be done by the officers of the Society unless those
who know of facts take the time and pains to write them out
and report them at headquarters. The primary object of
membership, after the financial problem has been solved, is
that of a scientific interest in collecting and reporting facts,
for investigation and record. It is hoped, therefore, that
each member will feel some responsibility for reporting per-
sonal experiences of all kinds relevant to the objects of the
Society and such others as occur within their knowledge and
may be the subject of careful inquiry. In no other way can
we accomplish our scientific object. Interesting psychic
phenomena are not the possession or experience of every
one, neither can they be produced at pleasure, as can many
phenomena by the experimentalist in normal psychology.
Psychic phenomena are scattered and sporadic and their
scientific use will depend quite as much upon the services
of those who can report them as upon the work of the in-
vestigator. It is hoped, therefore, that members will be
seriously interested in the collection of facts and the enlarge-
^nt of a membership that may equally increase the facts to
examined and recorded.

Another important fact to remark is that reporters of ex-
ences will have to be patient with much real or apparent

Editorial. 331

scepticism regarding their records. They will have to be
examined and discussed as if they were not believed, tho we
may actually accept them without question. Science is
critical if it is anything, and many experiences will be re-
ported that will have great importance evidentially if they
can pass the ordeal of a thorough scientific examination.
This always has to be done for the sake of ascertaining the
accuracy of the narrator's judgment and memory, especially
in regard to the details that the scientific man will treat as
important. No reflections will be implied in questions de-
signed to bring out the facts and to protect them against
sceptical corrosion. We hope, therefore, that each reporter
will find our inquiries quite sympathetic even tho super-
ficially suggestive of distrust. We are engaged in the task
of convincing others, not ourselves. It must be remembered
that every one of us is more cautious about accepting the
statements of entire strangers than we are those of intimate
friends whom we trust. This is not at all because strangers
are necessarily any more untrustworthy than our friends, but
because we have not the knowledge in one case as in the
other of the character which determines credibility. When
this is the case we have to subject reports to the same exam-
ination to which a court subjects its evidence in a civil pro-
ceeding. It is a question of sifting the statements until they
are free from the suspicions of mal-observation and defective
memory. The time will come when experiences will be re-
corded at the time of their occurrence and then the investi-
gation will be less annoying to the subject of them. We
have to convert people who do not have personal experiences
and that can be done only by such methods as have con-
vinced the world of the existence of meteors, of traveling
balls of electricity, of evolution, of Roentgen rays, of wireless
telegraphy. The facts have to be established in such a
manner that the simplest objections to their occurrence or
reported character cannot be made. Owing to their spo-
radic nature it will take time to collect them in quantities
sufficient to impress scientific sceptics.

I have said that the phenomena are sporadic and occa-
sional. This fact makes the inquiry into psychic experiences

332 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

unusually difficult and prolonged. We cannot verify the
allegations of favored individuals as can the experimenter in
the laboratory with normal subjects. The phenomena with
which psychic research deals are as rare as are meteors and
comets. They are not always observable by those who may
wish to investigate them. Comets may have a thousand
telescopes turned on them, but psychic phenomena are not
verifiable in similar ways. We shall have to collect them
for a long period of time in order to assure ourselves of data
that necessitate so large a set of theories as prevail in the
public mind. Each individual experience may be counted
as one in the total collection. The single case may not prove
much, if it even proves anything, but it may have an ines-
timable value in the collective mass. We hope that each
person may appreciate this aspect of the problem and be
patient with it and serve a useful part in the work of collect-
ing the facts.

A circumstance also hardly less important than those
which have already been mentioned is this. We hope that
reporters will not mistake the value of their experiences. It
is natural for us to estimate their importance by their rela-
tion to the conclusion which we may be interested in sup-
porting. But experiences may have a significance quite
diflFerent from that which we are seeking and yet not lose in
their value. It is hoped, therefore, that narrators will re-
port their facts regardless of what they may think of them,
that is, whether they think them good or bad. An incident
may not prove what we wish it to prove; it may not seem
proportioned in dignity to the hypothesis by which we ex-
plain it, and it may seem disgustingly trivial. But the scien-
tific man will not be frightened at these aspects of them. In
some respects the more trivial the better as this character-
istic may add to their evidential importance. But the main
circumstance to be noted in this caution against misconceiv-
ing the value of experiences is the fact that they may often
throw light upon the problem at a point which the narrator
does not suspect, and if they do this they will be much more
valuable than if the experience were told to prove another
matter. A fact does not necessarily have one explanation.

Editorial, 333

It may have several, and these several explanations may be
connected together and not mutually exclusive. There are
many intermediate problems in the larger issues of psychic
research and facts which do not help to solve one may help
to solve another. We therefore hope members will report
experiences without asking a question as to their value before
reporting them. When large numbers of different experi-
ences are put together they will constitute not only a col-
lective, but also an articulated whole. Each individual inci-
dent may be an imperfect one and hence with common points
of contact with others they may find a classification and ulti-
mate explanation not at all suggested at the time of their
occurrence.

Let me illustrate what I mean. I take several imaginary
cases. Suppose I dream that my aunt has died and I find
afterward that she actually died about the time of my dream.
The circumstances might make such a dream of little or no
importance evidentially in any special explanation of it. But
suppose again that the dream had been that an uncle had
died when the fact was that he was long dead and it was the
aunt that died coincidentally with the dream. This instance
would appear to have no importance at all in a scheme of ex-
planation. Again suppose the dream was that my deceased
uncle appeared and I recognized him as a deceased uncle
while again it was the aunt that died coincidentally with my
dream. Here we have an instance that begins to have sug-
gestiveness, but may still be imperfect in character. Sup-
pose further that my dream is of the appearance of a de-
ceased uncle to tell me that my aunt has died, and I after-
ward find that this particular aunt died coincidentally with
my dream. The instance in this case obtains a more signifi-
cant complexity and suggests an intelligible explanation.
Suppose now further that I go unknown to a trustworthy
psychic and receive a message purporting to come from this
aunt that her brother, my uncle, had reported her going to
me in a dream, we will readily see the possible interpretation
of the simplest incident even tho it was not in any respect
evidence of such an interpretation.

Now the illustration may be made a little more compli-

J

334 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

cated and serve the same purpose. Suppose A has the first
of the mentioned dreams about his aunt, B the second about
his uncle, C the third about his uncle and D the fourth about
his uncle and aunt, all of them coinciding with the death of a
special aunt, and E has the mediumistic experience with such
details as mentioned. Now tho the dream of A may have
neither evidential importance sufficient to prove anything of
itself it will probably appear clear that all of the experiences
have the same explanation and we can ascertain this only by
the patient collection of separate incidents which can some
day be articulated into an organic whole.

For the help and guidance of those who will take the pains
to record their experiences it may be well to lay down certain
rules which it is desirable to have in mind. If conformed to
they will give greater value to the facts reported. They
will apply to such phenomena as Apparitions, Clairvoyance,
Premonitions, Coincidental Dreams, Telepathic Coincidences
and all facts having a coincidental nature. Some of the rules
will be general and some specific.

1. It is desirable that all experiences be written out and
reported as soon as possible after their occurrence.

2. It is very desirable that the dates, and if possible the
hour, of their occurrence should be recorded, especially in
such phenomena as apparitions, dreams and telepathic coin-
cidences, or cases of spontaneous clairvoyance and premoni-
tions.

3. If the experience represents information not known
by the percipient at the time, it is especially desirable that it
be written out before it has been verified by letter, telegram,
or other source of information.

4. If possible, it is desirable to have the written account
mailed to officers of the Society or to some other trusted per-
son prior to the verification of the experience.

5. When possible, it is also wise to tell the experience
and its incidents to some friend or relative who may confirm
it before its verification.

6. It is desirable to have the account as detailed as possi-

Editorial, 335

ble regardless of the points that may most interest the nar-
rator.

7. It is important and desirable, if possible, to have con-
temporary documents, such as letters, diaries, telegrams, or
other notes of an experience in case the written account is
not made at the time.

8. It is better, if possible, to avoid the introduction of
all theoretical explanations into the account. Incidents ex-
plaining the meaning of the facts are important, but the
interpretation of the phenomena is not necessary to the ac-
count. This means that it is desirable to have the bare facts
described without regard to any explanaition of their mean-
ing, whether favorable or unfavorable to the opinions of the
narrator.

9. It is desirable also to record all the usual or unusual
accompaniments of the experience, such as one's sensations
and feelings, including any marked peculiarities of visual,
auditory and tactual sensations.

10. In cases of experiment it is desirable to observe and
record carefully all the conditions affecting their integrity.
If it be with a medium-, it is important to make a note of all
questions and statements of the sitter as well as those of the
medium. In cases of automatic writing, the sheets should
be numbered and religiously preserved, and in copying the
contents, all questions and statements of the sitter or persons
present should be inserted in their chronological and psy-
chological place. Record and preserve all errors and con-
fusions quite as carefully as the clear and correct incidents.

There may be minor considerations to be regarded, but
those which have been mentioned are the most important,
and facts reported in conformity with them will prove much
more impressive to the scientific man than such as are ex-
posed to the objections of mal-observation and defective
memory.

The correspondence which we publish in another column
suggests, as readers will observe, attention to investigations
into the nature of a transcendental world and the ethical re-
lation of the present to it, and we wish to invite general con-
sideration of it for the sake of a clearer understanding of the

336 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

problems involved in the work of psychic research. We de-
sire here to express editorially what we conceive these prob-
lems to be and so to explain the limitations under which the
work has to be done at present.

After so many years of inquiry regarding the super-
normal it is natural enough that many persons, especially
those who have been convinced of survival after death, should
ask for information regarding that life and to feel some
weariness with the continued application of our inquiries to
the elementary problem of psychic research. But while we
appreciate this position of our correspondents quite fully, it
is important — and their letters present the opportunity — to
explain the object of the Society in so far as it claims to be
' a scientific body.

We have mentioned in later comments the main difficul-
ties which hamper at present the parrying out of the in-
quiries suggested, and there might be much more funda-
mental objections to stress, at present, on the study of con-
ditions regarding which communications are unverifiable.
But we shall not dispute the interest or importance of that
point of view, altho thinking that it may mistake the whole
issue of the nature and importance of proving a future life.
What is to us more important scientifically is the nature of
the work which the American Society has undertaken to do.

The task which we have undertaken as a scientific body
is not at all the personal satisfaction of investigation and
conclusions about a future life alone, but the collection of
human experiences bearing on all sorts of obscure psycho-
logical phenomena. No doubt it is impossible to escape the
interest which a future life has for all our members, but the
past investigations into this subject have encountered a vast
number of experiences which have no relation to the evi-
dential issues of such a question and which avail to throw
light upon the mental conditions and processes involved in
the whole mass of phenomena. These suggest very decided
limitations in the prosecution of our inquiries and so in
deciding the opinions which we shall hold about any aspect
of our problem. Consequently, after we have satisfied all
ordinary scepticism about a future life we have to patiently

Editorial. 337

investigate the conditions on which we may prosecute in-
quiry into the nature of a transcendental world and to un-
derstand the reservations with which any conclusion what-
ever regarding such a matter has to be held. It is a loni;
and difficult process to do this. There is no guarantee, after
having proved the identity of a given person, that his state-
ments regarding such a life can be accepted. As our prob-
lem is a scientific one we cannot accept credulously any
statement whatever which may come from a spiritual world,
not because we have to doubt the veracity of the com-
municator, but because the primary scientific problem is veri-
fication. It matters not how plausible a statement may be
about the " other side," science has to give such credentials
for it as will make it rational on other grounds than the
assumed or proved veracity of the communicator. To do
this the comparison of many cases of mediums is absolutelv
necessary, especially when we have to eliminate the personal
equation of the psychic as affected by the subconscious ac-
tion of his or her mind.

A most important consideration also in this connection,
and affecting the limitations under which communications
about such a world have to be made, is the question of the
conditions affecting the triviality and confusion of the mes-
sages. The great objection to the acceptance of the messages
as spiritistic is this triviality and error. I do not consider
it as a legitimate objection, but the universality of it and the
fact that our problem has always to be gauged by the con-
ception of it which the public holds are adequate reasons for
removing this objection first, and if the hypothesis of ab-
normal mental conditions of some kind in the communica-
tors while communicating be possible, we have first to in-
vestigate its truth and then to consider how it affects the
veracity and credibility of statements about that other life.
We all know how little reliance can be placed on the dreams
of somnambulistic people or the statements of secondary
personalities regarding the life we now live, and much less
can we accept unverified the statements of somnambulistic
statements or the views of secondary personalities in the
transcendental world. They may many of them be true,

338 Journal of the Atnerican Society for Psychical Research.

but our task is to verify them, and this is a much more diffi-
cult and prolonged labor than proving personal identity.

There is no agreement on many points in spiritistic lit-
erature about the next life, and we have to pursue our in-
quiries with this in view and it will not be easy to ascertain
what we can believe regarding it. It will not be enough to
discover a consistent system in one set of experiments. That
would be perfectly natural on the assumption that subcon-
scious mental action affected communications. We have to
ascertain the extent of that influence and eliminate it from
the account. Besides we have to eliminate as well the in-
fluence of abnormal mental conditions on the " other side,"
especially if they happened to be affected by the memories
of the communicators. I know one case in which the com-
municator, who had sufficiently proved his identity, made
certain statements about his transcendental life and discov-
ered in a moment that they were influenced by his memories
of the earthly life and remarked the fact, going on with state-
ments calculated to correct the previous ones, but without
adding anything to illuminate any curiosity we might enter-
tain about his condition. The same communicator had told
me at another time that he could not make this life clear to
me.

It will be impossible to conduct inquiries on this com-
plicated problem, commensurate with its magnitude, until
we are financially situated to pursue them rightly. It will
take many years working on a number of cases like that of
Mrs. Piper to make even an impressive showmg on it. We
can only content ourselves with casual communications in-
cident to the prosecution of the more fundamental problems.
When the nature and magnitude of the work have been suf-
ficiently appreciated by the public to endow it, we shall be
in a position to make attempts at satisfying the desires of
those who have curiosity on this point.

Another important consideration in the conception of
our work is that, as a scientific body, we are not primarily or
only investigators for our own personal edification. Our
task is not merely to convince ourselves of the supernornial
— in fact it may be to disprove it and so to explain away the

Editorial. 339

popular beliefs in the matter — but to convince the sceptic
of the existence of the supernormal, if true, and to explain
aJl the perplexities involved in it. We are not merely prov-
ing to ourselves these claims, but we have the large task of
proving them to others who have not been witnesses of the
phenomena. In this we have to make all sorts of concesr
sions to points of view which may not be our own, and espe-
cially to objections which the sceptic may entertain regard-
ing any part of the subject. The conversion of others to an
interest in our problem is a wholly different task from that
of satisfying ourselves. We have to work with methods and
criteria not necessarily our own when we are satisfying the
demands of the sceptic. He must not be allowed to evade
the issues in any respect, and if we enable him to criticize us
on issues that are not the primary ones he will weaken our
cause. The world does not accept the supernormal in any
way — ^making us free to do any dogmatic work. This is
especially true of the scientific world which we are trying to
interest and convert. As a scientific body, pretending to
employ strict scientific methods, we have to present such a
mass of evidence as will satisfy the fundamental criterion of
truth, which is sufficient, frequently, in that the occurrence
of alleged phenomena make them credble as a systematic
feature of the cosmic order. This condition of our problem
is much more than one of investigation alone. It is the ad-
justment of our material to the difficulties and mental con-
ditions of critics, who may be very glad to use every oppor-
tunity to discredit results, when it may be easy to com-
pletely silence their objections by matter which is not amen-
able to their ridicule. That is to say, our task as investi-
gators must not be confused, nor does it coincide, with that
of convincing doubters of the validity of our claims. This
latter part of our task is perhaps much the larger one and
will require more patience and sacrifice than the former.

340 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

CORRESPONDENCE.

I have received several letters suggesting the publication
of material bearing on the conditions of the life after death,
and as the sentiments expressed in them are probably very
common among the members, I have thought it seasonable
to invite discussion of the matter with an expression of what
seems forced upon us for the present as students of this very
perplexing problem. I make selections from two of these
letters, which are representative of a class, and they will suf-
fice to make the issue clear. I trust that the opportunity
for intelligent and scientific discussion of the question may
thus be opened to members.

Cleveland, Ohio, April 29th, 1907.
Dr. James H. Hyslop:

Dear Sir: — Will you Kindly permit me, as one who is much
interested in the work of your Society, to express to you certain
criticisms and suggestions which have arisen in my mind re-
garding the method of your work.

One of the chief difficulties felt by many in the way of ac-
cepting the view that such communications as those through
Mrs. Piper really came from the spirits of the departed, is, that
the alleged communications seem so trivial in character. Your
answer is that it is precisely such trivial personal recollections
of this life, capable of verification here, that are needed to give
real proof of personal identity, and that all statements regarding
conditions in a life beyond this, must be cast aside until the
main question of the reality of communication from such a life
is settled, since such statements cannot be verified by us, and
hence have no evidential value.

Would it not be extremely desirable that a definite effort
should be made incidentally at least to your other inquiries to
gather together and make public such data as have already been
secured, or might be secured by questions to communicators
hereafter accessible, as to what we must consider the nature of
the future life, in case the communications shall prove genuine.
If by such an effort, a series of statements are secured touching
matters of real value, in connection with the future life, this
would be the most effective answer to the objections of those
who say all is trivial. Nor am I willing to admit that such re-
sults would lack evidential value. If the method of investiga-
tion which you and your co-workers have developed, is sho>vn
to secure for us a consistent and steadily growing body of

Correspondence. 341

teaching on the questions which are of real moment to man-
kind, the presumption in favor of its reliability will be strength-
ened, just as men trust the deliverance of their senses and their
own mental processes while unable to offer any logical proof of
their validity. It seems to me that if the work of investigations
is too constantly limited to the verification of petty details of this
life, the whole subject may in the end seem so formal and bar-
ren to the public that its real significance will be lost sight of.
In the last analysis the purpose of the whole investigation — ^the
purpose which gives to the work its supreme importance — ^is to
learn, not merely the fact of a future life, but such truths re-
garding its nature as to answer the question, what we should do
here to prepare the way for the greatest welfare and effective-
ness there, and what we may hope for as we look forward to
continuation of existence there. Even if we must still condition
all statements on such subjects by the proviso — if there is a
life beyond, and if the alleged communications are genuine —
still even a tentative and hypothetical answer on subjects of
such vast importance would be, it seems to me, a thing ex-
tremely desirable to have, and might prove of no small service
in helping us to a juster estimate of the value of these investi-
gations, and the best methods of further pursuing them.

Such questions as the following are suggested as meriting
investigation :

(i) What is the general character of the future life?
I2) What is the extent and nature of the communications
between spirits in that life?

(3) Are any other spirits than those of the departed from
this life known there?

(4) Is there any greater knowledge possessed there re-
garding the leading teachings of religion such as that concern-
ing the existence of a God, etc. ?

(5) What is the nature of the experiences immediately fol-
lowing death?

(6) What are the chief differences of condition brought
about by death?

(7) What is the nature of the gradual developments (if
any) experienced by the spirit after death?

(8) In what way should one's life here be ordered so that it
may lead to the greatest possible welfare and effectiveness
there?

(9) What differences are there in the life beyond between
spirits of different men due to the different ways in which they
have lived when on earth?

Very truly,

342 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

Jersey City, April 17th, 1907.
My dear Sir: —

If I am not presuming too much I would like to suggest two
methods which would tend to increase the enthusiasm mani-
fested in the Society's undertakings.

One of these, is the publication of extracts from the mass of
material which you have told me you have on hand, purporting
to give information on post-mortem conditions. I appreciate
the argument that the first step is to lay the foundation for
admitting this evidence, but people think they have waited long
enough for something of value per se; and there should be no
hesitancy in submitting the matter in hand to the verdict of
public opinion, by which religious values in general have to be
tested.

If there is anything in it superior to the " Seven Spheres "
and " Seven Cycles " type of supermundane communications, it
may be trusted to vindicate itself.

Very truly,

It is hoped that members will avail themselves of this
opportunity to discuss the position taken by these two corre-
spondents. For the present I shall only reply to one remark
in the last letter and defer to the editorial columns the dis-
cussion of the main points considered. As to the material
on hand for discussing in a detailed manner th^ conditions
of a future life I can only say that this is contained in the
record which Dr. Hodgson made during his eighteen years
investigation of Mrs. Piper. That record is not yet acces-
sible to me and when it does become accessible, as it may, I
shall be under limitations in regard to its use. Whatever
may be done to supply the desires of the correspondents will
have to come from future investigations in other cases, and
very little of this can be done until an endowment has been
obtained that will meet the expenses of such work. It will
probably require several years constant work on each case
merely to determine the extent to which experiments of the
kind desired can be trustworthy for any purpose. Very
few people have any conception of the nature and complica-
tions of our problem. I shall discuss this elsewhere. In
brief, however, it requires long and difficult experimentation
first to determine the extent to which subconscious mental

Correspondence, . 343

action and ideas of the medium affect the contents of real or
alleged communications, and that has to be determined be-
fore any inquiries are worth while in the direction sug^
gested. I do not question the desirability of pursuing such
inquiries, but they do not seem to me nearly so important at
present as the correspondents assume, tho I concede rights
of opinion to other points of view than my own.

But apart from this, which is not the available defence of
the policy which we have to pursue at present, there is the
more fundamental fact that we have no means whatever to
conduct such investigations. We are able at present only
to carry on the most desultory experiments and are not
even able adequately to test cases for any such inquiries as
are desired. Matter bearing on the questions concerned can
only be casually obtained until we are in a position to ex-
periment systematically. — Editor.

MR. CARRINGTON'S CRITICISM.

Haverhill, Mass., May 7, 1907.

The Editor, Journal of the American Society for Psychical Re-
search.

I should like to reply to Mr. Hereward Carrington's criticism
of my hypothesis, appearing with my article in the May number
of the Journal,

In his criticism he apparently gives my hypothesis the
" reductio ad absurdam."
' That this is only apparent and not real I hope to show.

To his first objection, wherein Mr. Carrington makes the
statement that certain electrical conditions or an etheric medium,
altered or withdrawing from the body at the time of death may
account for the loss of weight : my answer is that a loss of weight
implies a loss of matter — ^gravitative matter — and that no amount
of electrical alteration of any body has ever been known to alter
its weight in the least, for the very good reason that electricity
in its relation to matter as we know it is a condition and not an
entity, and this I judge will hold true of matter and electricity,
whether the theory of the electrical origin of matter turns out to
be true or not.

Anything disappearing in a way to affect the beam of a scale
as in my experiment, far better comeS under the head of gravi-
tative matter than " eiheric medium.'*

344 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

The ether is gfravitationless or of such density as to be beyond
human measurement, any modincation of it that would affect
the beam of a scale would be matter itself.

Mr. Carrington ends this part of his criticism with the state-
ment that " such a withdrawal (meaning etheric medium) would
account for the facts without resorting to the supposition that
consciousness was in any way that which caused the loss of
weight indicated by the balance."

Now I never have supposed that consciousness had weight
or was itself space occupying. I regard consciousness as a
function of the personality either here or hereafter, and the con-
tinuing personality as necessarily a space occupying substance
or organism.

Mr. Carrington presents cases that he has observed, supposed
to prove weight loss unaccounted for by known channels of loss
in persons still continuing to live, one case losing five pounds,
which he asserts could not be accounted for by present day
physiology. And then he naively asks, " Would such a test
indicate that soul substance had been lost." And as naively
adds, " Evidently not, since the man continued to live."

This truly is the " reductio ad absurdam" of my hypothesis.

I pass over those cases noted by him of patients so ill that
they had been given up to die by their physicians and who were
afterwards cured by the Fasting Cure, stated by him to consist
in a process of abstaining from all solid and liquid nourishment for
thirty, forty, fifty days and longer, for he admits that the weight
loss in these cases is accounted for by physiological processes
we already know.

I will merely remark that as a practicing physician such
results procured by starvation in cases about to die appear to
me to be impossible.

In those cases of gain in weight during fasting, and on slight
diet, Mr. Carrington first thinks that they present a physiological
paradox, for the reason that we are supposed to gain our flesh
and weight solely from the food we eat. He goes on to say
" And if more weight is gained than food eaten, how are we to
account for the facts? In such cases, are we to attribute the gain
in weight to added soul substance ? "

Further along he shows unconsciously the needlessness of
citing these cases against my theory, for under the guise of a
hypothetical explanation he rediscovers the well known physio-
logical truth that we gain our weight also from the water we
drink, and admits that the people in the cases he cites had all
the water they wanted to drink, and so accounts for the seeming
oaradox in a way satisfactory alike to science and common sense,

^ar as these cases go my theory is untouched.

Correspondence. 345

And now we come to the " Experimenta Crucis," the case of
a man sealed up for a period of one hour in a metallic burial
casket, losing five pounds in weight during the undertaking, a
loss that Mr. Carrington supposes cannot be accounted for by
anything we know of physiology.

He goes on to say, ** Here then we have a loss of weight that
if recorded correctly cannot be explained by any of the known
laws of physiology, since the person undergoing the test took
no bodily exertion and the loss cannot be due to any of the
known channels of loss. Would such a test indicate that soul
substance had been lost? Evidently not since the man con-
tinued to live." And I would add evidently not even if the man
had died.

Again he says, " Until such cases are in some measure ac-
counted for, it is at least premature to assert or even propose
that an observed loss of weight at the moment of death, is due
to any soul substance or that it has any necessary connection
with soul or consciousness at all."

Now this last case would be the " reductio ad absurdam,"
with a vengeance, of my hypothesis, if it were correctly recorded,
and if it were true that the five pounds loss of weight could not
bt accounted for by a known physiological process.

I would call attention to the fact that this is the only case
cited that has anything to do with the subject of discussion — a
loss of weight not accounted for by known channels of loss — all
the other cases cited satisfying even Mr. Carrington that they
could be accounted for by physiological knowledge already in
our possession.

Is this case really beyond explanation by known physiological
processes? I scarcely think so. I think I can in some measure
account for it, and thereby excuse my temerity in proposing my
hypothesis.

What would happen to a man sealed in a metallic casket for
one hour?

Unless he were in a state of catalepsy, in which metabolism
is at the lowest ebb compatible with life — and this man could
not have been cataleptic, because he was to smile through the
glass head plate at the witnesses of the test — he would sweat in
a way that he never sweat in his life before, and sweating, he
would lose weight.

Now because of this sweating, before it can be said that in
his case there was a loss of weight not accounted for by known
channels of loss, some questions would require consideration and
answer.

For instance. Was he weighed immediately before and after
in the clothing he wore during the hour of incarceration, or did

346 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

he discard the clothing worn in the casket for another suit
before weighing in?

If the latter, were the clothes worn in the casket weighed
separately, immediately before and after to determine the differ-
ence due to sweat moisture?

If not so immediately weighed after the hour, how long a
time elapsed before they were so weighed and what was the
temperature of the room in which they were exposed, this, in
order to take account of the evaporation of moisture?

Was there any soft substance as cloth or blanket lining the
casket to ease his bones as he laid there?

If so, was that weighed before and after to determine amount
of sweat moisture absorbed by it?

If no such lining was in the casket was the moisture neces-
sarily deposited on the inner surface of the casket collected and
weighed ?

Unless the weight loss was determined by weighing casket,
man and all, when the test began, and before he was released —
and that is not recorded — all the foregoing questions would
require answer before we would even be justified in assuming
that the weight loss in his case could not be accounted for by
the commonly known physiological process of sweating.

Moreover, this case was reported by Rear-Admiral George
W. Melville in his discussion on the submarine boat for the
bearing it had on the question of how small a quantity of air a
man could live on for a certain period of time. There is nothing
to show that the experiment was primarily undertaken to prove
any matter of weight loss accompanied by all precautions against
error. Incidentally a loss of tive pounds was noted, and the
amount is so great that I have no doubt, if the subject of and the
witnesses to the experiment were interviewed, they would fur-
nish testimony, confirming my explanation of how the weight
was probably lost.

D. MacDOUGALL, M. D.

DR. MacDOUGALL'S REPLY.

I have read with interest Dr. MacDougall's counter to my
criticism, the primary object of which was to elicit such a
reply. I wish only to state that, so far from looking upon
Dr. MacDougall's reply with hostility, I should be only too
glad to see him prove his point — as against my theory — ^and
hope that future experiments may indeed vindicate his posi-
tion. My reply was merely to call attention to certain objec-

Book Review. 347

tions to the theory thafwould have to be faced, and the fact
that Dr. MacDougall has been enabled to prove my criticism
harmless strengthens his own position, — which no one is
more delighted to see than myself.

HEREWARD CARRINGTON.

BOOK REVIEW.

The Psychology of Religious Belief. By James Bissett Pratt, Ph. D., As-
sistant Professor of Philosophy in Williams College. New York, The
Macmillan Company, 1907.

This little book has some unique features which are mainly confined to
the last part of it. There are three divisions in it, Definition, History and
Description, The first endeavors to define feeling, belief, and religious feeling.
The second gives the historical aspects of several religions ; and the last repre-
sents the present status of religion generally. In this fermenting stage of
thought the book ought to prove a very helpful one, tho we imagine that men
will hardly escape the consequences of present scepticism on these matters any
more than did the Greeks at the time of and after the Sophists, and for the
same reason.

The first chapter analyzes the "psychic life" into its elements, with a
marked tendency to recognize as most important certain subliminal elements,
which it is the fashion to-day to admit and emphasize — ^tho it took a genera-
tion to remove scepticism as to their existence. We are not sure but that we
have some sympathy with the sceptics. For instance, the author quotes Pro-
fessor James' statement about the infant's consciousness as a " buzzing bloom-
ing confusion," when we might safely ask any one what he knows about an
infant's consciousness? It seems to us that the nature of an infant's con-
sciousness is about as determinable as the other side of the moon. It is cer-
tainly a matter of pure conjecture and theory. It does not seem to us that
any reli^rious consciousness is going to be illuminated by going back either to
the infant or to the subliminal, both being indeterminate facts. The subliminal
is still a subject of investigation and, to us, seems only a big hole into which
to throw mysteries, with the implication that they are explained, when the
fact is that it means only that they are not explained or intelligible in terms
of the only facts that are clear to us. But we do not, on this account, dispute
the value of admitting a consideration of the early mental life and subcon-
scious phenomena into religion, tho we do not think they have any more im-
portance there than anywhere else. We do consider, however, that this im-
portance is inferior to that of the conscious elements, and it only invokes
mystery to lay the stress on the less known facts in human experience when it
is the clearly known which we are seeking.

The second chapter on the nature of belief is interesting enough, and
rightly recognizes the prior importance of this factor in any discussion of

348 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

religion. But there is a tendency, prevalent among other writers also, to re-
gard feeling as the main factor in religious belief. It seems to us that the
author does not adequately reckon with the equivocations of this tenn. This
fault, however, is not his alone. It is to us the fundamental delect of alt
discussions of religious belief. To us, religious belief, as belief, does not
differ from any other type of acceptance of truth. Belief is " assent to propo-
sition," if we may adopt Green's statement, and, in religion, it is precisely the
same mental state that it is in physics or politics. " Feeling " is also the same
phenomenon in all human experience. As remarked, the term is a most
equivocal one. There are three distinct meanings attaching to it. The first
is a name tactual sensation; the second is a name for emotional states or the
inner reflexes of pleasure and pain accompanying perhaps all other mental .
activities; and the third is ineradicable contnction. With writers who want
some word to express the last datum in settling doubt, they use the term
" feeling." But this is only to admit defeat where a reason is rightly ex-
pected. In discussing religion, however, we require to know which of these
conceptions of the term is meant. The vague abstract import which involves
all three is worthless and makes it only a word, which, in fact, has no useful
content. If» we mean the third import of it, the term is not distinguishable
from " belief," and to make it the second is to use a term which does not
distinguish religion from politics or art.

There is, to us, too much of a tendency to treat religion as something
tmique and wholly different from other mental attitudes. It may have a
certain cohesiveness or tenacity which some other beliefs do not have. But
if this is true it is because of certain interests which avail to intensify our
allegiance rather than because of any difference in kind in the mental elements
constituting it. The ** feeling " element of religion, as we said, is the same as
the emotional aspect of all other objects of human concern. It is the one
fixed aspect of it. The variable element is its object or content This is
determined by the modifications of "belief" which individuals undergo be-
tween infancy and maturity. If we are seeking a defence of religion, it must
lie in the determination of a valid belief in regard to certain real supposed
fundamental beliefs, and not in the determination of an emotional element
If we can fix some belief, we shall have no difficulty in determining what
" religion " can be held and made permanent. But as long as its content is
variable and subject to the scepticism which falls to every stage of belief
which claims dogmatic assurance before the mind can have it. there will be
discussion of its problems.

The last four chapters are somewhat new on this subject. They still show
the defects of a discussion which does nothing to prove the objects which arc
supposedly essential to " religion," but they are important in the study of the
evolution of what passes as " religion." Far be it from us to depreciate their
value, as we do not forget that we must understand psychologically how
doubt on religious matters rises if we are to remove it The chapter on the
development of belief in youth is especially important in this connection. But
I am sure that all who are seeking some criterion for the determination of a
legitimate object of religious belief will not find it here. If we are going to
make the religious view of life depend on the existence of a personal Deity
and the belief in a future life, we should see that we do something more than
analyze past and present conceptions. We must fix the content which we
recognize. Otherwise we shall have to change that content and adopt some-
thing having more stability than theism and a future life. What will that be ?

Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 349

ADDITIONAL MEMBERS.
Fellows.

Balfour, The Right Hon. A. J.. M. P.. F. R. S., 4 Carlton Gardens,
London, S. W., England. (Honorary Fellow.)

Crookes, Sir William, 7 Kensington Park Gardens, London, W.,
England. (Honorary Fellow.)

Dana, Dr. Charles L., 53 West S3rd Street, New York City.
(Honorary Fellow.)

Floumoy, Prof. Th., The University, Geneva, Switzerland.
(Honorary Fellow.)

Hall, Prescott F., 60 State Street, Boston, Mass,

Rayleigh, Lord, Terling Place, Witham, Essex, England. (Hon-
orary Fellow.)

Richet, Professor Charles^ 15 Rue de L'Universite, Paris, France.
(Honorary Fellow.)

Schrenck-Notzing, Dr. Freiherr von, 2 Max Joseph Strasse,
Munich. Germany. (Honorary Fellow.)

Members.

Beaman, Middleton G., 211 The Cordova, Washington, D. C.

Cowan, James J., P. O. Box 456, Colorado Springs, Col.

Driscoll, James F., c>t. Joseph's Seminary, Yonkers, N. Y.

Hcald, Pusey, M. D., 409 Washington Street, Wilmington, Del.

Lauritzen, Severin, Holte, Denmark.

McChesney, John T., Everett, State of Washington.

Podmore, Frank, 6 Holly Place, Hampstead, London, N. W.,
England. (Honorary Member.)

Putnam, Dr. James, 106 Marlborough Street, Boston, Mass.

Seewald, Henry, c|o Clinton H. Blake. Braydon Street, Engle-
wood, N. J.

Sherwood, Mrs. Warner, 465 West 157th Street, New York City.

Taylor, Lieut. Col. G. LeM., 6 College Lawn, Cheltenham, Sur-
rey, England. (Honorary Member.)

Westcott, Mrs. Clarence L., 243 West 75th St., New York City.

Associates.

Clinton, De Witt, City Treasurer, 22 City Hall, Worcester, Mass.
Cole, Irving W., 200 Lancaster Ave., Buffalo, N. Y.
Collier's Weekly, 416 West 13th Street, New York City.
Dallas, Miss Helen A., " Innisfail," Cross Roads, London, N. W.,

England.
Franklin Institute, The, 13-17 South Seventh St., Philadelphia, Pa.
Hall, Ira C, Interlaken, Seneca County, N. Y.
Humiston, W. H., 228 West 114th Street, New York City.
Hutcheson, Dr. R. W., Rockville Centre, Nassau Co.. N. Y.

350 Additional Members:

Kendall, Mrs. Fredeiick W., Hamburg, N. Y.
Knowlton, A. E., Haddon Heights, New Jersey.
Lay, Mrs. H. L., 131 West Third Street, Oil City, Pa.
Matthies, W. W., Walden, N. Y.
Moore, Mrs. T. M., 78 Summer Street, Buffalo, N. Y.
Norton, John B., Lawrence, Long Island, N. Y.
Oldham, E. E., Treasury Department, Washington, D. C.
Place, J. M., 239 North Capital Street, Washington, D. C.
Potter, R. B., 160 Fifth Avenue, New York City.
Reed, Mrs. A. H., Brandon, Vt.

Revue du Spiritisme, 40 Boulevard Exelmans, Paris, France.
Richardson, C. G., Springfield, Vermont.
Shirley, James, 43 Cedar Street, New York City.
Sterling, Edward C, Redlands, Cal.

Tatum, Lawrence W., 424 New York Life Bldg., Chicago, 111.
Toole, John R., Bonner, Montana.

Townsend, John R., P. O. Box 307, Colorado Springs, Col.
Trask, Spencer, 54 William Street, New York City.
Wild, C. R., 209 Bell Block, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Word, The, Theosophical Publishing Co., 244 Lenox Ave., New
York City.

Total Number of Fellows, Members and Associates (May,

1907) 534

Additional Members (June) 48

Total 582

Vol I.— No. 7. July, 1907.

JOURNAL

OF THE

rican Society for Psycliical Researcli

CONTENTS

GnsKAL Aktxclxs : pagb

Omar Khajrram and Psychical Re-
learch 351

Editoriai. - 3CT

IifCiDEzrrs : paob

Dream—Colxiddeiital - - - - 361
MediuflAistic—Predictioiia - - - 363
Apparition 368

COUCBSPONDBNCB 370

OMAR KHAYYAM AND PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.

I By Hereward Carrington.

There is a universal belief that every poet is also more or
less of a prophet, and that in his verse there are to be found,
if considered rightly, certain inner, mystical meanings ; and
that he displays a large amount of insight into, and knowl-
edge of the essence of things, which is unobtainable by the
writer of prose, and, in fact, such knowledge does not come
to any but the true poet. That there is more or less founda-
tion for this belief cannot be doubted, and it can readily be
proved, I think, by considering any of the works of almost
^ny poet we might care to discuss. This is, of course, par-
ticularly the case in such avowedly mystical verse as that of
Omar Khayyam, which deals with the deepest philosophical
problems and shows that whatever the personal character of
Omar mig-ht have been, — ^whether ascetic or not, — he was at
least a profound thinker, and had a thorough knowledge of
the science, the philosophy and the metaphysics of his day.
So deeply involved in mysticism is some of Omar's verse in-
deed, that it is almost unintelligible to us, unless read in the
light of the understanding which a study of metaphysics, of
philosophy and of psychical research phenomena gives to us.
Unless we are acquainted with the fundamental problems
much of his poetry loses its true significance ; but that Omar

352 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

Khayyam saw deeply into the inner meaning and mysteries
of things there can be no question, — as I hope to make clear
in the following brief discussion of some portions of his verse.
The great problems of death and futurity; speculations as to
the nature of the Deity ; his relation to the world ; fatalism,
idealism, and many other deeply important questions were
touched upon by Omar and treated in a manner which shows
that he was acquainted with the great problems that had to
be solved, though he had no means of solving them- Let us
consider briefly some few of the stanzas in the light of mod-
ern philosophy and metaphysics, and see if we can interpret,
and render somewhat clearer, the inner meaning of some oi
these verses; and at the same time show how deeply Omar
had studied and considered these great questions. Modern
science has, of course, discredited the idea that heaven and
hell are definite places, but rather accepts the idea that they
are (if they exist at all), certain states or phases of develop-
ment of the individual, who reaches a certain degree of per-
fection according to his own efforts, — as the result of his
work, and of that only ; that is, he must himself achieve any
results that are obtained, and while there are doubtless cer-
tain degrees of happiness which are attainable in any future
state (granting that such exists), it is now generally recog-
nized that such happiness or development can only be
reached as the result of our own individual effort, and not
because of the partial preference of some external Deity.
All life, all development, all growth must come from within,
it must well upwards and outwards from a central spring of
being; that is, we must always look inward instead of out-
ward for the real spirit that animates the universe, and if
this inner subjective being is spiritually blind, and lacking in
apprehension and understanding, then no amount of external
knowledge can impart such understanding, for " real knowl-
edge is spiritual and can only be perceived by the spirit"
Now, bearing this in mind, consider how beautifully Omar
expressed these thoughts when he said:

''I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some Letter of that After-life to spell :

And by and by my Soul retum'd to me.
And answered, " I Myself am HeaTen and Hell : "

Omar Khayyam and. Psychical Research. 353

Heav'n but the Vision of fulfiU'd Desire,
And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on Fire,

Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves,
So late emerged from, shall so soon expire."

Now let US consider this a little more fully. It will be
noticed that Omar describes heaven merely as " the visiofi of
fulfilled desire," — not the fulfillment itself; that is, it is al-
ways a little beyond our actual realization and grasp, en-
forcing in us a continued upward striving and effort, rather
than the cessation of all such active effort — which its actual
realization would bring. Consider now the second part of
the verse, " Hell the Shadow from a Soul on Fire." Now, in
the first place, anything that is " on fire " does not itself cause
a shadow, it causes light, and for a shadow to be caused,
there must be an illuminated surface, and an opaque body
introduced between the light and the illuminated surface,

" Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves,
So late emerged from, shall so soon expire."

Now I have just said that a shadow is not cast on dark-
ness, but on an illuminated surface, — so that this verse would
seem to be the exact opposite of the truth if we cannot find
some other meaning than that which the actual words con-
vey. Let us see if some other interpretation is not possible.
Let us suppose a gas jet illuminating the side of a wall. It
would, of course, cast light and not shadow, as I have just
stated. But suppose that a far more brilliant light than the
gas were suddenly to be introduced close behind the gas,
what would be the effect? The outline of the gas flame,
being so far less brilliant, would cast a shadow, though itself
a light, and would act as an opaque body! Perhaps this
verse would seem to signify that our own conscious life and
will is so far less mighty and significant than that of the con-
sciousness and will that is supposed to include us — ^that our
own minds but serve to dim and disfigure and render less
clear of expression the all-embracing consciousness of which
we are presumably a fraction.

Now let us consider Omar's conception of the Deity him-
self. Omar very clearly held to the theory of pantheism
which our modern philosophical doctrine of idealistic monism

354 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

enables us to understand more thoroughly than was possible
in Omar's time; subject and object, perceiver and perceived,
are but the two varying aspects of the one underlying cause
which is equally both; and that Omar recognized this is
clearly proved when he said, in speaking of the Deity and the
drama of human life :

" Which for the pastime of Eternity,

He doth Himself contrive, enact, behold."

That Omar was a fatalist goes without saying, the idea of
extreme fatalism running throughout his verse and rendering
it at times, almost despairing in tone, at others rendering him
indignant or scornful. Fatalism is a different thing from the
modern philosophical doctrine of determinism, though both
are opposed to free-will. We have, apparently, of course,
free choice in all our actions ; that is, we are enabled to do
what we want to do; but determinism says that we are not
enabled to do anything of the kind. The fact that we can
apparently do so is mere illusion, and that our action is in
every case determined by our previous actions, environment,
mode of life and external and internal influences and causes;
— so that, when any action is performed, it is the result of
these influences and their necessary result ; t. e., we are never
enabled to choose freely, or perform any action that is other
than the direct and inevitable result of previous actions,
thoughts and environment. If we could get a large enough
mental perception and grasp, as it were, of such forces acting
upon ourselves, we could see how it is that in other cases, our
action is necessitated, and not the result of deliberate choice
or free will, — though the illusion of free will will always be
present. This differs from fatalism, as I understand it, in
that it does not necessitate the planning or intervention of
any external mind or Deity — other than the mental and phy-
sical forces of the universe; while fatalism supposes an ex-
ternal mind which has planned everything from the begin-
ning, and each action and event as it occurs, is consequently
inevitable, and has been planned from the very creation of
things. Doubtless such thoughts prompted Omar to write
Verse 73 :

Omar Khayyam and Psychical Research. 355

" With Earth's first Clay They di<l the Last Man knead.
And there of the Last Harvest sow'd the Seed :

And the first Morning of Creation wrote
What the Last Dawn ofi Reckoning shall read"

This idea that the universe is planned out, as it were, in ad-
vance is somewhat different from the doctrine which main-
tains that everything has, in a sense, actually happened, — we
merely perceiving such actions as we reach certain states or
stages in our journey through life ; that is, all future events
are actually existent at present, but the reason that we do not
perceive them is that we have not yet arrived at the point of
view that enables us to perceive them, — nor will we until the
appropriate time has arrived. Perhaps we may be enabled
to grasp this idea a little more fully when we consider the
following simple analogy. Let us suppose ourselves on the
hind platform of the rear car of a train which is travelling at
a more or less rapid rate of speed. As the train moves, we
perceive, at either side of us, altered scenery, and the country
seems suddenly to be changed, — new scenes coming into
view and others vanishing. But it will be seen that in this
case the landscape newly perceived is not actually created;
it does not come into being at the moment we perceived it ;
it has always existed, and the reason why it has not existed
far us before, is that we have not been in a position to per-
ceive it until that moment; and when the landscape recedes
in the distance, it is not annihilated, but remains unaltered ;
but for us it has vanished — for the reason that we are no
longer in a position to perceive it. Thus it is that events
may perhaps exist in some real or " noumenal " world which
are only perceived by us, as phenomena, at certain definite
stages, or times for their perception. That we are, our-
selves, but phenomena, shadows, — the result, perhaps, of the
thought of some intelligence or Deity, was strongly sug-
gested to Omar, and he meant to embody that thought,
doubtless, in the following stanza :

" We are no other than a moving row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go

Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held
In Midnight by the Master of the Show."

356 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research. l

At times Omar grew weary of his speculations and his
philosophy, and relapsed into the attitude either of indigna-
tion at the Deity who had set such insoluble problems for
man to solve ; or, at other times, he would advocate drowning
all thought and reflection in the wine cup ; while at still other
times, the humorous aspect of the whole affair would dawn
upon him with irresistible force, and he advised us to retire
to some secluded spot, where we could forget all such prob-
lems and

" In some comer of the hubbub couched
Make game of that which makes as much of thee ! "

Yet Omar, in the end, wished soijie such inspiration as faith
or knowledge might give, and, after his renunciation of phil-
osophy, and advocacy of peaceful retirement and contempla-
tion, as the only method of gaining happiness, and the re-
nouncing of one's self to the inevitable, — still he raises a
piteous cry for further knowledge, for more light, for greater
inspiration and support when he wrote:

" Would but the Desert of the Fountain yield
One glimpse — if dimly, yet indeed, reveal'd,

To which the fainting Traveller might spring.
As springs the trampled herbage of the field ! '*

This shows that Omar was after all but human, and that in
spite of his renunciation of philosophy, and his advocacy of
forgetting all but the present moment, he still desired and
craved that for which all mankind craves — for which it con-
tinues to strive. Whether or not our knowledge -will ever
be such as to place these problems beyond the realm of faith,
and into that of certitude remains to be seen ; but the meand
by which this can best be acomplished are, I think, the pcr^
sistent and continued investigation of the problems that
arise in connection with the study of Psychical Research,

Editorial. 357

EDITORIAL.

The second number of the Proceedings has just been issued
and contains the following papers :

The first article is A Case of Clairvoyance, by Professor
William James. The second is A Record of Experiences by a
gentleman who desires his name withheld from publication.
The next paper is entitled The McCaffrey Case and embodies
an investigation of a remarkable dream^ purporting to reveal
buried treasure and which resulted in the finding of papers
apparently representing great value. The last paper con-
tains the results of an inquiry regarding the alleged move-
ment of physical objects without contact, and is so entitled.
A third number of the Proceedings will be issued in the au-
tumn.

It is important to mention one correction necessary in
the June Journal, as it affects the sense of the statement so
clearly. On page 339, lines 19 and 24 should read as follows,
the mistake in altering the original sentence being due to
the proof reader, and the error in spelling " credible " being
due to the printer after the proofs were sent in. Other errors
in the number we allow to stand. But the sentence referred
to should read as follows, as it was in the original manuscript
and proofs :

" As a scientific body, pretending to employ strict scien-
tific methods, we have to present such a mass of evidence as
will satisfy the fundamental criterion of truth, which is suffi-
cient frequency in the occurrence of alleged phenomena to
make them credible as a systematic feature of the cosmic
order/'

358 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

INCIDENTS.

The Society assumes no responsibility for anything pub-
lished under this head, and no indorsement is implied except
that it has been furnished by an apparently trustworthy con-
tributor whose name is given unless withheld at his own re-
quest.

The following case illustrates very clearly the extent to
which we have to be on the alert in regard to the trust-
worthiness of alleged facts. I quote it solely because it is
so a propos of the precautions which are so necessary in this
work.

New York, May loth, 1906.
On May 3rd I received the following letter which explains
itself. It was written as indicated the previous day.

May 2nd, 1906.
My dear Dr. Hyslop:

For some years I have successfully developed various oc-
cult powers in a number of people; recently I learned of your
great investigating work, and I would be pleased to meet you
and present to you one of my subjects if this is agreeable to you.
Kindly let me know.

Very truly yours,

L. s. M .

I replied that I would be very glad to meet the man with
his subject. On May 8th I received a reply from the gentle-
man saying he would call with his subject on May loth. He
promptly reported with a lady whom he introduced as his
wife. He was to call about 10 A. M., but some mistake in
cars detained them until about 10.30.

When they arrived I proceeded to interview them in re-
gard to their phenomena and ascertained that the man had
received communications from the sun and had perfectly defi-
nite views about things in that place with a definite theory
about the conditions which made life possible there. Appar-
ently both were sincere about their experiences, and I ex-
plained the difficulties of accepting anything of the kind
without careful records which the- • had jig^^ept.

i

Incidents, 359

I explained to them Flournoy's case of alleged communica-
tions from the planet Mars. The conversation then turned
to what the man had done to experiment in this way and he
explained that he had used magnets and crystals to bring
about his results. I may add here that I saw magnets and
crystals in his apartment afterwards.

After our conversation ended regarding the communica-
tions from the sun the man remarked that he heard I was in-
terested in communications from the dead and said he also
received such in his experiments. I expressed my interest
in trying for this immediately. This we proceeded to do.

The man lit some incense and placed it in a metal cup to
burn for a few minutes and his wife threw back her head on
the back of a chair. In two minutes she was apparently in
a trance and the communications began in a somewhat in-
terrupted manner. It is not important to give the record
as it was wholly irrelevant to me and showed neither perti-
nence nor any indications of previously acquired knowledge
about me or my relatives when this would have been very
easy on their part. But at the close the woman suddenly
cried out: " Wake me up quick; Arthur is dead." I marked
the time, 11.30 A. M. The man awakened the woman and
she said that the child* at their house was dead. She was
sure of it and that they had left him well. She said he had
had a fall some two weeks previous. The man appeared some-
what concerned and wanted to calm her. I remarked that I
thought they would find the fear unwarranted and the whole
thing was a result of subliminal action. But I asked them
to let me know if anything had taken place when they arrived
at home. The next evening I received the following letter
from the man.

May nth, 1906.
My Dear Sir :

The following is the explanation in regaid to the cry: "Ar-
thur is dead." The little boy had climbed onto his swing and,
without holding himself, swung back and forth and sideways;
suddenly he fell, and so unfortunately that his head struck an
iron toy. The nurse tried for some time to revive him, and
when she did not succeed, called to the maid to phone for the
doctor, adding " Arthur is dead."

360 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

She knew the time was about ii :30 because that was our lit-
tle baby's feeding time and she had prepared some food after
telling the maid to phone.

The boy regained consciousness after some hours. He may
recover.

Very truly,

L. s. M .

On the day of the experiment it was not made clear to
me that the child was not their own, but that was my im-
pression in the excitement, as something was said indicating
that it was a relative's. On receiving the above letter, how-
ever, I resolved as soon as possible to go and make a per-
sonal investigation of the facts. I could not go until Sunday,
May 13th, which I did.

On arrival I went up stairs to their apartment and was
met at the back door by the wife and she directed me to the
front door, where I would be admitted. I went back and
was immediately met by the man. The apartment was a
very modest one and poorly furnished. Magnets, crystals,
etc., were about the room and I soon explained my errand.
The man said the child had gone to New Haven and was
much better. He said the family lived in the next apart-
ment and I expressed a desire to see feome one in the family
He remarked that he thought they would not like to have
the facts published. But he thought his wife might persuade
the family to tell the facts, but he said his wife had gone out
and left him alone at home and that nothing coul(f be done
then about it. He was willing to -write to me about the
matter and let me know the facts.

The reader can see that there was certainly one falsehood
in the story, as I had met the wife at one door and the man
at another, he not knowing that I had seen his wife, and she
being the same person that had been with him at my resi-
dence. It was clear that he did not want me to ascertain the
exact facts in the case.

I quote this instance as a good illustration of the ordeal
through which every allegation has to pass before it can be
accepted as evidence of a supernormal coincidence. Every
individual must expect an investigation of incidents with the

Incidents. 361

view to soQie discrimination between them and such as are
untrue. We are constantly exposed to dangerous pitfalls
in these phenomena, and newspaper lying and misrepresenta-
tion have made it tenfold more difficult than was formerly
the case to authenticate alleged experiences. There was
probably in the instance above recorded a desire on the part
of the persons who came to me to obtain employment in
this work or to sell their wares. They were too ignorant of
the subject for us to treat this desire as in any sense criminal.
I am quite willing to concede that it was excusable under
the circumstances. But whatever the apology for such ac-
tion, the circumstance does not serve as a defence of the alle-
gations made. The story only shows what must be ex-
pected of a scientist if he is to obtain any credit for phenom-
ena claiming to be supernormal in their character. No inci-
dent can be accepted at its superficial value and no person
can expect the credulous acceptance of his experiences with-
out some measure' of investigation to authenticate their al-
leged character. Respectability and general honesty may
suffice to obtain notice for one's statements, but these char-
acteristics at least must be determinable as a condition of
scientific consideration.

JAMES H. HYSLOP.

DREAM.— Coincidental.

The following is an account of a dream which might have
been instrumental in its own fulfillment. The account shows
that the subject of it evidently acted on the suggestion which
the dream occasioned. The writer states in a separate letter
that the dream occurred in 1903. The narrative was written
on October 21st, 1905, and was sent to The Woman's Home
Companion for publication there with a large number of other
coincidental phenomena, but was turned over to me by the
Editor. Inquiry of the gentleman resulted in confirmation
of his story. The coincidence does not involve any proof
of the supernormal, but is one of those incidents which we
can accept as quite credible in itself, tho exposed to scep-
ticism if any large theories were dependent upon it. It has
the character of a premonition, but lacks the evidential qual-

362 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

ity of such, not because the facts of the dream are dubious,
but because the fulfillment is a possible result of auto-sug-
gestion. In other words, the incident is one in which we
may accept the facts as true and yet question any super-
normal explanation that might be offered. The incident
occurred in connection with the Methodist Episcopal Church
of Middletown, Pa., in the experience of a former pastor
there who writes from a later pastorate.

" One night — I think it must have been a Wednesday night—
I dreamt that I was standing in my pulpit on a Sunday morning
(for I am a preacher) preaching to my people. Everything was
very vivid and real. I saw the whole surroundings of church
and congregation clearly. I was urging the people to labor for
the salvation of their friends. Before closing 1 turned my re-
marks to any unsaved who might be present. I said : ' Unsaved
one! what have I been doing? I have been urging these people
not to labor to save themselves, but to labor to save you. Now
should you not be interested in yourself.* Then, stepping from
the pulpit to the altar rail, I said, holding out my hand, is there
one who will come and by taking me by the hand declare by
that to this congregation that he will become a follower of the
Lord Jesus. Instantly a man, 70 years of age, by the name of
Mr. H , walked out and took my hand.

" When I awoke in the morning the dream was clearly in my
mind. Thinking about it, I said, now I do not believe in dreams
particularly, but here I have made a sermon in my sleep. I will
repreach that as nearly as I can. I will act out the whole dream
as I had it. I will step down and hold out my hand and give the
same invitation as I did in my dream and see what comes of it.

" Without telling any one of the matter I prepared accord-
ingly. When I appeared before the congregation that Sunday
morning I was encouraged by seeing the man of my dream in
the congregation. I went through with the sermon as I had
been doing in my dream, and when I held out my hand and
gave the invitation, to the astonishment of the large audience

and my delight Mr. H , the man of my dream, came out

and took me by the hand, as I had seen him do in my dream.

" He was a man well thought of in the community and many
efforts had been made by others to get him to declare himself
for Christ and join the church. When a former pastor heard of
the matter he sent me a letter congratulating me that I had
managed to win him.

" Yours in search of the truth,

"REV. R. H. CRAWFORD,"

Incidents, 363

The incident beyond the mental control of the narrator

was the actual conversion and action of Mr. H ; but

we might regard this as a chance coincidence, tho many
similar coincidences might suggest something else. With a
view to ascertaining how much chance might have done in
the case I asked the narrator the extent of his acquaintance
and experience with the man and he replied that he had met
him as a pastor meets his people, had visited his family, and
spent half an hour or so in conversation with him. He had
also met him on the street and saw him at other times at ser-
vices. Mr. H sat on the extreme left of the minister

and seven seats from the front or about the middle of the
tiers of seats. Apparently, therefore, there were influences,

internal and external, acting on the mind of Mr. H to

declare himself on religious matters and we might assume
that the occasion had made the minister specially earnest and
impressive, so that we can imagine the coincidence to have
been one of chance, in so far as the supernormal is concerned,
tho possibly causal if we take the natural course of things on
the occasion. This does not erase the coincidence nor re-
move its interest as such, tho it may deprive it of evidential
importance in favor of more than the usual causal agencies
in such instances. But the main fact is that we do not re-
quire to be sceptical of the facts in the case. The doubt must
apply to any alleged explanation, and so the incident comes
as one which it is not difficult to believe in respect of its con-
tents and apparent significance.

A letter from a gentleman to whom Mr. Crawford re-
ferred me says that he knew this Mr. H as a man entirely

indifferent to religious matters.

MEDIUMISTIC— Predictions.

The next case has more striking coincidences in it, and
represents an experiment with a medium. I can vouch for
the trustworthy source of the narrative as it comes from an
uncle of my own. He is a man of scrupulous religious be-
liefs and habits, belongs to the Calvinistic faith, and has never
been in the habit of either consulting or experimenting with

364 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

mediums. This adventure was the result of a casual resolu-
tion, and, to make the experiment, my uncle visited a town
forty miles distant from his home. He is a business man
known as any similar man would be known in his community,
but is not publicly known in the country in which he carries
on his business. He is of a quiet and retiring character,
makes few intimate friends, and is not widely known as a
man in any respect. He is interested specially in religious
and missionary matters and is an intelligent person regarding
these and his business affairs. He would not be known in
the circle of persons interested in psychic research, as he has
carefully kept such interest as he may have in the subject
from the knowledge of his most intimate family connections
as well as others. Consequently he would not be readily
known in mediumistic circles. The following experience was
told me last summer, as remarked below, and was afterward
written out for me. The dates will show the relation of the
narrative to the fulfillment of the predictions made to him.
As I have remarked, my uncle visited a town forty miles dis-
tant to have his experiment, casually undertaken, and ac-
cording to his statement to me did not reveal his identity at
the time. The following is his account of the results given
from memory :

, , Oct. 24th, 1905.

Mr. James H. Hyslop,
New York City,
My Dear Nephew:

Your letter of Oct. 2nd came duly to hand, but I have been
so exceedingly busy with all the details of our new building and
moving our business into it, that I have not had time to answer.

The medium with whom I talked had never seen nor heard of
me and could have no idea of who I was, or anything pertaining
to my individuality. She sat me down at a small table, sat her-
self down at the other side, took mv right hand in her right hand,
put her elbow on the table and her left hand over her eyes.
Everything was still for two or three minutes, when she re-
marked : —

" I see you returning from a long journey ; you are coming
from the East. I think your journey extended beyond the ex-
treme eastern part of our country into some foreign land." She
immediately added, " You will start on another journey in a few

Incidents. 3t>5

^yh going toward California." I said, " No, I am not going
on any such journey." " Yes, you are," was the prompt reply ;
"you may not know anything about it now, but you will start
not later than four or five days at the farthest. You will go to
meet a gentleman on important business matters. You may not
go as far as California, but I see you already on your way to
meet them."

This interview was Friday P. M., and on Sunday evening I
received a telegram requesting me to meet three gentlemen 150
miles south of this place.

She resumed : — " Your mother is in the spiiit world. You
were her favorite child. She died suddenly when you were
away from home. You were very ill yourself when you received
the message to go to her. You were scarcely able to travel, but
she died the day before you reached home. She left a loving
message for you. She should not have died. The physicians
did not understand her case at all ; had they done so, she could
easily have recovered."

She also said : " I see two elderly ladies in your home. One
of them will soon be in the spirit world." This came true two
or three weeks later in the death of Aunt Cora.

" I see in your home a young woman, 30 or a little more,
years of age. She will start on a journey toward the East in a
few days. The sooner she goes the better. Some people are
trying to make serious trouble for her, but she will succeed. I
see another young woman about the same age — these two are
about the same height, both fair complexioned, both have blue
eyes. The second one has with her two little children ; she will
leave your home in a few days, going in the opposite direction."

I do not remember further details of the conversation, but
all of the statements she made which were not true at that time
came true in a very short time, just as she said they would.

Your aunt continues about as when you were here. She
keeps up wonderfully well. Remember us to^our little boy.
Your affectionate uncle,

J M

519 West 149th St., New York.

Oct. 30th, 1905.
I received the above letter this morning. It is from my
uncle who told me personally these incidents when I visited

him in this summer during August, the last of the

month. He has omitted one incident from the present nar-
rative which I shall add. It related to his wife, my aunt by
blood. The medium also predicted her death in two years

366 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

from the time of the sitting. She is an invalid and has been
an invalid for many years. Also my uncle does not state in
his letter when the sitting was held. I asked for dates as far
as possible. But in the conversation with me on my visit he
said the sitting was about a year ago, and only a short
time before my aunt Cora died. The prediction in her case
came true, as the account indicates, and it remains to be seen
if the second one occurs.

JAMES H. HYSLOP.

June 7th, 1906.
On May 28th (1906) I wrote my uncle to make inquiries
in regard to the details of his record and the following are
the results.

My uncle had returned from Palestine only a short time
before. The telegram called him into Oregon, south of his
home. He was the favorite child of his mother. She died
very suddenly with what the doctors diagnosed as congestion
of the liver. It was the opinion of a friend that her life
could have been saved and it wa§ admitted that her case was
not fully understood. My uncle was very ill at the time he
received the message to come to her bedside and was scarcely
able to travel. He arrived after her death.

His two younger daughters were at his home at the time
of the sitting, and one of them had two children: the other
none. There was no reason at the time to suppose that any
one was making trouble for her in the east, but when she
arrived in the east to which place she already intended going
she found that some one was making trouble in a very im-
portant matter. The other sister left in a few days after the
sitting and went northwest. The sitting was held about
October ist, 1904. My aunt Cora died on October nth.

IQ04, and my aunt on April 24th, 1906.

Takinsr the account as it stands I think no one would sup-
statements of the medium were due to guess-
-e most probably not due to chancje of any kind.
W€ could attribute therri to any supernormal
quiring information will depend on conditions
specified in the account and that are, perhaps.

Incidents. 367

not now determinable. Personally I think it most probable
that my uncle was not known by the woman to whom he
went. He was not personally known to her nor was she to
him. But there are other important weaknesses evidentially
in the account which make it unnecessary to urge the possi-
bility of previous knowledge by the medium. I shall enu-
merate these defects which a critic and sceptic would most
naturally put forward.

( I ) No contemporary record was made of the facts. The
whole account was given to me more than a year after the
occurrence of the events. (2) There is no consideration of
what the sitter may have said or asked on the occasion. Nor
is there any indication of the irrelevancies and errors which
were most probable in the unremembered statements of the
medium. Apparently only the hits are recalled.

A most important fact to be remarked in regard to the
experience is that my uncle, according to his own specific
statements in answer to inquiries, had never visited a medium
before in his life and went in this case in consequence of some
suggestion of an acquaintance, and went himself only out of
curiosity. It was not with any serious purpose, scientific or
otherwise, that he went. But as the matter was suggested
to him by what a friend had told him, I had to make in-
quiries to ascertain whether this person might have con-
sciously or unconsciously deceived him by imparting informa-
tion to the medium. The response to my inquiries brought
out the fact that the friend's name must be kept confidential ;
that he was not a spiritualist ; that he was a person who could
be trusted entirely and would not deceive any one in the
manner conceived ; that my uncle had known of his visiting a
medium but once, and that the friend did not suggest visiting
the medium by any advice or recommendation. The sug-
gestion was but that of example.

While the incident cannot be quoted as possessing evi-
dential value of itself it certainly represents to me a justifir
cation for inquiry. I happen to know my uncle well enough
not to turn the facts away in the usual manner in which the
scientific man, perhaps excusably, disregards similar narra-
tives. The incidents are hardly due to chance or guessing

368 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

and if we were absolutely assured against a natural scepticism
we might use the incidents as evidential of something super-
normal. I shall not give this value to them taken alone. But
they at least invoke the spirit of inquiry. Personally I am
inclined to believe that the incidents are supernormal, tho I
could not adduce the facts as satisfactory proof of this char-
acter. It is my experience with instances which are eviden-
tial and which exhibit the same characteristics that induces
me to classify the phenomena as most probably supernormal
and of the spiritistic type.

It may strengthen this judgment of them to mention the
results of some experiments which I have since had with
two mediums. It was impossible, under the circumstances,
for either of them to have had any previous knowledge of
the facts, as they involved events that had occurred three
thousand miles distant and the mediums were not profes-
sional, one of them in no sense of the term, and the other
limiting her work largely to friends.

In the latter of these cases the name of my uncle was
spontaneously given and I was told that his wife was pres-
ent. When I asked for her name I received at once the cor-
rect name. A few weeks afterward, when experimenting
with Mrs. Smead, whose case has been briefly described in
the Annals of Psychical Science, my father purporting to com-
municate, indicated that this aunt had been mentioned
through another medium and gave her name. The most in-
teresting feature of the message was the fact that her name
was spelled wrongly, but in precisely the way in which this
name had been spelled in the Piper experiments, tho not
referring to this aunt. Through another private case the
same mistake was made in spelling this name.

APPARITION.

The following incident is one of several which I have re-
ceived from the same person. The present one is substan-
tiated by the person who witnessed the occurrence.

Incidents. 369

Versailles, Ind., April 17th, 1907.
Prof. James H. Hyslop, New York.
Dear Sir:

Inclosed you will find a true experience of mine, which you
can use. While it is nothing startling, to me it was exceedingly
interesting, and you may be able to get something out of it.

Respectfully,

ANNA STOCKINGER.

It was one evening in August, two years ago, when Miss
Nellie Schwartz, a trained nurse, and I sat in our room with the
lamp light burning dimly. We had not been seated long when
I saw the form of a young man enter and stand at her right as
she sat opposite me. I described him to her, first telling her
his name. He said his name was Ollie Warren. I heard both
names distinctly given together. Never had I heard the names
before. His clothes were faded and brown and seemed too
loose for him, for he looked shrunken in them, so very thin was
he. As he stood there I became conscious of a strong feeling of
tobacco, but I couldn't get rid of the thought of tobacco. I
thought, Oh, if he would only leave. Such a strong feeling of
repugnance came over me that I said to Miss S., " Oh, I do wish
he would go, I don't like to have him here, I wish he would
leave ! " As she said nothing, I felt stronger than ever that she
was to blame for his presence, and I fell to blaming her
(mentally). Then he spoke. "Tell her," he said, "I have
come to thank her for what she did -for me in my last hours,"
and he looked so shamefaced all the while he stood there, that I
almost began to feel sorry. " Nellie," I said, " I believe he must
have had consumption, for he is so very thin." " No," she said,
"he passed out with delirium tremens! I could not resist his
piteous appeals and so gave him small amounts of alcohol, con-
trary to the doctor's orders, till he passed away." I saw him
stand there exactly as a remorseful man would, looking so
shamefaced that I would have felt sorry had not this great and
unusual feeling of repugnance borne down upon me at sight of
him. After delivering his message he disappeared. His nurse
had never to my knowledge mentioned his name in my hearing
nor had she spoken of him, and she did not recollect the young
man nor the part she played till this reminder. If this state-
ment is not all correct, as she remembers the incident, she will
append a statement to that effect below this one of mine.

ANNA STOCKINGER.

I can truthfully say the above written by Miss Stockinger is
absolutely true, and many more incidents equally as interesting.

(MISS) N. SCHWARTZ.

370 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

CORRESPONDENCE.

[The following correspondence explains itself and will
serve as the correction of an error that unwittingly crept
into our printing of the article by Dr. MacDougall. — Editor.]

Philadelphia, June loth, 1907.
Dr. James H. Hyslop,

No. 519 West 149th St., New York,
Dear Sir:—

The May number of the Journal contains a statement of ex-
tremely interesting experiments by Duncan MacDougall, M. D.,
in weighing the bodies of persons at the moment of death.
There is one point which I do not understand, and seems to in-
volve an error either in the determined weight lost, or as a mis-
print. On page 239 the report states " The loss was ascertained
to be three-fourths of an ounce." On pages 267, 268, it is stated,
" It took the combined weight of two silver dollars to lift the
beam back to actual balance. On weighing these they were
found together to weigh three-fourths of an ounce."

Now, silver dollars weigh exactly one ounce each, unless they
have lost slightly by long usage ; and therefore the weight of the
two silver dollars showed a loss of two ounces at the moment of
death instead of three-fourths of an ounce.

Yours respectfully,

A. C. KNOWLTON.

Haverhill, Mass., June 12th, 1907.
My Dear Dr. Hyslop:

In answer to yours of yesterday, would say that the words
" two silver dollars " were a misprint. It should have read,
" two silver half-dollars." It read so in the manuscript, but your
printer made the error. The two silver half-dollars, if new,
would have weighed an ounce, but they were not new ; one was
coined in 1858, and is quite badly worn ; the other was coined in
1894, and is slightly worn. I weighed them again this morning,
and found they weigh together 376 grains, which was the exact
weight, as I remember the weight of the test. That is so near
three-fourths of an ounce (360 grains) that I called it so. These
half-dollars have lain in my safi ever since that night of the first
test. They were used merely as a matter of convenience, as I
did not want to disturb the shifting weight on the beam after it
fell when the patient died. I began with smaller coins placed on
the scale, but finally brought the beam back to the balance with
the two silver half-dollars. Sincerely yours,

D. MacDougall.

Vol L— No. a August, 1907.

JOURNAL

OF THE

American Society for Psychical Research

CONTENTS

Gbhbkal Abticlbs: paob

PhikMophy. Pwrduloffy and Psjchfcal
ReMaicb 371

A Remarkable Medlumistic Ezperi-
eooe - 382

Editorial : paob
The CattaoUc Church and Psychic Re-
search 394

Book Rbvxkw 397

TRBa8URBK*8 RBPORT .... 400
ASOXTIONAL MbMBSKB .... 401

PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHICAL
RESEARCH.*

By James H. Hyslop.

The only excuse that I shall offer for bringing the sub-
ject of psychical research before the Philosophical Associa-
tion is the invitation of the secretary to do so. I would not
have voluntarily proposed it, as I have enough to bear in
being known as thinking about it at all. But I am glad that
an involuntary opportunity has occurred to present some
features of the subject to a group of men who are, or ought
to be, as much interested in the outcome or promises of its
work as the scientific psychologist. I grant that many will
think — and from the traditions of science may rightly think
— that the subject belongs more properly to the experimental
psychologist and hence to the Psychological Association.
The experimental psychologist, however, keeps shy of it
as yet and will probably not boast of any conquests until he
can come in as the husband of the woman who killed the
bear. The philosopher might well refer me to the psycholo-
gists, and to the psychologists I would go if they were not
joined to their idols. They will not even refer us to the
philosophers, but pass by on the other side, and I rejoice to
find that, as in Plato and Aristotle, the metaphysician widens
his interest until we may say again — I hope with similar ap-
proval— Homo sum : humani nihil a me alienum puto. Besides I
recall that the Philosophic Association is itself the outcome

• Paper read before the American Philosophical Association, Dec. 27th, 1906.

372 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

of a protest against ignoring that meaning of phenomena
which keeps the spiritual vision, Plato's theoria, the philo-
sophic passion, turned toward the wider horizon which even
ordinary sense experience is forever revealing in the alembic
of nature. This is ample excuse for you and for me to men-
tion the residual facts of experience in the presence of those
whose business it is to welcome any circumstance that may
discover the movable limits of human knowledge. It is
something, too, again to appear before a court which is will-
ing to accept a suit that presumably belongs to another
jurisdiction. I refer, of course, to Psychology.

I can well appreciate the embarrassment of both parties
in the petition to take up the quest of investigation in this
matter. In the first place, the problems of psychic research,
on one side of their nature at least, are scientific ones and
for that reason are presumably excluded from the territory
of philosophy and metaphysics. They are in certain respects
at least apparently psychological. But as psychology in
recent years has protested against any and all metaphysics
and philosophy as irrelevant to its issues, an excuse may be
sought to exclude psychic research from its purview in spite
of certain affinities with that field. Experimental psychol-
ogy especially alleges that its function is not to study the
soul or to ascertain whether it exists or not, but to ascertain
the uniformities of co-existence and sequence in the phe-
nomena of consciousness, regardless of all questions whether
these phenomena are functions of the brain or incidents in
the life of a spiritual subject other than the brain. It will
insist on such an assumption that it is no business of psy-
chology to search either for a soul or its destiny, having to
be content with the laws of mental phenomena and not to
feel concern for their meaning either metaphysical or ethical.
This, of course, is high ground and I would not contend
against it, but for the human interest attaching to all facts
aflFecting psychology of any kind. I should not so much
insist that the experimental psychologist should make the
problem one of his as I would ask at least tolerance for the
work and respect for the field in which it must be done. If
he will not admit it as a part of his own territory he must at

Philosophy, Psychology and Psychical Research. 373

least not claim a monopoly of scientific interest in the com-
paratively narrow field of sticking pins into human subjects
or measuring mental time.

On the other hand, the problems of psychic research in-
volve the method of science and psychology, even tho the
conclusions be those at least bordering on metaphysics. If
we are to assume that philosophy has nothing to do with
scientific method we may well understand why it should has-
ten to absolve itself from all duties in the premises, and so
try to relegate a disagreeable task to psychology. But if
philosophy will have none of it, we can make the same de-
mands as upon the psychologist, namely, that no prejudices
be admitted against the study of what must result in con-
clusions of interest to both philosophy and psychology.

The whole difficulty between the two groups of interest
may be stated thus. Psychic research undoubtedly must be
ruled by scientific method, and the scientific method of psy-
chology at that, while its object is not the professed object
of existing expjerimental psychology. Its object and con-
clusions are related to those of metaphysics, and this too
whether the conclusion be positive or negative. The prob-
lem of psychical research regards the existence and destiny
of the soul, while experimental psychology avows that it has
no interest and no duties in such a problem. Let us grant
its narrow conception of its interest and restore philosophy
to the function which Plato gave it, namely, of comprehend-
ing all human interests in its folds, and widen scientific
method, or even philosophic method, sufficiently to disap-
point psychology of its most precious possibilities. We have
only three alternatives. First we may assume to study the
problem as one vital to philosophy and allow psychology to
go its blind and ignorant way; or, secondly, we can insist
that psychology widen its scope sufficiently to comprehend
what it so passionately eschews, or thirdly we may insist, if
neither will accept the challenge, that both, after accepting
a divorce from each other, may allow a dowry to the issues
that gave rise to both of them. The method of the one and
the object of the other, however, ought to devise a jiwcUis
Vivendi for psychic research that may assure its pursuits.

374 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

Philosophy on any conception of its field and duties can
hardly ignore the problem, as any conclusion which either
shows the limits of knowledge and duty or points to an ex-
tension of their meaning, cannot fail to be of interest to its
vocation. Psychology, on the other hand, can hardly avail
to invoke any human interest unless its results are commen-
surate with the most general problems of human life and
will have either to incorporate psychic research in its terri-
tory or welcome the attainment of conclusions that will make
its own pursuits useful and effective. But whether in junc-
tion or distinct from both of them, psychic research deserves
the encouragement which the object of the one and the
method of the other makes imperative.

With this statement of general principles I may briefly
summarize the aims of the work which this paper repre-
sents. The new Society for Psychical Research for this
country is the sequel of the death of Dr. Richard Hodgson
and the consequent dissolution of the American Branch of
the English Society. It was the intention of the persons
organizing this new movement to have carried out their
plans in conjunction with Dr. Hodgson, but his death pre-
cipitated the organization of an independent body before the
organizers were completely ready to put their plans into
effect.

It was apparent from certain types of phenomena with
which investigators came into contact that the field of psy-
chical research prosecuted by the English Society needed to
be greatly extended and to be made to take in the wide terri-
tory of Abnormal Psychology and possibly some borderland
phenomena between Physiology and Psychology. The per-
sons interested, therefore, resolved to organize investiga-
tion upon a larger scale than the parent Society. This led
to the incorporation of the " American Institute for Scientific
Research." This title was given it because the largest part
of its field was more or less independent of that occupied by
psychic research, or the supernormal. In this organization
it was resolved to divide the territory into two divisions.
Section " A " which should concern itself with Abnormal.
Psychology, including hallucinations, secondary personality.

Philosophy, Psychology and Psychical Research. 375

functional mental diseases, hypnotism and all phenomena re-
lated to various nervous troubles and the therapeutic methods
necessary to understand them, and Section " B " which
should occupy itself with the alleged supernormal experi-
ences of telepathy, apparitions, clairvoyance, premonition,
mediumship, dowsing, etc. The third section is merely an
idea which it is hoped to realize later and relates to the
problems of heredity, prenatal influences, the latter of which
is without any adequate scientific support, if it has any
grounds at all, and with these some problems on the border-
line of both them.

If the problems which the American Institute wishes to
take up had only a scientific interest there would be little
excuse for presenting their aims before the Philosophical As-
sociation. But at least one field of the inquiry is vitally
connected with philosophic issues. I refer to the problem
of a future life. I refer to this, however, because I wish to
recognize the general conception of the public and others
regarding the work and at the same time to correct some of
its illusions. It is time, after nearly twenty-five years work,
to admit that there are and have been many additional ques-
tions before the psychical researcher, and to urge that some
suspense of judgment has still to be maintained regarding
actual achievements. But among the problems which the
Society has investigated and wishes still to investigate more
thoroughly is that of a future life, and the human interest in
it is such that we cannot escape the conviction of most peo-
ple that we are concerned only with that. And I admit that
it is this problem which is most intimately associated with
the question of metaphysics. It is connected therewith be-
cause it involves the problem of existence beyond the reach
of sensory perception in its normal functions. The estab-
lishment of any such conclusion must affect philosophy in
its primary duties very profoundly and must lay the founda-
tion of a very large reconstruction of things metaphysical,
ethical and religious.

Perhaps the question would have had less importance for
many other ages. But the civilization of the West has lived
so long within the shadows of a belief in a future life that

376 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

the materialistic and agnostic reaction must naturally carry
with it the loss of many ideals cherished under the domina-
tion of that religious view of the world, and whatever we may
say about the proper attitude of man toward the order of
the cosmos; whatever abuses have characterized the belief
in the past, and whatever strength human nature needs from
a firm knowledge of the present and its place in individual
self-realization, nevertheless if we wish to understand what
value nature places on personality in comparison with other
things in its alembic, we must come to some conclusion about
the probabilities of this future being a fact or not. Far more
than the satisfaction of a college professor is at stake. He
can be trusted, with his salary and culture to enjoy himself,
free from the bitter struggle for existence. He thinks he
has nothing to pay to the ideals and hopes of the dull mil-
lions that toil foredone at the wheel of labor, and can be
independent of their wants and hopes. A day of reckon-
ing will come, especially when that multitude holds the fran
chise, and little grace will be shown to the philosopher who
cannot reinstate some spiritual ideal which makes intellect-
ual and aesthetic life worth while. Short shrift will the
man have who cannot offer a quid pro quo for the leisure and
opportunity to delve into the mysteries of the world. The
economic ideal has possessed modern civilization and I think
history shows clearly that, however necessary certain eco-
nomic advantages may have for a certain self-realization,
they do not in the least guarantee spiritual culture when
they are possessed by a materialistic public. Something of
the meaning of things beyond mere sensory life, especially
for the unfortunate classes, who have as high spiritual ideals
as we may cherish and yet have not found the chances for
their realization.

Assuming then that the philosopher will admit the legiti-
macy of the problem, if not its importance, we may suggest
the conditions under which it has to be solved. \\'e can no
longer rely upon a priori speculation for our views of the uni-
verse. \\'e are subject to empirical methods. The day of
dreaming and reasoning without premises in facts has gone
— gone at least for the time, and some of us think it must

Philosophy, Psychology and Psychical Research, 377

remain past. This aside, however, the fact is, that no philos-
ophy in this age has any chance for survival which does not
base itself on empirical facts. When it comes to the im-
mortality of the soul we ask for evidence within the limits
of scientific method or we surrender it and teach Stoicism
as a refuge from the accusation of cowardice. But for
positive belief, if we insist on having any interest in the
problem at all, we must go to empirical facts. It is that
method for which psychic research stands and it will simply
turn any other hope out of doors.

Nearly twenty-five years of collecting experiences in va-
rious types of supernormal phenomena, if they do not justify
the claims of proof for a future life, certainly make it a plau-
sible hope and it remains for those who claim any intelli-
gence and human interest to see whether this plausible hope
be an illusion or not. We are fast arriving where scepticism
must be on the defensive. Scepticism has long been re-
spectable without the use of any other than a priori methods.
That is no longer its immunity. It will now have to give
an account of itself by the patient study of facts or slink
away into disrepute.

This briefly explains the situation to-day, and it is the
excuse for asking an interest in the solution which certain
facts promise to give to the larger hope, as I think Tennyson
called it. We are not ashamed to discuss Plato and Soc-
rates in this matter, and why not the issue itself. Are we to
be forever playing about historical conceptions and have no
truth of our own to hold? Must we evade the primary issues
which even the most ethical types of the Greek would not
evade? I. think not. At least the task should be as re-
spectable to-day as then, and if it is not so, it is because
philosophy has grown too aristocratic in a democratic civili-
zation to accept its responsibilities.

The actual work which this organized investigation in the
English Society has accompished, and which it set out to
accomplish, is the collection of a mass of facts, real or alleged,
just as you wish to interpret it, bearing on the issue which
I have defined. Previously the alleged phenomena were
ignored and received no recognition within the ranks of

378 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

orthodox science, and naturally enough obtained the repu-
tation of having no importance. The case was precisely
like that of meteors. These astronomic phenomena were
ridiculed by scientific men precisely as they now ridicule
apparitions and telepathic claims. It was the same with
travelling balls of electricity and hypnotism. In all of them
it was the untutored mind that made the discovery and the
scientific man opposed and ridiculed it until the facts forced
him to surrender. The analogy between the phenomena
which proved the existence of meteors and those which at
least apparently prove a transcendental spiritual world is
very close in the fundamental characteristics which illustrate
both their strength and their weakness. These are their
sporadic nature. It required the collective force of many
scattered incidents to prove scientifically the existence of
meteors, and it requires the collective mass of supernormal
phenomena to give scientific weight to the claims of a spir-
itual world which so rarely intromits its influence into the
material world at points that can have evidential importance.
Now every one who understands scientific method must
admit the right of scepticism when he deals with some iso-
lated apparition or mental coincidence which may claim to
represent supernormal events. Measured against the total
mass of knowledge which bears no indication of such extra-
ordinary claims, it is natural and justifiable to resist the spec-
ulative claims of the spiritualist, even tho the isolated fact
is extraordinary enough to excite interest. But it is not
so easy to justify the same kind of treatment for a large col-
lective mass of similar facts occurring under conditions that
seem to exclude chance from their explanation. Unfortu-
nately the scientific dogmatist has been able, if not to ex-
plain away, to diminish the evidential value of sporadic in-
stances of apparitions, mental coincidences, and mediumistic
phenomena, and, finding that he might resist individual in-
stances as indications of very large theories he has neglected
the collective weight of many facts not so easily attributed
to illusion, hallucination, or chance coincidence. It is this
latter circumstance that makes out the whole case of the
xhic researcher, and it will not do for the Philistine to

Philosophy, Psychology and Psychical Research. 379

imagine that, because he has weakened the evidential im-
portance of an incident, he has explained it. In the end he
has the collective whole to explain, and this has characteris-
tics not readily explicable by the means discrediting the indi-
vidual instance.

Now the Society has collected a vast mass of incidents
representing apparitions, telepathy, clairvoyance, and pre-
monition, all of these terms being mere names for certain
facts, real or alleged, and the collection is impressive enough
to suggest some extraordinary explanation. The work of
Mr. Myers on Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily
Death may be regarded as a summary of all the most reliable
facts of experience which the Society has been able to ob-
tain and more or less to authenticate. It is time to give them
some meaning in the scheme of human experience. The
fact that they are outside the normal or most common expe-
rience of men is no reason for ignoring them. They are no
more outside it than were meteors outside the narrow theo-
ries of the astronomers. The fact that they find a place
in that experience at all entitles them to articulation with
the explanation which will reach them. They certainly sug-
gest conclusions which widen our knowledge of the cosmos
without conflicting with any but a narrowly dogmatic view
of it. That wider view also is no more revolutionary in the
field of psychology than are Roentgen rays, Hertzian waves,
and radio-active substances in the field of physics. The re-
sults then summarize themselves in the possibility of the con«
tinuity of consciousness or human personality, with perhaps
a number of adjunct capacities of mind which are not yet
understood and whose meaning places them on the border-
line of the two states of existence. This result may not
revolutionize philosophy, but it will give that kind of assur-
ance, if sufficiently proved, which enables the practical man
and moralist to reconstruct his method of renovating the
world in its ethical work. I cannot dwell upon this view
of the matter, but I indicate it as the one important outcome
which philosophy has generally tried to support until recent
times, in order to elevate the spiritual ideals of the race.
The substitution of scientific for philosophic method has de-

380 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

prived philosophic arguments on all questions of their for-
mer cogency and it remains for science to vindicate the ideals
which philosophy held with faith. If we are going to con-
trol the vast multitude in a democracy we must be able to
prove the value of personality, and that value will be en-
hanced in proportion to the place it occupies in the scheme
of the cosmos. If it assigns it only an ephemeral impor-
tance we may expect man to look at the matter in this way
as long as he is ethically influenced by cosmic considerations
in the adoption of his ideals. If he finds that nature respects
consciousness and the spiritual life by giving them perma-
nence, as it does to matter and force, we may expect to have
mental and moral influence of the most important type to
direct and cheer conduct. But without these we shall have
just the materialistic struggle for lower satisfactions which
alarms so many earnest thinkers in our present social and
political problems.

Now I recognize that the full claims of the psychical re-
searchers have not been substantiated to the extent of mak-
ing a large number of converts to them among men of the
type of Huxley and Darw^in, and I do not care to apologize
for this in any way. But I would assert with much confi-
dence that the phenomena are frequent enough and suffi-
ciently authenticated to make it imperative that the philos
opher and the psychologist should direct the investigation
instead of following in the wake of it. We have a large task-
before us. The phenomena are exceedingly sporadic, and
those that we can accredit with evidential importance are
still more infrequent. We may have to collect for a cen-
tury before we have done more than prepare the way for the
right sort of experimentation and observation. We muft
not let the rush of modern life push us into hasty conclusion?
or to divert our interest from the phenomena because we do
not discover the full meaning of the cosmos in one day or
through one instance of suggestive fa'cts. We have to ex-
ercise great patience and perseverance, and be content for a
long time in merely collecting facts, or allegations of facts,
waiting for the discovery of those characteristics in a col-
lective whole which we cannot trust in the individual inci-

Philosophy, Psychology and Psychical Research. 381

dent The organization of the American Society for Psychi-
cal Research and the incorporation of the American Institute
for Scientific Research, dl which the Society is merely a
Section, has been made to give better opportunities for the
prosecution of this work and to articulate the study of the
real or alleged supernormal with both normal and abnormal
psychology. If all who have any appreciation of the func-
tions of psychology and philosophy in the community will
just sympathize and assist in various ways with this work
they will not repent their interest or courage. We shall
have to face an age and a press which knows only to make
fun and indulge in ridicule of all serious things. Even the
ministry finds it hard to be serious any longer. The infec-
tion of amusement in every field of activity and of contempt
and ridicule has spread so that those who see the importance
of this work must be able to abide their time, and as long
as facts are on their side he will laugh best who laughs last.

The primary matter for us, however, is the recognition of
a problem which is not without an unusual interest for the
metaphysician, less perhaps for its solution than for its bear-
ing and implications in connection with the larger signifi-
cance of things. Next to this is the clear conception of the
fact that it wall require a long time and great patience to
solve it. The connection between a spiritual and the ma-
terial world, assuming that the former exists, is not so con-
stant or so easy that we can make it either intelligible or
assured by any superficial inquiry. It took physical science
long to lay the foundations for its recent achievements, and
it will take psychic research long to do even its preliminary
work, and we have to obtain both means and method for con-
ducting its investigations on a scale commensurate with the
nature of the problem and with the difficulties which it must
encounter.

Philosophy has had to live in the " dim religious light '"
of faith for the last century and to contend w^ith science for
its existence, but the facts which have been pouring into
recognition from psychic research may enable it to appro-
priate the calcium light of science for conclusions which
science has not been willing to admit. That affords an op-

382 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

portunity which cannot well be neglected. Tho much re-
mains to be done and will require united efforts to attain,
yet enough has been done to set physicists to thinking, paus-
ing even before the facts in their own field which have shaken
the old materialism and opened the way for a priori possi-
bilities which psychic research may prove empirically to be
facts. But in the fulfillment of that task the philosopher will
have to act as a restraint on many popular passions and fol-
lies. If he had kept in touch with the real problems of com-
mon life he could the more easily have led the masses which
are now driving him into the battle. Sir Oliver Lodge, a
physicist, is in the front, and tho he does not approach the
problem with the same equipment as does the metaphysician,
the prevailing habit of giving confidence to physical science
in its conquests, while it has ridiculed philosophy and theol-
ogy alike, will give the philosopher a disadvantage if he does
not assume his own rights, and hence I here plead the obli-
gation of philosophy and psychology to see that they govern
where they have hitherto only been following. I simply
reiterate, therefore, in conclusion, the presence of sufficient
authenticated material to render probable the existence of a
wider horizon for human personality — a horizon which will
enable the moralist and the political ruler alike to deal with
the practical problems of life in a way which no materialist
can do.

A REMARKABLE MEDIUMISTIC EXPERIENCE.
By Dr. J. F. Babcock.

INTRODUCTION.
The following paper is by a gentleman with whom I am
personally acquainted. He is a dentist by profession, tho
retired. The summary here printed is a brief report from the
detailed record which is in our possession, and we hope some
day to print it in the Proceedings. It will not appear eviden-
tial to those who demand proof of the supernormal, and it
ia not published here as evidence of any theory whatever.

A Remarkable Mediumistic Experience. 383

The importance of the paper consists mainly in its illustrative
character of phenomena having great psychological value,
and if the future should show that these and similar phenom-
ena belong to the class with which they claim to belong the
interest in them will not be less for that reason, tho at present
they may have no other interest than illustration of import-
ant psychological phenomena. They are at least illustrative
of dramatic impersonation which do not represent the normal
action of the author's consciousness.

The author some twenty years before these phenomena
occurred had been a student of spiritualistic claims, and had
exposed a number of frauds, tho he also witnessed enough
of what seemed to him to be genuine to think favorably of a
spiritistic hypothesis. He appreciates the scepticism which
naturally interprets such instances as unconscious fabrica-
tion, tho he is at a loss to believe this even in phenomena like
these that lack the primary credentials for a supernormal
source. Witnesses of the gentleman's veracity and intelli-
gence have been sufficient, and I think the paper will supply
internal evidence of sufficient intelligence to make any out-
side inquiries on that point superfluous. The primary prob-
lem is his veracity, and my acquaintance with him and ob-
servation of some of his automatic writing, as well as the
testimony of others, put that beyond the usual rights of
scepticism. I have every reason to believe that no one need
question the gentleman's integrity and veracity, whatever in-
terpretation may be given the alleged phenomena. I have
found the gentleman perfectly open-minded in regard to his
own phenomena, tho desiring to have some other explana-
tion of them than secondary personality.

JAMES H. HYSLOP.

The author published this account for private circulation
and so concealed his identity. I retain that form here, tho
he consents to the use of his real name.

Ssrnopsis of a Remarkable Mediumistic Experience.

In the year 1882 a young professional man, then thirty-six
years of age, whom, for the purposes of this recital, we will

384 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

designate by the name of Doctor Hunt, and who, previous to
this year of 1882, had been a consistent opponent of every-
thing Spiritualistic, was induced by a friend, in whose intelli-
gence he had confidence, and under the pressure of unusual
circumstances, to visit, by himself, and without previous ap-
pointment, a so-ca'led medium : a farmer's wife of the highest
reputation, and who made no public or professional preten-
sions of any sort whatever. The doctor called upon this
lady fully resolved that he would conduct himself ^nd his
utterances in such a way as to neutralize any anticipated at-
tempt at deception, but notwithstanding his precautions, bis
skepticism and his reticence, the interview with this person-
ally unknown medium was fraught with developments of
such a nature as to supply him with material that challenged
his most thoughtful consideration.

Among many incidents of that visit he was informed by a
purported spirit friend named Josie, and who, previous to her^
death, had been a cherished friend, that he was himself the
possessor of mediumistic ability, and that, if he would take
pencil and paper that night and place himself in a ppsition
to write, she would come and control his hand. Skeptical ot
any result, he did so and, after waiting for some time, he
found in a faint way, much to his astonishment, that the
*' Josie's '' assertion of the afternoon was, to some extent, a
true one, since, while not conscious of contributing any vol-
untary assistance, but extremely suspicious of it, his hand
was moved to write more or less of a wholly unimportant
character; but, as time progressed, the control grew gradu-
ally stronger, and his hand was influenced to write free.y
upon many varied topics — as freely as a conversation be-
tween living friends might have been conducted. There
were four of these asserted spirit controls, with all of whom
Doctor Hunt had been upon intimate terms of friendship
during their earthly existence, and their writing, in many in-j
stances, was of a most serious and exhaustive test character;
because of what was written, and the doctor finally had noi
other recourse than to acknowledge and firmly believe in its
spiritual origin, though, inconsistent as it was, he remainecl
as skeptical as before in relation to all other spiritualistic

A Remarkable Mediumistic Experience 385

phenomena, save that involved in his own experience.
Scarcely had this period arrived, however, when the writing
abruptly ceased — cut short off, without the slightest prelim-
inary warning of any sort or nature — and, for twenty-two
years thereafter, not another spirit-inspired word could the
doctor write, though, following the early period of this sud-
den cessation of his ability to write, he tried many times to
bring about its renewal, and less frequently as time passed
on, but he never permitted a whole year to elapse without de-
votinjg some brief portion of it to an attempt to regain his
former ability, always, however, without the slightest re-
sulting encouragement. Thus twenty-two years passed
away, bringing Doctor Hunt, who had meantime retired from
practice, to the age of fifty-nine. During this interval he had
returned to his original skepticism — always barring his own
former experience — and had avoided all intercourse with any
and everything of a spiritualistic nature, content to let such
matters take their own course, but cherishing his personal
knowledge that the ability of a spirit, so called, to return to
this life from beyond the grave, had been proven beyond all
possibility of the least doubt in his own mind; that the ques-
tion " If a man die shall he live again ? " had been most em-
phatically answered in the affirmative, and with this knowl-
edge he was willing to rest satisfied : a knowledge which he
had never communicated to any, even at the time of the
writing's activity, save some three or four personal friends of
a liberal scope of mind. Such was the condition of affairs
when, in the closing days of the year 1904, Doctor Hunt was
prostrated upon a bed of sickness necessitating the care of a
trained nurse. As the period of convalescence lay heavily on
his hands, it occurred to him that it would be a good oppor-
tunity to enter upon a patient and persistent effort to see if
the former ability to write might be renewed, but for some
time there were no results ; the hand remaining passive and
quiescent, even under the most ardent desire, and it was the
doctor's custom to spend an hour or more on each occasion
with pencil in hand, resting on a pad of writing paper, when
suddenly, upon one of these occasions, he became conscious
of an unusual sensation in the pencil hand: a feeling of pres-

386 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

sure and attempt at propulsion of the pencil, which soon after
resulted in an actual, well defined effort at writing, though it
was wholly illegible.

At this time Doctor Hunt very much feared, so slow and
uncertain was the movement, that his strong desire to re-
acquire his former writing ability had involuntarily stimu-
lated a personal attempt to succeed, though he was wholly
unconscious that such was the case. However, no real cause
existed for such skepticism, since a few more trials demon-
strated beyond all question that his hand was again under
control, even as it had been so many years previously, though
its old perfection was much slower than formerly in matur-
ing. During the course of the following several weeks prac-
tice the control — which purported to be that of " Josie," one
of the old 1882 quartette — had obtained a sufficient mastery
over the doctor's hand to write freely upon any topic desired,
but as time passed on many things were written so unlike the
" Josie " of the olden time, that Doctor Hunt was compelled
to become suspicious that some other than " Josie " had as-
sumed her name and was endeavoring to deceive him, and
such was the ultimate development, since it soon transpired,
through their own admissions, that two so-called spirits, a
man and a woman, both of a depraved worldly life and nature,
had conspired to try and deceive the doctor in every possible
manner that a wolf might accomplish in sheep's clothing.
They clung to the use of " Josie's " name and identity, until
a climax was imminent in Doctor Hunt's resolve to volun-
tarily abandon the writing permanently, since it had come
to consist of a series of the most cunningly devised, and
shrewdly developed, deceptions conceivable to human en-
deavor, to say nothing of their future life origin. In the
earlier portion of the writing Doctor Hunt was almost awed
at the fact alone of there being any writing at all, originated
and controlled from such a source; and by the certainty of
the fact that he possessed in himself the ability to communi-
cate with the so-called dead.

This knowledge so impressed him, at this early period of
the writing, that he failed to consider so very much about
-?hai was written, as that any writing existed at all, but, as

A Remarkable Mediuntistic Experience. 387

time passed, and the fact of the writing became an almost
every day commonplace, that feeling of awe lessened, and he
gave more attention to the extreme peculiarities of the sub-
stance of what his hand was being controlled to write. He
would propose tests of various kinds, which were readily ac-
quiesced in by the control, but which would invariably prove
fruitless of result. Other spirit controls would be introduced
by name, some of whom had been known by Hunt in this
life, while others were unknown, but who, upon request, gave
addresses, for the doctor to write to, as proof of their sin-
cerity, but, when written to, the letters of inquiry were al-
ways returned stamped " Unknown," while those with whom
the doctor had formerly been acquainted would write some-
thing so unworthy of them as to excite his strongest suspicion
as to their proper identity.

Upon subseqently discussing these suspicions with the
apparent " Josie " she would cunningly evade all discussion,
or else tender some more or less plausible explanation. Doc-
tor Hunt had for some time been coming to the conclusion
that any spirit but that of " Josie " was the controller of
his hand, and as a final test of sincerity — an ultimatum — ^pro-
posed one of a decisive, but simple character, which was ac-
cepted by the control, with the advance understanding that,
should it fail. Hunt would at once abandon all further at-
tempt at writing. It did fail, and was meant to fail at the
time of its acceptance, having been agreed to by the con-
trol, only as another opportunity of perpetrating an addi-
tional deception, which the control, as subsequent events
amply proved, malignantly delighted in, but this proposed
test, and the certainty that the doctor meant to voluntarily
terminate all further writing, served to expose the whole char-
acter of the plot and conspiracy, (imagine such language as
applicabte to such a source) as entered into by a man and a
woman spirit, whose only, subsequently confessed, motive
was " to have a little fun with you." Upon the failure of the
test last referred to, the rtiale conspirator signed his name as
" Edward J. Wantonness," thus meaning to convey the ob-
vious impression that what had been written had been done
through deliberate wantonness. Subsequently, however, he

388 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

asserted that his name was " Emmons," that he was a pugi-
list during life, and that he met death on the scaffold for a
murder, committed in Kansas. The woman's name was
given as Alice B. Wilson and who, as she afterwards con-
fessed, had been doing the writing under the influence and
control of " Emmons." During the conversation, i. e. writ-
ing, which ensued after these developments, " Emmons "
acted the blackguard in every respect possible, and was in-
formed by Doctor Hunt that he was "no gentleman!" a
self obvious statement, but which after events proved that
" Emmons " took deadly umbrage at. The doctor was at
once disposed to instantly abandon the writing forever, but,
realizing the overwhelming importance of the vital fact of
a spirit's ability to return and intelligently communicate at
all — regardless of the character of the communication — ^and
all which such a fact involved, and which had been unmis-
takably verified as a fact time and time again, he hesitated to
abruptly terminate the writing, and he finally decided that
he would take some weeks to give the entire matter the
careful consideration which was its due. At the end of three
weeks, during which period he had made no endeavor to
write further, Doctor Hunt had firmly decided to abandon
the writing for good, since he could perceive no possible ad-
vantage to be derived from its continuance under such wick-
edly vicious controls, and upon the next attempt at writing,
with " Alice " as the avowed control, he so informed her,
and naturally supposed that such a decision would perma-
nently end the whole affair, but she proceeded to express her
great sorrow for all that had previously occurred; that she
was sincerely repentant for the first time in her whole ca-
reer, either worldly or spiritual ; that " Emmons " had taken
himself away for good; and that, if the doctor caused the
writing to cease at that stage of the proceedings; just at the
time when she had resolved to try and lead a different life,
because events connected with the writing had so deter-
mined her, he would be " assuming a responsibility greater
than he could possibly comprehend." Doctor Hunt believed
that this was but a continuation of the former attempts at
deception, and he informed her that he did not believe a

A Remarkable Mediumistic Experience, 389

word of what she had written, but that in deference to her
pleading, he would give her just one more trial, and accept
the consequences ; but it may as well be stated at this point,
as later, that she fulfilled her every promise from that time
on, giving ample evidence, as the writing progressed, that
her professions of repentance and reform were sincere and
genuine ones. At Doctor Hunt's request she undertook to
write the history of her earth life, one of wickedness and
suffering, without the slightest repentance at the time, only
at the end to be shot by a jealous lover, in a New York
saloon, though the wound was not necessarily a fatal one
in itself. She was removed to Bellevue Hospital, but blood
poisoning occurred, and there she died in the month of Au-
gust, 1883, aged only twenty-two years. " When I awoke "
— as she wrote — " the first thing that I became conscious of
was the most magnificent singing that mortal ears ever list-
ened to," and she then proceeds to tell of her entrance into
the new life, and of the " spirit guide " who met her to con-
duct her to her future place of abode; of the scenes which
she saw, and of her guide parting from her in a locality
which she describes as " excelling in majestic beauty the
most imaginative that the human mind can conceive." All
of which was greatly to her astonishment. " Since my
worldly life had been of so vile a character that I had fully
expected to incur the punishment which the Bible and the
preachers had led me to believe was my due," but she pro-
ceeds to say, her wild life on earth had so formed and per-
meated her nature that she found herself unhappy amid such
unexpectedly beautiful surroundings, and left them " to seek
an environment more in keeping with my worldly nature."
She found it, but it " was too much like an actual Hell to
suit even me," and she wandered on elsewhere.

Her narrative is most interesting and of considerable
length, but during the writing of it that " Cutthroat Em-
mons," as she termed him, who is " as cruel as human suf-
fering," as she at another time described him, would at fre-
quent intervals, and without any preliminary warning, or
stopping of the writing, take possession — as it were — of the
pencil, and cunningly continue her narrative in a manner

390 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

te suit himself. In all such instances " Emmons " would,
ere long, discover himself to Doctor Hunt, through the glar-
ing incongruity of what he wrote, and the doctor would, in
such cases, many times throw the pencil down in disgust
and discouragement, despairing at even obtaining anything,
through the writing, of a sufficiently compensatory charac-
ter to justify its continuance. These incursions of interfer-
ence by *' Emmons," interspersed at times by the vilest and
most brutal personal abuse of the doctor, became so unbear-
able and intolerable that he would, upon several occasions,
have terminated the writing then and there, and was firmly
determined upon doing so, but he was deterred from -instant
action by a desire to secure an opportunity of saying fare-
well to " Alice," something which he regarded as being justly
her due, as she had conducted herself in a strictly conscien-
tious and thoroughly honorable manner, ever since the period
of her early promise and had always expressed herself as be-
ing as much chagrined and hurt as the doctor himself, by
the utterly malignant course pursued by " Emmons," whom
she claimed dominated her in our physical sense, since he
would unexpectedly appear to her at such times of his in-
terferences, and compel her to abdicate her own control
and take possession himself. Although Doctor Hunt would
be strong in his resolution to quit the writing permanently,
when once he had secured the chance to say good-bye to
" Alice," yet when it came, her almost pitiful pleadings to
continue for her sake, and her sanguine assurances that " Em-
mons " would not again return, would cause his resolution to
waver and he would consent to try " just once more."

At other times his resolution to abandon the writing
would be vacated by the appearance of " Emmons " in the
form of an apologist, with an expression of his sorrow for
what he liar) said and done previously, and all because, as he
averred, the doctor had at one time informed him that he
'no gentleman," and he would tender his promises to
"in Interfere. He made several of these apologies
ses, and after them, for a time, the writing, with
le control, would proceed smoothly, when just as
i began to entertain a hope that " Emmons " had

A Remarkable Mediumistic Experience, 391

at last kept his word, he would re-appear as milicious and vir-
ulent as ever before, but patience finally ceased, with Hunt, to
possess any virtue, and he made another attempt to have a
final parting with Alice, which attempt, at her suggestion,
resolved itself into a compromise that for three months there
should be no further endeavor to write a single word, except
that once each twenty-four hours Alice was to come and sim-
ply write her signature in such a mutually agreed upon man-
ner that its peculiarity would be known to herself and the
doctor, alone. This arrangement was made in order to
frustrate any attempt which " Emmons " might make to act
in her name, through an imitation of her ordinary signature.
During this period of three months this plan was carefully
observed, and although " Emmons " made several attempts
to substitute himself, they were invariably exposed through
his inability to write the signature of Alice in any but her
usual style. This however, he was unaware of, but upon one
occasion, near the close of the three months period, he was
permitted to take the control, through curiosity, long enough
to write " My animosity is satisfied. I wish the writing the
best of luck, and that you may become a good medium. I
shall never trouble you again," to which Doctor Hunt made
a suitable audible reply, and the matter rested there. At the
termination of the three months comproriiise, upon October
1st, 1905, the writing was riesumed in a hopeful way. though
the doctor's confidence in the promise of " Emmons " was of
the weakest kind. For the first time there appeared to be an
opportunity to secure some compensatory information
through the presentation of questions, for answer, which
Doctor Hunt had long before carefully prepared in writing,
but which, because of the " Emmons " interferences, there
had been no opportunity to present. Alice, upon being in-
formed of the doctor's desire, willingly consented to reply to
all the questions which might be offered to the " utmost of
my ability," and the same are now in process of being pre-
sented and replied to by Alice, whose answers are of the in-
tensest interest. " Emmons " has remained quiescent, save
upon one occasion, when there was good reason for suspect-
ing him of a design to interfere, and upon two other occasions

392 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

when he prevented Alice from getting control at all, though
he made no attempt to substitute himself. However, in an-
ticipation of such an event occurring, Doctor Hunt has gone
through the form of a " good bye " with Alice, having ex-
plained to her his inflexible resolution to abandon, for good,
all further attempt to continue the writing upon the very
next effort by " Emmons " to interfere, a position which she
most regretfully endorses, but with the assertion that "* Em-
mons,' when he realizes that you are fully determined to
terminate the writing, if he interferes again, will never do so,
as he has said himself that * this writing must go on,' and he
will not take the step that will cause its cessation." It is to
be hoped that such will prove to be the result, indeed, but
judging by all past experience, little confidence can be placed
in an " Emmons " promise, and should he re-appear in any
sort of an attempt at an interference with the free and un-
trameled pursuit of the writing between Alice and himself,
the doctor will at once abandon all further effort to continue
the writing. He will tolerate in himself no further procras-
tination or evasion, and is, for the first time, in a position be-
yond the effect of restraining mental influences, having ar-
ranged his farewell with Alice, to instantly terminate the
writing for good should the necessity again present itself.
Its abandonment will involve a bitter disappointment to Doc-
tor Hunt, but the continued maintenance of his own self-
respect demands that he shall inflexibly adhere to the resolu-
tion he has formed, but in the event of his being called upon
to carry his resolution into effect through the return of this
malignant spirit degenerate, where can the language be found
expressive enough, comprehensive enough, bitter enough, to
use in denunciation of this " Emmons," whose only design
has been to render futile this wondrous gift of direct communi-
cation betiveen the living and the so-called dead. Because of Doc-
tor Hunt's extreme reluctance to encounter the obloquy and
villification of the chronic skeptic — and even the clergy stand
aghast at the temerity of any attempt to prot^e the truth of
their own teachings and their own pulpit theories — he has
thus far refrained from confiding his truly remarkable expe-
rience to any living person, save one, and that one a lady

A Remarkable Mediumistic Experience 393

friend. Such reticence surely precludes all evidence of any
marked desire to render himself conspicuous, but he has
forced himself to the conclusion that an issue of such tre-
mendous human interest is not one which he can properly
regard as a personal one, that the problem, " If a man die
• shall he live again ? " a problem of all the world for countless
ages ; of many a mother weeping for her first born ; of many
a heart-broken father, mother, sister or brother, mourning
for their loved ones gone before ; and of many a coward loth
to die, solved in the aMrmative, is not solved for him alone, and
its solution to be retained concealed in the recesses of his
own brain. Hence this printed synopsis has been prepared —
in lieu of a written letter — with the view of judiciously using
it as an introductory means of securing the attention of one
or more men of science, whose interest in matters of a psy-
chical nature may induce them to wish to read and study the
original MSS. or record of the happenings herein alluded to,
and of which this recital, though somewhat extended, is but
a brief " synopsis."

" Truth is mighty and must prevail," but Doctor Hunt
asks in all sincerity. How? and yet it is as true as God reigns;
as true as that the sun rises and sets; as true as that our
earth revolves ; that Doctor Hunt's hand has been controlled
by some unseen power, to write upon a great variety of
topics with which he was himself personally absolutely un-
familiar. This unseen power calls itself a Spirit of the Dead,
and who, after searching investigation, shall say that it lies,
or is mistaken?

And again Doctor Hunt asks. How can this astounding
knowledge which he possesses; how can the absolute truth,
mighty as it is, which has been revealed to him, be trans-
ferred to the comprehension of another? How?

[In a letter dated May 17th, 1907, Dr. Babcock writes the
following, which may be regarded as an appendix to what
has been published above. — Editor.]

" Because of the malicious action of the spirit " Emmons "
in connection with the death of " Wade Fogg " — as the man-
uscript shows in full — I voluntarily abandoned all further

394 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

effort upon or about March 13th, 1906. I did not again
make any attempt until January 3rd, 1907 — ^when I hoped to
obtain the control of " Alice " with " Emmons '' eliminated.
" Alice ". ostensibly responded, but after enduring a most
aggravating series of nightly obstructions to my effort to
prove that the control was *' Alice " — such as weak control
broken promises-^-constant postponements — and in fact all
kinds of annoyances that could be devised with a plausible
explanation, that would partly satisfy me and serve to keep
me trying — altho always suspicious of the control — it finally
developed that " Emmons " had got in his work again — ^that
he had alone engineered the thing from the beginning, as he
openly acknowledged it when his deceit was no longer pos-
sible, and again when he overwhelmed me with abuse and
vileness. Of course I again abandoned it all (upon Jan. 31st,
1907) and so it has ended."

EDITORIAL.

The Catholic Churth and Psychic Research.

The, newspapers recently reported certain statements
about the lecture of Mr. J. Godfrey Raupert which it is de-
sirable to have set right. The following is an authentic ac-
count of what Mr. Raupert did say, sent to me by Mr. Rau-
pert himself. It is also important to say that we are per-
sonally acquainted with Mr. Raupert and know his personal
views on the matters concerned. It is not necessary to go
into details of what the papers said in misrepresentation of
Mr. Raupert's statements and views, except in one instance.
The New York Timfs went to the trouble to seek information
from Rome and reported by cable a denial of Mr. Raupert's
claim that he had the authority of the Pope. It was notice-
able, however, that the Times denied nothing except that he
had the authority to discuss "spirit photographs." This

Editorial, 395

constructive limitation, without admitting what he did have
authority to do, was calculated to leave the impression on the
public that Mr. Raupert had no such authority to discuss
any aspect of the question. The present ^atement of the
matter was published in the Catholic News of May 25th, 1907,
and was indorsed by Mr. Raupert in a letter to me stating
that it contains " all the facts of the case." I may also say
that two other high authorities in the Catholic Church have,
in personal letters to me, confirmed Mr. Raupert's state-
ments.

The importance of this lies entirely in what it signifies
regarding the interest of those who are in a position to in-
fluence a large number of the human race. AH of us know*
how slowly and conservatively the Catholic Church acts on
all scientific questions, whether rightly or wrongly I am not
implying in this statement, but only that the mere force of
papal example in this matter will exercise a wide influence in
demanding scientific attention to a subject which so many
scientific men have ridiculed.

Mr. Raupert's Lecture Misrepresented.

" It is hardly necessary to state that the reports contained
in the daily papers, respecting Mr. J. Godfrey Raupert and
his lectures are, for the most part, gross mispresentations.
Mr. Raupert, while a member of the Anglican Church, came
in touch with psychical phenomena a good many years ago,
when unique and exceptional opportunities of studying the
subject presented themselves to him. As a result of these
long continued studies, he came to conclusions which have
since been confirmed by high scientific authorities in all
parts of the world. What these conclusions are has been
very explicitly set forth in his well known work, * Modern
Spiritism, a Critical Examination of Its Phenomena, Charac-
ter and Teaching in the Light of the Known Facts.'

"The best informed among psychical researchers have,
as is well known, given it as their convictions — arrived at
after many years of painstaking investigation — that the much
disputed phenomena are in many instances objective in char-
acter and are governed by extraneous intelligences. Among

3% Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

these researchers are men possessing an European reputa-
tion, such as Sir William Crookes, Profs. Alfred Russell Wal-
lace, Sir Oliver Lodge, Prof. Barrett, etc. Quite recently
Profs. Richet, ot Paris, and Lombroso, of Italy, have joined
their ranks. Some of these scientists have accepted the spir-
itistic theory in the narrower sense, that is, that the com-
municating intelligences are really the spirits of the dead,
and that they are making the communications received the
basis of a new system of Christian thought and philosophy.

" Mr. Raupert's studies have led him to the conclusion
that this latter position is built up on a one-sided aspect of
the matter, and that it cannot be maintained when all the
lacs at present known to us are taken into consideration. He
is convinced, not only on the ground of his own observations,
but on that of valuable documentary evidence, which, in the
course of years has come into his possession, that a grave
moral and physical danger lurks behind these psychical phe-
nomena.

" In view of the rapid growth of spiritistic practices and
doctrines, Mr. Raupert was invited some years ago by the
late Cardinal Vaughan to lay his facts and views before the
clergy of the Archdiocese of Westminster and the students
of the ecclesiastical seminaries, so that they might be put in
possession of that full and accurate knowledge of the subject
which circumstances demanded. Mr. Raupert delivered lec-
tures at different centres of theological education in England.

" When in Rome last year in connection with a chari-
table work in which he is deeply interested, Mr. Raupert
happened to have a private audience with the Holy Father
the day on which he was announced to deliver a lecture
to the students of the English College. The Holy Father
hearing about this, and a projected visit to the English speak-
ing world being decided upon, he pointed out to him the
opportunities thus offered of communicating the results of
his researches to the Catholic clergy and student* in the
various countries to be visited, also urging the translation
of his books into other languages.

" After lecturing in Australia, Mr. Raupert was invited,
on his arrival in New York, to visit the diocesan seminary

Book Review. 397

and to tell the students all he knew of the subject and the
present state of the controversy concerning it. He was also
invited to deliver a lecture in New York to a mixed audi-
ence, composed, as he was told, of members of a private
Catholic association. There was clearly, in the case of such
a private gathering, no call for the presence of reporters and
they were not admitted. Accounts, however, of what was
supposed to have been said at this lecture, found their way
into the daily papers, resulting in gross misrepresentation
and in totally false impressions being left on the public mind.
" Catholic readers, however, should form no misconcep-
tions on this subject. Mr. Raupert's views are too well
known, both from his public writings, and from his lectures,
to leave any doubt in any mind as to his attitude in the mat-
ter. It is hoped on a future occasion the substance of the
lectures which he has delivered, may be given, from which
It will be seen that his conclusions are quite in keeping with
the uniform teachings of the Catholic Church, which, while
admitting the reality of spiritistic phenomena, forbids her
members to take any part in their production."

BOOK REVIEW.

The Psychic Riddle. By Isaac K, Funk, D. D., UU D., &c.
Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1907.

In this little book, Dr. Funk has gathered together a number
of psychic experiences of all kinds, combined in the oddest of
fashions, and interspersed with religious and other ideas of the
author. I do not mean by this to insinuate that Dr. Funk's book
is anything but a vefy useful contribution to the subject : and it
should be of much use in one way and another by soliciting the
public's interest in the problem ; by inviting them to join the A.
S. P. R., by calling the attention of the press to the importance
of the subject — in these ways the book is to be commended, and
it may be said that parts of the book are fascinating reading.
The chief drawback to the book is its lack of stability, or of
sdidity, if I may so express it, — in that it reads more like magazine

398 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

or newspaper material than the work of a scientific man and seri-
ous investigator. Still, that might be an advantage, after all,
when the wider public is to be reached, since they do not seem to
pay the attention to the more serious and heavier books which
their scientific character would seem to demand and warrant. I
turn, then, to a resume of the book's contents.

The first two chapters of the book are devoted to general con-
siderations and discussions of the evidence for the occurrence of
psychic phenomena ; answers to objections, and a number of rea-
sons given why the subject should be investigated by scientific
men — which arguments are pretty well known to the readers of
this Journal. The next chapter — " Communications purporting
to come from Dr. Richard Hodgson " should also be well known
to all those who have followed the three articles on communica-
tions from Dr. Hodgson in the Journal — this chapter being de-
voted largely to a study of the same class of phenomena, reprints
from the Journal Reports, etc. By far the most important chap-
ter in the book is that devoted to " The Phenomena Known as
Independent Voices " — this being an account of a number of
seances with Mrs. Emily S. French, of Rochester, N. Y. In this
chapter Dr. Funk describes a number of seances in which a loud,
masculine voice spoke — ^apparently coming out of the air — when
it would have been practically impossible, he asserts, for the
medium to have produced the voice by any fraudulent means.
The reports of these seances certainly make strange reading ; yet,
tho great care seems to have been exercised, they do not, for
some reason, seem to carry conviction to the reader. Various
possibilities seem to suggest themselves,— of such a nature as to
render fraud at least conceivable. Thus, the author puts too
much stress on the moral qualities of the medium, and too little
upon the actual " tests " employed. Hence he slights the phy-
sical possibilities of the case — and it is only the physical possibilities
we must take into account when considering the seances of pro-
fessional mediums.

More convincing, to my mind, is the case of Mrs. Blake, re-
ported by Dr. Funk, with statements and reports by Dr. Hyslop
and Mr. David P. Abbott — whose critical attitude should be ap-
parent to all those who have followed his excellent articles on
slate-writing, which have been running through several issues of
the Journal. The phenomena reported deserve the attention of
all students of psychic problems.

The next chapter contains some accounts of clairvoyant, tel-
epathic, and spiritistic phenomena of a miscellaneous character,
including one very good and well recorded account of a reciprocal
character, in which a physician, after falling into a state closely
allied to trance, appears to a friend at a great distance, being seen
and recognized by him, — at the same time that he himself saw

Book Review. 399

his friend in his natural surroundings, and what he was doing.
The two men's letters, stating their respective experiences,
crossed in the mails.

The last chapter deals with " Some things that seem proven
and some things that seem not proven," and contains a very in-
structive account of Dr. Funk's experience in attempting to
identify a " spirit," which alternately affirmed and denied it had
communicated through certain mediums, on certain occasions,
and gave other contradictory evidence of an amusing nature.
Dr. J. M. Peebles also reported (Appendix B.) a case coming
under his own observation of very like nature. Other Appen-
dices give resumes of Dr. Hyslop's recent experiments; Prof.
Lombroro's conversion to spiritism, and a letter of Camille
Flammarion, stating his continued belief in the supernormal.

HEREWARD CARRINGTON.

INTERNATIONAL PSYCHICAL CLUB.

There has recently been founded in England an " Inter-
national Club for Psychical Research," the object of which is to
consolidate the efforts of various workers in psychical research
throughout the civilized world, and to study the " psychical,
spiritistic and spiritual interests of society." It is proposed that
lectures be given regularly, and a bulletin of the proceedings
published, also regularly. Up to the end of this year, the fees
are to be five dollars entrance fee, and five dollars per annum ;
after this year, ten dollars per annum. Details of the Club can
be obtained by all desirous of joining, by writing to the Editor:
The Annals of Psychical Science, no St. Martin's Lane, London,
W. C, England.

Most assuredly, we wish our co-workers every success in
their undertaking, and can only hope that their enterprise may
prove all and more than its founders hope. Much will depend
upon the spirit in which the investigations are carried on ; since
support from eminent men can hardly be expected if a dignified
and cautious attitude be not maintained. We shall look for their
publications and the results of their work with keen interest.

H. C.

400 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

TREASURER'S REPORT.

The following is the Treasurer's Report for the quarter be-
ginning March 4th and ending June 4th :

Receipts.

Grant from the American Institute $3,000.00

Disbursements.

Publications $1,018.84

Investigations 510.70

Salaries 650.00

Typewriting machines (2) 130.00

Stamps 1 14.70

Printing 19-25

Letter Files and Indexes i7-30

Sundries 53-68

Total $2,514.47

The grants made to the Secretary of the Society amount to
$5,800, and only $5,400 of this sum have been drawn out. The
total expenses for the three quarters from September last have
been $5,789.77, the difference between this and the amount
drawn out of the bank being the Secretary's own contribution to
the expenses.

The following shows the comparison between Receipts from
membership and sales of publications, and Expenses :

Receipts from membership fees $1,290.00

Receipts from sale of publications 46.20

Total $1,336.20

Total expenses $2,514.47

Expenses over receipts $1,178.27

These facts show clearly the need of a largely increased mem-
bership or an endowment. The work has already reached a
point where it would require $20,000 a year to provide for it.
No attention can be paid to the investigations necessary until the
funds have been obtained.

JAMES H. HYSLOP,
Secretary and Treasurer.

Additional Members. 401

ADDITIONAL MEMBERS.

Fellows.

DuflF, Mrs. Grace Shaw, 87 Riverside Drive, New York City.
Francis, Mrs. H. H., 188 Church Street, Middletown, Conn.
Osier, Dr. William, Oxford, England. (Honorary Fellow.)

Members.

Archives dc Psychologic, The University of Geneva, Geneva,
Switzerland.

Boyd, Peter, North American Building, Room 13 19, Philadel-
phia, Pa.

Browne, W. H., 21 Strong Place, Brooklyn, N. Y.

Colby, Howard A., 7 Wall Street, New York City. (Life Mem-
ber.)

Collier, W. A., Jr., c|o Barron Collier, Flat Iron Building, New
York.

Cosby, Major Spencer, War Department, Washington, D. C.

Currien, Dr. A. F., 173 East Lincoln Ave., Mount Vernon, N. Y.

Dodge, Ernest G., 448 Fifth Street, Brooklyn, N. Y.

Green, Mrs. W. F., 25 First Ave., Mount Vernon, N. Y.

Gildersleeve, W. M., Central Valley, N. Y.

Harris, Robert L., 10 East io8th Street, New York City.

Hatch, Wm. M., Union City, Mich.

Holman, E. Elizabeth, 1028 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, Pa.

McDonald, Dr. Ellece, ii>4 West 86th Street, New York.

McLean, Mrs. C, 19 Rich Ave., Mount Vernon, N. Y.

Patterson, J. R., Peerless Portland Cement Co., Union City, Mich.

Perkins, George W., 1 10 South loth Ave., Mount Vernon, N. Y.

Wall, Stephen A., 232 Market Street, Paterson, N. J.

White, Charles H., Center Sandwich, N. H.

White, J. A., 257 Lincoln Ave., Youngstown, Ohio.

Williams, Major C. C, Bethlehem Steel Co., South Bethlehem,
Pa.

Associates.

Andrews, Mrs. Velzora, Quincey, Mass.

Benjamin, Mrs. Charles A., 14 Lynde Street, Salem, Mass.

Bennett, Aubrey, 99 Water Street, New York City.

Bull, Dr. Titus, 504 West 149th Street, New York City.

Carpenter, Harriet E., 16 Kennard Road, Brookline, Mass.

Davis, Jno. W., Clarksburg, W. Va.

Hackley Public Library, Muskegon, Mich.

402 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

Hart, Charles E., 192 Clermont Ave., Brooklyn, N. Y.

Hatfield, Mr. S. P., 838 Bedford Ave., Brookhrn, N. Y.

Hughes, James T., Beauchamp Place, New Kochelle, N. Y.

Hunt, Mrs. W. H., Hampshire Arms, Minneapolis, Minn.

Lewis, David J., Cumberland, Md.

Lundteigen, A., Union City, Mich.

Newcomb, C. A., 625 Woodward Ave., Detroit, Mich.

Perry, Edward Baxter, Camden, Maine.

Pierson, Mrs. A. H., Natchitoches, La.

Platen, Hugo B., 209 Best Street, West, Savannah, Ga.

Ransom, Stephen, 237 West 131st Street, New York City.

Reiber, Ferd., Butler, Pa.

Rogers, Dr. Edmund J. A., 222 West Colfax Ave., Denver, Colo.

Schuyler, M. Roosevelt, 99 Pearl Street, New York City.

Shipley, Mrs. Marie E., 1337 Denison Ave., Columbus, Ohio.

Sullivan, Harry C, Alpena, Mich.

Williams, Mrs. Henry L., 60 Porter Terrace, Lowell, Mass.

Total number of Fellows, Members and Associates (June,

1907) 582

Additional Members 49

Total 631

Vol I.— No. 9. ' September, 1907.

JOURNAL

OF THE

American Society for Psychical Research

GannAi. Akticlbs: pagb

Soul and Body 403

Spirit SUte-Writinff and BiUet Test - 414

EDiToaZAL 438

CONTENTS

Incidents: pags

Dream 432

Olfactory Hallucination • - - 436

CORKBSPONDBNCB 440

SOUL AND BODY.
By J. Arthur HiU.

The unsolved problem of the relation of the soul to the
body is a hardy perennial which bids fair to last as long as
the related terms. In spite of the investigations of the best
minds during some thousands of years, the problem is almost
as far from solution as ever. The widest differences of opin-
ion have existed, and continue still to exist : the ancient who
compared the soul to a player performing with a lute (the
body) is paralleled by many a modern religious thinker;
while the Epicurean and Lucretian idea of the generation
of the universe from a fortuitous concourse of atoms may be
considered as finding its equivalent in the atheistic monism
of Professor Ernst Haeckel. Still, though these parallel-
isms exist to some extent, it can hardly be doubted that
some advance has been made ; and this advance has been en-
tirely due to the psychologists. It was only when metaphy-
sicians began to turn their attention more particularly to the
nature of knowledge and of the knowing faculty, that im-
portant discoveries were made; and in this connection the
names of Hume, Kant, Hamilton, and the two Mills, stand
out in bold relief. We know now that " absolute " knowl-
edge is impossible. We have learnt that we cannot jump
out of our own skin. " What strength of sinew, or athletic

406 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

states of our nervous centres. This is a perversion of lan-
guage ; sensations are states of consciousness, not states of mat-
ter, (Mill's System of Logic Bk. i, Chap. Ill, par. 4.) If I
have pain, the sensation or feeling of pain is a mental fact;
and though it is doubtless accompanied or preceded by some
change in my nervous centres, it is not identical with such
change. The sensation is a mental fact. Later on (p. 65),
we find Dr. Binet contradicting his assertion that sensation
is a state of nervous centres, by saying " My personal opin-
ion is that sensation is of a mixed nature. It is psychical in
so far as it implies an act of consciousness, and physical
otherwise.'' Again, what is my nervous system, and what
are my nervous centres? I infer that I possess these things,
from my knowledge of other human beings' nervous centres,
which I have gained in dissecting them or in reading physi-
ological or anatomical text-books. In any case, my knowl-
edge of my nervous centres has been gained by inference
from sensations. I have no direct sensations from those
centres — t. e,, I cannot dissect, see, and handle my own brain
— but I infer that they are possibilities of sensation. And it
my nervous centres are no more than inferred possibilities of
sensation, it is obviously absurd to say that sensations are
states of those centres; for the proposition is equivalent to
the ludicrous statement that my sensations are states of in-
ferred possibilities of sensation. It is surprising that a psy-
chologist of Dr. Binet's eminence should have allowed him-
self— perhaps through hasty work — to be betrayed into such
a serious confusion.

Now as to the second part of the sentence. We are told
that sensation has an exciting cause, which is unknown to
us, and which we may call the X of matter. This seems to
contradict former assertions, in which we were assured that
all we know of external nature is our sensations. It appears
now, that — in order, no doubt, to dodge the bogey of sub-
jective idealism which Dr. Binet perceives to be heaving in
sight — our knowledge of the outer world is not limited to our
sensations, as we were assured was the case. It appears
that we know the existence of a cause of those sensations —
but, not knowing its nature, we call it X, Here we approach

Saul and Body. 407

perilously near to Spencer's Unknowable; in fact, Dr. Binet
sometimes uses the term (p. 25) even with the orthodox
capital U which has stuck in the throat of so many Spenceri-
ans. And the Unknowable has been shown to be a self-con-
tradictory term. Moreover, we cannot predicate Existence,
pure and simple, of anything. An existential judgment is
possible only when we have grounds for other judgments as
well. If we know that something exists, we always know
more of it than its mere existence. We know something
about it — some of its qualities— or we should not be able to
attribute existence to it. Is not then an unknown X, of
which we know nothing except that it exists, as self-contra-
dictory a term as the famous Unknowable itself ? Dr. Binet
would have been wiser to define Matter as Permanent Pos-
sibilities of Sensation (Mill's Examination of Sir William Ham-
ilton's Philosophy, Chap. XI) and to fall back on intuitive belief
(System of Logic, Book I, Chap. Ill, par. 7), instead of bring-
ing in an unknown but existent X as cause of sensations. It
would perhaps have been better still to refrain from account-
ing for sensation at all. No doubt the fear of being driven
into Berkeley's position (in which the cause of seiisation is
God) was responsible for this other serious mistake. And,
as a matter of fact. Dr. Binet appears to be aware of the
weakness of the position. For, in discussing the difficulty
of matter existing unperceived — which is the bugbear of the
idealism which asserts that esse is percipi — he alleges that
such existence is " a necessary postulate of science and prac-
tical life." (p. 122.) This is an abandonment of the X
whose existence is known; and it amounts to giving up the
problem as insoluble, from the metaphysician's point of view.
And if knowledge of this metaphysical something is impos-
sible ; and if we are to fall back on the supposed necessities
of practical life as justifying the postulate of its existence ; it
is not very clear how Dr. Binet could logically object to
Berkeley's postulate of God as being this X — for such a pos-
tulate is extremely useful in practical life, and has much to
recommend it.

There is, however, much that is admirable in Dr. Binet's
book. The arguments against Materialism are very telling,

408 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

and are, indeed, quite fatal to that theory. If matter — the
brain included — is nothing for us except sensation, it is ob-
viously absurd to say that the brain produces thought ; for,
translated into accurate language, this would be to say that
certain sensations — or rather inferred — possible sensations —
produced all other sensations. And the proposition that cer-
tain possibilities of sensation produce all actual sensations,
though it may be very true, is certainly not very explanatory
or illuminating. And even if matter is something more than
sensation — if there is an unknown X behind phenomena —
materialism is still destroyed all the same, for the ultimate
source of consciousness must be declared to be unknown;
moreover, if there is a noumenon behind the phenomenal
brain, that brain in a sense is not mortal, and the individual
need not perish when the phenomenal brain dies. Thus, in
any case, materialism as a doctrine asserting the necessary
connection of mind and phenomenal brain, is clearly and in-
dubitably false.

The remaining doctrine to be examined is that of psycho-
physical parallelism. To this theory Dr. Binet gives in his
adhesion; though he admits that it is not without its diffi-
culties, which, however, — in his opinion — are not absolutely
fatal to it. Matter has been shown to be, for us, nothing but
sensations, or states of mind. Mind, on the other hand,
cannot be proved to consist of anything except " acts of con-
sciousness ; " for, as Hume pointed out, we can never catch
the mind devoid of content — it is always ideas that we per-
ceive. Dr. Binet, not content with denying the existence of
both matter and mind, even goes so far as to deny the exist-
ence of the "subject," (p.264) which would seem to carrywith
it the logical necessity of utter philosophical scepticism, with
its outcome of complete pessimism. For if no subject exist,
neither does any object ; and the whole pageantry of our ex-
perience is the most baseless fabric of illusion — ^the unreal
hallucination of a non-existent lunatic! But we will return
to this later on; at present we are considering psycho-phy-
sical parallelism. Matter and mind, it appears, are not real
existences, yet there are undoubtedly facts which we call
mental, and facts which we call material. It seems therefore

Soul and Body. 409

possible to treat these two classes of facts separately ; to con-
sider mental and material phenomena as existing in two par-
allel chains. Suppose someone treads on my toe; certain
physical, and possibly chemical, changes occur in the nerves,
and a current carries vibrations to the brain ; whence, in turn,
there issues a back-wash of vibrations which, speeding along
the motor nerves, result in the withdrawal of my toe from
the locality of danger. These are physical or material facts.
Concomitantly with them — or immediately subsequent to the
first vibrations set up — I experience a feeling of pain. This
is a mental fact. Why the two orders of fact occurred to-
gether we do not know. We have no right to assume a
Leibnitzian pre-established harmony, for that involves fur-
ther difficulties; we simply do not know. This is the doc-
trine of psycho-physical parallelism upheld by Bain in the
book already mentioned, and, faute de mieux, seems to be the
theory to which Dr. Binet inclines. But, as he himself
shows, it contains the gravest difficulties — difficulties which
seem to render it absolutely unsatisfactory as a philosophic
answer to the question at issue.

For, when we consider this parallelism, we find that the
parallel chains are not really distinguishable. They do not
exist apart from each other, any more than did Mind and
Matter, the reality of which Dr. Binet denies with such re-
markable sang froid. The facts which I call material, when
nerve-vibrations are set up in my crushed toe, are not really
material, but mental. They are inferred from what I know
of matter, which — as we have seen — is nothing for us but
sensation, which is a mental state. The foot of the man who
has stamped on my toe, though I call it physical fact, is not
really provable to be anything more than a mental fact ; it
consists of sensations in my mind. The foot of the man in
question, the physical changes in my nerves, and the back-
ward movement of my own damaged extremity into a situa-
tion of greater safety, are as much mental as the feeling of
pain which I experience concomitantly. It is true that I re-
gard the former as somehow outside of me, and the pain only
inside of me — that other people can see the foot, etc., but
cannot feel my pain — ^but this is merely the result of habit.

410 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

or of our constitution. We cannot give a philosophical rea-
son for thus dichotomising the unity of our experience. It
is an arbitrary distinction. All physical facts are in the last
resort mental — ^at least in so far as they are, or can be, known
to us. And even if the parallelist demurs to such a sweeping
statement; if he affirms that there is something in physical
facts which is not mental, the addition of which unknown
something differentiates these facts from the purely mental;
he still cannot deny that in every physical fact there is at
least a mental element more or less, for without such element
the fact would not be a fact to us at all. And if he admits
this, the distinctness of the parallel chains is destroyed. The
physical and the psychical have merged, and we cannot dis-
entangle them. The doctrine of psycho-physical parallelism
is, then, not a philosophical doctrine at all. The distinction
between the two chains of facts is purely arbitrary, like the
distinction between physics and chemistry; it is useful as
facilitating psychological and physiological study, in the
same way as the distinction between physics and chemistry;
both consider the same objects to a great extent, but they
consider different aspects of those objects. And to this end it
is useful to make arbitrary distinctions, excluding irrelevant
aspects, narrowing the area of observation, and making ab-
straction of the desired elements. But we must not allow
ourselves to be deceived into thinking that we are explaining
ultimates in so doing. Chemistry and physics do not explain
the ultimate nature of matter; still less, if possible, does the
doctrine of psycho-physical parallelism explain psychical and
physical phenomena. It is simply a mode of abstraction, for
purposes of study; it does not explain anything. And one
cannot help thinking that if Dr. Binet, after pushing his in-
quiries to the last verge, had rested there while he asked
himself what postulates seemed necessary, proof of anything
being unavailable (instead of falling back on " practical ne-
cessities " in such a hurry), he would have renounced the
parallelist doctrine, however " purified." For indeed, his
own arguments suffice not only to " scotch " — which he ad-
mitted— but also to kill it.

And where, we may now ask, is the root-error, the radical

Soul and Body. 411

vice, of this mode of thought ? We seem to have assisted at
the execution, successively, of Matter, Mind, and even ma-
terial and mental phenomena. There is nothing left. The
universe has been reduced not only to Chaos, but to Nonen-
tity. And this is absurd, not only to the plain man, but also
to the philosopher. Where, then, is the flaw ? The answer
is — in the reftisal to postulate a Self. Without postulating a
Self, a Subject, philosophy is impossible. We cannot prove
our own experience, for to prove something is to support it
with something that is better known ; and nothing is better
known to us than ourselves, our own existence. This, there-
fore,is incapable of proof. It is given in our own experience. It
is a matter of immediate knowledge. In all inquiry, we must
start out from the postulate of the reality of the Self. It
must be the basis of any system. The world must be inter-
preted on the basis and analogy of our own existence. And
even those who try to deny the reality of the Self, do not
succeed in their attempt to do without it ; for the denial is an
act, an act implies an actor, and an actor, in order to act,
must first be. In fact, language cannot be used without im-
plying the self's existence ; for Thought cannot exist without
a Thinker, and language is crystallized thought. When Dr.
Binet says that " the mind is the act of consciousness ; it is
not a subject which has consciousness," (p. 264) he is chang-
ing the terminology, but is not getting rid of the thing. The
mind may be nothing but an act; but if so, who or what is
the actor.? There cannot be an act without an actor; and,
accordingly. Dr. Binet brings back the notion of mind under
the name of consciousness. It is possible to juggle thus
with language to an indefinite extent; but we cannot get
behind the reality of the self. It is quite true that there can
be no object without subject, and no subject without object ;
they are correlative terms. But the total Being which I call
myself, and which I know only partially, may be above the
subject-object relation. There can be no husbands without
wives, and no wives without husbands; the terms are cor-
relative, like subject and object. But men and women may
and do exist who are neither husbands nor wives. The sub-
ject-object aspect covers experience as we know it (as the

412 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

husband-wife aspect would cover humanity if all men and
women were married) but it does not follow that this aspect
covers all existence, or that it is the highest possible aspect
in which existence can be regarded. But for our present ex-
perience the subject-object aspect is certainly the highest —
or the most fundamental, shall we say — ^which we can attain
to. Postulating the reality of the Self, the universe of ex-
perience falls into order. Knowledge comes to the self by
its interaction with Matter — ^we must bear in mind that the
distinction between the self and phenomenal matter is log-
ical, not real — and by its interaction with other Selves or
Minds. The ultimate reality which interacts with us, edu-
cating us, spiritualizing us, is God. The world-process is a
process of education, of which we can as yet see the End only
dimly. There is no reason to suppose, and every reason to
doubt, that at death the self, which manifested through that
portion of matter which we call the body, is annihilated. Its
experience may well enough continue, in other forms. We
have seen that matter cannot be said to produce conscious-
ness, though in our present experience it seems to be inevi-
tably linked therewith; consequently, the consciousness
which we inferred as manifesting through our friend's
" body " need not have ceased to exist when that body
becomes what we call dead. I can conceive my own
consciousness continuing to exist after my body's destruc-
tion; I certainly cannot conceive myself existing other-
wise than as a subject, but it is not necessary to try. My
experience may be of objects, as it is now; but those objects
may be different. I may have a body of some other kind
through which to function. Anyhow, I do not feel so com-
pletely at home in the coarse "vesture of decay" which I
now inhabit » as to have any difficulty in imagining myself as
tenant of a different and better one. And the whole trend
of evolution as known to us in our present experience is
strongly in favor of some such notion, even if we leave aside
•tual evidence which exists for the hypothesis of sur-
1 a word, the postulates of God and a future life
e satisfactory, and more philosophically justifiable,
baiting agnosticism of the doctrine of psycho-phy-

spirit Slate-Writing and Billet Tests. 413

sical parallelism. For, as we have remarked, this doctrine
has for its logical terminus the abysses of philosophical scep-
ticism— which is much more than religious scepticism — and
utter, despairing pessimism. The mind that halts in this ag-
nosticism can only do so by refusing to follow out its prem-
ises to the conclusions which are involved. It must decide
that the best thing to do is just to rub along without think-
ing, making the best of a bad job. "Travaillons sans raison-
ner," said Voltaire, "c'est le seul nwyen de rendre la vie support-
able."

But though we may have the misfortune to differ from
Dr. Binet on the points specified, this will by no means blind
us to the merits of the book under discussion. Its sincerity
of purpose, its lucid argument, its dispassionate and undog-
matic style — pure light without heat — are sufficient passport
to the goodwill of every earnest student; and the sincere
hope may be expressed that this translation will be read very
widely by the large public to which this useful series makes
its appeal.

Wensley Bank, Thornton,
Bradford, England.

SPIRIT SLATE-WRITING AND BILLET TESTS.

By David P. Abbott.

THIRD ARTICLE.

[All Rights Reserved.]

X.

I shall next describe a slate trick sold by certain dealers. It
is a very excellent trick and is used by many of the very best
performers of the present day. I know a professional medium
using it very successfully. I happened to meet him ; and in the
course of certain discussions over trickery resorted to by certain
mediums, I made mention of this trick, and even performed it for
him, afterwards explaining it to him. I soon heard of his per-
forming a slate test which answers the description of this one,
and with which he was so successful that he received almost a
column notice in the " Progressive Thinker " of May 26th, 1906.
I may incidentally mention that prior to my discussion of the

414 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

subject with him, he gave no slate writing tests. In fact, when
I first met him, he made no claims to mediumistic powers, but
merely acted as manager for his wife who was a medium. I
also happened to explain a billet test to him, wherein the spec-
tators write questions on thin cards, addressing them to spirits
and then sealing them in envelopes. They are taken to the
operator, who is placed with them under a large cloth cover and
enveloped in perfect darkness. The operator reads them* by
holding a small electric flash light behind the envelopes in the
darkness. The envelopes are rendered transparent in this man-
ner, and the writing can be easily read.

I soon thereafter heard of his working this trick in a public
hall, going into a trance, lying on a table, being covered with a
large drape and in absolute darkness. The billets were placed
under the cover with him, and he gave the tests, handing out
each envelope unopened as he answered the question it con-
tained. The audience was greatly impressed with this seance.
I shall now describe the slate trick.

The performer enters with three slates. The subject is seated
in a chair but the operator or medium remains standing. The
operator now lays the three slates on a table close at hand.
He picks up the top slate, which is free of all writing, and washes
and dries it on both sides; then holding it to the eyes of the
subject, asks him if the slate is perfectly clean, exhibiting both
sides to his view. It is a fact so evident that the subject thinks
everything honest, and, in fact, does not look for trickery.

The operator now asks the subject to take this slate in his
right hand and hold it. This the subject does, and is of course
at liberty to thoroughly examine the slate, which for that rea-
son he seldom does. If he should do so there is no harm done,
for the slate is without preparation.

The operator then takes the next slate from the table, cleans
and exhibits it in the same manner, and finally requests the sub-
ject to hold this slate in his left hand. This the subject does.
The operator now takes up the remaining slate and thoroughly
cleans and exhibits both sides of it to the spectator. Then tak-
ing two of the slates, he places two sides of them together right
under the eyes of the sitter, calling his attention to the fact that
no writing is on either.

The operator now ties the two slates together and gives them
to the subject to hold in his lap, and asks the subject to place his
handkerchief on them. Next the operator takes a silk foulard or
ordinary mufHer, and asks the subject to wrap the remaining
slate in this, to place it on top of the other two slates, and to
place his hands on the same. This is done and the operator
takes care thereafter, in no way to go near or touch the slates.
Meanwhile he talks on the proper subject for a time, and then

Sfnrit Slate-Wrtting and Bilkt Tests. 415

directs the subject to open and examine the slates. When the
subject does so, he finds a long spirit message completely cover-
ing one side of one of the slates.

If in any manner it has been possible for the operator to have
previously become acquainted with any of the history of the sub-
ject, this message may be from a departed friend or relative, in
which case the effect on the subject is very great.

What are the moves that escape the notice of the subject?
In what way has the operator accomplished this illusion? First
there are certain moves that escape the notice of the subject,
and are forgotten simply because they are accomplished in a
perfectly natural manner. Also there is a secret about one of
the slates. It is of the style known as a " flap slate." Such a
slate is an ordinary one, except there is a loose piece of slate
called a " flap " which fits neatly into the frame of the slate.
When the flap is in position the slate appears to the sight as an
ordinary slate, and any message written on the surface of the
slate proper under this flap, can not be seen. The flap fits loosely
enough that if the slate be turned over it will fall out and expose
the concealed message. There are many trick slates, but the
" flap slate " is the best, and the one most generally used. It
can be used in a number of diflFerent ways.

This slate, with the message prepared upon it and signed,
and the flap in position over it, is situated at the bottom of the
three slates. The performer places these three slates on a small
table or chair when he enters as stated at first. He cleans and
exhibits the first two slates and gives them to the subject to hold
as already described. Now he next cleans and exhibits the third
slate, using care to grasp it with his fingers so that the flap does
not drop out. He turns both sides of it to the subject for in-
spection who, after having so thoroughly examined the others,
is by this time tired of the repetition of such close examination
where nothing can be discovered, and is therefore more ready to
look and be satisfied.

The performer now takes from the subject's hand one of the
other slates and places it on top of the slate in his own hand. It
must be remembered that the slate in the operator's hand is flap
side up and in a horizontal position. He places the side edge
of the unprepared slate on the side edge of the flap slate, one
being" at right angles to the other, and then he calls attention
to the fact that there is no writing between the two slates. He
next closes the slates.

Now here comes the natural move that escapes the subject
and is forgotten afterwards. The operator appears to be exam-
ining- the edges of the two slates to see if they fit neatly; and in
doing so he looks toward the window or other light, and holds
the two slates to this light edgewise as if he were peering be-

416 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

tween them to see if they fit. As he brings up the slates to peer
through them he merely turns them forward and over towards
his eyes and peers through.

This move attracts less attention, if the operator first tilts the
right edge of the slates downward, and apparently inspects the
left edge of them as if looking to see if they fit neatly. He should
then immediately bring them to a horizontal position, tilt up the
end furtherest from himself, inspect it an instant and then ele-
vate the lower ends towards a window or light and peer through.
In this manner the moves seem natural, and if executed rapidly
attract no notice.

This turn of course brings the flap slate to the top and the
flap falls from it quietly into the unprepared slate. As the per-
former looks through these slates he remarks that they do not
seem to fit properly ; and, suiting his action to the word, he low-
ers his hands with the slates to the table, leaving the lower or
unprepared slate, now containing the flap, on the table. Remark-
ing, ** Let me try that one," he takes the remaining slate from the
subject, quickly placing his slate on top of it. As he does all
this he, of course, does not expose the lower side of the slate in
his hands to the view of the subject, because it contains the mes-
sage. He holds this slate slightly tilted so that the message
side is away from the subject.

As he takes this second slate from the subject, he places his
slate on top of it and peers through between them quickly, re-
marking that they fit better ; and then taking a long piece of tape
he quickly ties and binds these two slates. He now places them
on the subject's lap. Taking a small piece of chalk or slate
pencil which he has apparently forgotten, he slips the top slate
at one corner slightly to one side, and drops the chalk into the
lower slate, slipping the top one back into position. He now
asks the subject to place his handkerchief over the slates and his
hands on the same. This employs him and keeps his attention
from the third slate on the table which now contains the dis-
carded flap. This slate appears to the eyes as merely an ordi-
nary one, although it contains this flap.

The operator next picks up this third slate, and apparently
looking for something, asks the subject, "Where did I place the
silk muffler?" As there was no silk muffler brought out, this
surprises the subject and takes his attention; the operator then
remarks, " I guess I forgot it," and steps through the folding
doors to get it. He of course carries the third slate, with the flap in
it, with him. When out of sight he drops the Aap into a drawer,
and quickly returning with the silk muffler and third slate, starts
to wrap up this slate; but changing his mind he requests the
subject to wrap it up, place it on top of the others, and then to
place his palms on the same. This gives the subject ample

spirit State-lVrMng and Billet Tests. 417

opportunity to examine this third slate, and he soon forgets that
the operator carried it out of the room for an instant. Of course
the message will be found on the top slate of the two that were
tied together, and the others never have anything on them.

By this time the subject has forgotten the little move where
the operator laid down one slate on the table, and took the other
tTom him, tying them together.

As I perform this trick, I usually perform it for a company
as a conjuring trick. I cause a selected word and its definition
in a dictionary held by a spectator, to appear on the slate in
chalk writing.

The manner in which I force the selection of the proper word
is this: I first bring from a table in the adjoining parlor a pack
of cards which resemble playing cards on their backs, but on
the face of each they have only different printed numbers. I ex-
hibit these and return them to the table.

As I do this I of course exchange them for another pack made
up of cards bearing only two numbers ; that is, half of the cards
bear one number, and half of them another number. Let us
suppose these numbers are 38 and 42. I arrange the pack pre-
rious to the trick with these two numbers alternately, so that if
the pack be cut or separated at any point, the next two cards will
be cards bearing the numbers 38 and 42. I leave this pack in
view on the table, and the spectators think it the pack they
have just examined.

I now return with a velvet bag on the end of a stick or
long handle, and ask some one to take from this bag a number
of small wooden discs, and to read and call off the numbers
printed on each and then to return them to the bag. This is
done, and each is seen to bear a different number. Now reach-
ing this bag to some one else, I request him to draw a single disc
from this bag and retain the same, but not to look at it. This
is done and he of course draws one with the number on it that I
desire, for the reason that the bag on the end of the stick is
double ; that is, it has a partition in it forming two compartments.
The stick or handle is of japanned tin, and is hollow, con-
taining- a piston operated by a spring from a window curtain
roller. This piston is a wire, and it extends beyond the handle,
through a seam in the top of the cloth partition in the bag; and
this part is bent in a half circle, the same as the sides of the
upper edge of the bag.

When I bring on the bag, I have the partition on one side,
so that the compartment containing the discs made up of differ-
ent numbers is open. After a spectator examines a handful of
discs, returning them, I release the pressure I am exerting on
the rear end of the handle, allowing the piston to revolve ; and
it thus opens the compartment wherein all the discs are of a

418 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

single number, and at the same time closes the other compart-
ment. The person drawing the disc can only draw the number
desired, as all the discs in this compartment bear the same
number.

This number indicates the number of the correct word on
the page. I next bring forward the pack of substituted number
cards, and asking. some spectator to cut them, I next ask him
to select the two left on top. I return the others to a drawer,
and ask him to add up the two numbers on the selected cards
and give the result. This sum indicates which page in the dic-
tionary the third spectator, who holds it, shall select. The para-
phernalia for this trick can be obtained from any of the conjuring
depots.

I shall here describe how to prepare the slates for this experi-
ment. I go to a store with a good supply of slates, take a
piece of stiff pasteboard and cut it to fit nicely into the bevel of
the frame of some good slate which I wish to use. I then try this
pasteboard flap in other slates until I find one in which this flap
fits nicely on either side of the slate. I lay this one aside for my
purpose and select another, making three that have frames which
are uniform in size on both sides, and which are all the same in
size, measuring within the bevel of the frames. These frames
should also be perfectly square at the corners inside the bevel.
As the slates in stock vary in size, this careful selection is neces-
sary. I use slates seven by nine inches inside the bevel for this
trick, which is the most suitable size. I also select slates with
true or level surfaces.

I next select a slate with a true surface, but as thin as possi-
ble. I use the slate in this to make the loose slate flap. I mark
the slate portion around next the frame with a knife, then saw
away the frame. I next take a saw such as is used in sawing
metal, and saw away the edges of the flap at the mark I have
made. I now try this flap in one of the slates : and if it be too
tight, I remedy by use of a file. I also bevel the edges of this
flap for half an inch, so that when it is placed in the frame of one
of the slates, the slate will appear nearly natural by showing
some of the bevel of the frame on that side.

It is quite necessary to select slates with as deep a bevel
to the frames as possible ; and if the flap be too thick, it is neces-
sary to grind it thinner with a stone, and then smooth it up with
a smooth stone or a block and some fine powder.

I prefer padded slates, but select those on which the cloth
binding is not too wide; as I desire the slates to rest closely
together when I turn them, so that the flap will not have far
to fall ; and so it will be more certain to fall within the frame
of the lower slate.

spirit Slate-Writing and Billet Tests. 419

XI.

I shall here describe another trick, where only a double or
hinged slate is used. I will give both the explanation and effect
together. I select for this a double or hinged slate, size five by
seven, and prepare a flap to fit in one side of one of the slates.
It makes no difference whether it fits any of the other sides or
not. I bevel this flap on one side only, as but one side of it ever
shows. I paste a sheet of newspaper on the side that is not
beveled. This must be trimmed off very accurately and well
glued to the flap with library paste.

I prepare the message with a soapstone pencil or a piece of
chalk, and cover it with the flap. The slate now appears per-
fectly natural. I seat my subject at a table on which is scat-
tered some newspapers. The table should be large enough for
these papers to be in two piles. One of the piles usually has
only one paper in it which is opened out on the table. This is
farthest from the sitter. The other papers are directly in
front of him.

The message is on the outside of one of the two slates making
the double slate, with the flap over the message, so that it appears
as an ordinary slate. I grasp this slate in my left hand with
my fingers on the flap side, and my thumb on the opposite side.
The hinged edge of the slates is the edge that is in my hand. I
hold the back of my left hand facing the sitter, who is at my
right hand, seated at the table.

I exhibit this flap side of the slate to him, calling his atten-
tion to the fact that it is free from writing. I also rub a dry
handkerchief over it as if making this fact doubly sure. I in-
stantly turn my hand exhibiting the other side to his view, and
likewise calling his attention to the fact of its freedom from writ-
ing. I now lay the slate flat on the newspaper under my left
hand flap side down, just as I am holding it. As I do this I
slightly pull up my sleeves as if they annoy me, and as if this
were why I have just laid the slate down. Of course, when the
slate is laid down in this position, the flap drops instantly on the
newspaper; and afterwards, when the slate is lifted up, it re-
mains on the paper. It will not be noticed at all, having the
sheet of paper pasted to its upper surface, if the attention of the
subject is not directed to this paper, but is kept instead on the
slate as it is being handled.

I instantly remark, " Of course, you desire to see the inside
of these slates also;" and suiting the action to the word, I care-
lessly lift the upper slate with my left hand grasping it by the
edg'e nearest the spectator. This is the edge opposite the cloth
hinge ; so that as I lift this edge up, the slates assume a vertical
position, opening out and hanging suspended below my hand.

420 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

The inside of the two slates are thus exposed to the view of the
subject, and are seen to be free from writing. I take my right
hand and quickly grasp the lower slate, closing it up under the
upper one, which at the same time I lower to a horizontal posi-
tion.

This folds the two slates together or closes them, by folding
in the direction away from the sitter; so that what were before
the inside surfaces of the slates are now the outside, and the
hinged edge now faces the subject. The message is now in-
side the slates on the upper surface of the lower one.

I now grasp both slates with my left hand, and I take a rubber
band from my pocket with my right hand and quickly snap it
around them. I give the slate to the spectator and say, " Place
them on the table with your palms on them — I will remove these
papers which are in the way.*' As I say this I lift the pile of
papers from in front of him ; and as he places the slate on the
table. I place these papers on top of the other paper on which
rests the invisible flap. I lift this paper up now with the others,
and take them all containing the discarded flap, and quickly re-
move them from view.

Meanwhile I instruct the sitter how to hold his palms, and I
instantly return and direct the seance. In due time he finds the
message. This trick is excellent if worked carefully and not
too slowly. If used in the daylight, too strong a light should
be avoided ; although I have no trouble anywhere, because I al-
ways keep absolute control of the subject's attention, which is
the most vital part of any trick.

XII.

I shall next describe a trick known to the " profession " as
" Independent Paper Writing." A number of small tablets of
scratch paper are brought out. The size that I generally use
is about four by five inches. The subject is requested to select
a sheet of paper from any of the tablets, which he does. Mean-
while the operator brings to the table two slates about the size
of seven by nine inches inside measure.

The operator requests the subject to place his sheet of paper
on one of the slates, which he does. There is no writing on the
slates, which fact the subject can see. The other slate is now
placed on top of the one with the sheet of blank paper. The
edges of the slates are made even, and the slates held for a time
on the head of the medium in view of the sitter. In due time
the slates are separated and the paper is found to be covered
with a message on both sides. The writing is in pencil or ink,
according to the pleasure of the operator.

If the subject has previously been induced to write his ques-

spirit Slate-Writing and Billet Tests, 421

tions and retain the same, this message answers them in detail
and is signed by the name of the spirit to whom they were
addressed.

There are many means of securing knowledge of questions
written secretly. Some of the best I am unable to give in this
article, as I am under a contract with the dealer from whom I
purchased the same to maintain secrecy in regard to the method.
Farther on, however, I shall give a method which is most gen-
erally used by professional mediums all over the country. In
fact, most of the mediums that I have met, use it, to my certain
knowledge.

I shall now explain the slate part of the " Independent Paper
Writing." The slates are selected from bound slates, just as
the three slates were selected for the first ** flap slate " trick.
One of these contains a flap but it is not a slate flap. It is
what is known as a " silicate slate flap." These are very light
and about as thick as pasteboard. Procured from some dealers
they are a little too dark to exactly match the slate in color, but
I have generally been able to procure exactly the proper shade
from George L. Williams & Co., 7145 Champlain Avenue, Chi-
cago, Illinois.

In the prepared slate which I lay upon the table, and upon
which the subject is to place the blank sheet of paper, in a similar
sheet of paper under the flap. The message is, of course, written
on this paper in advance. As the flap is over it, nothing can be
seen and the slate appears merely as an ordinary one. Most
generally I take the sheet of paper from my subject with the tips
of my fingers and place it on this slate. I then lay the other
slate, which I exhibit to the spectator, on top of this one. I even
up the edges, and then grasp the two slates by their edges
tightly and bring them on top of my head for a time. This move
naturally turns the slates over, and of course the flap drops
quietly into the lower slate. Meanwhile I address the subject
in the proper manner ; and when I take the slates down, lowering
them to the table, I leave the slate that is next my head under-
neath the other one. I lift oflf the top slate and hand the subject
the slip of paper, which he sees at the first glance is covered
with writing. The effect is very great.

The subject immediately begins to read the message with
such interest, that I have ample opportunity to take the slate
containing the flap in my left hand, and while the subjiect reads
the message aloud (which I direct him to do), I step through
a door to a drawer to get some article ; and, of course, I drop
the flap and concealed slip of blank paper into the drawer, but
keep the slate still in my hand as I return to the subject I then
lay this slate on the table while I insnect the message.

This is really one of the most effective of tricks and is very

422 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

easy to perform. The operator should select slates that are
well matched and should procure a " flap " of the desired color.
The flaps are very cheap.

Sometimes I tear a corner from a slip of paper containing
the message. When I do this I conceal it between the ends of
my fingers; and when the subject gives me his selected sheet of
paper, I tear a similar corner from it. I apparently hand this
last corner to the subject with the request that he retain it. Of
course, I give him the comer torn from the message slip instead,
and conceal the last corner torn off in its place.

After the message is produced and read, I remind the subject
to see if this corner fits his slip of paper. Worked as a conjur-
ing trick, this last effect adds some improvement to the trick ; but
I am not so sure that it adds to the effect if given as a genuine
phenomena ; for tearing off the corner reminds one of conjuring
tricks, and thus suggests the idea of trickery.

However, I generally tear off this small corner so that on
one side of it, there is a portion of one of the words of the mes-
sage. In this case, instead of giving this corner to the subject
to hold, I lay it on the table writing side down, and request him
to place his finger on it. Finding a part of one of the words
on this corner gives the idea that this writing was done while he
held it. This adds more mystery to the effect.

XIII.

The trick described here is most suitable for platform pro-
duction. The performer takes a single slate in his hand and
a piece of chalk in the other hand. He exhibits one side of the
slate to the audience, saying, " Side one." As he does this he
makes a large figure " one " on that side of the slate. He then
turns the slate ; and saying, " Side two," makes a large figure
" two " on that side of the slate. He next steps to a chair or
table, and taking a damp cloth, washes off first one side and
then the other. He immediately sets the slate in full view of
the spectators in a vertical position, so that one side faces the
spectators and the other side is of course hidden from view. He
leans it against any object that may be convenient, usually
against a chair or table leg with one edge resting on the floor. In
a short time he lifts the slate, exhibiting the rear surface on
which is written a message in chalk writing.

The secret of this trick is again a slate flap. The message is
prepared and the flap in place. The performer grasps the slate
so as to hold the flap in position, and exhibits and marks the
two sides of the slate. He now steps to a table or chair to get
a piece of damp cloth ; and as he washes " side one " of the slate,
he rests the lower edge of the slate on the table or chair. As he

spirit Slaie-Writing and Billet Tests. 423

does this he tilts the slate backwards slightly. He next turns
the slate so that "side two'' faces the audience; and as he
washes this side, he releases his hold on the flap on the rear
of the slate, and allows it to drop on the table or chair.

If a chair «be used, a newspaper is in place spread out on its
seat; and a piece of newspaper is also pasted on what will be
the upper side of the flap, after it be dropped on the newspaper.
If instead of a chair a table be used, and if it have a dark or slate-
colored cover, no newspaper need be used on either the table
or flap. However, the newspaper can be used when using a
table if the performer so desire, or the slate can be cleaned
and then taken to the paper to be wrapped up. In this case,
the performer merely places the slate on the newspaper flap side
down, remarking that he will wrap it up; then as if suddenly
changing his mind, he remarks, " No, I will stand it here where
you can all watch it, instead.*' He then places the slate in the
vertical position before described: but of course uses care not
to expose the rear side of the slate containing the message.

Some performers prefer to have the table top covered with
velvet or felt and a piece of the same material glued on what
will be the upper side of the flap after it be dropped on the table.
This trick makes an excellent conjuring trick, if a single
word in a book be chosen and then made to appear on the slate
in chalk writing. In this case I first prepare the slate, and
after thoroughly washing both sides, place it on the platform
as I have described.

I now take two books not alike, and descend to the spectators,
giving one of them to some spectator to hold. Next I give a
card to a second spectator and ask him to insert it in the end
of the remaining book which I still hold. I ask him to let it pro-
trude from between the leaves about a half inch. I tell him to
place it between any of the leaves he may desire. When he has
done so, I step to another spectator and request him to open
the book at the position occupied by the card, and to call aloud
the page that it marks.

I step to this third spectator, a slight distance away, and be-
fore I reach him I ask him if he will assist me. As I ask this I
start towards him. All eyes are turned toward him as I direct
my attention to him, and of course at this instant I turn the
book in my hands end for end. In the other end of the book a
duplicate card has previously been placed at the page I desire;
and as I approach him my fingers secretly press the second
spectator's card entirely into the book. The third spectator,
of course, opens the book at the position marked by the dupli-
cate card.

As soon as he reads aloud the number of the selected page
on his right (which I request him to do) I ask the spectator

424 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

holding the other book to open it at the page chosen, and to read
aloud the bottom word, which is of course the word prepared on
the back of the slate. If the performer can procure a book
which somewhere within it has two consecutive pages on which
the bottom words are the same he can have s«me spectator
choose whether the page selected shall be the right one or the
left one. This should be done before the book containing the
cards is opened.

If such book can not be procured, then the operator can
simply ask the spectator opening the first book to read aloud
the page number on his right. He should then turn to the
person holding the second book and request him to turn to that
page and read aloud the bottom word. As soon as the word
is read aloud, the performer takes both books, runs to the stage,
and turning over the slate exhibits the word. The slate is
passed down for inspection.

Another method can be used for forcing the choice, say the
right-hand page, of the two pages where the duplicate card is
located. When the third spectator opens the book at the card,
the performer turns to another spectator and asks, ** Which page
will YOU takCj the right or left?" If the spectator choose the
right page, the performer directs the person holding the book
to read aloud this page number. If, however, the person should
take the left page, the performer then remarks in a natural
manner to the person holding the book, " He chooses the left so
YOU will have to choose the right.'* This seems perfectly nat-
ural to the audience, and the person holding the book is then
directed to read aloud the number of " his page."

If the operator prefer, he can, when the spectator first opens
the book, stand directly in front of him and grasp the two sides
of the book with his two hands. He can then ask, *' Which
shall I take, the right or left page? " If some one replies, " The
right," the operator asks the person holding the book to read
aloud the number of the page on his right; but if the left be
chosen, the operator says, ** Read aloud the page number on my
left." In either case the page is the same. If when asking the
question, *' W^hich shall I take, the right or left page?" the
operator emphasizes the word ** right " slightly, and then pause
a mere instant before rapidly continuing the question, the
" right " will almost invariably be chosen.

I consider this slate trick as the best one for stage work that *
I have seen. It is very simple, and the simplest tricks are always
the best and most difficult of detection. After the message is
produced and the slate sent out for inspection, the operator piles
some discarded articles on the discarded flap and removes all to-
gether.

spirit SUxte-lVriting and Billet Tests, 425

One operator, when performing this trick in a parlor, previ-
ously takes from the shelves of the library some new book that
has never been opened, and of the style that opens rather stiffly.
He selects the page he desires, and proceeds to open the book up
widely at this page. After this, the book will naturally open at
this place. He is careful not to open it widely elsewhere.

He now selects two pla3'ing cards from duplicate packs, the
cards being duplicates of each other, and places one secretly in
this book where it has been opened. When ready to perform, he
takes one of the packs of cards, and takes a card from it appar-
ently at random. This card is really the duplicate of the one in
the book. The performer gives this card to a spectator, and asks
him to push it into the book between the leaves at any. position
he may select, pushing it entirely out of sight. This is done.
Now without any change whatever, the performer presents this
book to a second spectator to open at the card and call out the
page. As he does this the book naturally falls open at the place
where the first card was concealed, and where the glue used in
binding the book has been broken. The card being there, and
being apparently a mere playing card selected at random from a
pack, lends a color of genuineness to the performance.

Another operator, when performing this slate trick, causes
the sum of a number of figures to appear on the slate instead of a
word or message. He accomplishes this as follows: He writes
a horizontal row of three figures on the front fly leaf of some
book. Under this row of three figures he writes in different
hands, tw*o or three other rows and draws a line below them as if
ready to add them up.

When performing, he takes this book; and opening it at the
BACK fly leaf, he requests a spectator to write a horizontal row
of three figures, each figure to be his own choice. When this is
done he takes the book, and in the same manner has another spec-
tator write three figures under these. He continues this until
there are as many horizontal rows of figures as he has prepared
on the front fly leaf.

He now requests the last writer to draw a line under all of
the figures ; and then, taking the book, he passes it to still another
spectator, with a request that he add the figures carefully and
announce their sum verbally. Of course, when he gives this
book to the last spectator, he opens it at the front fly leaf (having
previously allowed the book to close), and the last spectator adds
up the figures written by the operator and whose sum is on the
prepared slate.

Some performers produce this same result by having the
spectators write on a card, and thus exchanging the card ; but
the method with the book is the better, as it is perfectly evident

426 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

that the book is not exchanged. This adds to the after-effect of
the trick.

I am acquainted with a performer who uses two slates instead
of one when, performing this trick. He first cleans the unpre-
pared slate on both sides, showing the spectators that both sides
are clean. He then gives this slate to a spectator to hold. He
next cleans the slate containing the flap, resting one edge on a
newspaper spread on a table — while he washes each side. Of
course, he allows the flap to drop onto the paper from behind the
slate while cleaning the second side of the slate. Having news-
paper pasted on one side of the flap, it can not be seen when on
the paper.

He immediately advances to the spectator who holds the first
slate, and says, ** I will tie them together." As he does this he
carries the slate with the message writing side down, so that no
one can see it ; and quickly placing this slate on top of the other
one, he ties the two together and leaves them in the possession
of the spectator to be held.

I kpow of another performer who uses three slates in this
trick, and gets an answer to a question which some one asks
aloud. Certain words in the answer are written in colors such as
the spectator may choose. His assistant behind the scenes has
the third slate with the flap ; and when the operator gets some
spectator to ask the question, the assistant immediately writes
the answer and lays the flap over it. The operator at the time
asks some spectator to designate which words in the answer shall
be in certain colors, and if the fifth, seventh, etc., be chosen, the
assistant writes these words with colored crayons.

The assistant now after laying the flap over the message,
places the slate between the leaves of a newspaper, flap side up.
This paper he quietly lays upon a table on the stage unobserved.
While this is being done, the performer has taken the two un-
prepared slates down to the spectators and had them thoroughly
examined. This has taken the attention of the spectators so that
no one has observed the assistant enter and leave the stage.

The operator now returns to the stage ; and stepping to this
table, he lays one slate on the table behind the paper and starts
to place the edge of his other slate on the front part of the table
while he numbers and cleans the sides. The newspaper appears
to be in his way ; so with his left hand he draws it backwards on
the table over the first slate laid down ; and then, resting the other
slate on the table, numbers its two sides with a piece of chalk.
He now cleans both sides thoroughly and stands this slate edge-
wise on the floor against a chair. He next apparently draws
from under the newspaper on the table the other slate. In real-
ity, he draws out the prepared slate with the flap in position from
between the leaves of the newspaper.

Editorial. 427

He now numbers both sides of this slate, standing it edge-
wise on the newspaper and showing each side as he does so.
He next cleans the flap side thoroughly ; and then turns the slate
to clean the other side, and while so doing allows the flap to fall
from behind the slate upon the newspaper. Having newspaper
pasted on its upper surface as in the previous cases, it can not be
seen.

As soon as the second or unprepared side is clean, the operator
places this slate in front of the one on the floor and lifts both to-
gether, ties them securely, and passes them to the audience to be
held for a time. In due time the spectators untie them, finding
the message answering the spoken question. The designated
words are in the chosen colors which makes the effect very great.

The credit for the invention of this last fine trick, belongs to
a magician, Mr. Edward Benedict, of Minneapolis, Minn.

(To be continued,)

EDITORIAL.
Newspaper Stories.

An important scientific principle and lesson may be en-
forced by a few observations on newspaper stories which
often interest psychic researchers. They are stories which
fail to be verified upon inquiry. Premising what I may say of
some instances I may note that a few years ago I made it a
habit to write inquiries all over the United States regarding
stories of remarkable phenomena of all kinds, including strik-
ing cases of animal intelligence. It will be interesting to re-
mark that, during that period, I was never able to ascertain
the truth of any but two incidents. The reply almost in-
v^ariably was that there was no foundation for the story. I
was prepared to expect this by my experience in Baltimore
w^hen in Johns Hopkins University. I boarded with two
newspaper reporters and learned from them the habits of
newspaper editors. I was told, and it was illustrated by
actual experiences on the part of these reporters, that when
the editor did not have material enough to fill up the paper

428 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

he asked reporters to write some story, and they often had to
set about fabricating incidents to fill space. One of these
fabrications was a story about a woman who had a great deal
of trouble finding an address in Baltimore after the changing
of the numbers on the streets, this having taken place while
I was there. In these days of fiction it is easy to invent
plausible stories. Such inventions regarding alleged super-
normal phenomena would not occur until there was an in-
terest in them. But they apparently occur frequently
enough when the editor wants something to excite sensa-
tional interest, and even when they report a truth it is so
buried in lying that it is often not worth the pains of inquiry
to ascertain the grain of wheat in the chaff.

With this introductory incident I may call attention to
some concrete instances which have come into my posses-
sion. Dr. Richard Hodgson had the habit in his work of
keeping everything that came into his office for record, even
the letters of inquiry that were returned undelivered. I
have fifty-three such letters put into my hands since his
death. They were inquiries of persons named in newspaper
stories regarding alleged coincidental experiences such as
dreams, death apparitions, clairvoyance, etc. If they had
been verified the incidents would have been extremely val-
uable as evidence of the supernormal. But the letters being
uncalled for or undelivered suggests fabrication of the stories
concerned. It is possible that the reporters, if they did not
invent the incident outright, made the usual mistakes of that
craft about the facts and the names concerned, and tho that
apology has to be admitted as possible it does not diminish
the scientific reproach which such stories have to suffer.
They simply illustrate the impossibility of attaching the
slightest value to anything we see in print until it can be
vouched for by persons whose integrity can be established.
That of newspaper editors cannot be admitted without an
investigation equal to that necessary to establish the trust-
worthiness of personal experiences.

Let me give an instance of the methods by which news-
paper editors make up their news. I give it in the very
words of an editor himself.

Editorial 429

The editor of the Chicago Tribune had published in the
columns of that paper a story to the effect that a Mrs. Sarah
Garity of Los Angeles, California, had frequently experi-
enced coincidental dreams in connection with deaths in her
family. The story was circumstantial and detailed. Dr.
Hodgson made inquiry of him for the truth of the story and
the editor replied as follows :

** The article about Mrs. Sarah Garity was obtained from,
a Los Angeles writer who never before contributed to the
Tribune, and whose name I do not recall. I have seen the
same article in other papers, and do not doubt you will be
able to obtain her address by writing to the postmaster in
that city."

Inquiry in that city failed to get any trace of the person
named. It is possible that the whole story was fabricated
by a reporter to make a few dollars. Papers may publish
such things as incidents that come to them and without pre-
tending to vouch for them, as is precisely the policy of edi-
tors. But the public must riot assume that it is dealing with
fact when it reads anything in the papers. Nothing that a
paper ever says has any other value to-day than as a reason
for inquiry, and if they are not more careful and judicious in
the selection of stories than they now are, there will be no
reasbn to believe or even to investigate their allegations.
Xhis conduct on their part has made it doubly expensive to
ascertain the truth and excuses the most scrutinizing scep-
ticism regarding any statement whatever purporting to illus-
trate the supernormal. The evidential problem becomes
g-reatly complicated by newspaper carelessness.

Another illustration of this matter is found in a series of
** grliost *' and other stories published in the Ncxv York Globe
during the spring of 1905. I have a collection of 135 of
these. Only twelve answered inquiries regarding their ex-
periences and three letters were returned undelivered. An
interesting feature of the series is the fact that the editor
offered $5 for the best ghost story for the week, a prize that
rriigrl^t induce many a fabrication. If the same number of
persons had been as careful to record and report their ex-
periences at the time to some one qualified to collect and in-

430 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

vestigate them they might have proved of scientific value.
But newspapers that oflfer $5 for such stories are a poor re-
sort for educating the public on the supernormal.

Another case was subjected to investigation by myself
recently. An account of a vision by a lady of the killing of
her brother was published by a western paper. It repre-
sented the events as having taken place on a ranch. My in-
quiries resulted in the statement that there were no ranches
in that locality and that the story had come in from Wyom-
ing without any credentials, so far as could be ascertained.

Another illustration is the following. A story was widely
published to the effect that a certain gentleman had hypno-
tized himself and could not awaken from his sleep and finally
that he died from the effects of self-hypnosis. Such a state-
ment was calculated to impress readers with the conviction
that hypnotism was very dangerous. Curious to know what
the real facts in the case were I made inquiries, and the fol-
lowing letter is the reply, illustrating once more that no re-
liance whatever can be placed on such stories. It is espe-
cially important to make the correction because of the dam-
age which such statements are calculated to produce on the
general public.

Southbridge, Mass., May 23rd, 1907.
Mr. James H. Hyslop:

Dear Sir : — Mr. Andrew H. Simpson, whose case you in-
quire about, died of tumor of brain, probably glioma. At
first the diagnosis lay between hemorrhage and tumor, but
as the case developed we could by exclusion reach a reason-
ably sure diagnosis of tumor, and that glioma rather than
sarcoma or carcinoma. I am sorry that we could not verify
it by an autopsy, but the family has been annoyed by so
much unpleasant notoriety that they would not allovsr it.

The whole story of hypnotism was a fake, pure and sim-
ple, the finished product of yellow journalism, and was pub-
lished again after repeated denials of its truthfulness.

Yours truly,
W. G. REED, M. D.

Incidents. 431

Illustrations of similar and worse fabrications will be ap-
parent to every reader of the papers, and it will continue so
long as the public prefers fiction to fact.

INCIDENTS.
The Society assumes no responsibility for anything pub-
lished under this head, and no indorsement is implied except
that it has been furnished by an apparently trustworthy con-
tributor whose name is given unless withheld at his own re-
quest.

[The two following cases represent coincidental dreams
which seem to be well authenticated. As the letters indicate
they were first addressed to the Editor of The Woman's Home
Companion who had published some articles purporting to
have been written by myself, but which were the production
of a writer for that journal who represented the articles as
mine in response to a request of the Editor that I be asked to
write them. The Editor of the Companion sent the corre-
spondence to me, and I made investigations regarding it
with results that speak for themselves. What the explana-
tion may be may be left to readers. The dreams are un-
doubtedly coincidental and would be referable to telepathy
by some and perhaps complicated by clairvoyance in the esti-
mation of others. But I am not concerned with pressing
any theoretical explanation. They are both associated with
the deaths of certain persons. The connecting link for tel-
epathy is not apparent, nor is it important that it should be
sought in isolated instances like these. We have to be con-
tent with the evidence that some connection existed. — Edi-
tor.]

DREAM.

Arthur T. Vance, Editor of Woman's Home Companion :

IDear Sir : — I was greatly interested in Prof. Hyslop's " Ghost
Stories from Real Life " in the September number of the

432 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

Woman's Home Companion, and I want to tell you of two pe-
culiar occurrences in my own experience. The first is this. My
husband is a physician, and about three years ago Dr. A. A.

L , of this city, was leaving for a two weeks' vacation and

left my husband in charge of his patients. Among them was a

Mr. G , sick with an incurable disease. Now I never saw

the man or knew anything about him, but one night in my sleep I
seemed to go down Beaver Street where he lived up the steps of
a house, and into a room where a family, to me unknown, were
gobbing around an apparently dying man. I saw a woman go to
the phone, and in a short time my husband came in the room and

examined Mr. G , altho I did not know who he was, and

told the family he had already been dead about fifteen minutes.
I found myself sitting bolt upright in bed drenched with perspira-
tion. I at once awakened my husband and told him of the
dream, described the house, room, people, sick man, etc., and he

at once said, " Why that is Mr. G — ." In about ten minutes

after this the telephone rang, and on answering it my husband
said it w^as a call to come to G *s at once as he seemed un-
conscious and they thought he was dying. My husband told ine
of it, and I said to him as he was dressing, ** He w^ill be dead
when you get there,'' and sure enough, when he reached the

house Mr. G had been dead about fifteen minutes. Now

tell me, what was this?

Two years ago my cousin William P , aged 21, died

from tuberculosis of the spine. From childhood up the deepest
affection had existed between us, and the fact of our both being
passionately fond of music drew us even closer together, though
we were two hundred miles apart, he in Tottenville, X. Y., and I

here in . In March 1901 he was stricken with this spinal

trouble. He was organist of Brighton Heights Reformed
Church, Staten Island, and clerk in the First National Bank at
St. George and the thoughts of giving up both these positions
caused him great mental distress. In May they sent for me to
come on, thinking perhaps I could cheer him up. I found him
greatly depressed, as he told me he knew he would never get well
again. His favorite piece was Braga's " Angel Serenade/' and
this I used to play for him daily and it always seemed to calm
him. I came home in June 1901, and when I left him he was
bent over, supporting himself with two canes. As I said " good-
bye '' he said to me — *' When you see me again I will be straight,
not bent over like this." " God grant it,'' I replied. From this
time he grew steadily worse, and in November took his bed.
He often used to long for me, and especially to hear me play, but
on account of his distressing appearance they would not send for
me. as I had recently been very ill. He died March 29th, 1902,
and the night before he died was very restless, as his suffering

Incidents. 433

was intense. He longed to hear me play " Angel Serenade."
On the evening of March 28th I was lying on a couch in my
library, thinking of him, when his hands (I saw them distinctly)
took mine and led me to the piano. I at once began to play
'* Angel Serenade,'' and his hands followed mine all through the
notes till I became hysterical, and had to stop playing.

Xow comes the strange part. His mother tells me he kept
wishing to hear me play and suddenly he became very quiet and
his fingers seemed to be playing upon a piano. All at once he
gave a great sigh and said " How beautiful '* and dropped into a
comotose condition from which he never wakened. I, in the
meantime, had gone up to my room and taking my Bible sat
down and read. With the exception of my child of four, asleep
in his crib, and a little pet dog, I was all alone. There was a
small sewing room opening off of my room and in its doorway
was hung a pair of dark blue curtains. I read steadily for some
time when suddenly I heard footsteps in the sewing room and a
draught of icy air came from between the blue curtains. The
little dog raised his head and began to whine and then crawled
under my chair. I looked up and there between the blue cur-
tains stood my cousin, straight and tall as he had been before his
illness, with outstretched hands and a most heavenly smile upon
his face. I stared at him spellbound for a few minutes and as the
clock struck nine he vanished. Just then our door bell rang and
I went to the door to receive a telegram saying " Willie died at
eight. Come at once." My mother tells me when he died his
expression was one of intense suffering, but in about an hour's
time it strangely changed to a beautiful smile, which he still had
>vhen I next saw him in his coffin, and which he had had when
he appeared to me in the doorway. If you decide to publish
these strange experiences, will you please suppress names and
places which are authentic. I have told these stories to several
people and they attribute them to overwrought nerves or imag-
ination. Yours very sincerely,

(MRS.) M". L. B.

James H. Hyslop:

Dear Sir :— ^I received your letter of June 25th, this morning,
and at last my husband has consented to answer the questions
contained in your letter of May 22nd. The persons to whom I
told the circumstances of the experience connected with my
cousin's death, were a colored man, Charles Henderson, no longer

in our employ, and the house maid. Miss Hattie M , who

now resides somewhere in Phildaelphia. My husband has very
little faith in such experiences, in fact laughs at them and as a
rule inquires " What did you eat to have such dreams? *' so I do
not know what answer he may have written to your questions,

434 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

but whatever they may be I hope they are satisfactory and that
the incident and correspondence are now closed.

Yours sincerely,
June 27th, 1906. E. G. B.

June 27th, 1906.

My dear Sir : — Replying to the questions in your letter to my
wife, of May 22nd, I have to say that the remarkable experiences
referred to occurred just as she relates them.

With respect to the G incident she could have had no

possible interest or concern, not knowing the man nor ever hav-
ing seen him. He was not even a patient of mine. I was in at-
tendance only because of the absence of the regular family phy-
sician.

In the second incident pertaining to her cousin's death, I re-
call distinctly, as in the first incident, finding her sitting at the
piano, pale and dazed, as if in a trance, from which I had to
arouse her, and upon questioning her, she related her experience.
All this occurred before the telegram came, announcing the death
and the incident was related by her to our housekeeper, who now
lives in Philadelphia, and to Mr. J. H. S — - — , of this city.

I can offer no satisfactory explanation for the above occur-
rences. Yours very truly,

M. L. B.

St. Louis, Mo., Sept. 6th, 1905.
Editor " Woman's Home Companion,"

Dear Sir : — Professor Hyslop's article on " Ghost Stories from
Real Life " in the September issue of your magazine, interested
me greatly. Not because I know anything of Psychology except
in a general way, nor because I am a spiritualist, which I am not,
nor have I ever considered myself superstitious, but because of
several inexplicable experiences; and your invitation to relate
anything one may have had or heard along this line is my excuse
for writing. An experience of very recent date, brought the
matter more prominently to my mind, and next month's article
by Prof. Hyslop, may explain it somewhat to me.

Some two weeks ago I had a very restless night, but tovvani
morning fell into a troubled sleep, when I dreamed of my
mother (who lives in N. Y. State) weeping violently, and of my
efforts to comfort her. I awakened and sleep left me. The
next day or two I was depressed and related my dream both to
my husband and next door neighbor.

This took place on Wednesday morning and on Friday fol-
lowing I received a letter from my sister telling me that on Mon-
day my mother had received word of the severe illness of her only
sister, my aunt, living in Connecticut. She left at once for her
bedside, reaching there Thursday P. M., and at 4 o'clock Wednes-

Incidents. 435

day morning my aunt passed away, the very time or thereabouts
that I had had my dream.

.1 would hardly know just how to class such an experience,
whether as telepathy or what, but I am firmly convinced it is not
of the things you mention as " utterly inexplicable on ordinary
grounds."

Another incident along a little different line was experienced
by a friend of mine, whose reputation for truth and veracity is
unquestioned. Her husband is a railroad engineer, and he
started out on his usual run one afternoon, expecting to return
late the next afternoon. He did not come as expected, the after-
noon and evening passing and his wife finally concluded to retire.
3he had fallen into her first sleep when she was awakened by
hearing her name called twice in rapid succession. Never think-
ing but that it was her husband at the door she hastened down
stairs to open it. He was not there. She went to another door
with the same result and feeling so sure of his being there and
thinking he was hiding in the shrubbery to tease her, she called
his name and no response. Coming back into the house she
glanced at the clock and saw that it was ten minutes of eleven
and she then went up stairs to bed again.

The next morning, after her household duties had been at-
tended to, she went down town, and on her way noticed a group
of railroad men, several of whom she knew, engaged in animated
conversation. One of them came to her and said, " Did you
know that your husband was in a wreck last night, but don't be
alarmed, he is 'all right." She was greatly agitated and went on
down to the dispatcher's office to get further particulars. She
found it was as her friend had stated, there had been a wreck and
a bad smash up of cars, but her husband and his fireman had
jumped and escaped almost miraculously with but slight injuries
and they would both be at home at two o'clock. On arriving
home and relating their experiences the fireman said, " Now that
it is all over, I have to laugh when I think of you (the engineer)
for the only thing you said just as you jumped was, ' Belle,
Belle!* "( his wife's name). His wife looked up and said, " and
what time was it?" Her husband replied, " My watch stopped
from the force of the jar I gave it at a quarter to eleven." My
friend rarely tells this, as people have laughed, and said, " only
an hallucination " — but she, like myself, believes it was truly an
instance of communication of thought between minds fully in
sympathy.

Pardon this lengthy epistle, and my only excuse for so en-
croaching on a busy man's time, is my interest in your publication
and your invitation to relate instances of this character.

Yours very sincerely,
C H. G .

436 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

I made inquiries regarding the dates of the dream and the
death and Mrs. G's reply is that the date of both was August
i6th, 1905. The issue of The Woman's Home Companion -to
which reference was made was for September of the same
year. The husband confirms the incident and Mrs. G*s
statement that she told it before any knowledge of the death
of her aunt. The reader will also remark a similar confirma-
tion by Mrs. B.

The husband of Mrs. G. sends the following confirmation
of her statements regarding the incident.

I can corroborate the statement of Mrs. G. in reference to her
relating the incident mentioned before having received news of
the death of her aunt. Yours truly,

D. B. G.

James H. Hyslop:

My dear Sir: — Your letter of September 12th received. In

reply will say, that I distinctly recall Mrs. G 's remarkable

dream and of her telling me of it before the death of her aunt. It
seemed to worry her, and she talked to me of it, expecting to
bring her bad tidings.

She talked of the news of her aunt's death, some time after,
when it occurred. I cannot state how long a period elapsed be-
tween the dream and the death but several weeks I should judge.

Yours sincerely,

Mary E. B -.

Sept. 28th, 1906.

[The following experience is by a lady whom I know
personally and was written out in response to my request
after hearing it viva voce. It is interesting as showing an
appeal to the sense of smell to produce the effect which may
be explained in any way the reader prefers. The repetition
of the experience g^ves it an unusual interest. — Editor.]

November 26th, 1906.
My dear son, 19 years old, was lying on his death bed. Quick
consumption was the cause. In the room stood a small vase
filled with violets, which I had brought several times during the
day to his bedside, to let him smell their sweetness. " I am so
tired and sleepy, and yet sleep will not come," said, or rather whis-
pered he, for his voice was gone and once more I brought him the
violets. This time he whispered, " They are so sweet, I shall

Incidents. 437

only raise violets when I am well." He did not know that he
was passing away ; yet a very little while after this he closed his
eyes to this earthly light. I laid the violets on his breast, and
there they were when he was laid in his grave. This was early
in March and it seemed natural, when spring came and violets
were brought to the house, that my thoughts should turn to the
memory of him, whose last words had been ** They are so sweet."
In the month of August of the same year I was alone in my room,
sewinp, when all at once, first a faint and then a very pronounced
odor of violets filled the room — ^there certainly were no violets
anywhere, it was not the season to have them around — what was
it— Charlie is here, something said within me and just then my
remaining son, who had been upstairs in a litle den, wherein the
boys had always done their studying, came down and said,
"Mother, have you any violets here? Just now it smelled so
strong of them in my room, it was so nice." *' So Charlie has
been with you also?" I could not refrain from saying — but now
it had all gone, just as if it had come with a presence and gone
with that presence. Every now and then, at long intervals, this
fragrance of violets would thus suddenly be with us, and who-
soever happened to be here just then, would smell it, and know
it to be violets. Then for some years there were no violets to
come to us in that way, and my oldest son had married, and
brought his wife home here. Sometimes I would speak of it, that
the violets, Charlie, had not been with us for a long time, and my
son's wife would smile sceptically and plainly intimate that it
was all imagination. One day, however, she had just come in
from out of doors — I myself was in the kitchen seeing to dinner —
when I neard her say in the next room, " Have you any violets
hidden somewhere?" and when I stepped into the room, where
she, and also my son, who had just come in, were standing in
wonder and oh, the sweetness of it ! a basket full of violets could
not have filled the room with that fragrance more completely
than it was now filled, — no violets being there. We stood
and marveled, but I knew in truth that Charlie had come again.
Since we could not see him, this was surely a beautiful way for
him to impress us with his presence. This is the last time it
happened. E — K .

My daughter-in-law will corroborate my statement, so far as
she is concerned in the matter, if it is necessary. I have, how-
ever, stated things exactly as it happened.

Dec. 7th, 1906.

Prof. James H. Hyslop:

Dear Sir: — Received your letter of Dec. ist and will answer
here some of the questions you asked me. The incense incident

438 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

occurred on Sunday, June 4th, 1905. I had tried very hard to
believe that it was possible that the very strong smell of this in-
cense was coming through the air from some Catholic Church,
but when I reasoned that the nearest church was six blocks
away, and that in all the thirty-seven years that we have lived in
this home, there had never even the faintest waft of incense
come from that church, I discarded this thought and it was then
that it suggested itself to me, if it could be that my cousin had
died. My son Charles died on the 29th of February, 1884. The
first time the violet scent was strongly defined, was in August of
the same year, then during the following winter — I could not
give any exact date — it occurred three times then not again for
some years. The last time — ^this was when my son's wife first
perceived it — was in November of 1894, and never before had the
whole room seemed to be filled so completely. My son and wife
are now and have always since their marriage been living with
me in this house, no separate address. My son has been very
unwell this past summer, with symptoms of nervous prostration,
and so I have avoided speaking before him of such matters and at
present I would have no questions put to him. My daughter-in-
law will send you some lines to confirm what I have said re-
garding the last occurrence of the violet incident.

The name of the lady who saw her husband and son in the
window of deceased son's home, is Mrs. H. W ; her hus-
band and son both had occupied responsible positions in the
Coast Survey Office. The daughter who is an opera singer ap-
pears under the name of "W N ;" but it is the

younger sister, Jenny, also studying music now in Berlin, Ger-
many, who with her friend had been present at the occurrence.

Mrs. W also is sick at present ; when she is well enough

for me to speak to her about the matter I will let her read your
last lines to me, and then let you know the address at once. I
must, of course, ask her permission to send her daughter's ad-
dress in Europe. The young lady friend I will see myself for

you. Mrs. L sent me word that she wished to see me.

If the weather permits, I will see her to-morrow. She is well
and hearty enough but I am not sure that she can write English
enough to write a good statement. She has read what I have
written to you, and said, " Just so it was." I have no doubt that
in some way she will manage to write to you. Had I told you
when you were here, that about two months after my cousin had
died, I had taken a letter of his to me, put it into a new envelope
and closed it ; then took it to a certain medium — I had never be-
fore been there — ^and when she took the envelope in her hand, she
described the party from whom this letter was. She described a
priest's garments — really the Bishop's hat — did not seem to know
what to make of this queer headgear ; had apparently never seen

Incidents. 439

one. She told me also what sickness he died of. You will soon
hear from me again. I am yours sincerely, E. K.

The following is the corroborative testimony of the
daughter-in-law, followed by another interesting experience
by Mrs. K. which shows the same tendency to the use of the
sense of smell for the conveyance of information.

One day, on entering the sitting room, I smelled the scent of
\'iolets strongly and asked, " Has any one any violets here ? "

Mrs. K came from the adjoining room immediately and

said " No." The scent lasted only a short time.

EMILY E. K.

You see my son's wife had no sentiment about the occurrence,
did not know my son who had died, and after the first curiosity
she felt it left no impression on her.

I had another experience, similar to the " Fragrance of Vio-
lets " happening. In June, 1905, I was alone in the house, read-
ing— when all of a sudden — the strong scent of a certain incense
—such as is used in the lamps swung during " High Mass " at
Catholic altars — filled the room, getting more and more pro-
nounced every second, so that I wondered where it came from.
I tried to find some explanation for it, but did not succeed. Then
somehow the thought came to me — I know not how nor why —
"Can it be that Ludwig has died and has been thinking of me? "
Ludwig was a first cousin of mine, and was at the time Bishop of
Dresden, Saxony. He and I had been great friends in our youth,
and while I knew that he was suffering from some slow malady,
I had been written to that he might live for years yet. So when
this thought came to me, I somehow would not accept this ex-
planation in my mind, and there was nothing to do but give up
finding any. In less than a minute the strong scent had all gone.
Ten days later, however, I received the news from home, that
jCousin Ludwig had died on exactly the same day at his country
residence near Dresden. As I have stated, we had been great
friends, and thus it must be that in this manner he communicated
with me. In fact I cannot help but accept it now in just this
way. E. K.

440 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

CORRESPONDENCE.

To the Editor:

Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

I have read Dr. Hyslop's able discussion on Telepathy in the
June Journal, with much interest, and for the most part with
cordial agreement. It is indeed time that some steps were taken
to show how illegitimately the notion of " telepathy " has been
extended since the introduction of the term. We have learnt
that under certain conditions a mind can apparently influence
another mind in some way which does not seem to involve the
mediacy of the normal sensory channels of the percipient. That
is about all we ought to say ; yet we continually find ourselves —
such is our natural hunger for *' explanations " — in danger of in-
voking " Telepathy " in cases which do not justify the hypothe-
sis. In the cases of transmission of diagrams, or in other ex-
perimental cases where normal transmission and chance coinci-
dences are excluded, some communication between agent and
percipient — by unknown means — must be supposed. Also, in
many cases of veridical hallucinations, the same supposition is
justified. But. as Dr. Hyslop points out, we are going far be-
yond our brief when we advance from tentative suppositions in
cases such as these, to the sweeping and wholesale attribution of
telepathy as adequate " explanation " of such cases as that of
Mrs. Piper. It has been frequently pointed out that any explan-
ation of — e. g. — the " G. P." phenomena by telepathy would in-
volve the arbitrary supposition of a kind of telepathy for which
there is no evidence. It would involve the supposition that Mrs.
Pipef*s subliminal can select from many minds just such facts as
are suitable for building up a fictitious " G. P." It may require
credulity to believe in communications from the dead, but it re-
quires quite as much to believe in such an extension of telepathy.
If Mrs. Piper's subliminal is so powerful and so knowing, and
yet is such a persistent liar in pretending to be what it is not, it
would seem simpler — as Dr. Hodgson suggested, and in accord-'
ance with the assurances of our Catholic friends — to call it the
Devil and have done with it. This might not be a very scientific
explanation, but surely those who are credulous enough to be-
lieve in this extended telepathy, will be able to believe in a Devil
quite easily ; for I think there is more evidence for the latter than
for the former. But to come back to seriousness, there is one
point in Dr. Hyslop's paper which seems to me perhaps unsatis-
factory. In paring down telepathy to its legitimate meaning, he
attempts to restrict the use of the word to cases in which an
agent is trying, or may reasonably be supposed to be trying, to
impress the percipient. Thus, in transgerren- " " ^^ams, etc..

Correspondence. 441

the active mind of the agent impresses the passive mind of the
percipient, and the phenomenon falls into line with our notions
of mechanical causation. Similarly, it is reasonable to suppose,
in the case of veridical apparitions, that the mind of the agent
was somehow the cause of the percipient's impression, though
the latter may not be an exact reproduction of the agent's
thought. In short, that telepathy should be applied only to phe-
nomena in which the effect on the percipient is preceded by con-
scious activity of a certain kind, on the part of the agent. Such
a restriction would at once cut the ground from beneath any tel-
epathic explanation of the veridical communications through
Mrs. Piper ; for many of these communications cannot reasonably
be accounted for by supposing that some distant agent was or
had been consciously trying to transmit such messages to her.
And it is of course a common thing for the sitter to receive a
veridical communication — characteristic of a deceased person-
ality— which certainly is not, at the time, in the sitter's conscious
thoughts. If the Piper phenomena are to be attributed to telep-
athy, it is obviously necessary to invert our previous ideas about
agent and percipient ; we must suppose that Mrs. Piper's sublim-
inal— far from being a passive percipient — Can go foraging very
actively indeed in search for the facts it wants for its special pur-
pose— can go rummaging through many minds, far and near,
turning over innumerable memories in search of the right ones.
It is against such an outrageous assumption that Dr. Hyslop
enters his protest; and no doubt all unprejudiced minds will
agree with him. Of course we are not thereby driven to accept
the spiritistic explanation ; it is open to us to say that no explana-
tion as yet brought forward seems completely satisfactory.

But, though agreeing with Dr. Hyslop's protest against telep-
athic explanations which are not justified by solid evidence, I am
nevertheless inclined to think that his restriction of the definition
is rather overdone in the opposite direction. If we restrict tel-
epathy to phenomena in which there is an active cause in the
consciousness of an agent, it seems to me that there is left a
whole class of phenomena for which we have no name. I refer
to veridical messages (by whatever sensory channel received, i. ^.,
by the speech or writing of a sensitive, or through table-tilting,
or other means) which do not seem explicable either by chance
coincidence or by the supposition of some agent's conscious
thought. It is common enough for a trance personality or a
normal clairvoyant to give a sitter many startlingly true facts
concerning his past life — facts which were not consciously pres-
ent in his mind at the time. Frequently the intelligence at worK,
though purporting to be a " spirit," does not purport to be any
acquaintance of the sitter, or to be obtaining his information from
anv such (deceased) acquaintances. It alleges itself to be the

442 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

medium's regular " guide," and it seems to be obtaining its in-
formation by somehow " reading the mind " — " sensing the sur-
roundings." as it sometimes says— of the sitter. In other words,
the memories of the sitter seem to be to some exent accessible to
this foraging entity, whatever it may be. Dr. Hyslop is perhaps
right in saying that we have " no reason to believe that memories
are active causal agencies," and that therefore we have no right
to call telepathic, phenomena of the kind just specified. But, if
we allow this, we certainly need a name for such phenomena.
There is plenty of eivdence in support of the fact itself — that
memories are under certain conditions accessible, by supernormal
means, to a foreign intelligence, incarnate but perhaps generally
subliminal — and if the name of " telepathic " is denied us, it
seems difficult to find a suitable descriptive title. " Clairvoy-
ance " and " talaesthesia " are more properly applied to super-
normal perceptions in which no mind foreign to that of the sensi-
tive is supposed to assist; i. e,, to perceptions of distant scenes,
etc., which do not seem reasonably explicable by telepathy.
What name, then, is left us for the phenomenon of supernormal
acquisitions of facts from another person's memory? The term-
inology of psychical research is already becoming rather cum-
brous and I think that terms — like entities— ought not to be
multiplied praeter necessitatum; but the temptation to invent a new
term is strong, when there seems justification which amounts al-
most to necessity. However, as already indicated, it may be
argued that Dr. Hyslop's restriction of telepathy is too rigorous,
and that it is justifiable to apply it — as descriptive term, not as
" explanation " — to mind reading of memories as well as to the
reading of the conscious, mental states of an active agent Per-
haps the two classes could be distinguished from each other by
the addition of a word or words, the root name " telepathy " be-
ing retained for both. I throw this out as a mere suggestion, and
again express my appreciation of Dr. Hyslop's useful and timely

P^P^^' J. ARTHUR HILL.

Vol. I.— No. io. October, 1907.

JOURNAL

OF THE

American Society for Psychical Research

Gbibsal Articuss: pagb

Human Personality .... 443
Dr. Mackay on the ImmortaJity of the

Soul 459

Editokzal ;

"Njffger-talk Incident**- ... 400

The Sapcmormal In Psychic Research 481

CONTENTS

Incxdbnts : pagb

Apparent Clairvoyamoe > . - 495
Dream -------489

CoRjtBaPom>BivcB : .... 491

BookRevibw 492

Addxtionai. Mbmbbrs - - - - 493

HUMAN PERSONALITY.
By Hartley B. Alexander.
SYNOPSIS:
I. Apprehension of Another's Personality:

(a) Of the Bodily Self .

1. In the mere physical apprehension of a human
being, in sense-perception, there is already
given something more than the merely phys-
ical; there is given an instinctive sense-infer-
ence of consciousness and vital personality.

(b) Of the Psychic Self.

2. And in our inference of the state of another's

mind, it is not merely the current thought and
feelings that we infer, but a way of thinking
and feeling, a character which we reconstruct
as his permanent personality, underlying the
transiency of mood and thought, and exempli-
fying his essential being.

II. Apprehension of One's Own Personality:

(aj As Shown in Consciousness,

3. Similarly, in our apprehensions of ourselves,

as persons, we pass beyond the temporary

444 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

events of current consciousness to an inner
" control " which synthesizes and amalgamates
our experiences into a kind of logic of charac-
ter ; and again, in self-consciousness we have a
fundamental and immediate recognition of an
inner being more or less at variance with the
outer environment.

(b) As Shozvn in Subconscious Developments of Experience.

4. This inner being or life control is what we

mean by " soul " ; from the fact that its primary
mark is anticipation of experience, as shown in
the teleology of a developing life, and from the
fact that its primary function is the co-ordina-
tion and piecing out of our fragmentary day-to-
day consciousness, we can but infer that the
soul's nature must be an extension of our con-
scious life, 1. e.y it must be spiritual.

(c) As Sttown in Self-Interpretation.

5. Primitive beliefs in the " soul," e, g,, as exempli-
fied in poetic pantheism or in doctrines of trans-
migration, indicate how fundamental in the
human mind is its feeling of spiritual extension,
or supplementation, beyond this mortal embod-
iment. And even our self-misunderstandings
(source of human tragedy) are possible only on
the theory that we are more than we are self-
revealed to be. There must be ground of real-
ity in our natures answering to our spiritual as-
pirations ; otherwise Nature belies herself in the
creation of the human mind, and truth is illu-
sion.

III. Objections to Belief in Immortality:

(a) Body and Mind Dependence.

6. The problem of the relation of body to mind

takes its rise in the primitive confusion of soul
and body, and it offers difficulties as to the pos-

Human Personality, 445

sible independent existence of the soul only
when misunderstood: mind is not so much de-
pendent on body as is body on mind ; the body
is but the mortal instrument of the spiritual
control, as is shown by the fact that it can be
understood only when taken as representing a
purpose to which mind is the key; to explain
body-experience we must hypothecate an ex-
perience transcending body-consciousness.

(b) The Sense of Human Unzvorthiness.

7. From a universal or cosmic point of view a
human life is a concrete embodiment of Na-
ture's evolutional aspiration; and man's sense
of his own unfulfillment and unworthiness is
but the better proof that his mortal life does not
complete Nature's design in creating him; the
shortcomings of the achieved reality but em-
phasize the worth of the ideal in Nature's
scheme, and so the scope of her promise for
him.

APPREHENSION OF ANOTHER'S PERSONALITY.

I.

There is a way we have of judging one another which is
a matter partly of intuition and partly of that vital sympathy
we call instinct. On meeting a stranger we form conclusions
about him almost immediately, responding to his presence
with certain feelings which temper and tone our conduct to-
ward him. We become aware, for example, of a distinctive
physical stamina — muscles strong or weak, nerves tense or
flaccid, an impetuous or a reticent bodily disposition, — and
we gauge the man at a given potential, acknowledging or
denying his mastership of ourselves.

Now all this is not merely seeing. What the sense of
sight furnishes us is, at first blush, but a mazy manifold of
color and light. It is ourselves who interject into this mani-
fold the vividness of reality, the hue and stir of life. If we
see things distinct, living, it is only because our sensations

446 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

are already perceptions, entering consciousness biased and
shot through by our own vital experience. This experience
(whether stored in memory or instinct) is what imbues sense
with its nice observation. The satisfaction which we feel in
the subtle and lissome grace of a maid's movements, the
provocation in the merry flash of her countenance, do not
spring from any specialty of the vision, but from the fact that
she is humanly close to our sympathies and understanding.
The whole art of human living, the strange quick knowledge
with which the generations of our ancestors have endowed
us, falls into sudden illumination, and we greet it with a
ready and responsive smile.

Nor is this play of vital sympathies restricted to percep-
tion of human life. Our comprehensions of animals are
mainly ascriptions of man-like function to organisms whose
analogies with our organism cannot but be felt. We leap;
we run; in dreams at least we fly; and when we see these
actions performed or suggested by other creatures, our un-
derstanding— nay, our seeing — is in large part an incipient
imitation of them in our own bodies.

The muscled beast has thus a potential of its own. The
clean turn of the limb, the compact adaptation of the wing,
impress us not as mechanism but as expression of movement
and life. And when we see vixenism in the manners of spar-
rows, strenuosity in lambs, a placid domesticity in the rumi-
nant cow, we do but bring into exercise some feature of that
general animal nature of which we with them are coheirs.
Of course the nearer the action or trait conforms to human
canons the closer is the felt kinship and understanding. I
doubt not that the dog is in some degree indebted for his
place in our aflfections to his cogitative capacity for wrink-
ling the browB, and the reason why the lion seems so much
pearer human comprehension than the striped and spotted

his kind may well be the impression iof brow which the

ne ^ives to the leonine countenance; the dignity of the
^hcasts is the dignity of the aspect of intelligence.

1 the kinly tokens by far the most impressive are

•presence of no animal with recognizable eyes is

^Qin certain modesties and subjective reserva-

A

Human Personality, 447

tions elsewhere not manifest. It is not the vertebral column
but palpable eyesight that constitutes the true insigne of
aristocracy in the animal world. Creatures the most mon-
strous, the octopus, the squid, conspicuously favored with
this mark, are thereby accorded thrice over the respect con-
strained from us by all eerie life.

Now the reason for this unique suggestiveness of eyes is
not far to seek. For just as movement is the pre-eminent
token of life — so that clouds and lightnings, winds and rivers,
the circling heavenly bodies, are the last of inanimate objects
to lose animistic interpretation, — so is the eye and its seeing
pre-eminently the sign of intelligent life. An eye always
seems to mean thought — vivid, tangible consciousness. It
may be mild, innocent, laughing, shy, frank, bold, furtive,
malicious, cruel, evil : all the gamut of disposition and mood
is in it, all the range of purpose and desire. We follow it in
the thrust and parry of conversation, we search it for sudden
confidences, we study it as the open ledger of another^s
thoughts, till it becomes the outward epitome of intellectual
life. In ourselves it is the chief instrument for the acquisi-
tion of knowledge, whose deep impress causes us to desig-
nate that within to which clear thinking is due the " mind's
eye " while our highest type of knowledge we call " inner
vision." Hence, wherever eyesight is, there, we impulsively
feel, must be intelligence, — though it is only upon reflection
that we recognize this intelligence as our own.

So we read our lives into other living creatures, judging
their bodily feelings and appetites and re-creating their tem-
peraments by analogies, a little distorted, from our experi-
ences and instincts. But we by no means restrict the hyposta-
tizing" process to animate forms. Primevally, the whole trem-
ulous world is astir with impulse and endeavor, human at the
core, and the whole geste of Nature is recorded in heroics
and g-iven form in the bright blazonry of man's imagination.
And even in these maturer modern days we have not thrown
off the ancient and necessary propension; though with a re-
stricted and stinted life, we still vivify and humanize nature.
The cunning interplay of forces which physics would make
the world to be is only the apotheosis of motion, the machine

448 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

at its acme. And what is the machine save a monstrous and
mutilated life? a body fitted with all clever device, adapted
to all nice operation, yet bereft of that inner direction and
sense which alone can give intelligibility? The machine is a
companion being to ourselves, the key to whose reality L^
wanting; possessing man-like efficiency, it is yet destitute ot
the inner motive which makes that efficiency comprehensi-
ble ; hence it is a thing distorted, deformed, a veritable Frank-
enstein. This, I take it, is why we are prone to feel a nerv-
ous dread of our own most characteristic handiwork, the
great tools of our material subsistence, dimly realizing that
in all of them is something baffling reason and offensive to
friendly imagination.

Doubtless this suggestion of mutilated life, offending as
it does the ancient and deep sympathies of our kind, has
much to do with our revulsion in the presence of the dead
The mere body is a most marvelous machine, yet it is only
by dint of sophistic intellection that we are able to get up a
passable admiration for the nice articulation of the skeleton
or the neat economies of the interplaying muscles. The sug-
gestion of something in principle infinitely nobler than mech-
anism, the suggestion of life, is too intimate for us easily to
tolerate its absence ; we cannot brook the fall. It is observ^a-
ble that the skeleton, from which the suggestion is somewhat
further removed, is more susceptible of lukewarm contempla-
tion than is the unaltered corpse, with its imperious remini-
scence of life. But with the effect of either of these what
contrast is given by the sculptor's representation of the body!
Here there is no thought of inner mechanism ; there is noth-
ing to dissect, nothing to tear apart or analyze; and so there
is no hint of death or mutilation. The whole work is an in-
vitation to imaginative interjection of vital fire, and in the
act of appreciation the imagination flashes the response, im-
perceptibly swift. The physical form becomes an incarnate
mood, thrice intense because thrice purified in its marble
abstractness ; there is no flaw, neither dross of flesh nor fu-
tility of vacillation, but just the poise and instancy of living
at its height.

It is not for me here to enter upon the psychical com-

Human Personality. 449

plexities involved in apprehension of the physical personality.
Enough that these are built up of the enormously intricate
histories of our forefathers' lives under the control of that
bent of Nature which has made our race and our several
characters what they are. Granted that it is not the mere
body, the mere machine, but the living body, the inspirited
man, that alone is beautiful or terrible in human appearance,
the reasons for this or that feeling or response in the pres-
ence of this or that physical person belong to what is spe-
cialized in our natures. They belong to what I have termed
vital sympathies, meaning those obscure yet ruling elements
of human character derived from the life-histories of the
order of being, genus, spefties, race, to which we belong.
Our vital sympathies are in a sense epitomes of these life-
histories; they are precipitates of experience taking form
partly in ancient and well-ordered instincts, partly in im-
pulses and aptitudes, only flittingly grounded in character ;
they are modes of conscious response, ever on the verge of
manifestation, and life largely consists in their play and coun-
terplay under the impulsion of the myriad suggestions of
our daily encounters.

In these encounters familiarity goes for much. But
human nature is wide and may be piqued to the most unex-
pected interests and admirations, as Desdemona's for her
Blackamoor. In our estimates of physical personality we
owe much \o the traditionary ideals of our race, whose heroes
and ogres are the bases of our admirations and antipathies,
yet something we owe to the mixed new being each one of
us is — ready to welcome a novelty not too novel or to recog-
nize a temerarious magnetism in a type which our fathers
could have found only repellant. At the basis of physical
charm lies fullness of physical life — buoyancy, grace,
strength, the clear line!!^ of the vigorous l>ody, the brijjht hues
of health. But over and above this, perhaps more appealing
as surely more subtle^ h the sufricustion of the animatinj^
mood or thought, be it the lurking of a wizened pre-humafi
smile, the shadowy semblance of a dead and forgotten rar*^
whose women alone survived, or the nettlesome anticipfl
of a froward evolution* v

450 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

Yet here I have already passed the bounds of the merely
physical personality, am already encroaching uix>n the mcc-
tal and spiritual. This is inevitable. For the man that we
meet in physical space is only the symbol of the man we deal
with and come to know. The highest type of human beauty
and the completest manifestation of life is that in which wc
divine an actuating intelligence capable of rousing our own
to its unforseen best. Physical life is never merely physical:
even the remote protozoan carries an unescapable flavor ot
fussy sentience, while the degrefc of consciousness we attrib-
ute to the progressive life-forms ever outstrips the complex-
ity of their physical development. For this the reason car
be no other than that final one : 6ur human nature measuring
itself forth upon the world which is its context.

II.

There is, then, encountered in the mere physical approach
something more than the merely physical, something in-
tangible but vivid, — life, human life, human nature. For its
initial term, consider the sleeping child. There is a softness
and flush about the cheek and lips, a freshness of the smooth
clean-curved brow, a mobility of the delicate lashes (all so
far from harsh and waxen death), gathering into a kind of
luminous halo, as from a subtle and hidden flame. The child
is the generalized man, and in the presence of its living body
already we grasp the scheme of man's nature, instinct within.

And so when we meet the man himself — visage over-|>en-
cilled by that symbolism of the flesh which it becomes the
lesson of our lives to read, — with unerring sense for the real
presence transubstantiating the physical, we g^ess beyond
the symbol to mood and thought, and beyond the mood and
thought to character and power. That we do this is not a
little remarkable, for it involves a kind of perpetual duplicity
of apprehension which surely could only have arisen in com-
pliance with a more masterful reality than any that pertains
to ordinary sense-perception, — and this human personality is.

Perhaps our greatest analytical difficulties come in con-
nection with our most ordinary modes of thought. Where
familiarity has bred custom, we judge with inscrutable swift-

Human Personality, 451

ness, and our keenest inferences come so impulsively to mind
that we accept them without question, — or, if question occur,
comfortably accredit them to intuition. We meet one an-
other and know one another; or we learn to know in the
briefest fragments of intercourse. There is a whole complex
impression which a human being makes upon a fellow human
being", regulating the latter's conduct toward him. Such
impressions constitute our mutual recognitions and are the
cues by heed of which we get along together.

Of course I do not mean to say that these impressions are
adequate or necessarily true. They are the most superficial
of acquaintanceships, rough sketches to be filled in as occa-
sion may offer with the detail of character. But even so
they form the general burden of our social life ; and no matter
how simplified and made uniform by social convention and
rule, they are yet of a nature sufficiently involved to puzzle
comprehension. I have already dwelt on the physical im-
pression, on the sharpness of its challenge and the imperious
speed with which we throw back the guess of life and force :
the net result of this impression is a sense-perception hardly
obviously sensible; the net result is an apprehension of a life-
experience analogous to our own and somehow in sensible
communication with ours. A living human being (till more
be known) is a generalized human nature, a blank personality
to be stamped in the die of experience.

The physical impression is thus a preliminary outstripped
even in its inception ; after it comes the impact of the person-
ality. It is odd how very little social fencing — a few com-
monplaces, a stray remark — may suffice to personalize. We
are so very close together, we mortals, or our common
human nature is so sympathetically broad, that at least such
mutual awareness as is necessary for the perfunctory part of
life is practically spontaneous. We may not in the prelim-
inary formality judge another at full or right value, but we
do judge whether or not he be worth cultivation; we judge,
that is, whether he represents the worthy or the unworthy
possibility in ourselves.

The truth is there is a vastly involved criss-cross of the
mental and physical worlds which to understand we must

4S2 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

first understand howthese worlds are never very clearly dis-
tinct in consciousness. Objects of sense-perception have
not, as facts of experience, that physical isolation which our
neat definitions seem to imply. They are all more or less
" charged " with inference and mood — with the psychical in-
terjection which is ultimately what makes them objects and
significant.

Take, for example, a tree : the tree is not merely a play of
color and light in three dimensions ; even for the vision alone
it is very much more ; it is a rooted and solid fact, compact of
resistance and resilence. In seeing it we directly perceive
the hardness and stability of its trunk, the pliancy of its
twigs, the firm texture of its leaves — nay, we even perceive
the ramifications and strenuous holds of its roots and the
cells and striations of its inner structure. Psychologists used
to annex these qualities to the visual image as more or less
extraneous associations, but we need only attempt the dif-
ficult feat of perceiving a tree-image — mere color and light-
in place of the palpable tree, to know how completely we do
in fact (inference with impression) " sense " the object as a
whole. Its whole substance and history is in its mere pres-
ence.

In a perhaps more conclusive way aesthetic values enter
into things. The beauty of a rose, the sublimity of a wild
sky, are so much a part of the rose and the sky that we can-
not conceive them without these qualities. The reality of
which our feelings and the rose or the sky are at once a part
is indissoluble.

Now all this, though in kind the same, is far less difficult
to comprehend than our perceptions of persons. For when
we meet a man we judge at two removes: we see not only
in the flesh a life, but in the life thought and emotion, im-
pulse and will. In his nods and glances, twitchings and turn-
ings, we become aware of his perceptions ; in his expression,
we feel his emotions ; in his comments or silences, we come
to know his thoughts. We reconstruct for him a state of
consciousness, an inner life, which gradually, as its reality
grows upon us, segregates itself from the sensuous environ-
nent, becoming a distinct and separate world, analogous to,

Human Personality. 453

but not within, ours. This other world does not share with
ours even the same physical space: its visions and imaginings
are in another space, to us forever transcendental. The
touch of a friend's hand, the glance of his eye, is but a
ghostly token from a realm, for all its familiarity and urgent
presence, hopelessly remote.

I imagine that a person Crusoe-like long isolated from
his fellows, on renewing their society might feel keenly this
uncanny sense of duplex life and twained worlds. Familiar-
ity ordinarily blinds us to its strangeness, and it is only now
and again, non-plussed by another's unwonted expression or
by an unaccountable impulse of his character, that we be-
come abruptly aware that what we gaze upon is but the
enigmatical shadowing of other-conscious being.

Yet not even in the reconstruction of another's conscious-
ness, strange as this act is, do we gauge the reach of our in-
ferences. In our daily intercourse, we by no means rely
upon inferred thoughts and feelings for our final estimate of
motive and propension. We judge very much farther than
the immediate consciousness; we judge mood, disposition,
Hfe motif: behind the mental state lies the moulding char-
acter, and this is our final reconstruction. The sure proof is
that we allow for a certain eccentricity in the concrete, mo-
mentary experience, and assume an underlying constancy
and consistency, an enduring, developing character, more
real and reliable than any temporary conscious fact. In-
deed, we often assume to know another better than he knows
himself, counting his present consciousness as of necessity
biased by its environment and so manifesting a kind of dis-
temper of the soul that somewhat distorts its real and deep
intentions.

In illustration let us suppose two unacquainted players to
meet at the chessboard. The first few moves reveal only
familiarity, or want of it, with the conventional openings.
But presently, the play fairly on, the silent opponents begin
to feel each other's quality. On the one side, we will say,
there is conscious mastery; on the other, a dawning sense of
inferiority. Now I know of no more realizing revelation of
the power of another's personality than comes to one who

454 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

feels himself helplessly succumbing to the slow toils of a mi-i
ter player. Behind the insignificant bits of wood, flauntm:
their impeccable assurance, looms the quiet calculation of U:
opposing mind, building up unescapable attacks, frustrati-,
every desperate expedient to freedom. But behind even thi:
more invulnerable, more terrible, is felt the reserve power c
the control, the pitiless sufficiency of the chess-intelligenct
So, if the weaker player stumble blindly in his play, if b
hand tremble and the sweat break upon his brow, the tribes ■
is rather to the hidden and machine-sure mind than to tbt'
trivial loss of an idle game.

This illustration — narrowed as it is to the apprehension':
purely intellectual character — suggests the vividness wiv
which, on occasion, the nonphysical presence may be feh
For the while, sense of bodily being disappears. The conve:
tional chessmen on their prim conventional squares are all o
the physical world that the mind entertains — no better r^
deed, than purely mental symbols. The reality that is felt i-
the aggressive, combatting intellect, with which one is almof
tangibly in contact, and behind even it the besetting- person^
ality. One stands on the very verge of a nearer and keener
acquaintanceship than human limitation allows; a dormant
sense seems issuing as from a vague, prenatal growth to give
new and powerful knowledge.

Such intensifications of ordinary judgments — found often-
est, perhaps, in certain supreme compassions of friendship-
are, I take it, sudden tensions or strainings of the evolutional
motif in accordance with which social intelligence develops.
This motif demands of us mutual understandings, mutual
approximations of character. Whether these be by the
whetting of the mind's keenness, through combat, or by the
broadening of responsiveness, through sympathy, they must
needs in certain moments receive access of conscious force
for the reason that experience is mainly given form and fixity
by its times of stress. It is the sharp spur of our own need
that awakes in us awareness of another's spiritual reality.

Indeed the awakening is in large part self-awakening.
We cannot see save with the light that we bring. All com-

Human Personality. 455

>rehension of character is ultimately comprehension through
iympathy ; that is, through imaginative creation of the other's
ife; and it is impossible for us imaginatively to create ex
•ifVii/o— only within the range of our own possibilities can
=;ympathy be awakened. I say " possibilities," rather than
'* reality/' Much that we are is the time's accident : our pres-
ent life is " ours '' merely by courtesy; for the most part, it is
\vhat it is because the world wills it so. None the less, in the
midst of this preoccupying present, we are dimly conscious of
a vague half-owned self, our hopeful " best self," more inti-
mate and lasting than the superficial reality of consciousness.
It is this elusive self which is expressed by and engrosses our
** possibilities," and it is these (already on the verge of reali-
zation, perhaps,) which are illumined now and then in the
great moments of our recognitions. In the time of stress,
encountering another whose nature fulfills our own till then
hidden ideal, we become glad in his strength and satisfied in
his sufficiency, little witting that the secret of our revelation
of his character is a sudden growth of our own.

In " Colombe's Birthday " Browning portrays such an
encounter. The theme is elementally simple: Colombe, in
her need, finding Valence, thereby finds herself. Outwardly
the event is her progressive understanding of him, with its
oddly investigative procedures; inwardly and truly, it is no
less than her own soul's new birth. The salient meaning of
two people's mutual knowing of one another — its value and
bearing for man as a social being — is directly phrased. To
Valence, in the exaltation of her confidence, Colombe says:

" This is indeed my birthday — soul and body,
Its hours have done on me the work of years . . .
Believe in your own nature, and its force
Of renovating mine! I take my stand
Only as under me the earth is firm;
So, prove the first step stable, all will prove.

That first I choose: [Laying her hand on his.] — the next to take,
choose you ! "

And after she has withdrawn, the reciprocal change appears
in Valence. He begins to perceive unsuspected powers in
himself (which, be it noted, she had seen) :

456 Journal of the Atnerican Society for Psychical Research.

"What drew down this on me?— on me, dead once,
She thus bids live, — ^since all I hitherto
Thought dead in me, youth's ardors and emprise.
Burst into life before her, as she bids
Who needs them."

This may be falling in love. From the sociological point
of view it is none the less interesting, for falling in love is,
perhaps, the most important of human rapprochements.
And the essential point here is that Browning shows what it
may mean, at its highest efficiency, for the individuals con-
cerned.

Of course in ordinary leisurely experience we have no
equally aggressive apprehensions of one another. None the
less we do judge to much the same intent if not to the same
degree. We never stop with the mere physical impression
and it is seldom that we go no further than the current mental
coinage. Perhaps this may be realized most clearly in judg-
ments of art. What is it we mean by " knowing " an artist?
Is it not the result of a series of impressions of his work, the
work in which he has expressed his own seeing, as well as he
may, and has so given us an inkling of his style of thought?
Under the stimulus of his hints we reconstruct in ourselves
something of his feeling and point of view, and then, on the
basis of our common human nature, instinctively generalize
the man. It is the mode of seeing or thinking, not the particu-
lar vision or thought, that gives the clue to character. Man-
ifestly there are all sorts of idiosyncracies of style, technique,
and topic, by which we can make judgments, but judgments
on such bases go no deeper than the Bertillon measurements
in the police galleries ; it is not by or through them that we
feel the cool charm of Corot, the phantasmic splendour of
Turner, or the attraction of Rousseau's scenic sagacity; there
is something beyond the canvas, a way of seeing it coaxes us
to master, which is the real and inner message of the art.

But there is no more convincing proof of the ulteriorness
of our judgments (as there is no more saving human virtue)
than is to be found in our inveterate habit of discounting one
another's faults of action to the favor of character. It is sel-
dom, indeed, that we believe a man quite so frail as his deeds.
We instinctively and thoroughly believe in motives deeper

Human Personality, 457

than conscious motives dominating each man's intention and
urging him to a more ideal life. We concede to him all manner
of weaknesses ; he is in bond to the world, the flesh, and the
devil ; but we excuse his weaknesses for the rigor of the bond,
and over and beyond all insist that he has in himself a spark
of that divine impetus which now and then makes heroes and
saints, and so glorifies our faith. It is for this spark, this
ideal and real, yet unrealized character, controverting his ac-
tions and lying deeper than his thoughts, that we cherish our
fellowman; it is this, not the partial mutilated being which
each as an historical entity must be, that we love in him ; and
it is this that enables us to maintain our own lives in good
courage.

I think it is worth while to ask oneself what is it that
gives dignity and nobility to such a character as Hamlet's.
Certainly it is nothing Hamlet does; his deeds are mostly
sorry blunders. Nor again is it his motives ; revenge may be
dignified, perhaps, but never noble. Hamlet's nobility is in
his ideal self — the self that we know so vastly better than he
knows it ; and his tragedy is the tragedy of wrecked possibil-
ity, the fine soul gone wry. We read his life with hardly a
passing awareness of its materia, its " business," but the ter-
rible breaking down of his spirit's house (not in madness but
in unfulfillment), that it is which arouses in us tragic terror
and pity.

From all this we may generalize that just as human na-
ture is a kind of natural law of the human species, so a man's
character is a kind of formulary of his individual life. It is
what, crediting to environment some percentage of aberra-
tion, we inly paint as his true portrait. It is the complex of
motive which we formulate as the key to his biography — a
harmony of impulses leading to the harmony of effects which
his total action involves, and wherever an action fails of this
harmony we say that it is not true to his proper self.

Thus do men come to know one another. Of this knowl-
edge two traits are to be noted. First, that we seem to know
another better than he knows himself, that we judge beyond
the temporalness of his present thought or feeling to what is
steady and sure, nor ever reckon what he actually is by his

458 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

own self-understandings, we universalize him, biographize
him, endow him with an ideal temperament and life motif.
Now the second trait concerns the meaning of our knowledge
to ourselves. For what we care for and love in another is
just this ideal, unrealized self: never what he is, but what he
promises to be; never the seen fact, always the biding possi-
bility.

Let it not be understood that I mean to affirm our knowl-
edge of one another to be always sure or true. That is far
from the fact. Most of what is heartrending in human life
comes from our incomprehensions. In the long years of
Javert's persecution of Jean Valjean he understood neither
his victim or himself. Maeterlinck turns the tragedy of
" Monna Vanna " upon a wife's too idealistic confidence in a
husband's faith in her. Ibsen's Nora awakes with pitiful sur-
prise to find her own spiritual deformity outmatched by her
husband's littleness and selfishness. Yet each of these in-
stances is in another way instructive. For Javert at the last
discovers his own unsuspected capacity to be noble — beaten,
though it be, for this life. And Giovanna, self-betrayed,
through her husband's frailty yet finds self-knowledge.
While finally the truth and magnanimity of Ibsen's idealism
forbade that Nora should believe even Helmer hopelessly
lost : having faith in her own possible redemption, she could
not wholly deny his.

The significance of our efforts to understand one another
is less their achievement than their endeavor. The fact of the
effort is a fact of self-stimulation. In seeking to know others
we come to know better ourselves, and in emulating what we
conceive to be noble in others we develop our own best pos-
stbilities. Peril aps the very essence of love is that it arises
between persons whose mutual contacts call forth most fully
the hidden idealizations in each other's character; and it can-
flOl be doubted that the richest and finest life is just that
is responsive to the widest play of human influences, or
essential process of human living is the bringing into
•nusness of latent ideals. In reconstructing our
^sure them by our own natures and so come to

Dr, Mackay on tlie Immortality of the Soul. 459

know ourselves through them. This subtle mutual awaken-
ing is what we mean by human influences and it is the great
source of the solidarity of mankind.

( To be contimied. )

DR. MACKAY ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE

SOUL.
By James H. Hyslop.

Dr. Donald Sage Mackay's article in the June number of
the North American Review is not a little interesting for its
revelation of the position of a theologian and the peculiar con-
tradictions of his discussion. It can be no part of this peri-
odical to take up all the issues of that article, but some things
said in it invite special notice. The paper called out an edi-
torial notice in the Nezv York Times of June 23rd, which was
indicative of the growing interest which intelligent men have
of the scientific leaning toward a solution of the problem, tho
that editorial remained agnostic of the possibilities in the
matter. What it is necessary still to do, it seems, is to get all
minds actually to face the real issue and to admit the method
by which it is to be solved. Until this is done men wnll
flounder about in speculations of all kinds, such as does Dr.
Mackay with the conservation of energy. I propose here to
take up the writer's views and statements, and give them a
consideration as exhaustive as the limits of this article will
permit.

After referring to Mr. Myers' statement that *' within a
century, the scientific proof of personal immortality would be
so strong that no reasonable man would question it," and ex-
pressing a doubt of its truth. Dr. Mackay goes on to say : —

" The hope of immortality will never be more than a hope,
and faith in it must rest rather in the region of the affections, than
in that of the intellect. The element of mystery is not only a
vital part of religion, it belongs to the discipline of character. If
the certainty of the future life were revealed so clearly and defi-
nitely that doubt would be impossible, that knowledge would not
only cheapen, but degrade, the noble side of life. Affection itself

460 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

would become coarse and vulgar, if the immortality of the in-
dividual were lifted out of the region of reverent faith into that
of demonstrated fact."

In discussing such a view it can hardly be proper for a
scientific journal to take up the cudgels for the value of a be-
lief in a future life until it is proved, whatever we may think
of that value. The attitude of science is first one of truth.
not of values. Of course it will always admit that there must
be a value attaching to every established fact, but it does not
appeal to that recognized value as a proof that an allegation
is true. Its more circumscribed problem is to ascertain
whether there is evidence that any statement is true or not,
and to place that truth on better foundations than " faith."
That will be the function of the w^ork which this Journal
undertakes. But it may be worth while to quote the remark
of the Nezv York Times, after alluding to the passage which
we have quoted. It says : " This seems to us the most note-
worthy statement in his article, and the one most open to
argument." The man of the world does not care for uncer-
tainties and " faith." He is inoculated with a very different
criterion for the truths which are to guide his conduct, and he
will not be influenced by this sentimental and wishy-washy
appeal to poetic emotions. He may be wrong, if you like to
contend so, but how are you going to interest and convert
one who demands intellectual conviction and is given only
emotional non-sense. We are always obliged to convert men
on their own premises. If they demand intellectual criteria
we must give them these or confess inability, which is virtual
agnosticism.

The position taken by Dr. Mackay so temptingly invites
criticism that I think it is fair to seize the occasion to discuss
it, and I mean also to handle his view without any mercy
which it might have been entitled to receive a generation ago.

One of the first things to be noticed is the position taken
in what has been quoted. This most apparently deprecates
an appeal to the intellect of man in the determination of a
belief which in the closing sentence of his article he regard>
as the most important one human nature can hold. I quote
this sentence also as one in flat contradiction with the opinion

Dr. Mackay on the Immortality of the Sotd. 461

just indicated. He says : — " In these ways, science and reli-
gion seem to be coming together in recognition of the most
glorious and inspiring truth that human thought can grasp,
the immortality of the human individual soul."

Now if this belief is so " glorious and inspiring " why not
endeavor to give it credentials which will satisfy the intellect
instead of leaving it in that hazy and uncertain condition which
" faith " always leaves every assertion said to be sheltered
under it, and in many cases in flat contradiction with what
the intellect has taught us to be fact? If we cannot satisfy
the reason why not be frank and admit the agnostic's posi-
tion? That is quite consistent with " faith,'' and yet the ad-
vocates of " faith " have, in the past generation, at least, been
the foremost opponents of the agnostic view of the world. Is
religion now coming over to the side of scepticism and science
to that of assuring us that Christianity is true? This must
certainly be the logical outcome of Dr. Mackay's attitude, and
the only thing that can save him is his inconsistent reliance
on a vague and ungovernable " faith.''

But the strangest feature of Dr. Mackay's depreciation of
intellectual aspects of the problem is his ignorance of his own
authority on this matter. I grant that it is true that theolo-
gians have given up in despair the task of appealing to the in-
tellect in proof of their dogmas, as I confess they may well
do, when they do not see what their original beliefs were.
The church does not appeal, as it did fifty years ago, to works
and arguments of the apologetic type, at least the Protestant
church does not do so. It has degenerated into fine pews and
aesthetic services with sentimental appeals to the imagina-
tion and emotions of its weak-minded parishioners, wealthy
men being the deacons and managers of its practical affairs.
The age of intellect has gone for the church and that on its
own admission. But this was not its position in the inceptive
stages of its history. The New Testament, which is sup-
posed by the religious mind to be its authority and history,
appeals to facts^ present facts of human experience, in proof
of a future life, and does not base its conclusion either on
" faith " or philosophic assumptions. The " miracles " and
the " resurrection "' were alleged facts and they were appealed

462 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

to as conflicting with the conclusions of speculative material-
ism at that time. Many phenomena which today come under
the scrutiny and investigation of the Society for Psychical
Research are alluded to in the New Testament record and
made the basis of a belief in immortality. The appeal in this
was to the intellect, not to the emotions. Whatever place
affection may have in giving adhesiveness and strength to a
hope for another life, they are not reasons for accepting it to
be a fact, any more than they can prove that we shall have a
fortune when we grow old. I have no doubt that the affec-
tions in pure-minded people stimulate and support a belief in
a future life. But they are neither evidence of it nor safe
guides to the formation of ideas in regard to it, and without
safe ideas and convictions regarding it, if believable at all, we
are not likely to use the belief rightly in our ethical relations.
Of this in a moment. The most important matter of remark
at present is the flat contradiction between the policy of the
modern Protestant church and its whole history. In discrim-
inating the Protestant church I am not taking up a brief for
any other, as I am not a member of any. I belong exclu-
sively to the scientific church, if I may so call it. But I have
to discriminate the church which originated in an appeal to
individual reason and now will not acept the logical conclu-
sion when it is abandoning it. If it will cease forming its
beliefs on the authority of the New Testament there is noth-
ing to say. But it is clear that the primary feature of its own
accepted authority is an appeal first to the intellect and last
to the emotions. The whole basis for a future life in the
New Testament is an appeal to present facts which cannot
consist, if they be true, with the claims of materialism.

It was after this earlier period and when faith in miracles
had faded that the church Fathers began to rely on philos-
ophy and all sorts of speculations to bolster up its *' faith.''
It stopped watching for facts and indulged, like Dr. Mackay,
in philosophic illusions to support its hopes, with the fate of
all such illusions, namely scepticism of all that is ethical and
inspirational in its creed.

I am not at present insisting that we should depend first
n the intellect for the support of our ideals. That may be a

Dr, Mackay oti the Immortality of the Soul. 463

vantage ground in this discussion, and I might be asked to
prove it if asserted here. All that it is necessary to empha-
size is the contradiction between the present position of Dr.
Mackay and that of his only authority for the policy of the
church. If he wishes to abandon that authority the issue will
be another one. But both his authority and the whole his-
tory of the church have involved an appeal to the intellect and
the emotions had to adjust themselves to these influences.

Now we shall see again how Dr. Mackay contradicts him-
self in this matter. After telling us that immortality will al-
ways be a hope and that the affections, rather than the intel-
lect, must be its basis, he proceeds immediately to congratu-
late religion with the present tendency of science to prove it !
He makes a great show of the conservation of energy to give
an assurance which his own view deprecates! He appeals to
the intellect where he should appeal, according to his own
doctrine, to sentiment! He should never tamper with
science and philosophy after deprecating their influence in
giving assurance which only vulgarises belief. He should re-
main in the hazy infinitude of imagination and poetry, making
all sorts of assertions without foundation, simply referring to
" faith '* which no one understands or reduces to definiteness.

But I shall boldly assert that there can be no healthy af-
fections and volitions which are not based primarily on sound
intellectual ideas. The inversion of this truth by Dr. Mackay
and the church, in the interest of dogmas which are in fact in-
defensible, and one might say too were never held by the
primitive church, is a violation of all sanity both of thinking
and action. And he tacitly shows this assertion to be true
by the prompt resort to reason and intellectual principles
after announcing the priority of " faith '' and an emotional
gospel. But there is nothing more certain to intelligent men
and women than the dependence of sane belief and conduct
on clear and assured ideas for which the intellect must stand
before emotion and volition can be rightly directed. The
most fundamental law of all consciousness is that man can
never act intelligently unless he is conscious of the end to-
ward which his will is moved. Intellection of some sort is
absolutely indispensable to rational volition. Otherwise a

464 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

man is a fool or an animal only. His intellect is prior to any
and all rational action. It will be the same with any emotion
that asks for justification. It must be adjusted to his intelli-
gence. The object which we admire or which gives us
rational satisfaction must be determined by the intellect, and
if it is not we can only leave the individual to his capricious
instincts. If we do not wish to reason at all : if we mean to
leave men entirely to their impuhes and emotions ; if we are
to discredit the functions of intelligence in favor of unregu-
lated affections, we should abandon all moral and political
government and have both social and individual, anarchy.
That is the only natural and logical outcome of Dr. Mackay's
premises. But ever since Plato we have thought that the in-
tellect had something prior to say in the beliefs and actions of
rational people, and when this becomes reversed we place the
victims in the insane asylum. We insist that a man shall
know what he does if he is to have any liberty or respect in
the community. This may be wrong, if you like, but it is the
only principle on which a rational civilization can be based,
and its alternative is unrestrained liberty and licentiousness.
Is Dr. Mackay prepared for that outcome?

Of course, our present civilization is only a compromise
with the logical on either side of this issue, but we shall never
be able to estimate rightly the principles which regulate the
ideal unless we look at their real or imaginary purity, and I
state the case so that we may realize the real tendencies of
the doctrine of Dr. Mackay which lacks realization only be-
cause men are not always consistent and adjust their actual
lives to an environment that will not allow pure logic to have
its full way.

But while healthy life and action at any time is an adjust-
ment of affection and knowledge, the intellect must have first
plact^. not merely because we cannot be rational otherwise,
but because it is the actual and inevitable course of things
where life and conduct are conscious at all. Taking this as
the norm of actual life Dr. Mackay, in depreciating intellect
and enthroning emotion in its place, is simply reversing the
**der philosophically of the nature which he must follow in

lis action. He does this simply at the behest of a tradi-

Dr. Mackay on the Immortality of the Soul. 465

tion which not only never had any foundation of an intelli-
gent sort, but which simply lingers on because congregations
will not give their intelligent leaders sufficient freedom of
thought to guide them wisely and so adhere to phrases which
once had a rational import, but have them no more. The fact
is, that the majority of ministers hardly tell their parishioners
the real truth about things. They are afraid of the intelli-
gence of men and women if they are once allowed to have it.
This state of things will have to be corrected if the religious
believer is to have his true place in the world, and the estab-
lishment of a future life under scientific assurance would do
much to bring about that desirable status. This is evidently
seen by the writer of the Times editorial, tho he is as dog-
matically agnostic about the impossibility of science accom-
plishing anything toward this end as is Dr. Mackay. None
of them will look at the real problem, but sneer at the only
rational attempts to solve it. When it becomes a little more
respectable to admit exactly what it is, these very intellectual
snobs will change their attitude, and at least admit what it is.
It is not science that finally determines human conviction,
but respectability. In its first stages conviction is moved
only by scientific considerations, but its general acceptance is
a matter of adjustment to the opinions of our neighbors and
these constitute the notion of respectability. So those who
are engaged at the real issue have only to plod on until the
very persistence of their work insures attention, and then Dr.
Mackay and his pews will listen, and so will the newspaper
editor and his kind.

The final appeal to " faith '' is a curious travesty on the
history of the church. It is true that " faith " has a promi-
nent place in the whole history of religion. But Dr. Mackay
and his confreres never seem to know what this " faith " was
and is in the parlance of religious life. It was not originally
a criterion of any truth whatever. It was not a means of se-
curing assent to statements of fact, but a quality of will to-
ward a person or principle of action that enabled us to await
the future for the consequences without worrying about
them. It implied a frank recognition of the necessary scien-
tific evidence for any statement about the future and simply

k

466 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

advised the man to work on under the ethical ideals which he
could see either in the life of Christ or in the principles which
he adopted for his conduct and he could then rest assured in
the best outcome. It is possible that this psychological atti-
tude is one way toward acceptance of belief, but it is not the
kind of evidence which the modern man, accustomed to the
ways of science, will always demand. Scepticism has ruled
so much of man's thought and action ever since the revival ot
literature that it is hopeless to make him content with ap-
peals to sources that have supported so many things which
science has had to overthrow. When men were without
guidance of any kind except authority " faith '' might be a
safe appeal, but the moment that science took the helm it was
to be expected that the new pilot was to be accepted and
obeyed. The achievements of this new agent have been so
great and its authority so enhanced by fulfillment of promises
that it is not to be surprised that so uncertain a leader as
" faith '* should be discredited. If we could tell exactly what
is meant by this " faith "' there might be less repugnance to
accepting it. But this rejection in its favor can only imply
that ignorance is preferable to knowledge in the regulation of
belief and conduct. Of course, neither Dr. Mackay nor any
of his confreres mean to assert so palpably absurd a position,
but in the absence of clear definition and discussion we must
challenge their language. In true parlance the rejection of
one standard and the setting up of another decides what is
meant by the accepted one, and in this case the repudiation of
intellect can have no other rational implication than the adop-
tion of ignorance, tho that is not what is really meant. But
this statement of what should be meant by such language is
the only way to bring out the legitimate function of " faith/*
if there be any. If " faith '' means an inductive inference on
the general appearance of things I can well give it a legiti-
mate place in the formation of opinions, but only in the ab-
sence of any and all other bases for truth. I can well appre-
ciate the use of the term to denote inductive inferences,
whether of slight or great probabilities, as based on the super-
ficial evidence of the world and when we have nothing to sup-
port an opposite contention. But when we have definitely

Dr, Mackay on the Immortality of tite Soul, 467

adopted scientific method in everything else connected with
our lives, it is only natural that we should insist on this in the
problem of a future life, and " faith " would be forced into a
subordinate place. Besides, this definition of " faith " admits
the intellect into the case, and in fact places that intellect at
the foundation of it, and consequently puts knowledge at the
bases of " faith " itself instead of discrediting it for this latter.
Any exclusion of the intellect and its processes from the act
of faith is only to make it either wholly unintelligible or as
acceptable only in terms of ignorance and a refusal to admit
evidence. The latter procedure is dogmatism of the sort that
leads to anarchy or despotism when it comes to the construc-
tion of society. If a man cannot reason or use his intellect in
the formation of his convictions of religious belief as well as
all others he must simply rely on the force of his will to vindi-
cate himself, and this leads to mental as well as social dis-
order. Men must either reason or fight in the settlement of
their problems. To reason assumes that they can peaceably
settle their differences and also that they appeal to facts.
But if they are not allowed to determine their beliefs and con-
duct by the intellect and its reasoning they must come to
agreement by fighting, which means that the vanquished
alone shall not use their intellects. They may have " faith " !
Their physical superiors will prohibit their thinking and de-
cide what they shall believe and do. Is this the maxim of
democracy? Of liberty and equality? It may be right. Re-
member I am only telling the consequences, but if these are
the logical outcome let us recognize it and if the outcome is
undesirable let us give up the conditions that determine it.
But any standard which does not admit the intellect into the
case only results in enthroning the emotions and the will,
which means caprice, rather than law and order, in the scheme
of things, and if ** faith " is to have this interpretation of its
function I imagine what place it will have in the reconstruc-
tion of the world with this scientific and intelligent age.

" Faith," if acceptable at all as a standard of truth, must
either implicate the intellect or leave the will without guid-
ance of any reasonable principles, and in the latter case au-
thority of some kind will step in with all its antagonisms to

468 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

the maxims which involve the idea of individual liberty and
judgment. Protestantism on this matter is between the
Devil and the deep sea. If it can abandon its neglect of the
intellect; if it can define its " faith " either as a quality of will
toward a person or a principle as it meant this in ancient
times or as an inductive interpretation of things where the
evidence is not demonstrative, it may have a foundation.
But it cannot obtain for it an acceptable function unless it
does this, and to take this position is to ally oneself w^ith all
efforts to obtain an assurance which " faith '* confessedly does
not give. x\ny other is a foolish and unintelligent allegiance
to lost causes.

I come now to the second part of Dr. Mackay's article.
As I have already indicated, after having set up the affections
as the proper determinant of the truth in the matter of im-
mortality Dr. Mackay proceeds to show us what science does
to prove what he says cannot be proved. The chief part of
his case is an appeal to the conservation of energy. For the
reader to have some idea of what this means I shall quote Dr.
Mackay's statements.

" Sixty years ago, an English scientist, by a very simple
experiment, made the discovery which Professor Huxley
himself described as the greatest of all discoveries of the nine-
teenth century. The experiment was this : By letting drop a
weight of 772.55 pounds one foot in a body of water, Dr.
Joule found that the temperature of that water to the extent
of one pound, was increased exactly one degree Fahrenheit.
A very simple result, and yet that experiment opened up the
way to the discovery of the law of conservation of energy, ac-
cording to which energy may and does constantly change its
form, but never perishes. The energy of motion passes into
heat, heat engenders steam, steam changes into electricity,
electricity into light, and in a hundred different ways the
great forces of the world are in a constant state of transition:
but they never perish. What we call * death ' is not annihila-
tion, it is only a change of energy. Decay is simply the
breaking up of life into new and multiplied forms of life. The
latest science recognizes at least nine different forms of
energy into which a single force may pass and repass without

Dr. Mackay att the Immortality of ttie Souh 469

diminution or loss. That, of course, is the great discovery of
modern science, that energy may be transformed from one
into another, but cannot be destroyed/'

Now when Dr. Mackay comes to the application of this
discovery he interprets it as proving the immortality of the
soul. But it is precisely here that he neither thinks nor stops
to observe that the great discoverers of the conservation of
energy and their successors do not interpret it for one mo-
ment as favoring survival after death. They view it quite on
the contrary as either having nothing to do with the issue or
deny a future life on the basis of it. All that Dr. Mackay
does is to arg^e formally and syllogistically from the premise
that nothing is destroyed, to the persistence of the soul. But
this is to wholly disregard the real meaning of the conserva-
tion of energy, and this in the very terms in which he himself
defines it. It is all very nice to secure an ad haminem argument
against physical science on the basis of the indestructability
of matter and energy, if we are clear that the conception of
that indestructability includes the persistence of conscious-
ness and personal identity. But the fact is that the conserva-
tion of energy, as held and taught by physical science, does
not include any such consequence. It does not even involve
the persistence of any identity in the physical world, accord-
ing to the usual way in which it is applied. It is only the il-
lusion created by the statement that nothing is destroyed that
makes careless thinkers imagine that the conservation of
energy favors personal immortality.

Ancient thought maintained the eternity of matter and
Christianity denied this, making it a created thing. The un-
created was spirit. For many centuries this conception of
things prevailed. But the discovery of what was called the
indestructability of matter and then following it, the conser-
vation of energy, reversed this and had the effect of subordin-
ating spirit to matter. Matter became an eternal thing again
and all that the conservation of energy meant was that the
forces of nature manifested themselves in various forms with-
out the creation or destruction of matter and motion. But
the doctrine did not suppose the continuance of personality in
these changes. It actually provided for the denial of it, and

472 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

fessor James. This is that we may have two kinds of func-
tion, one " productive/' in which survival would not be true if
consciousness be so conceived, and the other " transmissive."
in which its survival is supposed to be possible. But there
are two fatal difficulties to this view of the matter.

(i) In the physical world all transmission of energy, as
conceived under the law of conservation, does not imply the
retention of identity in several stages of its transmission. In
one stage it is heat, in another steam, in another electricity,
and in another light, but in none is the antecedent the same
as the consequent. The transmission is not that of the sub-
ject which is presumably the same, but of some " function '
which, in the conception of conservation as the only one to
make the case apropos at all, does not remain the same. As
personal identity is the necessary thing to make immortality
intelligible and interesting, and as " transmission " does not
imply this identity, the distinction of " functions " avails noth-
ing and is only a makeshift to evade the proper conception of
the problem. Of course, if the brain is only a transmitter of
energy we must suppose that the activities which we have
hitherto called its functions in consciousness must originate
without the brain and it then serves as a medium for trans-
mission. But the mere fact of a subject other than the organ-
ism to originate consciousness and other functions does not
guarantee that personal consciousness will retain its identit;
after death, tho it certainly creates such a presumption of it
that it would be little less than quibbling to doubt its possi-
bility after this admission. But our problem is not so mu:li
the establishment of another subject than the organism for
consciousness as it is to determine the persistence of personal
identity and to ascertain whether this is proved by the con-
servation of energy. The appeal here is to the established
doctrine of science that, defined as it is by the scientists them-
selves, does not include this identity in its conception of
" transmission " or " transformation." If the " transmis-
sion '* in the physical world were conceived as implying iden-
ity in the forces transmitted the case would be different, but
t does not so conceive it, and it matters not for the argument
v'hether the conception of physical science is correct or not.

Dr. Mackay on the Immortality of the Soul. 473

The logic of the case is determined by the facts. To make
the point effective we should have to show that the conserva-
tion of energy must maintain this identity. But to urge this
would probably make, as it did in ]Mach. the scientific man
sceptical of conservation in any sense affecting the problem
of immortality or the identity of the forces involved in the
"transmission " of energy.

(2) A " transmissive " function is not a " function " at
all in any sense useful to the issue. It can be talked about
only on condition that we change the whole conception of
conservation, unless we already hold it in a sense absolutely
irrelevant to the problem. A " function " is a " function *' of
a subject, and we only do violence to language and clear
thinking when we talk about the " transmission '' of a " func-
tion " from one subject to another. Our very conception of
" function " is that it denotes an activity of the subject in
which it is observed and in no case is this handed over to an-
other subject or does it retain its identity when it is supposed
to be so " transferred." The term is but a subterfuge and in
reality begs the whole question. Besides it assumes what is
never assumed even in physical science, namely, the continu-
ity of " function " without the persistent identity of subject,
while physics and metaphysics alike assume the identity of
subject or substance to sustain the identity and persistence of
** function," but this view of " transmissive functions " dis-
misses the need of substantive bases and yet talks about
" transmission ! " It has to start with the idea that " func-
tion " is originally " productive " and then to save immor-
tality assumes that what is " productive " in one subject be-
comes " transmissive " in another, and forgets all the while
that the " transmission " is to the organism from the soul,
while there is no reason to suppose it can be " transmitted "
back again. In fact the whole conception is a perfect thicket
of incongruities when you come to apply clear thinking to it.
Neither the conservation of energy nor distinctions be-
tween " functions " will help the case. The former misses
the issue and the latter only confuses it. The only method
for solving the problem is that in w^hich we can prove per-
sonal identity in its survival. Philosophy can only speculate

474 Journal of the Ainerican Society for Psychical Research.

on the problem and religion can only talk of a " faith *' which
it does not make either clear or effective for the imeiiec:
which is the modern source of all conviction. \\'hat we need
to realize above all other things is just this demand oi scien-
tific method for evidence which traditional methods have not
supplied. The extension of knowledge has deprived the
church of the weapons which it once used so effectively, and
its powers are now shared by cheap literature and the news-
papers. When all the intelligence was confined to the few
who had the reins of political and educational power in their
hands the authority of the priest availed everything. But
this is shared by the literary writer and the editor, and with
democratic institutions the individual has been so emanci-
pated from every form of authority, ecclesiastical and polit-
ical, that the whole method of determining his convictions
has changed. Science has come with its three centuries of
marvellous contributions to knowledge and human comfort
until it has established itself in human confidence so strongly
that ** faith '' turns to that authority for guidance and not to
the traditions and ipse dixits. Materialism has so many facts
in its favor under this movement that, unless scientific method
can be appealed to for evidence, the bases of religious thought
must remain in question, and Dr. Mackay says that this is
true and must always be true, not realizing that the present
generation will give up a future life and all it means for hu-
man progress, unless scientific evidence be forthcoming.

The problem is a perfectly clear one from the standpoint of
materialism. Not to equivocate about the use of the term
** function " it is simply this. We find human consciousness
associated with a physical organism, just as we observe diges-
tion, circulation, secretion, etc., and, barring the phenomena
of psychical research from the account,we never find this con-
sciousness dissociated from this organism. The functions of
the physical organism probably perish, and if consciousness
is a similar function its destiny is assuredly the same, and
whatever hope we might entertain of it otherwise must be
based on the doubt about its being a like function of the body.
As there is no evidence of its dissociation from the body.
apart from the facts of psychic research, the most that can be

Dr. Mackay on the Immortality of the Soul. 475

maintained is the position of agnosticism which is identical
with that of Dr. Mackay's " faith." This " faith " has to face
all the accumulated facts of physical and psychological science
against it and unless we can isolate an individual conscious-
ness and in some way prove its personal identity we must re-
main without any rational grounds for a belief in a future life.
The problem here is precisely the same that it is in any of the
issues of physics and chemistry. If we wish to discover a
new element we isolate or dissociate it from the environment
which conceals its independent existence. We must do the
same with the soul if we wish to believe in its continued ex-
istence. The evidence for its dependence on the organism
is so overwhelming without this isolation that intelligent
people must remain agnostic or deny persistence after death.
We should remember this simple fact, namely, that we do
not directly know the existence of any other consciousness
than our own in the world. We directly introspect the ex-
istence of our own consciousness, but we do not know
whether it can exist independently of the body. We cannot
introspect ourselves, as yet, apart from the organism. Hence
we have no immediate knowledge of our survival and shall
not have it until after we die, if then. But we have no means
of arriving at a knowledge of the existence of another con-
sciousness except by interpreting its effects in the physical
world. All that I can directly know of others is the exist-
ence of their physical bodies. If I have reason to believe
that they are conscious it is through their bodily movements.
That is, I ascertain the existence of other consciousnesses
than my own by a process of inference from actions like my
own, a process which is called the teleological argument
when applied to the main theme of theology, namely, the ex-
istence of God. The physical effects of consciousness in the
world justify our hypotheses of its existence, judging from
what we directly know of the relation between our own con-
sciousness and physical actions which we initiate.

But if the physical organism perishes and disappears we
cannot through it obtain the evidence of the personal con-
sciousness that was once associated with it. That conscious-
ness may not have really disappeared, but may only have

476 Journal of the Avierican Society for Psychical Research,

been rendered unable to produce physical effects in the
world. If it be a function of that organism, of course, it
must perish, but as that is the debated question the utmost
that we can contend is that the disappearance of the medium
by which it had, when alive, been able to make its existence
known only disqualifies denial of that existence, but does not
qualify the affirmation of it. Hence the only way to obtain
evidence of its continuance is to ascertain whether there are
any conditions under which that personal consciousness, if it
continues to exist at all, can produce physical effects in the
world that will justify the teleological inference to its per-
sistence. If this consciousness can produce through an-
other organism the same kind of evidence by which its iden-
tity was established while living we may safely infer its con-
tinuity. To do this it will have only to report its memories,
and hence the only way to establish survival will be to get
into communication with deceased persons in ways somewhat
similar to our communication with them while living. There
may be other methods for effecting this, but of these I have
nothing to do at present. It is certain that, if we can get into
communication with a discarnate consciousness, assuming
the possibility of its existence, we may have reasonable hopes
of demonstrating survival, and in the writer's opinion there
is no other way by which this can be accomplished against
the elastic arguments of scepticism and materialism. The
method of psychical research is, therefore, the only one that
will afford us any rational basis for certitude in the matter. I
shall not deny the right to hope and to have faith, but assur-
ance is so important that no intelligent person can neglect
the methods or the facts which claim to give it.

I am not concerned here with the question of facts but
with that of method, without which facts are useless. This
is no place to adduce facts to show that we actually do sur-
vive, as that is a larger problem than the limits of this discu>-
sion can consider. But I have laid down the principles on
which all intelligent men must proceed if they are to have
any assurance whatever regarding a life after death. So far
as the argument here is concerned there may be no assurance,
but if we seek it this method is the only one that can go be-

Dr. Mackay on the Immortality of the Soul. 477

yond a blind and unintelligent " faith," and I think we are all
sufficiently convinced of the value of assurance or certitude
in regard to any belief to accept this standard, if it offers more
than the authority of people who cannot present better argu-
ments than the conservation of energy, or a " faith " which is
both a non-possumus and an encouragement to irrational think-
ing and the capricious use of power.

I repeat here that psychic research is the method of the
New Testament which is not that of Dr. Mackay. It was an
appeal to alleged and perhaps in some sense real facts, and
not to " faith *' as assent to propositions. If religion is to
have any intelligent basis at all it must come to this method.
Hence, so far from attacking the religious mind the method
here proposed is one that reconciles it with science as no
other does. I understand the distrust which has infected
religious minds of anything scientific. Physical science has
so long antagonized, and successfully antagonized, religious
beliefs, that it is not easy to conceive it as a friend of its fun-
damental postulates. But this traditional prejudice must be
overcome and the sooner that the religious mind overcomes
it and accepts scientific method as its best friend the better
for the intellectual and ethical, to say nothing of the political
status and influence, of religion as a respectable force in the
community. Unless it does do this it must go the way of Pa-
ganism, which could not sustain its usefulness after it fell
to the rank of incredible things. The vitality of all beliefs is
dependent wholly upon the measure of intelligent support
that they can secure, and a doctrine so useful in the ethical
and social system as the survival of personality ought not to
be allowed to lapse in assurance for the lack of an intelligent
appreciation and application of the method which can give it
strength and recognition.

I am quite aware of the abuses to which the belief in a
future life can be put and perhaps has been put in the past.
But these are no excuse for the abuses to which scepticism
can also be put. But it is not rational to deny facts or to dis-
credit their significance because we are afraid that some igno-
rant and ill-advised people do not know how to use them
rightly. We should simply see that our responsibility is

478 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

properly met and that people are educated to the right under-
standing of the issue.

The point with this scientific investigation is not the value
of being able to communicate with deceased persons, but the
generic importance of certitude on a belief which is so funda-
mental to the best ethical ideals of the race. That it is im-
portant is admitted by Dr. Mackay in the face of his state-
ments about the consequence of demonstration to vulgarize
I it. Many important correlates are more or less dependent on

j the belief for either their integrity or their motive power, and

! hence, when the prevailing materialism tends to depreciate

I the value of personality in life, anything like the proof of its

I survival puts its importance on the level which it deserves

! and needs, especially in an age which prizes its democracy, it-

I self a product of the belief. There was no particular benefit

immediately accruing to the doctrines of gravitation and
Copernican astronomy, but for their influence on the general
I conceptions of the universe and man's relation to it they were

\ invaluable, and so it will be with the proof of a future life.

It is not the mere fact of survival that will determine its im-
portance, nor can we expect its belief immediately to react in
favor of social and political regeneration. But the slow accu-
mulation of important ethical ideas and associations with the
certitude that personality is equal in value to matter and
energy will permeate ethics with a power in the hands of the
educating and political classes that will do as much for the
coming generations as the belief has done in the past to origi-
nate and sustain what humanity we possess.

Editorial, 479

EDITORIAL*

Readers of the Journal will recall the " Nigger-talk inci-
dent " in the February number (p. 97) to which much im-
portance was attached. Soon after the publication of the
article I learned by hearsay that something had been said
about the matter by Dr. Hodgson while living, and through
Mrs. Piper's trance. It was impossible to correct the case
until I was assured that this was a fact. Mr. Piddington,
who has the past record in his possession, wrote me and the
letter has just come to my notice, in which he quotes the
record. I give this here below for the benefit of the sceptic
who is entitled to all the incidents in this connection. It will
be apparent to the student of secondary personality that most
of the material then quoted from my own sitting, relating to
this incident, can have no evidential value. We may assume
that the reference to " nigger talk " was a subconscious rem-
iniscence of Mrs. Piper in the trance. One feature of it,
however, retains its value. It is the pertinence of it to Prof.
James, which was not known, tho this is perhaps nullified by
the real or apparent guessing which might be involved in the
allusion to him, as a consequence of my denial, at the time,
that it referred to Myers, — which it did in so far as the trance
is concerned. But with these facts before us, the incident, as
described by my article, has not the importance ascribed to
it.

In reading the record below the reader must remember
that the matter in parentheses was what Dr. Hodgson said
at the sitting before his death. The other matter without
enclosure purports to be communications from Mr. Myers.

6 August, 1907, Holy Well, Hook Heath, Woking.
Dear iProfessor Hyslop,

I think I promised to give you the exact reference re " nigger
talk." Here it is :—

Feb, 4, 1902,

(R. H. " Do you remember about your laughing with me
once and your saying that doubtless you would some time be
coming back and talking nigger-talk?)

Yes indeed. Well, very well do I remember this. Is this
what you would call my talks with you now ?

480 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

(R. H.: No.)

I should really like to know if it sounds anything like it."

Sitting of Feb. /j, ipo/.

*'...! am making everything ready for a long talk with
you, my dear Hodgson, does that sound natural ?

(R. H. : Yes, it does. Do you remember your joking about
coming back and talking nigger talk?)

Yes, quite so. Hear me laugh "

Yours sincerely,

J. G. PIDDINGTON.

THE SUPERNORMAL IN PSYCHIC RESEARCH.

There is some general confusion regarding what is meant
by the " supernormal." This confusion and misunderstand-
ing can easily be appreciated by the scientific man if he stops
to determine exactly what he himself means by it, and it is
certainly excusable in others who have not been made the
beneficiaries of any satisfactory explanation of it.

The most general import of the term is that which trans-
cends the normal. But this latter is so indefinite that the
" supernormal " becomes doubly indefinite. It represents
not only the negative of the " normal," which we assume as
clear in conceiving it, but as the limits of the normal are not
clearly defined the " supernormal " may begin anywhere and
endnowhere. This state of meaning cannot be permitted to
remain if we are to make psychic research and its problems
perfectly clear. We must have some definite conception by
which we shall measure the claims of both of them, at least
in so far as the primary problem of psychic research is con-
cerned.

Now the " normal " is comprehensive enough to denote
any constant and regular action of an organism. Digestion,
for instance, is " normal " when it does its work properly and
there are no pains and bad effects from a failure to perform
its natural functions. Eyesight is normal when it has no de-
fects in the usual action of the retina and eyes. In usual par-
lance, therefore, " normal " means healthy and " natural/'
The supernormal in distinction from this would imply the
" abnormal," but the fact is that the term is not given any
such import in psychic research or elsewhere. It is the "ab-

Editorial. 481

normal " that represents what is not " normal " in the physio-
logical sense of the term. What then can we mean by the
** normal " in psychic research?

The problem of psychic research was created by the alle-
gation that certain kind of information was acquired in some
unusual way — a way very different from what was generally
assumed to be the only way in which knowledge could be
obtained. Illustrations of this peculiar type of information
are found in what has been classified under the various terms
telepathy, clairvoyance, premonition, and spiritistic phenom-
ena. In contrast with the claims that such phenomena ex-
isted, psychology had to define the usual and "natural" mode
of acquiring knowledge. This it asserts or assumes to be in
two ways, namely, by Sensation and by Judgment, if we may
summarize the various processes in these two divisions. Now
Sensation is supposed to be the '* normal " and usual way of
getting knowledge of things outside of us, and this is so gen-
eral that any process claiming to get it otherwise is subject to
the keenest scepticism. And in the phenomena of the senses
we have organs whose limitations are measurably well
known. For instance, we all agree that we cannot see
through solid objects; that we cannot see aroiuid the globe;
that we cannot see a pin a mile distant; that we cannot see
through walls; that we cannot hear whispers a mile distant;
that we cannot by sensation perceive human events half way
around the earth, etc. We say and conceive that our " nor-
mal " perceptions cannot give us such information as is sup-
posed to be conveyed by telepathy and clairvoyance, and
hence, in so far as we feel that the source of our knowledge
of eternal things is limited to sense perception we feel exceed-
ingly sceptical about the claims of any other source.

In the problem of knowledge, therefore, we have come to
think that its " normal '' acquisition is through the senses and
that their functions and capacities are limited to what we all
most usually and most naturally experience. There are, of
course, slight variations in these limits as in the more or less
acute sensibility of one person compared with another, but
any conditions requiring perception through solid objects or
at impossible distances as compared with our usual experi-

482 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

ence we are accustomed to exclude from the normal, and, un-
less the evidence is extraordinarily good and conclusive we
most naturally reject the allegation as absurd. But what I
am emphasizing is the fact that the " normal *' in the problem
of the acquisition of knowledge is limited to sensory pro-
cesses.

We do not, -however, think of judgment as " super-
normal," tho it is not a sensory process. It represents a
function which gets all the material upon which it acts from
the senses. The matter of knowledge, if we may use a Kan-
tian term, is derived from sensation. The process of Judg-
ment does not add to the matter of our knowledge of things,
of the external world. It but arranges and interprets it for
us. Now as the matter of knowledge, namely, what we
know of external events, comes through the senses, we are in
the habit of considering all " normal " knowledge of external
things and events to have their limits assigned to the usual
functions of sensation. Any knowledge not so gotten will be
called " supernormal." That is, knowledge which represents
actual and verifiable events external to the organism and not
acquired through sense experience will be called " super-
normal " for the reason that it transcends sensory processes
without being " normally " intellectual. Consequently the
test of the " supernormal" will be its relation to sensory
experience.

We recognize all sorts or productions by the mind which
we would not call ** supernormal," tho still not sensory. For
instance, the productions of Shakespeare, of Aristotle, of
Thomas Aquinas, or the work of any genius. These are not
the result of ordinary intelligence and so transcend it. But
as there is no definite criterion of the intelligence that trans-
cends the ordinary mind we cannot assure ourselves of a
means of distinguishing it from the usual. Besides the cri-
terion of the " supernormal " must be that which assures us
of an external origin of the knowledge concerned, and the
place to begin with this is in sensory experience. We have
no test of the intellectual knowledge that comes from without
*n distinction from that which is the normal product of the
iind which has it. So we have to seek this test in the rela-

Editorial 483

tion of the facts known to what we agree is " normal " with-
out doubt. There may be " supernormal '' intelligence of the
intellectual kind for all that I know, but we are without the
means of determining it. In the problem of psychic research
we must have a clearly recognized standard of the " normal ''
if we are to ascertain when any given fact transcends it, and
this standard is the ordinary limitations of sensation. That
is, when any facts, external physical or mental facts, are
known to a person without acquiring them by sense impres-
sions of the ordinary kind and not in any way explicable by
acute sensory action, we are entitled to call that acquisition
"supernormal." Hence the term comes to denote what
transcends sensation as we know it in respect of the matter
known. So telepathy, clairvoyance, premonition, and spir-
itistic communications, if they occur, are " supernormal."
Intellectual products, whatever some of them may be, are not
probably " supernormal." The data by which we test the
phenomena must be interpretable in terms of physical or
mental facts provably independent of the mind by which the
" supernormal " knowledge has been acquired.

There will be all sorts of facts which we cannot prove to
be " supernormal " tho they actually be that in fact, so that
our conception of it must be formed by such facts as are un-
questionably evidential, such facts and coincidences between
external events and the mind's perceptions, as would in no
case be referable to chance or guessing, as well as not obtain-
able by either " normal " sense perception or intellectual
processes.

This conception excludes from its category all instances
of remarkable secondary personality, flights of genius or ex-
traordinary lucidity, and intellectual feats not naturally con-
sistent with the ordinary habits and experience of the indi-
vidual. The fact that a thing is not ordinarily explicable
does not prove it " supernormal," even tho it be that in fact,
as it has to be inexplicable by sensory processes to receive
the title of " supernormal." The problem is to explain the
acquisition of matter or data of knowledge which might have
been acquired by sensation under the proper circumstances.
This means that the knowledge acquired " supernormally "

480 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

(R. H.: No.)

I should really like to know if it sounds anything like it."

Sitting of Feb. ij, ipoi.

*' . . . I am making everything ready for a long talk with
you, my dear Hodgson, does that sound natural ?

(R. H. : Yes, it does. Do you remember your joking about
coming back and talking nigger talk?)

Yes, quite so. Hear me laugh "

Yours sincerely,

J. G. PIDDINGTON.

THE SUPERNORMAL IN PSYCHIC RESEARCH.

There is some general confusion regarding what is meant
by the " supernormal." This confusion and misunderstand-
ing can easily be appreciated by the scientific man if he stops
to determine exactly what he himself means by it, and it is
certainly excusable in others who have not been made the
beneficiaries of any satisfactory explanation of it.

The most general import of the term is that which trans-
cends the normal. But this latter is so indefinite that the
" supernormal " becomes doubly indefinite. It represents
not only the negative of the " normal,'' which we assume as
clear in conceiving it, but as the limits of the normal are not
clearly defined the " supernormal *' may begin anywhere and
endnowhere. This state of meaning cannot be permitted to
remain if we are to make psychic research and its problems
perfectly clear. We must have some definite conception by
which we shall measure the claims of both of them, at least
in so far as the primary problem of psychic research is con-
cerned.

Now the " normal " is comprehensive enough to denote
any constant and regular action of an organism. Digestion,
for instance, is " normal " when it does its work properly and
there are no pains and bad effects from a failure to perform
its natural functions. Eyesight is normal when it has no de-
fects in the usual action of the retina and eyes. In usual par-
lance, therefore, " normal " means healthy and " natural."
The supernormal in distinction from this would imply the
" abnormal," but the fact is that the term is not given any
ich import in psychic research or elsewhere. It is the ** ab-

EditoriaL 481

normal " that represents what is not ** normal " in the physio-
logical sense of the term. What then can we mean by the
" normal " in psychic research ?

The problem of psychic research was created by the alle-
gation that certain kind of information was acquired in some
unusual way — a way very different from what was generally
assumed to be the only way in which knowledge could be
obtained. Illustrations of this peculiar type of information
are found in what has been classified under the various terms
telepathy, clairvoyance, premonition, and spiritistic phenom-
ena. In contrast with the claims that such phenomena ex-
isted, psychology had to define the usual and "natural" mode
of acquiring knowledge. This it asserts or assumes to be in
two ways, namely, by Sensation and by Judgment, if we may
summarize the various processes in these two divisions. Now
Sensation is supposed to be the " normal " and usual way of
getting knowledge of things outside of us, and this is so gen-
eral that any process claiming to get it otherwise is subject to
the keenest scepticism. And in the phenomena of the senses
we have organs whose limitations are measurably well
known. For instance, we all agree that we cannot see
through solid objects; that we cannot see around the globe;
that we cannot see a pin a mile distant ; that we cannot see
through walls; that we cannot hear whispers a mile distant;
that we cannot by sensation perceive human events half way
around the earth, etc. We say and conceive that our " nor-
mal " perceptions cannot give us such information as is sup-
posed to be conveyed by telepathy and clairvoyance, and
hence, in so far as we feel that the source of our knowledge
of eternal things is limited to sense perception we feel exceed-
ingly sceptical about the claims of any other source.

In the problem of knowledge, therefore, we have come to
think that its " normal " acquisition is through the senses and
that their functions and capacities are limited to what we all
most usually and most naturally experience. There are, of
course, slight variations in these limits as in the more or less
acute sensibility of one person compared with another, but
any conditions requiring perception through solid objects or
at impossible distances as compared with our usual experi-

434 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

but whatever they may be I hope they are satisfactory and tisat
the incident and correspondence are now closed.

Yours sincerely,
June 27th, 1906. E. G. B.

June 27th, 1906.

My dear Sir : — Replying to the questions in your letter to ir;
wife, of May 22nd, I have to say that the remarkable experience?
referred to occurred just as she relates them.

With respect to the G incident she could have had b-

possible interest or concern, not knowing the man nor ever ha
ing seen him. He was not even a patient of mine. I was in n
tendance only because of the absence of the regular family ph
sician.

In the second incident pertaining to her cousin's death, I n-
call distinctly, as in the first incident, finding her sitting at tb:
piano, pale and dazed, as if in a trance, from which I had
arouse her, and upon questioning her, she related her ex|>ericiKc
All this occurred before the telegram came, announcing the dear
and the incident was related by her to our housekeeper, who Dt«
lives in Philadelphia, and to Mr. J. H. S , of this citj\

I can offer no satisfactory explanation for the above occr
rences. Yours very truly,

M. L. R

St. Louis, Mo., Sept. 6th, 1905.
Editor " Woman's Home Companion,"

Dear Sir : — Professor Hyslop's article on " Ghost Stories fror
Real Life " in the September issue of your magazine, intereste
me greatly. Not because I know anything of Psychology exa" *
in a general way, nor because I am a spiritualist, which I am c.
nor have I ever considered myself superstitious, but because
several inexplicable experiences; and your invitation to rcl
anything one may have had or heard along this line is my exc.
for writing. An experience of very recent date, brought
matter more prominently to my mind, and next month's ar
by Prof. Hyslop, may explain it somewhat to me.

Some two weeks ago I had a very restless night, but t
morning fell into a troubled sleep, when I dreamed « ■
mother (who lives in N. Y. State) weeping violently, and
efforts to comfort her. I awakened and sleep left mf
next day or two I was depressed and related my dream *
my husband and next door neighbor.

This took place on Wednesday morning and on Ff
lowing I received a letter from my sister telling me that
day my mother had received word of the severe illness c
sister, my aunt, living in Connecticut. She left at on
bedside, reaching there Thursday P. M., and at 4 o'clocl

r

Incidents. 487

swiftly made my way to the street. An uncontrollable impulse
prompted me to run, but the sidewalks were filled with people
(returning from other churches). I took the middle of the street
and ran with all my might, conscious that the crowds of people,
many of whom would recognize me under the bright electric
lights, would think I was acting strangely.

Quickly I reached the office and darted up the lighted stairs,
really expecting to find something serious the matter. But all
was quiet and serene. On one side the hall half a dozen reporters
were busy. The door of the associate editor, Mr. Melville, whose
room was next to mine, was open, and he in his shirt sleeves
calmly working away. I quickly unlocked my own office door
and threw it open, when out rolled a cloud of black smoke, such
as I had never seen.

And yet the room was not on fire. What had happened was,
that a very large oil lamp hanging over the desk had been lighted
and left by the janitor, and left, with its large round wick turned
up too high. It had worked up higher, and was blazing with a
dull red glare through the dense smoke a foot or more above the
top of the lamp chimney. There was, of course, danger of an
instant explosion, but I took the risk and managed to extinguish
it, and to throw up the windows. In the process I was trans-
formed into a veritable blackamoor. And that was all !

Those who have never seen the like have little idea of the
soot-producing power of kerosene when burned rapidly with im-
perfect combustion.* Everything in the office, carpet, furniture,
books and papers, was covered to the depth of an eighth of an
inch, with a sticky soot. The large metal lamp, heated hot, had
been literally forcing the oil up through the wick, and would no
doubt very shortly have exploded. Pardon the length of de-
scription.

Instances are many, in which a dear friend in distress has in
some manner, by telepathy or otherwise, impressed another with
a sense of calamity or danger. What is peculiar in the incident
here related — and it is quite unimportant otherwise — is that no
human being other than myself was conscious of anything being
wrong at the time. Supposing that the warning came from
some unseen intelligence why was not the effort directed to
alarm one of those at work in the offices close at hand? Had a
destructive fire occurred my own loss would have been trifling,
as I was engaged on salary and the building and property be-
longed to others.

Can it be that our tangible personality extends far outward
from our bodies, like the air surrounding the earth or the light
about a luminous globe and that we at times become conscious
in that way of what is occurring at a considerable distance? I

488 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

never at any other time had an experience similar to this. I
send it merely as a very trifling contribution touching a subject
to which you have given much earnest study, and not asking or
expecting a reply.

Yours faithfully,

J. E. B. McCREADY.

[On receipt of the letter written to Dr. Funk I wrote fur-
ther inquiries to the gentleman and the following letter ex-
plains itself as a reply. It is most interesting to ascertain
the nature of Mr. McCready's earlier experiences. Appar-
ently the later phenomena was natural to characteristics
which the former experiences had indicated. — Editor.]

May 24th, 1907.
James H. Hyslop, Esq., New York,

Dear Sir : — Your favor of i8th inst. inquiring for further par-
ticulars re my related experiences in the St. John Telegraph office
is to hand. I beg to reply to your numbered queries as follows :

1. Those in the building had not noticed any smoke till I
opened the door, which closed very tightly.

2. Every one about the building was immediately made
aware of the trouble. I did not tell them all of my being warned,
although I think I told my associate editor. Park A. Melville, now
I think, in Boston, whose office room was then next to mine, and
on the following day, John W. Gilmore, now of Oromocto. N. B..
then business manaerer of the concern. (L have written him in-
quiring what he remembers.) I do not know Mr. Melville's ex-
act address, but he is, I believe, in newspaper work in or about
Boston. I, of course, told my wife, who now remembers ver>'
well my coming home in blackened condition from the smoke.
As to what I told her then of the mysterious warnine she now
says that she has so often heard me tell the story graphically to
friends, that she cannot distinguish between her memory of niv
earlier relation to her and my later many times repeated stories
of the occurrence.

3. My sensations, when feeling impelled me to leave the
church, were a strong internal motive which took the form of un-
spoken words — " Get to your office," ** Hurry to your office." My
feeling on being thus impelled was that it would seem ridiculous
to yield and run out of the church, and all the time I was trying
to attend to the services, but found it almost impossible.

4. I had no thought or consciousness of anything outside of
me, trying to impress me.

5. I have had no other experiences at all like this.

6. Have never tried the Ouija board or planchette. Forty

Incidents. 489

or more years ago I dabbled in the table rapping of the time. I
was accounted a fair " medium " in the crude spiritualistic ex-
periments of a provincial country district at the time. The tables
made some predictions, which, contrary to my then expectations,
turned out true. Conscientious objections to peering into the
future led me to resolutely dismiss the " spirits " and have noth-
ing more to do with that sort of thing. One method of the olden
time was to repeat the alphabet, and the table would rap when
the proper letter was called, so spelling out a word, name or sen-
tence. Five raps was a recognized spirit-call for the alphabet to
be repeated. After many years and down to some four years
ago, I have distinctly heard the alphabet call on the wall of my
sleeping room, but refused to respond to it. I suppose had I
recited the letters I would have received a message, but refused.

7. The lamp had been lighted about an hour before by the
janitor, in the regular course of his duties. I had not been in the
office since the previous Saturday evening. As the reporters em-
ployed then in the place are now, I think, all removed or dead, I
fear I cannot offer further corroboration of my story than what I
have given. I don't think any one who knows me will doubt the
truth of the story.

I was only induced to write it because of the unusual fact
that no one knew of the danger at the time the warning was
given, this being exceptional in telepathy. I certainly don't
want any notoriety in connection with it. My hope was to learn
of some one who might have had a similar experience.

Yours faithfully,

J. E. B. McCREADY.

DREAM.

[The following dream is recorded because of its psycho-
logical interest, and not because it in any way evidences the
supernormal. There is great need of noting dreams more
carefully than is now done, in order to ascertain, as far as
possible, their origin and sources. The following case is well
reported, and furnishes an example of the way in which
dreams of this character should be treated. If a number of
persons were to make similar records, it might be that, in
time, we should learn something of the causation and nature
of dreams; and the following case is published in the hope
that members and others may be induced to make similar
records of dreams that occur to themselves. — Editor.]

490 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

February 20th, 1907.

Last night, before going to bed, I made up my mind to write
down or ** put on record " some dreams, as I have observed that,
in my case, dreams rarely have reference to things which occupy
a large proportion of my thoughts and attention, but seem in
some way to be connected with trivial, half-observed facts and
occurrences of the preceding day or days. It is as if the mind
followed out a train of thought or sensation for which it had no
time during the day. Now to the dream itself.

First of all I saw a church (i), the walls of which were on fire.
(2). Men were trying to pull out the burning bricks ! The fire, I
thought, is caused by the burning apparatus which painters use
for burning oflf paint. I walked inside the church and noticed its
spaciousness (7). Where the altar naturally would be was a va-
cant space covered with oilcloth (3) which struck me as out of
place. On the right side were heavy golden ecclesiastical chal-
ices, etc. The scene melts away and I am with my mother. I re-
ceive an express parcel (10). I open it. I see a pile of slender
gold chains (5), two rings (4) — a heavy plain and chased one, and
one black enamel ring (17) covered with pearls. I put them on
two fingers ; I lose them (4) and I know by some mistake I shall
find them in an oyster patty! (12) which our old cook is serving
at the luncheon table. I find them on the table in a pile, and put
on the rings again. Change ! My sister shows me a letter. Out
of it fall a lot of stamps (6). I am relieved at seeing them.
Change again ! I am a child running away from a house, large
and winding and intricate. As I run, I put on a grey-blue (13)
bonnet, like a night-cap (14) ; I find myself in a laundry (14) ; I
am confused and rush out into a little room and find a wicker cup-
board (8) ; when I hide, the door bends over, like my screen (iij
does, and I know I am discovered !

I am now sliding down on my heels (16), and, at the foot of
the stairs, I see a lead-pencil (15) with india rubber at the point.
I think: why this pencil? And then I say, " Heels! " I am now
on a winding, covered passage (9), and I hasten along, following
a ball of light (9). I follow, but it melts away, and all I see is a
straw hat with an amber hat pin in it (18). I awake — thinking,
** Oh, let me remember this wonderful sample dream ! "

It appears to me that it is my visual memory only which is
active during sleep. I should like to state the fact that I paint
much ; my eyes are trained to observe, and do so almost automat-
ically.

Facts and Observations.

(i) I spoke about a church and its service to a friend that
day.

(2) On my way home, late, I saw a fire-engine hurrying by.

Correspondence. 491

(3) A friend spoke of having a room covered with oil-cloth.

(4) Many times during the day my ring fell off. It is heavy
chased gold.

(5) I broke a slender, gold locket chain.

(6) I intended to buy a lot of stamps.

(7) I went to a concert hall, and remarked on its spacious-
ness.

(8) I read Sir William Crookes' " Researches in Spiritual-
ism " just before going to bed, and was struck with a diagram of
an accordion, playing in a wicker cage; also a description of a
globe of light, luminous and solid.

(9) A week ago, I read an account of a dream of Mrs.
Piper's, where she followed a light through a passage.

(10) A friend of mine spoke of an express parcel yesterday.

(11) I bought a screen yesterday which won't stand up.

(12) I was asked to have oysters at dinner.

(13) I am surrounded by grey-blue furnishings.

(14) I had mother's night-cap laundered and tried it on.

(15) Had no pen holder, so took a pencil, such as I dreamed
about, and fixed a nib into it.

(16) I wore shoes with rubber heels yesterday.

(17) Mother had a black and pearl ring.

(18) Two days ago, I saw an amber hat pin in another per-
son's hat, and I wondered if it were mine.

So my dream showed 18 memories traceable by me to their
different sources.

HELEN CARRINGTON.

CORRESPONDENCE.

Southbridge, Mass., Sept. 6, 1907.
The Editor of the Journal:

Dear Sir; — I see that David P. Abbott is up to his old tricks and
tomfoolery again. He seems to intimate that mediums generally
do that kind of tricks. It is certainly not the case, and if you had
made a very extensive investigation you would know better, in-
stead of depending on sensational writers.

Very truly yours,
C. L. X.
Editor, Journal of the A.S.P.R.:

Dear Sir: — Allow me to say that Mr. N is misinformed

if he thinks that mediums do not do their slate writing tests in
the manner described by Mr. Abbott. What evidence had Mr.

492 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

N beyond his opinion — that mediums do not produce their

tests by the same means? It may interest Mr. N to learn

that I have been seriously investigating the physical phenomena
of spiritualism for more than nine years, and I have never seen
any single case of genuine slate writing in all that time; one in
which the fraud was not patent to me, and in all that time I have
never seen a case of slate writing where I did not feel I could sit
down, immediately after the seance, and duplicate the entire per-
formance, and in most cases improve upon it. I am perfectly
open to conviction, but I cannot find the genuine tests.

Very truly yours,

HEREWARD CARRINGTON.

BOOK REVIEW.

Behind the Scenes with the Mediums. By David P. Abbott. Open Court

Publishing Co., 1907.

I have no hesitation in saying that this is one of the most important and
helpful books that has been published, dealing with slate-writing performances,
sealed letter-reading, mind readii^ tests, etc. A large section of the book will
be known to members of the A. o. P. R., as it consists of a reprint of the ar-
ticles on slate-writing contributed to this Journal; while the chapter entitled
" Mediumistic Reading of Sealed Writings " is reprinted from the Open Court
Magazine, and is also pretty well known to students of psychic problems in
America. It describes some very excellent methods of reading sealed letters,
and obtaining writings on slates, under what appear to be the severest test con-
ditions. The first chapter, " Half Hours with Mediums," is also very instruc-
tive, and explains some miscellaneous tests and experiences of the author that
give one a vivid idea of what one has to cope with in many professional me-
diums. The chapters on " Vest Turning," on " Materialization," " Perform-
ances of the Annie Eva Fay Type," " The Relation of Mediumship to Palm-
istry and Astrology," etc., are highly diverting and instructive, and, to my
mind, should be read by all those persons who are inclined to think that too
much stress has been placed of late upon the possibilities of fraud, etc. In
these Chapters are to be found tests more marvellous than anything witnessed
in the ordinary mediumistic seance— duplicated by fraud, and the method fully
explained. I am in a position to state that the explanations offered by Mr.
Abbott are positively correct, and that mediums do actually perform their tests
in the manner described. The two Chapters " Some Modern Sorcery " and
'* Some Unusual Mediumistic Phenomena," are, perhaps, the most instructive
in the book, for here are described mind-reading tests and slate-writing, pro-
duced under conditions that to all appearances absolutely preclude all possi-
bility of fraud, and yet are shown to be produced by the simplest possible
means. These Chapters alone well repay the reader, and would give the book
its value, even in the absence of any other material. A long "Appendix" de-
scribes methods of obtaining " spirit-portraits " by fraudulent means, and is
also highly instructive and useful. On the whole, it may be said that Mr. Ab-
bott's ^ok is excellent from start to finish, and should have a wide circulation
among all those who are honestly searching for the truth, and do not
wish to be swindled out of their money by rank frauds, while searching
for that truth.

HEREWARD CARRINGTON.

Additional Members. 493

ADDITIONAL MEMBERS.
Fellows.

Brown, Miss Ella, Canaan, Conn. (Life Fellow.)

Dumas, Dr. Georges, 49 Bd Saint Germain, Paris, France. (Hon-
orary Fellow.)

Jordan, Dr. David Starr, Stanford University, Cal. (Honorary
Fellow.)

Leroy, Eugene Bernard, 51 Rue Miromesnil, Paris, France.
(Honorary Fellow.)

Peterson, Frederick, M. D., 4 West 50th St., New York. (Hon-
orary Fellow.)

Peyton, W. C, Montgomery Block, San Francisco, Cal.

Thompson, Albert J., Bloomington, Ind.

Members.

Bemis, J. W., 704 Equitable Bldg., St. Louis, Mo.

Bryan, C. H., Mt. Sterling, Ky.

Bulletin de la Societe d'Etudes Psychiques, 41 Rue de Rome,
Marseille, France.

Edson, Charles F., 950 West 20th St., Los Angeles, Cal.

Hauenstein, J. F., Lima, Ohio.

Howard, Charles A., Aberdeen, South Dakota.

Owens, Eleanor L., 344 19th St., San Pedro, Cal.

Peirce, Mrs. Alice W., c|o Brown, Shipley & Co., 123 Pall Mall,
London, S. W. England.

Plumb, Max A., c|o Cal. School of Mechanical Arts, i6th and
Utah Sts., San Francisco, Cal.

Polk, Paul M., S. Washington St., Vicksburg, Miss.

Psychophysisches Laboratorium, Joh. Verhulststraat 153, Am-
sterdam, Holland.

Ralph, Dr. B. B., 218 Rialto Bldg., Kansas City, Mo. .

Smith, William, 600 Castle Street, Omaha, Nebraska.

Wern, A. W., 1345 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles, Cal.

Associates.

Borton, Mrs. F. S., Box 56, Puebla, Mexico.

Cionglinski, Francois, Vinnitza, Province of Podol, Russia.

Clarke, Mrs. Olive Rand, Warner, N. H.

Coates, Truman, M. D., Oxford, Pa.

Crandall, Dr. Floyd M., 113 West 95th Street, New York.

Crawford, Mrs. Frank, 506 South 27th Street, Omaha, Nebraska.

Dearing, W. S., Box 417, Orange, Cal.

Folte, G. J., 1034 Myrtle Street, Oakland, Cal.

Frost, H. Louise, Lincoln Street, Waltham, Mass.

Griffing, Mrs. Jane, 1729 Amsterdam Ave., New York City.

494 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

McComb, Mrs. James, Port Richmond, N. Y.

Macaulay, Mrs. U. B. T., 4288 Western Ave., Montreal, Canada.

Maynard, Laurens, 108 Mt. Vernon St., Dedham, Mass.

Moore, A. W., 432 Powers Building, Rochester, N. Y.

Moxey, Louis W. Jr., 1213 Race St. Philadelphia, Pa.

Schenck, Miss Ida Z., 50 West 45th Street, New York.

Ring, Henry F., Houston, Texas.

Verrall, Mrs. Margaret deG., 5 Selwyn Gardens, Cambridge,

England.
Ware, T. B., Mechanicsburg, O.

Total Number of Fellows, Members and Associates (Aug.

1907) 631

Additional Members 40

671
Names Struck off List for Non-payment of Dues 12

Total 659

Vol I.— No. ii. NotBMBtB, 1907.

JOUFSNAL

OF THE

American Society for Psychical Research

CONTENTS

Gbsibral Aktzclbs: paqx

The Physical Phenomeaa of Spiritual-
ism 495

Statement of Sir William Cnokea - - 502

Identifieatioa of PersooaUty - - - 505

Spirit Slate-Writ inff and Billet Tests • 5U
Editouai. ;

Financial ------- 522

A Ifisunderstandinff - - 524

INCXDEMTS : PAGB

The Mnacular Sense in Mediumsliip - 528

Apparitions 530

Coincidence ■ 533

Dream or Apparition .... 583

corjibspondbncb : 536

Book Rbvzbws 542

Treasttre^fi Report - • - • - 545

Additionaz. Mbmbbks - - - - 546

THE PHYSICAL PHENOMENA OF SPIRITUALISM.*
By Frank Podmorc.

The greater part of this very useful and instructive book
is devoted to describing the methods actually employed by
expert professional " mediums ** for producing fraudulent
spiritualistic phenomena. The methods of slate-writing,
rope-tying or untying, spirit photographs, and materializa-
tion are thus expounded, so that we are left in doubt whether
to wonder most at the ingenuity and audacity of the trick-
sters, or the simplicity of their victims. Three chapters are
devoted to spurious clairvoyance and mind-reading: and these
are, perhaps, the most valuable in the book, since they deal
with imitations of phenomena which are undoubtedly in
some cases genuine. Personally, I should like to hear more
about the mediums' Bltie Book (p. 314), with the list of seven
thousand dupes to be exploited in Boston alone: Does Mr.
Carrington really possess a copy of this wonderful book?
How did he get it ? And what will he take for it ?

But, premising that much entertainment, as well as in-
struction, is to be obtained from the first section of the book,

*Thc Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism: Fraudulent and Genuine.
By Hereward Carrington. Boston) 1907.

496 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

I pass on to the second and smaller section, which deals
with the phenomena labelled " The Genuine." Here, unfor-
tunately, I no longer find myself in entire agreement with
Mr. Carrington. It would take too long to defend myself on
all the points on which Mr. Carrington courteously seeks to
controvert me. I should like to expound and justify my atti-
tude towards the Poltergeist — the /era naiura oi Spiritualism:
but I must refrain. But I will enter a brief protest against
one of the author's positions. He contends that the existence
of fraudulent manifestations is, in itself, an argument for the
prior existence of genuine phenomena, of which the fraudu-
lent are the counterfeit. When a conjuror changes a hand-
kerchief into a rabbit, is he also humbly imitating Nature?

And I must challenge one statement of Mr. Carrington's,
because it concerns my honour. In my treatment of Sir Wil-
liam Crookes' evidence as to the phenomena observed with
Home, Mr. Carrington says that I seem to him to attack pref-
erably the weak evidence. My principle throughout has
been to deal with the evidence at its strongest. Mr. Carring-
ton's criticism reveals a discrepancy between our standards
of what constitutes strong evidence, — or rather, if he will al-
low me to put it so, it betrays a liability on his part to fall oc-
casionally below the standard which he has set up for him-
self.

Consider the following passage, in which Mr. Carrington
very clearly indicates the difficulties of interpreting testimony
in these matters: —

" It will be seen from the above that there is a great differ-
ence between what actually transpired, at any given seance,
and what the accounts say transpired. The general public
cannot get that all-important fact too strongly rooted in its
mind : that the events which transpired at a seance may not
be reported accurately, so that the report of the seance may
be altogether wrong and erroneous, though the sitters, and
those who drew up the report, may have been thoroughly
honest in their belief that the report is accurate in every re-
spect. The effect of all this is very great indeed. Many
spiritualistic seances are quite inexplicable as described, but
the description is not a true report of what took place at the

The Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism. 497

seance in question. The facts are distorted. Consequently
the person taking it upon himself to explain what took place
at the seance is called upon to explain a number of things
which, in reality, never took place at all. We must remem-
ber, in this connection, that a number of conjuring tricks, as
described, would be quite impossible to explain by any process
of trickery. The description of the trick was not correct."

(P- 54).

Now, if Mr. Carrington had always kept. true to the spirit
of this passage, there would have been little room for diver-
gence of opinion between us. I will illustrate my point by
considering Mr. Carring^on's method of dealing with the evi-
dence for levitation. He quotes two passages in which Sir
William Crookes describes in general terms what he has seen.
Here is one of them : —

" The best cases of Home's levitation I witnessed were in
my own house. On one occasion he went to a clear part of
the room, and, after standing quietly for a minute, told us he
was rising. I saw him slowly rise up in a continuous gliding
movement, and remain about six inches off the ground for
several seconds, when he slowly descended. On this occa-
sion no one moved from their places. On another occasion
I was invited to come to him, when he rose eighteen inches
off the ground, and I placed my hands under his feet, round
him, and over his head when he was in the air. On several
occasions, Home and the chair, on which he was sitting at
the table, rose off the ground. This was generally done very
deliberately, and Home then sometimes tucked up his feet on
the seat of the chair and held up his hands in full view of all
of us. On such occasions I have gone down and seen and felt
all four legs were off the ground at the same time, Home's
feet being on the chair. Less frequently the levitating power
extended to those next to him. Once my wife was thus
raised off the ground in her chair." (p. 380).

Now the account is clearly evidence of Sir William
Crookes' belief that he had seen Home raised from the
ground without visible support. But unless we believe Sir
William to be exempt from the fallacies which beset the senses
and the testimony of ordinary mortals, it ought not to be held

498 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

sufficient to justify us in sharing his belief. In other words,
we cannot accept Sir William's statement until we know
more precisely the evidence upon which it is founded: what
he saw, when, where, the nature of the light, and the attendant
circumstances generally. Now, in his detailed notes of sit-
tings with Home in 1871 and '72 he records two and only two
instances of levitation, at which he was present, and in both
cases, it is to be noted, the light was lowered just before the
Aianifestation took place. On July 30th, 1871, shortly after
the gas had been turned out, and " spirit lamps " [t. e., lamps
burning spirit] had been substituted;

" Mr. Home then walked to the open space in the room
between Mrs. Fs chair and the sideboard, and stood there
quite upright and quiet. He then said, " Fm rising, Fm ris-
ing "; when we all saw him rise from the ground slowly to a
height of about six inches, remain there for about ten seconds,
and then slowly descend. From my position I could not see
his feet, but I distinctly saw his head, projected against the
opposite wall, rise up, and Mr. Wr. Crookes, who was sitting
near where Mr. Home was, said that his feet were in the air.
There was no stool or other thing near which could have
aided him. Moreover, the movement was a smooth, contin-
uous glide upwards." *

The second instance is recorded as follows : " On April
2ist, 1872, after various minor phenomena had occurred, "a
message was given ' Try less light.' The handkerchief
moved about along the floor, visible to all. Mr. Home nearly
disappeared under the table in a curious attitude, then he was
(still in his chair) wheeled out from under the table still in the
same attitude, his feet out in front off the ground. He was
then sitting almost horizontally, his shoulders resting on his
chair. He asked Mrs. Wr. Crookes to remove the chair from
under him, as it was not supporting him. He was then seen
to be sitting in the air supported by nothing visible." **

In commenting on the levitations observed by Sir William
Crookes, Mr. Carrington remarks (p. 382). " Nor are the

• Proceedings S. P. R.. Vol. VI., p. 126.
— Proceedings S. P. R., Vol. VI.. pp. 118, 119.

The Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism. 499

usual methods of fraud possible either, since the light was al-
ways sufficient to allow of the medium being distinctly
seen. . /' On what is this confident assertion based? Mr.
Carrington is certainly not justified in basing it on the sum-
mary description of the phenomenon given in the two pass-
ages he quotes (p. 380) from Sir W. Crookes, for in these two
passages the nature and the degree of the illumination is not
even mentioned. And in the only two detailed accounts of the
levitation which Sir William Crookes has published, the light,
as just shown, had been lowered immediately before the man-
ifestation; and, whether because of the insufficiency of the
illumination, or because of his position relative to the me-
dium, Sir William was in neither case able to see all that took
place. He infers that Home was raised from the ground
without contact, not from what he himself saw, but from
what the others present told him they saw. Sir William
Crookes is a man of such great intellectual distinction that
we are bound to listen with respectful attention to any state-
ment of his own experience. But science does not recognize
vicarious justification, and we are not at liberty to impute
like intellectual capacity to the unnamed witnesses by whom,
in the second account quoted, Home " was seen to be sitting
in the air."

The other evidence of levitation cited by Mr. Carrington
is the celebrated account given by the Master of Lindsay and
others of the floating of Home out of a window at least 70 feet
from the ground. The incident is reported as taking place on
the i6th of December, 1868. Lord Lindsay reports as
follows : —

" I was sitting with Mr. Home and Lord Adare, and a
cousin of his. During the sitting, Mr. Home went into a
trance, and in that state was carried out of the window in the
room next to where we were, and was brought in at our win-
dow. The distance between the windows was about seven
feet six inches, and there was not the slightest foothold be-
tween them, nor was there more than a twelve-inch projec-
tion to each window, which served as a ledge to put flowers
on. We heard the window in the next room lifted up, and
almost immediately after we saw Home floating in the air

500 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

outside our window. The moon was shining full into the
room ; my back was to the light, and I saw the shadow on the
wall of the window-sill, and Home's feet about six inches
above it. He remained in this position for a few seconds,
then raised the window and glided into the room, feet fore-
most, and sat down."

Lord Adare's account of this incident is as follows :

" We heard Home go into the next room, heard the win-
dow thrown up, and presently Home appeared standing up-
right outside our window ; he opened the window and walked
in quite boldly."

These accounts are dated July, 1871 — 1. e., two and one-
half years after the incident. In February, 1877, the third
witness. Captain Wynne, gives his testimony, in a letter to
Home, as follows : " The fact of your having gone out of one
window and in at another I can swear to."

Here we have three separate accounts of what purports to
be the most stupendous marvel of modern times. Let us ex-
amine each account separately. Lord Lindsay was the chici
spokesman: What did he see and hear? He heard a sound
which suggested to him that a window in the next room was
being lifted up: Subsequently, sitting with his back to the
window, he saw on the wall a shadow which he interpreted as
that of Home "floating"* outside the window, opening the
window, and gliding into the room feet foremost. Even if
the outside illumination had been good, and the shadows on
the wall quite sharply defined, Lord Lindsay's testimony
would amount to very little.

The shadows, we are given to understand, were cast by
the moon, and Lord Lindsay could not therefore determine
from the shadow on which side of the window Home was
standing. At most, therefore, he could testify that there
was a space between Home's feet and the window-sill. But
were the shadows sharply defined? By reference to the al-
manac, it will appear that the moon was new on the 14th ot
December, 1868. What kind of shadow is cast by a moon

* I borrow this word from an earlier account by Lord Lindsay, given
to the Dialectical Society in 1869.

The Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism. SOI

two days old, even in the clear atmosphere of America?
Lord Lindsay's account is worthless as evidence. Practically
it amounts to this ; he believes what the other witnesses told
him.

But we have two other first hand accounts. What do
the other witnesses say? Captain Wynne, eight years after-
wards, says he can swear to the fact. Lord Adare says, " We
heard the window open, and presently Home appeared * * *
outside our window." Appeared to whom? Lord Adare
tells what he heard. Why does he not tell us what he saw ?
Is it not a little curious that one of the witnesses to this stu-
pendous marvel should be content to give so meagre an ac-
count, without any details, and couched in such ambiguous
language? And is it not still more curious that the task of
describing the details should have been entrusted to the one
of the party who from his position could see nothing? If
Lord Adare had really seen the whole drama, is it likely he
would have left it to be told, practically, at second-hand ? A
comparison of the three accounts, and the ambiguous word-
ing, of the testimony given by Lord Adare and Captain
Wynne suggest that possibly none of the witnesses had
their faces turned direct towards the window, and that Lord
Lindsay was the only one of the three who made the attempt
to distinguish between what he saw and what he inferred.

I appeal — if Mr. Carrington will permit the familiarity, —
from Philip drunk to Philip sober; and will quote Mr. Car-
rington against himself : " . . there is a great difference be-
tween what actually transpired, at any given seance, and what
the accounts say transpired." Is there any case recorded in
the book in which the nature of the alleged occurrences and
the unsatisfactory nature of the evidence point more strongly
to a divergence between appearance and reality ?

In dealing with the baffling phenomena which form the
subject-matter of the second part of his book — levitation,
elongation, and the carrying about of red-hot coals —
Mr. Carrington has chosen a hard task. If he has not
thrown much fresh light upon the question, perhaps that was
hardly to be expected. To get a satisfactory explanation of
the marvels testified to, we shall probably have to await the

502 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

advent of another Home. But as to the first section of Mr.
Carrington's book, there can be no question that it will repay
a careful perusal.

STATEMENT OF SIR WILLIAM CROOKES.

[We asked Sir William Crookes if he wished to see Mr.
Frank Podmore's article and he replied that he had not time
to consider it, but he requested us to formulate our ques-
tions, to which we desired an answer. The following letter
from him is in reply to the question whether he could furnish
further particulars in regard to the statements which he had
made respecting Home's mediumship. These statements
were made at the conclusion of a paper by Sir Oliver Lodge,
in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. VI.,
pp. 341-345. We quote these statements after giving his let-
ter in reply to our inquiry. — Editor.]

7 Kensington Park Gardens, London, W.
August loth, 1907.
Hereward Carrington, Esq.,

Dear Sir: — If you will kindly read my introduction to the
series of seances with D. D. Home, as printed on pp. 98-100 of
Part XV. of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research,
you will, I think, find answers to all your queries, written with
more care and accuracy than I could now write them at this dis-
tance of time and in the hurry of other avocations. I have no ob-
jection to your reprinting this Introduction in your Journal. In-
deed, I should like it to be reprinted, as it gives a clear statement
of my present position in respect to these phenomena.

I remain, truly yours,

WILLIAM CROOKES.

The following is the introduction to which the above let-
ter refers. The same opinion was expressed in his address
before The British Association at Bristol, in 1898; see Pro-
ceedings S. P. R., Vol. XIV., pp. 2-5.

INTRODUCTION TO "NOTES ON SEANCES WITH D. D. HOME."

By Sir William Crookes, F. R. S.

In the year 1874 I published in a collected form various
papers, dating from 1870 to 1874, describing inquiries made

Statement of 6ir William Crookes, 503

by myself, alone or with other observers, into the phenomena
called Spiritual. In a paper reprinted from the Quarterly
Journal of Science, for January, 1874, I announced my inten-
tion of publishing a book, which should contain my numerous
printed and unprinted observations.

But this projected work has never seen the light. My ex-
cuse,— a real excuse, though not a complete justification, —
lies in the extreme pressure of other work on my time and
energies. The chemical and physical problems of my profes-
sional life have become more and more absorbing; and^ on
the other hand, few fresh opportunities have occurred of
prosecuting my researches into " psychic force." I must con-
fess, indeed, that I have been disappointed with the progress
of investigation into this subject during the last fifteen years.
I see little abatement of the credulity on the one hand and the
fraud on the other which have all along interfered, as I hold,
with the recognition of new truth of profound interest.

The foundation of the Society for Psychical Research has,
however, somewhat altered the situation. We have here a
body of inquirers of whom the more prominent, so far as I
can judge, are quite sufficiently critical in their handling of
any evidence making for extraordinary phenomena, while
they bring to the task that patience and diligence without
which an investigation of this sort is doomed to failure. In-
vited to contribute to the Society for Psychical Research
Proceedings, some of my notes on seances with D. D. Home, I
feel I ought not to decline. I am not satisfied with these
notes; which form, so to say, only a few bricks for an in-
tended edifice it is not now probable I shall ever build. But,
at least, they are accurate transcripts of facts which I still
hold to be of deep importance to science. Their publication
will, at any rate, show that I have not changed my mind ; that
on dispassionate review of statements put forth by me nearly
twenty years ago I find nothing to retract or alter. I have
discovered no flaw in the experiments then made, or in the
reasoning I based upon them.

I am too well aware that there have been many exposures
of fraud on the part of mediums ; and that some members of
the Society for Psychical Research have shown the possibility

504 Journal of the Atnerican Society for Psychical Research,

of fraud under circumstances where spiritualists had too read-
ily assumed it was not possible. I am not surprised at the evi-
dence of fraud. I have myself frequently detected fraud of
various kinds, and I have always made it a rule in weighing
Spiritualistic evidence to assume that fraud may have been
attempted, and ingenuously attempted, either by seen or un-
seen agents. I was on my guard even'in D. D. Home's case,
although I am bound to say that with him I never detected
any trickery or deceit whatever, nor heard any first-hand evi-
dence of such from other persons. At the same time, I
should never demand that anyone should consider Home, or
any other medium, as " incapable of fraud," nor should I pin
my faith upon any experiment of my own or others which
fraud could explain. The evidence for the genuineness of
the phenomena obtained by Home in my presence seems to
me to be strengthened rather than weakened by the discus-
sions on conjuring, and the exposures of fraud which have
since taken place. The object of such discussions is to trans-
form vague possibilities of illusion and deception into definite
possibilities ; so far as this has yet been done, it has, I think,
been made more clear that certain of Home's phenomena fall
quite outside the category of marvels producible by sleight-
of-hand or prepared apparatus.

But I must not be supposed to say that all, or even most
of, the phenomena recorded by me were such as no juggling
would simulate. Many incidents, — as slight movements of
the table, etc., — were obviously and easily producible by
Home's hands and feet. Such movements, etc., I have re-
corded,— not as in themselves proving anything strange,—
but simply as forming part of a series of phenomena, some of
which do prove, to my mind, the operation of that "new
force " in whose existence I still firmly believe. Had I de-
scribed these seances with a view to sensational effect, I
should have omitted all the non-evidential phenomena, and
thus have brought out the marvels in stronger relief. Such
was not my object. In most cases the notes were written —
primarily for my own information — ^while the phenomena
were actually going forward, but on some few occasions they
were copied or expanded immediately after the seance from

IdentiUcatian of Personality, SOS

briefer notes taken at the time. They are here reprinted ver-
batim; and the petty details which render them tedious to
read will supply the reader with all the material now available
for detecting the imposture, if any, which my friends and I
at the time were unable to discover.

My object in publishing these notes will have been at-
tained if they should aid in inducing competent observers, in
this or other countries, to repeat similar experiments with
accurate care, and in a dispassionate spirit. Most assuredly,
so far as my knowledge of science goes, there is absolutely
no reason a priori to deny the possibility of such phenomena
as I have described. Those who assume — as is assumed by
some popular writers — that we are now acquainted with all,
or nearly all, or even with any assignable portion, of the
forces at work in the universe, show a limitation of concep-
tion which ought to be impossible in an age when the widen-
ing of the circle of our definite knowledge does not reveal the
proportionately widening circle of our blank, absolute, in-
dubitable ignorance.

IDENTIFICATION OF PERSONALITY.
By James H. Hyslop.

Aug. 24th, 1906.

The following experiment in the identification of per-
sonality was undertaken in repetition of similar experiments
published in my Report on Mrs. Piper in the Proceedings of
the Society for Psychical Research. I quietly arranged with
Miss Mary Brickenstein to tell me some incidents which she
would expect to prove her identity to any one she chose.
She selected Miss Buchanan, after an explanation that I was
imitating the phenomena of spiritistic communications. She
then gave me the following incidents which I have worked
up in the fragmentary manner indicated in the various " mes-
sages " represented by what I showed to Miss Buchanan.

Miss Brickenstein alluded to the fact that she wore a
brussels net veil on the piazza one warm day while at her
Florentine embroidery, which she was much interested in, and
that they had played bridge whist under the trees. Also she

506 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

remarked that she and her sister met Miss Buchanan at the
stone one evening behind the hotel, and that they had talked
at the balsam walk about England and Scotland and espe-
cially the Prince of Wales and his morganatic marriage. To
lead Miss Buchanan astray she mentioned a drive taken by
the latter to Keen Valley for books and her stopping at Aris-
ponet on the return. Miss Brickenstein also remarked the
fact that she suffered frequently from neuralgia, a fact which
Miss Buchanan should recognize.

The " messages " work up these incidents in a most con-
fused form to imitate the confused messages which often
come through Mrs. Piper. They -explain themselves. As
the mistakes and confusions usually follow phonetic lines
the reader will often remark that an apparently irrelevant
word is a phonetic attempt at some important name or
phrase.

I explained carefully to Miss Buchanan that she was to
imagine the messages as coming from some one who wanted
to prove his identity to her as if a spirit, and that she was to
watch for phonetic errors, explaining to her what often oc-
curred in communications of the alleged spiritistic type. The
answers recorded after the questions, which were shown one
at a time in their order, explain themselves. I place the
answers to the incidents masquerading as " messages " in
square brackets.

I

Hello, don't you know me. We met not long ago. I

was I forget. Oh yes, the back some distance.

Yes, not in the parlor. I wait. .Break is

that it ? No I don't get it. Try again.

[No guess of any one. Recalled the breaking of a tum-
bler by my little boy George, this being suggested by the
[ord break.]

2

wfully stuffy here. But I think I know who I am.

>ne. Remember warm weather. Played. .

tlie bride? No, the king the deuce! Speak

hear. The mountains there. Oh yes. Up

jthc behind the house.

Identification of Personality. 507

[No one recognized. The word " bride," intended as a
mistake for " bridge," suggested a reference a few nights
previously to some one in the parlor who looked like a bride.]

3

Remember the sunsets. We often saw them at that

stone. Others did. I am Remember my spectacles.

Breaks No Ten. You know wist. Let

me breathe on the piazza.

[The allusion to spectacles suggested Mr. Brickenstein,
and Miss Buchanan recalled that she had broken his tennis
racket. Miss Buchanan also mentioned the fact that she had
seen the sunset with him at the stone behind the hotel.]

•4

Under the trees Brussels tied Remem-
ber the bridge Florentine. The books to read. Down

hill. A net. No, I was not with you

Lodge. We met at the stone on the slope behind

The drive books, books. Oh yes.

["Lodge" suggested Hurricane Lodge, as it was intended.
Recalled the drive to Keen Valley for books, but not the in-
tended meaning of "A net " which was for " Arispo-

net," the name of Mrs. Martin's place. The word " bridge "
suggested meeting Dr. Hurd at the brook bridge. Not in-
tended. Mention of talk with Mrs. Logan about Florence.]

S

If it were not cards. Net vale. The bridge

Prince I don't know It was there: Trips in

England. We talked last week. Oh yes, that walk

pond

[Talked with Mrs. Logan about the Princess. Did not
recall any pond. Recalled trips to England and talks with
Mrs. Logan about them.]

6

Hurry what did you say? walking stick. No, no. .

nearly . The cane. There that is it. Bricks and

stone. Don't you know? Scotland Wales. Mr. Mor-
gan. We talked about it.

508 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

[" Bricks and stone," as intended, suggested Bricken-
stein, and statement made that it might represent mistake in
coming through. " Hurry " as intended recalled " Hurri-
cane." Recalled talk with Miss Brickenstein about the
Prince of Wales, and remarked : " It looks like Miss Brick-
enstein." This was correct. Did not recall any " Mr. Mor-
gan." The word was intended as a mistake for " morgan-
atic."]

7

Prince of Wales embroidery veil tied over

my head Many talks about him. You know. B

s Ask Ellis. Ride keen aris Who was

it? I Brussels net Oh yes, I wish I could keep

clear.

[" I wonder if ' B s ' m^ans Brussels ? " Allusion

to ride suggested Mrs. Corlies. Then asked if " B . . . . s "

meant Miss Brickenstein. I did not assent, but remarked
that I would note her guess.]

8

Do you remeb neuralgia. Florentine Played

on the bridge. Is that right? piazza waist. No,

no. Bears Mar Wales. I said something about

morning no. Wait. Balsam walk. You know-
that. We talked there about marriage.

[" Florentine " recalled staying at a pension in Florence.
Recalled being at Balsam walk with Mrs. Logan and the
Brickensteins and talking with them there about the Prince
of Wales, and also remarked that Mrs. Logan had neuralgia.
Word " morning " suggested nothing. It was intended as a
mistake for " morganatic."]

9

Remember my Florentine embroidery. How warm it

was. We got thirsty. Bier Bessie Stone

Oh yes, played bridge. Now I have it. You know

It was whist. I had neuralgia. You talked about the Prince
of Wales balsam walk Morgan's wedding,

[The allusion to '* Florentine embroidery " recalled Miss
Brickenstein very definitely and assuredly. Remarked that

Identification of Personality. 509

she, Miss Bu. had not played any games of bridge whist
here, and did not recall the game under the trees which the
" message " intended. " Bessie stone " suggested Miss
Brickenstein. This was the intention. Allusion again to
the talk with Mrs. Logan about the Prince of Wales.]

10

I saw you take that drive. I was not there. Arisponet

Breaksten. Oh I can't. You remember talks about

England. Scotland too ck . , . . s . . n Hurricane

met at stone back Don't you know.

[Drive and Arisponet recognized, and " Breaksten " in-
terpreted as referring to Miss Brickenstein correctly, and
the remark made that Mrs. Corlies had introduced them, the
Brickensteins, to her at the stone behind the Hotel and as
bricks,]

II

I was interested in embroidery, and had neuralgia. Re-
member the morganatic marriage and the balsam walk.
Bricks stone I was there my brother Re-
member whist. We played.

[Miss Brickenstein guessed again with assurance and the
remark made that she had not played bridge whist with them.
The game under the trees not recalled.]

12

I had a sister. Capitol We lived there. B . . i . . t . .

..in. Three of us. We Hyslop. M y Br k

St. . . .n. I must go.

[Miss Mary Brickenstein guessed and an illusion made to
Washington where she and her sister and brother live. This
was intended by the use of the word " Capitol."]

The reader will remark easily enough the various illus-
trations of correct identification. I had, of course, intended
that Miss Brickenstein should be the alleged communicator
whose identity was primarily sought, but I also intended that
others should be secondarily involved, and the identification
in their cases was often quite as prompt and clear. It is ap-

510 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

parent that it does not take much evidence psychologically
to justify the identification of a special person in the manner
here illustrated. It is especially important as showing what
follows the exclusion of fraud in mediumistic phenomena and
that the sitter's judgment may be much more respected for
his verdict than it is perhaps usual to concede. We have,
in such experiments the assurance that the message comes
from a known person and the problem is only to study the
amount of evidence which will justify a judgment of identity.
The phenomena might illustrate the ease and extent to which
the impersonation of others may be possible, but it is no part
of this experiment to exhibit such a fact. The problem of
impersonation in these phenomena is not an important one,
and concerns only those who are willing to believe, without
evidence, in the existence of non-human spirits masquerading
as human agencies beyond the grave. As we cannot scien-
tifically believe in spirits of any kind until personal identity
has been proved, we shall have to make the matter of imper-
sonation secondary to the first issue. Hence I am concerned
here merely with the question of the extent to which we can
accept the average and normal human judgment regarding
the source of any given facts purporting to be spiritistic. We
are testing the correctness of the sitter's judgment in esti-
mating the evidence, not determining the existence of the
source identified. Readers must decide for themselves the
interest and importance of the results. ^

The second experiment was conducted in a slightly differ-
ent manner. The lady who was to act as " sitter " was in a
distant town, and I sent the " messages " to her in a marked
order and she was requested to write her verdict on each one
as she read it and not to wait until she had read all of them.
The order in which they were to be read was marked. I
waited until I could send the " messages " to the lady from
New York City, so that no direct suspicion of the lady who
gave me the material could arise, as Mrs. Belknap, to whom
they were sent, knew that Miss Brickenstein was at the hotel
in the mountains at the time when the material was actually
Prepared. By sending my letter from New York the most

ural associative clues and suggestions were avoided. The

IdenH/icaHon of Personality. 511

record represents the " messages " and replies or guesses in
the same manner as in the first experiment.

The reader will observe that the identification was so
prompt that the whole effect of later *' messages " was only
confirmatory. I had intended that the earlier questions
would not suggest Miss Brickenstein, but would appear cor-
roborative of the judgment when it had been established by
the later instances. But the reader will remark that the
right name was gotten immediately and on what would ap-
pear to most people as extremely slight evidence. I had
given no hint whatever of the time and place of obtaining
the matter which makes up the " messages."

The incidents out of which I made the " messages " were
the following. Miss Brickenstein had been told by Mrs.
Belknap of a tea basket she had given her daughter Margaret
the previous Christmas. Just before my little boy and my-
self started on a California trip I was given a reception in the
woods on a mountain side. Mrs. Boyd and Miss Bricken-
stein had tied a ribbon on a post to serve as a guide for the
guests to the grounds. Some fun had existed between the
Brickensteins and Mrs. Belknap because they all had reddish
hair. Other incidents explain themselves, in some cases not
having any special purpose or relevance except to give the
effect of confusion.

I

Do you remember the tea basket. You told us you gave

it to Margaret the Christmas before. We saw you at

[Miss Brickenstein.]

2

We were at the party on the mountain side. Mrs

drove us down. We asked for the woods. He was in a col-
lege. You remember. You wanted the cottage at foot of

hill. Reception He was going away The

little boy

[This recalls the picnic in the woods suggested by Prof.
James of Harvard and to be given for Mr. Hyslop who was
going to California. The episode of the cottage suggests
Mr. Soren, as I remember.]

512 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

3

Culver only one day. We tied the ribbon on the

post. California. The tea party. George went too.

[This suggests Mrs. Boyd as I seem to remember. She
had a young man who was a visitor for only one day and that
he might have been at the tea. She tied ribbons on the fence
to show the guests where to enter. George Hyslop went to
California with his father.]

4

Mrs. Boyd do you remember she drove us down to

the place. The hillside near the lodge. Three of us tied

the ribbon. James Harvard said he would

come.

[I thought the office boy did the driving the day of the tea.
Did Mrs. Boyd drive us down? Prof. James said he might
come, but did not, having gone off with some friends at Glen-
more.]

5

My sister was there. We were all good friends. We felt
much sympathy because we three had red hair. We met at
lodge.

[It must be Mary Brickenstein. It sounds more like
Mary than Lucy, and we three were more or less alike as to
hair.]

6

Bricks and stone. M and L Stein. It is

hard to get it. Oh yes. Br Brads Breaks

Mar L. .cy Brick

[" Bricks and stone " — Mary and Lucy Brickenstein, but
the rest is too obscure for me to make anything of it.]

spirit Slate-Writing and Billet Tests. 513

SPIRIT SLATE-WRITING AND BILLET TESTS.
By David P. Abbott

FOURTH ARTICLE.

[All Rights Reserved.]

XIV.

I will here describe a few methods of obtaining a name or a
question which is written by a sitter, and where the sitter retains
the writing in his own possession. The first which I shall de-
scribe is the most improved method known at present, and is al-
most universally used by the professional mediums traveling over
the country.

The plan is to get an impression of the writing that is not a
carbon impression. The impression is, in fact, invisible until
after it is " developed." The paper used is a thin, highly glazed
paper. A tablet of this paper is provided for the subject to write
upon. He can make an inspection of the tablet if he so desires,
and he will find nothing. The operator first prepares a few
sheets of the paper by rubbing over one side of them with wax.
Some mediums use paraffine wax, which has been melted and
mixed with a small amount of vaseline. If this wax be used, it
must be kneaded with the hands while cooling and afterwards
pressed into cakes. I prefer to use " spermaceti " wax. The
wax, being white, can not be seen on the paper after the same
has been coated with it.

The sheet must be laid on a flat, smooth surface, and thor-
oughly rubbed over with the wax. This prepared sheet is gen-
erally placed in the tablet two or three sheets below the top,
coated side down. It should be held in place with library paste :
and another prepared sheet should be similarly placed a little
further down, to be used in case emergency demands it.

When the writing has been done, an invisible impression of it
is transferred from the waxed surface of the prepared sheet, to
the sheet next under it. Of course this can not be seen until de-
veloped, as the wax is very thin and is the color of the paper.
After the subject writes his questions, and removes the sheet
bearing them, the operator secures this tablet by almost any
secret means; and then he secretly removes the sheet bearing
the impression and develops it. This is most generally done by
throwing on the sheet some powdered charcoal, and shaking the
sheet around until the powder adheres to the wax, after which
the surplus powder is dusted off. The writing appears plainly
and may be easily read. Some performers use plumbago, lamp-

514 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

black, or coal dust instead of charcoal. Many different powders
may be used. The magician, Mr. Edward Benedict, merely holds
the wax impression over a lighted gas jet, moving it about. The
flame blackens the wax portion, which melts and dampens the
paper where it adheres.

When this trick is used at private readings in apartments, the
operator, after the writing, usually leads the sitter into the next
room for a reading. Meanwhile an assistant secretly secures the
tablet and leaves another in its place that is unprepared. Gen-
erally the door betwen the two rooms is left open ; and it is only
necessary for the operator to engage the sitter for a moment, to
give opportunity to the assistant to make the exchange, which
can be made in many different ways. After the assistant has
had time to develop the writing, the operator leaves the room for
a moment on some trifling errand and of course secures the in-
formation while out of the room.

Sometimes the operator produces a slate message for the sub-
ject; and then while the subject is inspecting it, secretly ex-
changes tablets from a large pocket in his coat. When this
method is used, the operator generally pretends to hear some
one at his outside door; and as his servant fails to respond, the
operator excuses himself for a moment, and taking advantage of
his absence, develops and reads the writing.

I am indebted to an accomplished magician, Mr. Gabriel Ras-
gorshek, for the secret of an excellent means of working this trick.
It is being successfully worked by an expert medium at the pres-
ent time, and Mr. Rasgorshek is thoroughly informed as to the
means employed.

The medium gives his readings in a large store room. He
curtains off the room into three apartments, making a large re-
ception room in front, a middle or waiting room, and a third room
in the rear, where is concealed an assistant unknown to all call-
ers. He uses a twelve foot cabinet in the center of the rear of the
middle room, directly against the rear cross curtain. The cabinet
is merely formed of curtains, and is divided into two compart-
ments by a curtain partition.

In one of the compartments of the cabinet is a table, a pre-
pared tablet and pencils. This is the room into which each sitter
is invited by an attendant, to write out and prepare his questions,
signing his name to them. In the waiting room near the walls
are seats for callers, and one caller at a time is invited to enter
this solitary room and prepare his questions. The other room in
the cabinet has a table near the back curtain, with a chair on each
"ide of it. In this latter room, on one side of the table, the me-
um is seated, giving the readings, slate writings, etc.

The concealed assistant in the rear of the apartments secretly
aches through the cabinet curtain into the room where the tab-

spirit Slate-Writing and Billet Tests. 515

let has just been used, and removes the tablet, leaving another
prepared tablet in its place for the next subject. He now de-
velops and reads the questions, names, etc.; copies them neatly
and also adds to them information secured from the city directory; then
placing the slip of paper containing the copy in a small slit in the
end of a stick, pushes it through a small opening in the back cur-
tain of the other room in the cabinet. This opening is located
so that the stick enters the cabinet just by the medium's hand
behind the table. The subject is by this time on the opposite
side of the table receiving his reading, and the medium secretly
opens the slip and reads the information. Meanwhile another
subject has been invited into the other room in the cabinet to pre-
pare his questions. There is also a small cloth tube on the side of
the table next the medium's hand. This tube runs through the
rear curtain. In case some one has become unduly excited over
a reading and has prepared questions at home and returned for a
second reading, the medium takes them in his hand for a moment,
fingering them. He keeps on hand a number of folded billets of
different styles ; so that when he sees the ones the subject has, he
can secretly secure duplicates in his palm. When he fingers the
subject's billets, he adroitly exchanges them for his own, and ap-
parently places the subject's billets in a book on the table. In
reality he places the substitutes in the book, " palming " the
originals, which he sends through the cloth tube to the assistant.
Very soon they are returned to the hand of the medium under the
table. He now takes the billets from the book, apparently re-
turning them to the sitter, but really again substituting, so that
the originals are returned to the sitter. He conceals the dupli-
cates; and by this time the information begins to come into his
hand, and the reading becomes very effective.

There is a means of developing the wax impression that I con-
sider superior to the method given above ; but I am restrained
from making it public by a promise of secrecy to the dealer from
whom I purchased the secret. It can be obtained of George L.
Williams & Co., 7145 Champlain Avenue. Chicago, 111, The
method given here, however, works very well, and is the one gen-
erally used by most mediums: the secret has become common
property among mediums and has even been published before.

A magician, Mr. C. S. Weller, of ^Mitchell, South Dakota, has
experimented a great deal with diflPerent methods of preparing
impression paper and developing the impressions. He some-
times prepares the sheets with common cocoa butter, and some-
times he saturates the paper with a forty per cent solution of
cream and wiater, afterwards stretching the sheets in frames until
dry. These can be used on a marble-top table, the bottom of a
porcelain dish, or a marble slab. In this case he dusts ultra-
marine blue on the object bearing the impression and then blows

516 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

it lightly, so that all of the powder is blown off except that which
adheres to the impression. Any of the colored powders may be
used. Some performers place a prepared sheet on a glass plate
and another sheet over this for the subject to write on. In this
case the impression is transferred to the glass plate.

I am acquainted with a lady medium, who, when she gives
private readings, answers some questions for each of the sitters,
which they have written and retained, giving them their correct
names, etc. The method she uses is very simple, yet she assures
me that it works most successfully.

This medium is working in connection with a lady " Palmist "
who always receives the visitors in the waiting room. When the
visitor arrives, this lady has a book in her hands, which she has
apparently just been reading. There is no furniture in the room
except some chairs. The lady seats the visitor ; and in case this
person does not desire a " Palm Reading," she says, " Madam

B is not quite ready to receive visitors just now ; you will

have to wait a few minutes." She then continues, " While you
are waiting, just write down the questions you wish to ask," and
she gives the visitor a sheet of paper and a pencil ; and as there is
no table upon which to write, she also gives this person the book
which is still in her hand.

She places the sheet of paper on the back of the book and
says, " Write the questions you desire answered on that sheet of

paper and keep it. Madam B prefers to have you write them

down so you will not forget them. Sign your name to them and
address them to some spirit near to you."

The subject does as requested, and the lady again tells her to
" just keep her questions." She now relieves the visitor of the
book. She waits and converses for awhile, and then says, " I do

not see why Madam B does not come. I will go and see if

she is ready." She retires to the other rooms, and incidentally
takes her book with her. She quickly returns with a duplicate
book in her hands which the visitor thinks is the original book,

and says, " Madam B is nearly ready, and she will be out in

a few moments." She converses with the visitor until the me-
dium comes in and proceeds to give the reading, which fully
answers the questions.

The first book was a new one and had a paper cover on the
back. Under this cover, on each back, was a carbon sheet, with
a sheet of white paper under it. When the lady went to see if
the medium was ready, she left this book with the medium, re-
turning quickly with the duplicate. The medium read the im-
pression and committed all to memory before entering.

There are many methods of secretly securing an impression of
the writing of a sitter. Sometimes, where no table is handy, the
subject is given an ordinary ** clip board." such as stationers fur-

spirit Slaie-Writing and Billet Tests. 517

nish for clamping billheads and blank papers. This consists of
stiff pasteboard and a spring clip, or clamp. A sheet of blank
paper is in position held by the clip ; and the writing is transferred
from a sheet of copying carbon concealed under the mottled paper
covering the inside of the " clip board," to a sheet of white paper
between it and the board. The " clip board " is. then taken se-
cretly by an assistant, or sometimes by the medium, who excuses
himself for a moment on some pretense, after adroitly exchanging
a concealed " clip board " for the prepared one which he also con-
ceals. A sharp knife is then run under the edge of the mottled
paper of the board, separating it therefrom. The carbon is re-
moved and the impression read. After this a new blank sheet is
put on the board, the carbon replaced, all is neatly covered by
mottled paper, which is pasted in position, and the " clip board "
is again ready for a sitter.

Sometimes the table on which the subject writes is prepared.
A good method is this : Use a heavy table or one nailed to the
floor. The table must have one hollow leg. A sheet of thin,
white silk is spread on the table with a sheet of carbon over it
and thin cloth or paper over both. This last is tacked in place.
A cord runs up the hollow leg and is attached to the silk. This
cord runs under the floor to a concealed assistant, who draws in
the silk after the writing.

The most common method and the one most generally used
is a bold " switch " of the paper before the eyes of the sitter,
when the operator takes it to press it against his forehead. When
this method is used the medium, and subject sit at opposite sides
of a table. The writing is done on a small card, which is then
folded two times by the subject. The medium reaches and takes
it in this condition, and presses it against his forehead; then
returns it to the subject to press against his own forehead for a
time. The operator then again takes it, and pressing it to his
own forehead, gives the reading.

In this method the operator has concealed in his left palm a
duplicate card folded similarly ; and when he takes the card from
the subject with his right hand, first places it in his left hand
directly over the duplicate. The back of the operator's hand
faces the subject so that the cards are concealed from his view.
Xow with a deft move of the fingers, he pushes forward the dupli-
cate into view, withdrawing the original ; then fingering it with
his right hand he takes the duplicate and presses it to his own
forehead. He next hands this duplicate to the subject to press
to his head ; and meanwhile with his left hand below the
table, he secretly opens and reads the question. The card can be
opened and folded silently, which is the reason cards are used
instead of paper. The original is now palmed in the left hand,
and the original maneuvers gone through with again ; this time

518 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

handing back to the subject his own card. After this the read-
ing is given.

There is another method of making the " switch," which is in
very general use. In this case it is made with one hand alone.
Soft paper is used instead of cards, so that it will fold into smaller
space. Proper, paper can be opened and refolded silently, if care
be used. The slips are of a uniform size, so that when folded
they will always be of the same size. The subject is instructed
how to fold them after he has finished his writing.

When the operator makes this " switch," he has a duplicate
piece of paper inside his right fingers, held between the middle
and first finger near the end. He keeps the back of this hand
towards the subject so that the duplicate can not be seen; and
when he picks up from the table the paper that the subject has
written upon, he deftly draws it from the ends of his fingers with
his thumb, up into his palm beyond the duplicate, and then with
his thumb pushes the duplicate into view.

With a little practice this " switch " can be made in an instant,
and the move will escape the subject entirely. If, at the moment
the operator picks up the paper, he addresses the subject, the lat-
ter will invariably glance into his face for an instant ; just at this
moment the right hand deftly makes the " shift " and instantly
brings the duplicate into the view of the subject in a perfectly
natural manner, which seems entirely honest in appearance. He
then proceeds with whatever method he may prefer in finishing
the trick.

I will next describe two tricks depending entirely on this
" switch." They are used very extensively by the professional
mediums of this day in the larger cities. The second one I will
describe is used by a number of the most celebrated mediums of
Chicago, such as advertise with flaming headlines in the daily
papers.

In the simplest form the operator seats the subject at a large
table, facing it, and near the right corner of one of its sides.
There is nothing on the table but a few slips of paper, a Bible,
and a bell. The subject is instructed to write his questions, fold
his paper and lay the same on the table, and then to tap the bell
when ready.

On hearing the bell the medium enters, steps to the table and
picks up the billet, at the same instant asking the subject if this
paper contains his questions, name, etc. At this instant, while
the subject glances at the medium's eyes, the " shift " is made :
and the operator, instantly, with his left hand, opens the Bible,
and with his right apparently inserts the billet between the leaves,
closing the book. He, of course, inserts the duplicate billet, re-
taining the original in his right palm. He now steps to the left
side of the subject, who remains seated at the table. He faces

spirit Slaie-IVriting and Billet Tests. 519

from the table so that his left side is next to the left side of the
subject, and he instructs the latter to place his hands on the Bible.
Then the medium places his left palm on the subject's head to
'* establish conditions " ; and as he does so he places it rather on
the side of the head nearest himself, and so that his palm and
wrist are opposite the left eye of the subject. This prevents the
subject from turning his face towards the medium, or seeing what
he is secretly doing.

The reader must form a good mental picture of their positions,
if he desires to realize the possibilities of this trick. The medium
has his back toward the table and his left side to the left side of
the subject, who faces the table. They are thus facing in oppo-
site directions; and while the medium now describes his im-
pressions to the subject, he secretly opens the billet with his right
hand and reads it. His right hand is behind the range of vision
of the subject, and is also concealed from the view of the latter
by the medium's person and left hand, which latter is pressed
against the upper left side of the subject's head.

He now folds it again, placing it in position between the ends
of the first and second fingers ; and turning he opens the Bible,
taking out the billet and apparently presenting it to the subject.
He asks the subject to hold it to his own head ; and of course he
gives the subject the original billet, secretly " palming " the sub-
stitute at the same time.

Next he places his hand on the subject's head, and gives the
reading, answering the subject's questions, giving his name, etc.

In the next trick which is slightly more complicated, five slips
of paper are used. The medium addresses the subject somewhat
as follows : " You came here for me to help you. You are in
trouble, or worried about something, else you would not be here.
Now I desire to help you if I can. I charge one dollar, and I
answer four questions. It is necessary for you to ask these
questions if you want me to be certain to answer them. If I
were to proceed of my own accord, I might give you something
which you would not care for ; therefore I will ask you to write
your questions on these four slips of paper, writing only on one
side of the paper, and folding them twice with the writing inside.
On the fifth slip write your name, occupation, and address. Now
write questions which, if answered, will be a benefit to you.
something that will do you some good. Let one be about busi-
ness matters, another about love or family matters, etc. If you
desire results that will benefit you, write your questions openly,
^ving the names of all persons concerned, in a straightforward
and honest manner. When they are written, folded, and all is
readv, tap the bell." The medium now retires until he hears the
bell.-

The subject invariably complies with all conditions. When

539 Journal at Ae Aimericmm Society for Fsydncal RaearcL

the operator enters^ fae immedxatehr takes liie bOlets, cme at a
tim«, as ther He on the table, aikd cnmps or folds them an addi-
tiooal time. He does this hnrricdlj, as if he desires them to be
verr secnrelr folded. Of cxmrse he ** switdics '^ the last ooe,
leaving a " dummy ** in its place, and secretly retaimng the orig-
inal in his right palm-
He now takes the same position as in the previous trick, -with
his back to the table, left side to the left side of the sitter, hand
on the sitters head. etc. He then asks the subject to ** make a
M"ish " while he is " establishing coQdition&.'' 'While the subject
is thinking of a wish, the medinm secretly opens the billet with
hi? right hand, reading and refolding it as in the other trick. He
now remarks, ** Have yon made a wish ? " C^n being answered in
the affirmative, he replies, ** That wish vnU not be entfrely ful-
filled." He now tarns, and picking np one of the billets, appar-
ently hands it to the snbject, requesting him to bold it to his owti
head. Of course he changes the billets again, handing to the sub-
jrci the i^r he has iust ^ffrrr-y nrod, and retaining in his palm the
new one. He reqtiests the subject to hold it to his o^-n bead
with one hand, and to lay his other hand on the Bible.

The medium now places his palm on the side of the subject's
head as in the preceding trick, and with his right hand secretly
c*pens and reads the second billet, memorizing VL As he does this
he is verbally answering the question on the first billet, which
the sub;ect is now holding to his head. If the first question was.
" Sha]l I make a certain investment in mining stocks, etc.,'' the
medium says. " I sec you contenaplatc investing in mines, etc.,
etc. This will not prove a profitable investment ; you should by
no ireans do this. I see there is another oppominity coming to
you for an investment, that will be much safer, etc_ etc. Xow,
sir. open the question you are ho' ding to your forehead, and see
if I have answered it correctly."

Meanwhile the medium has secretly read the second question,
and :he biliet bearins: it is in position between his fingers. He
now picks up an-'^ther b:'Iet. apparently gi\-ing it to the subject
to h 'Id as in the tir>i case. Of course he gives the subject the
second one which he has iust secretly read, and retains in his
palm the new one. \\ bile he answers the second question, which
may pertain to love or family affairs, he again secretly reads the
que^tion in his right pa-m.

.After an-wering: the question, the subject is directed to open
his billet and see if it be corn* ^red; and the medium

turns and picks up another on^ presenting it to him.

This is continued t:ntil all of r "X answered, and the

subject's name. occt:pation. e

.\t the last billet, which the w n again

rr.akes the " shift/' retaining givin sabject

Spirit Slate-Writing and Billet Tests. 521

the last genuine billet. This time he leaves the side of the sub-
ject, and answers the question correctly without contact with
him. This trick is very effective, and gives the greatest satis-
faction to the medium's patrons.

There are so many methods of gaining knowledge of what a
sitter secretly writes tliat it is impossible to g^ve them all here.
It is §afe to say that in any case where the subject is required to
write anything, that there is always a secret means of gaining
knowledge of the writing. In such cases no information is ever
given except such as could be inferred from the writings, or such
as can be g^ven by shrewd guesswork.

I know one medium who wears a skull cap when giving a
reading. It is made of black silk; and in the top of it, held in
place by a lining of oil cloth, is a sponge saturated with odorless
alcohol. The subject writes his questions on a card and seals it
in an envelope. The operator now takes the envelope, and
presses it on top of his head directly over the hidden sponge.
The alcohol renders the envelope transparent; and after a mo-
ment the medium brings the envelope in front of his eyes, with
its upper edge resting" against his forehead, and there reads the
question. He is near-sighted and this is quite easy for him.

He holds it in this position while he talks to the subject, until
the alcohol evaporates and the envelope assumes its natural ap-
pearance. He then gives the reading and returns the envelope
unopened. This is a very impressive trick. The use of odorless
alcohol for such purposes is well known in some quarters, but I
think this method of using it is not generally known at present.
The envelope never leaves the sitter*s sight and the experiment
appears very marvelous.

Other means of securing information from writing are some-
times adopted, but they are very complicated and in some cases
require a very expert operator. I once met a medium who could
so manipulate his subjects as to secure much information from
the writing in the most concealed manner ever known. The
reader is referred to the author's article, " Some Medium istic
Phenomena,'* in the Open Court of August, 1905, for a sample of
his work.

There are also means of apparently reading sealed questions
from the platform or stage, in which the methods are thoroughly
concealed. In some of these cases the medium never goes near
or touches the questions in any way, can be blindfolded, and may
even walk about while giving the tests. In such cases the sealed
questions appear never to leave the sight of the spectator; yet
the medium reads and answers them in the most marvelous man-
ner. A description of the means used would require too much
space for the length of this article, so I merely make mention of
these tricks. I do this that the reader may be on his guard in

522 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

any case where the subject writes anything whatever, and where
the operator claims to secure knowledge of such writing through
the assistance of spirits of the dead.

EDITORIAL.

Mr. J. Arthur Hill, in a letter which we published in the
September number of the Journal animadverting on the ar-
ticle to Telepathy in the June number, suggested that we
should have a term for the " kind of telepathy " which we
said had not been scientifically proved. It has occurred to
us to suggest the word telemnesia for this purpose. We can
assume that telepathy shall denote the transference of pres-
ent active mental states, while " telemnesia " may denote the
transference of memories and perhaps imply the selective ca-
pacity of the percipient to determine what is wanted for its
purposes. It is possible that this implication of selection
should not be associated with the term, as we should deem it
more natural that the transmission should be the work of the
agent rather than the foraging of the percipient, and if so we
should have to coin a still different term for this selective pro-
cess on the part of the psychic. In any case, however, telem-
nesia might serve to denominate a process of supernormal ac-
quisition of memories rather than present mental states.

This definition would not imply that the process was or is
a fact. The possibility is wholly without evidence at present,
and it would have to be experimentally proved before it could
have any standing in a court of science.

FINANCIAL.

Tt is intended that the fiscal year shall begin the first of
Tanuary each year and end December 31st of the same.
Phis year's report of total expenses will not be made until
he January number of the Journal for next year.

Editorial. 523

If readers and members, however, will examine the Journal
for February, April, August and November, they will find
what the expenses of the work have been since they began in
June, 1906. I shall summarize them here.

First Quarter $1,186.00

Second Quarter 2,064.30

Third Quarter 2,514.47

Fourth Quarter 2,687.67

Total $8,452.44

To complete the year ending December 31st will require
nearly enough more to make the total expenses $10,000,
which was the sum calculated at the outset. It is hoped,
however, to bring the amount a little below this.

Receipts from annual memberships have been $4,925.
Receipts from Life memberships of the various types have
been $2,450. Only the income of this last sum can be used.
This will be a little more than $100. Hence it will be ap-
parent that the total receipts will be a little more than $5,000.
The expenses have been nearly $3,500 more than receipts,
and before the end of the year will reach nearly $1,000 more.

If the experimental work which is contemplated this com-
ing year be undertaken it will add considerably to the calcu-
lated annual expense! The Society will have to press vigor-
ously for an adequate endowment, and this financial state-
ment is made in order to emphasize that need. It is not
known to what extent members can aid in this directly; but
indirectly they might effect much by presenting the subject
to all who may be induced to consider it. Work that is now
enlisting the minds of the best men in Europe and that has
received an endowment of $800,000 from the French Govern-
ment ought, in this country, which boasts of its intelligence
and progressive spirit, to far surpass this munificence.

We wish to repeat the request to members that they be
free to take part in the Correspondence which we wish to as-
sociate with the work of the Journal. Only in this manner
can we remove difficulties, misunderstandings, and objections

524 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

regarding the work. We desire the freest expression of
readers' opinions or desires with reference to these matters,
and they will receive the most respectful attention.

For instance, word has reached us indirectly and not by
letter that a certain member wants to see telepathy exploited
experimentally and less of the matter which bears on spiritis-
tic hypotheses. We should be glad to publish any criticisms
of the method involved in editing the publications and ex-
press the hope that readers will take us into confidence in
that matter. We would say to this unknown critic, however,
that we should be very glad indeed to have and to publish
matter bearing upon telepathy. The only thing that has pre-
vented it is the simple fact that we cannot discover any suit-
able evidence of its existence. The writer, speaking person-
ally, can say that he has never yet been able, in fifteen years'
experience, to find a single case of it which could be experi-
mented with scientifically, and for that reason cannot be ex-
pected to publish any matter on it. Very few spontaneous
cases of it have come to our attention.

A MISUNDERSTANDING.

M. Caesar De Vesme has an article in the July number of
the Annals of Psychical Science in which there are several mis-
conceptions of views which I had expressed in the articles
summarizing the experiments with Mrs. Piper and others
since the death of Dr. Richard Hodgson in the February,
March, and April numbers of this Journal. His remonstrative
attitude of mind regarding my position with reference to
telepathy, tho entirely friendly in its spirit, involves such a
misunderstanding of what I said and hold, that it may be well
to call attention to the matter and to correct the misconcep-
tion which may have also been shared by others.

I am made, apparently at least, to deny the fact of telep-
athy, as the following quotations show. After quoting my
statements he says : —

" It seems then, that the person who holds the telepathic hy-
pothesis, before having recourse to that of spirits, is in the opin-

Editorial. 525

ion of Prof. James Hervey Hyslop, among the great mass of wii-
scientHic people. He has asserted, as we have just seen, that those
'persons who can believe such things without a shadow of evi-
dence would be capable of believing anything ' and that he refuses
to treat this hypothesis of telepathy seriously until some proofs
can be advanced in favor of it which are adequate to sustain its
vast pretensions."

After some further animadversions in criticism of my con-
tention the writer goes on: —

" Secondly, is Prof. Hyslop quite sure that there is not, as he
calls it, a shadow of evidence of the transmission that thought can
operate between the experimenter and the subject in a state of
trance? I appeal to all who have seriously pursued the study of
metapsychics and ask them whether this statement of Prof. Hys-
lop's does not seem to them absolutely astounding. They are
acquainted with the experiments of Dr. Malcolm Guthrie and Sir
Oliver Lodge with Miss Ralph and Miss Edwards, of Gurney,
and Myers with Blackburn and G. A. Smith, etc."

It is possible that M. De Vesme did not appreciate tech-
nical English clearly enough to detect exactly what my lan-
guage stated in my attitude on telepathy: for his criticism is
too friendly to attribute his position to a desire to find serious
fault. With his understanding of my position his surprise and
animadversions were certainly excusable, if not justified. But
when my exact language is observed, with the definite limita-
tions which I assigned to the term " telepathy," I think it
will be clear that my position will not seem so at variance
with scientific opinions about it as a superficial interpretation
might imply.

I do not deny, and I did not deny in those articles, the ex-
istence of telepathy of some kind. I was quite aware of the
experiments by Dr. Guthrie and others, and in fact I have ac-
cepted telepathy as a fact on the ground of just this and simi-
lar evidence. But what I was doing in my article was insist-
ing on the limits of that hypothesis to the kind of evidence
which proved it and determined its character, in so far as that
evidence sustained it at all. What I denied was " the kind of
telepathy " assumed by those who applied it to the Piper and
similar phenomena, and I denied this, not as a fact, but as a

526 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

scientifically supported view. I did not say that telepathy
has no scientific evidence in its favor, but " the telepathy
which this writer assumes " (April Journal, p. 197), and "no
scientific man believes in the kind of telepathy here sup-
posed." I made this clearer and more emphatic in the June
number of the Journal in the article on " Telepathy/' but this
may not have been seen by M. De Vesme when he wrote his
article. What I have been insisting on is that the only scien-
tifically legitimate use of the term " telepathy " is that which
merely names a group of supernormal phenomena whose
cause is not yet known or understood and that the facts which
support its claims at all are limited to the present active
states of the agent. There is no scientific evidence for se-
lective telepathy or the percipient's selection of memories in
other minds. This process may be a fact, but there is as yet
no scientific evidence whatever for this, and it must be as-
sumed if the spiritistic hypothesis is to have any rival in the
explanation of the Piper and similar phenomena. They can-
not be accepted as evidence of such a telepathy because they
relate so definitely and almost exclusively to the personal
identity of deceased persons. Until we have evidence of this
selective telepathy, telepathic foraging in the memories of the
living, telemnesia, if I may call it such, in facts not related
to the personalities of deceased persons, the term cannot be
legitimately applied to the explanation of such records as I
was discussing. I accept telepathy as defined by the evi-
dence in the Society's records and Proceedings, but that does
not include one iota of fact proving the influence of latent
knowledge. When the evidence has been produced that
there is this kind of telepathy I shall insist less strenuously on
its applicability to such cases as are under consideration.

The view which I here take is not new and is not my own
solely. It was maintained by Sir Oliver Lodge himself as
early as the first Report on the experiments with Mrs. Piper.
After making the statement, in his account of personal ex-
periments, that he regarded telepathy as scientifically proved
and that " thought transference is the most commonplace
explanation to which it is possible to appeal," Sir Oliver
Lodge went on to add : —

Editorial. 527

" But, whereas, the kind of thought-transference which had
been to my knowledge experimental^ 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 which has not yet
been experimentally proved at all."

I admit unhesitatingly the possibility that present active
mental states may be telepathically transmitted to a medium
in a trance, but this admission does not carry with it the hy-
pothesis or the belief that memories or past experiences can
be so transmitted. Before any such hypothesis can be enter-
tained scientifically it must have been proved to be tenable in
regard to incidents which are not relevant to the personal
identity of deceased persons. The original evidence of
telepathy consisted in facts which it was absurd on the face of
them, or at least unnecessary, to refer to such a source.
Otherwise telepathy would have had to compete with spirit-
ism for recognition. But there is not a trace or shred of
scientific evidence that telepathy is a selective process forag-
ing about the mind of sitters for pertinent incidents to imper-
sonate the dead. The kind of telepathy which critics of spir-
itism are assuming or tolerating completely alters the con-
ception which originally defined it. That conception as-
sumed the agent as the influencing factor. This new and
enlarged "telepathy" assumes that the percipient does the
work selectively and no analogy whatever exists between
this and the scientifically proved telepathy. All that I ask is
that the hypotheses which are used to explain things be scien-
tifically proved and that they show some rational consistency
with the facts and the assumed powers attributed to them. I
can abandon the spiritistic hypothesis when its rival can show
some other credentials than the respectability of scepticism.

528 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

INCIDENTS.

The Society assumes no responsibility for ansrthing pub-
lished under this head, and no indorsement is implied except
that it has been furnished by an apparently trustworthy con-
tributor whose name is given unless withheld at his own
request.

[The following account of personal experiences, in the
main, explains itself. But I wish to call attention to the de-
sirability of reporting or having reported the various sensa-
tions and emotions which may accompany noteworthy per-
sonal experiences. The importance of them will be apparent
to the student of psychology, and the writer, who has himself
reported in the English Proceedings through Professor
James some important phenomena in the field of glossolalia,
has here shown his appreciation of the accompaniments of
such experiences. Similar reports are desired and will always
be welcomed. Physiology always desires to ascertain
and study such accompaniments of mental states as blood
pressure, heart beats, knee jerks, optical reflexes, etc., so that
psychology may take a lesson from this method and record
the phenomena directly and indirectly associated with those
which seem to be of most interest. The explanation may be
left to the future. — Editor,]

THE MUSCULAR SENSE IN MEDIUMSHIP.

As no analytical attention has ever been reported by me of the
Muscular Sense in Mediumship— as proof of the self-realization
(by motor sensation) of the motions of " spiritual " pressures and
forces — when acted upon by " spirits " — in speaking and writing
— I herewith give the following experiences as connected with
" The Case of Albert le Baron, with an introduction by Prof. Wil-
liam James," in Part XXXI of the Proceedings.

I.

Muscular Sensations When Speaking.

Sensations of the Muscular Sense were felt by me in my

clieeks ; inr my cheeks were mechanically compressed by the mo-

iu,n of the f^>rce ; and the air from my lungs was driven automat-

V out of niy mouth in violent suspirations. This was accom-

--iiicd uitli such cries as from Rameses for Egypt: "0, my

Incidents. 529

people ! O, my people ! " My cheek-action — mechanically — ^was
due to the mental energy — subconsciotis — acting on the nerve of
my buccinator muscle.

The muscular sense was, in fact, confined to the nerves of my
cheeks and the muscle around my lips, viz., the orbicularis oris,
and elevator muscles. I cannot say why no muscular sensations
were felt in the muscles of my larynx ; or, the crico-thyroid mus-
cle, as supplied by the superior laryngeal branch of my pneumo-
gastric nervous system. There was no articulation or enuncia-
tion ; the Egyptian ( ?) words, automatically rolled out of my lips ;
mostly, in unmodulated, cavernous semi-gutteral sounds. With
no pitch, tone, or modulated qualities of voice. And — not know-
ing their nature — that is, the nature of the subconscious origin of
Egyptian (?) sounds; of course, as I listened to them, they pro-
duced in me, very strong religious emotions of mystic wonder.
They also serve to heighten the subconscious action, previously set
in motion, by the new and startling religious suggestions from
without.

II.

Muscular Sensations When Writing.

Sensations of my Muscular Sense (when automatically writ-
ing the religious messages of Rameses to Egypt and Arabia) were
felt in the interossei muscles of the fingers of my right hand ; and
the muscular sensations seemed to alternate from the back of my
right hand, to its palmar surface; no muscular sensation being
felt in my little finger. The subconscious force exerted (to con-
tract the muscles in my middle, and index fingers, when auto-
matically writing) was sensed the more powerfully by my Mus-
cular Sense, in exact proportion as the " messages " increased or
decreased in the scale of intelligibility, viz., rose in their moral
meaning from intelligently inferior moral concepts, up to superior
moral concepts. At first — ^before the writing became intelligible
— the sensations of my Muscular Sense was chiefly confined to
the superficial muscles of my right forearm; and to the three
general muscles of pronation and supination. In writing the au-
tomatic, penitent, religious " messages " of Rameses, of course,
my available, conserved, and subconscious religious energy, acted
upon my muscles — in part at least — through branches of my ul-
nar and median nerves. Of course, all the new, and startling,
automatically written religious messages, had — like those when
speaking — a similar profound ethical effect on my moral and spir-
itual, emotional nature. Far more startling than any new re-
ligious suggestion coming to me from an ecclesiastical source
from outside my own body.

530 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

APPARITIONS.

The following incidents occurred in the experience of my
children this summer while I was on a lecture tour in the
west. I publish them partly because of their freshness and
partly because of their early record. The first one was re-
corded the next morning after its occurrence, and immedi-
ately after I had been told it. I had my boy write it out him-
self and it is in his language. I questioned him at the time
to see how much reliance I could place on it as an experience.
His grandfather died last December. The second incident
was written down immediately after its occurrence, not more
than five minutes, I being in the room when it took place.
The accounts are by the children themselves.

It must be remembered that I have not talked to my chil-
dren about such phenomena. I had for a long time refrained
from mentioning psychic research or its facts in the presence
of my children, and from various sources and hints, some of
them from questions by his schoolmates, the boy managed to
get some idea of what I was interested in, and tho I have an-
swered a few questions about the matter since then I have not
talked about it or done anything to interest him or the others
in the subject. The two younger children, girls, have not
read anything whatever on the subject. The boy has read a
number of short newspaper stories and has been told by mc
that they were probably fabrications. It is probable, however,
that he has picked up some fairly intelligent conceptions of
the phenomena. I should at least infer as much from casual
observations of what he has remarked on several occasions.
But he has not shown any manifest interest in the subject
and its phenomena. There is no reason from either this sup-
posed interest or any apparent fears or curiosity about the
phenomena to assume that his imagination had predisposed
him to illusions or hallucinations in this field, tho this explan-
ation of the phenomenon is the one that will commend itself
to most people.

George is nearly fifteen, Winifred is nearly thirteen, and
Beatrice is eight and a half years of age.

Incidents. 531

San Francisco, August 6th, 1907.
At about 9 o'clock Monday night, Augfust 5th, 1907, my two
sisters and I were playing on the bed in the room of the Hotel
Jefferson. I suddenly looked up and I saw my grandfather walk-
ing through the doorway. He disappeared instantly and then I
remarked to my sisters that I had seen my grandfather come
through the doorway.

GEORGE HALL HY9L0P

We heard George say this at thfe time.

WINIFRED HY9L0P,
BEATRICE HYSLOP.

The next is an incident reported by the youngest child. I
questioned her and had her tell it over to me at several differ-
ent times and under different circumstances, but she always
told it exactly as here narrated. I suspected pure imagina-
tion and not even illusion or hallucination, but so far as I
could discover it was not her imagination in the proper
sense of the term. I would prefer the hypothesis that it was
a casual hallucination due to interest in the previous experi-
ence of George which she saw I was curious about. I did not
find any definite clue to its explanation from what she was
thinking about, as she could give no clear idea of this. But
it is possibly due solely to the suggestion of the other experi-
ence and the consciousness that I would be interested in it.
There were two of the experiences as the reports show, tho on
different dates. The unique character of the second has
some suggestions of an apparition in it.

San Francisco, Augfust 6th, 1907.
I was lying on the bed and George was in the bath-room. I
thought I saw him walk across the room.

August 7th, 1907.
This morning I was lying on the bed. I saw a circle with my
grandfather's head in it. I thought he said, " Say."

BEATRICE HYSLOP.

The next incident is connected with the two older chil-
dren and occurred in Portland. It is not exactly collective,
as the reader will see, but it involves reports by both of them.
I was at work in the room when it took place and my atten-

532 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

tion was called to it at once by both children. I had the ac-
count written down by them at once.

Portland, Ore., August i8th, 1907.
At half-past six on Sunday night, August i8th, 1907, my sister
and I were in a room (No. 62) in the Hotel Nortonia of Portland,
Oregon. Winifred was bending over the table (in front of a
window) with her elbows resting on it. She was calling my at-
tention to a picture that was drawn by my younger sister (Bea-
trice) of the double-bow-knot in the railroad up Mt. Tamalpais.
As I happened to glance over Winifred's head into the next room,
which was to the right, I saw a hand and the cuff of a black coat
shoot from behind the door as if tossing something. About one
second later Winifred's comb fell from her head towards me.
Winifred was on my right and the comb fell between us, as if it
was tossed and dropped just a little too far. I thought at first
that it was my father that threw the comb and went into the next
room to see if it was he. Winifred blamed me for it and it was
hard work to persuade her otherwise. Before I saw the hand I
had looked twice into the room, because I felt that something was
going to happen.

GEORGE HALL HYSLOP.

I had just come in from supper and was kneeling on the chair
near the table where my father's type-writer was, with my head
on my hands and my elbows on the table thinking, when my
comb, which was holding up my hair, fell on the table. At first
I thought it was my brother, who was standing at the side of me,
who pulled it out, but he said, " Honestly, I didn't," so I believed
him. He then told me that he saw a hand coming out of a black
coat throw it from the next room onto the table. He said he
thought it was father.

WINIFRED HYSLOP.

The position in which Winifred was at the time makes it
possible that the comb would fall out of its own gravity, if it
was not well in the hair. But the comb was behind a black
bow of silk and this might have hindered its fall in this way,
tho I have no reason to believe that it did so hinder it. I have
had her assume this position again without telling her what I
wanted, and if the comb was loose in her hair it could easily
have fallen of its own volition, as her head seems to have been
a little below the level, tho this is not positively proof for that
occasion. But in so far as the apparition of the hand is con-

Incidents. 533

cerned it might have been caused by the motion of the comb
itself starting and associated with the black silk bow in front
of it. This is the most probable interpretation of the facts.

COINCIDENCE.

July 30th, 1907.

While on the train today from Los Angeles to San Fran-
cisco, I was looking out of the window and reflecting for
some minutes on the limits of the duty to sacrifice. It was
suggested by the idea which some maintain that our own indi-
viduality should be absolutely lost in that of something else,
and I thought over for some time the idea that duty to self-,
realization denied the necessity of any sacrifice except that
which admitted the rights of all others to the same achieve-
ment and ends as we imperatively seek them. In my mind
the word sacrifice constantly came to the front, but I said
absolutely nothing. I remained perfectly silent. My little
girl, between eight and nine years of age, was sitting on my
lap and some five or ten minutes after I had stopped thinking
of the matter suddenly asked me what sacrifice was. Notic-
ing the coincidence I did not reply until I asked her how she
came to think of that. She answered : " Oh, I don't know.
I just thought of it." I could find no reason in her mind for
its occurrence, and she knew nothing of its meaning until I
explained it to her. There was no apparent reason for an
ordinary explanation of the coincidence by suggestion, unless
we suppose hyperaesthesic conditions sensitive to uncon-
scious vocalization on my part, of which I was not even sus-
picious at the time.

JAMES H. HYSLOP.

DREAM OR APPARITION.

The following experience was sent to me by Mn C. A.
Snow, a prominent attorney of Washington, D. C. He ac-
companies the incident by the following statements, made
necessary by the duty to suppress the real names. Mr. Snow

534 Journal of the American Society far Psychical Research,

assumes responsibility for the facts which he got personally
from the lady herself.

Mrs. S., the narrator, was the daughter of Justice X., of
the United States Supreme Court, and was once much talked
of as a possible candidate for the Presidency. Mr. Snow came
into possession of the facts some fourteen years ago and they
were reduced to writing a year or two later by the lady her-
self. The following is the account :

" In October of the year 1890, Mrs. S. was residing tempo-
rarily in Vienna. She had gone to Europe to stay one year, be-
ing a widow, without family, and free to roam at will. Having
only a limited income of her own, her father (then Justice X. of
the Supreme Court, U. S.), made an addition to her means that
she might enjoy greater advantages while abroad. At this time
she had already stayed abroad three years, with the approval of
her father, and was contemplating remaining still one year more.
Her father, in his letters to her after she told him of this decision,
seemed a little disappointed. She also received a letter from a
friend, saying, ' I do not mean to convey the idea that your
father is not well, but you have not seen him for so long that I
want to warn you that you will find him changed.' From that
time Mrs. S. felt an unaccountable depression of spirits, and re-
gfretted that she had not gone home with some friends, who
sailed a few weeks before. She had no intention of altering her
purpose, however, of remaining abroad one year longer. She
had the idea firmly fixed in her mind that her father would live
to a great age, as he had always enjoyed good health, and came
of a loner-lived stock.

" At this time Colonel Frederick Grant was U. S. Minister to
Vienna, and Mrs. S. was in correspondence with her friends, the
U. S. Consul, Mr. Portello and his family, at Dusseldorf, with a
view to joining them for the winter, and was constantly expect-
ing messages from them.

" This was the state of affairs on a certain Saturday in the
month and year already indicated, when Mrs. S. received an in-
vitation to dine at the legation, ' en famille ' on the next evening
(Sunday). 'I have also your friend, Mr. G.' said Mrs. Grant
That nieht on retiring Mrs. S. was in much better spirits than
usual, looking forward to the morrow's dinner with pleasure.
Her sleep was fitful and broken, however, and she had wakened j
up and gone to sleep again two or three times, so that she knows
she must have had the following dream or vision towards morn- |
'ng. She seemed, in this dream, to be transported back to the j

•ly room in her father's house in the United States. He was j

Incidents. 535

lying in an invalid's reclining chair, with a crimson face, still
conscious, but she seemed to know that he had just been brought
in from somewhere, having been stricken with apoplexy, and
that he was dying. She was in great agony, and seized his hand
and said : * O, Pa, you are dying, aren't you ? ' ' Yes, my child,'
he replied, ' I am, but I am an old man and you could not expect
me to live much longer.' The vision then dissolved and Mrs. S.
awoke.

" She went in to breakfact the next morning, or rather that
same (^>unday) morning at lo o'clock, and a little later the Mr.
G. spoken of above, came into the breakfast room of the same
hotel to consult with her about their going together to the Lega-
tion to dinner that evening. He ordered his breakfast, as they
sat there the porter handed Mrs. S. a cablegram. Her heart mis-
gave her, but she defied Fate, and determining that it should not
be a realization of her dream, she said, with bravado, * this is
from Mr. P. and I shall now be able to determine definitely my ,
plans for the winter.' Meanwhile she opened the dispatch with
trembling hand. It told her that her father had had a stroke of
apoplexy the day before, and was in a critical condition. ' O,'
said she, ' my dream ! ' She then told Mr. G. of her dream of the
early morning, and he assisted her to make her preparations to
leave for America. She felt sure that her father would die, as
she had known in her dream that he was dying. She felt that
he was trying to tell her so, and prepare her. She left Vienna
that nigfht, and on Monday, as she was taking a train from Lon-
don to Liverpool, she bought an evening paper, which she would
not look at, however, until the train had started. She knew so
well what she would find there, that she took pains to get a
coupe to herself that no one could witness her distress. When
the train was fairly under way she opened the paper, and the
first thing that met her eye was an announcement of the death
of her father that morning.

" On her father's office table, at the time of his death, was
lying a letter to her, to which he had not yet affixed his signature.
It was his last mental effort, and showed that she was the last
object of his thoughts. He had fallen in the street near his resi-
dence, that Saturday, with a stroke of apoplexy, and was carried
into his house by some persons who saw him fall. He was still
conscious, when the doctor arrived, and said : * Doctor, I have
been expecting this.' "

536 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

CORRESPONDENCE.

ON THE INFLUENCE UPON THE COMMUNICATOR'S
MIND OF OBJECTS PRESENTED TO THE MEDIUM.

The Editor of the Journal:

Dear Sir: — I should like to offer one or two remarks upon a
subject that has been very little discussed, from a theoretical
standpoint, though the fact itself is hardly questioned by those
who have made a careful and critical study of the evidence for
supernormal phenomena in the Piper and other similar cases. I
refer to the faculty, (apparently possessed by the medium or the
intelligences who purport to communicate through her) of com-
ing into closer touch with the mental and spiritual life of the sit-
ter, and of being better enabled to remember a number of forgot-
ten facts — simply because they are enabled to hold (through the
medium's hand) certain material objects which they previously
wore, or handled, and which the sitter has brought with him or
her, in order to " assist in clearing the communicator's mind." In
both Dr. Hodgson's Report and that of Dr. Hyslop, are to be
found many references to this fact — the importance of some ma-
terial object, to act as a means of clearing the communicator's
mind, and ensuring better and clearer communications, — though
it was only after long years of experimenting with the trance that
the real importance of having these objects began to dawn upon
the experimenters. It was only natural that this comprehension
should be slow in coming, when we know that so much fraud is
frequently connected with this very factor — mediums asking to
hold a letter against their foreheads, e, g., in order to catch a
glance at its contents — and so on. So when objects were
brought to the medium at first, it was only right that they should
have been carefully wrapped up and concealed from the medium
— though we now know that many of the results that might
otherwise have been obtained were in all probability vitiated or
ruined by the very precautions employed. Still, in the early
stages of the investigation, and especially before the honesty of
the medium was proved to the satisfaction of all, it was only nat-
ural that such precautions should be taken ; and most unscientific
would have been the procedure if they had not.

But now that the facts are all but universally recognized ; at
least, among those who have made a careful study of the phe-
nomena,— the question arises : What is the explanation of the ob-
served fact? If, e. g., a sitter should bring a lock of hair to a sit-
ting, and place it in the medium's hand, when the person from
whose head that lock of hair had been cut, when alive, was •com-
municating ; and if the communications at once became clear and
relevant, instead of confused and erroneous ; if, again, a pen-knife

Correspoftdence. 537

or a piece of stone were placed in the hand with the same results,
or with the result of inducing a sudden rush of supernormal infor-
mation, what would be the modus operandi of this clearer and
greatly facilitated communication? In what way have these ob-
jects assisted in the acquisition of the information imparted?
That they must have assisted in some way is evident from the
very fact that the communications did become clearer and more
correct and precise. In what manner have they influenced or
aflFected the medium or the communicator, in order to bring about
these unlooked-for results?

That is certainly a most baffling question ; one that I shall not
attempt to answer, of course, because its entirely correct solution
will not, in all probability, be forthcoming for many years yet —
until a far better comprehension and grasp of psychic phenomena
be prevalent than is prevalent today. But, if only for the reason
of clearing away some popular misconceptions on this subject,
and in order to stimulate reflection among members of the S. P. R.
and others who think upon these questions, I may, perhaps, be
permitted to offer the following tentative remarks.

It is generally conceived that the object carries with it some
subtle physical influence or " aura " which, in some manner, influ-
ences the medium or the intelligence communicating through
her.* This belief is the basis of all " psychometric " readings, of
course, and is a very convenient one to hold ; and can be made a
very plausible one. So far back as 1885, Mrs. Henry Sidgwick
oflfered a somewhat similar view— or rather hypothesis — as one of
four explanations of haunted houses, conceiving it possible that
some such influence might cling to the atmosphere of a house —
much as its physical atmosphere clings to it — and in some man-
ner might influence the minds and senses of those who lived in
such a house thenceforward, — or at least for some considerable
time, until the influence might be supposed to " wear off." Simi-
larly, it might be that every object, worn by a person, or closely
associated with him, physically, might in some manner be influ-
enced by him, or impregnated with his "psychic atmosphere," and
so might be the means of bringing that person or influence to the
medium to communicate; or assist him to communicate, while
there, by bringing him in touch, as it were, pro tern., with old influ-
ences and associations. And this idea is still further supported
by the fact that articles brought to the seance, for the purpose of
"holding" a communicator, and rendering his communications
more clear and intelligible, are far more potent and influential if

* For the sake of clearness of expression, I shall speak, throughout,
of the " communicators " as if they were real intelligences or personages.
This is for the sake of convenience, merely, and must not be understood
as carrying with it any adhesion to the definitely spiritistic view.

538 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

they have been previously wrapped up in oil or rubber cloth, and
carefully protected from all external influences — the touches of,
and handling by, another person particularly; if, indeed, such
handling does not ruin the influence altogether. These facts,
then, would seem to indicate that some such physical influence
exists, in fact, and that it has, in some manner, the power ascribed
to it.

Granting, then, for the sake of argument, that such an influ-
ence does exist, how are we to conceive it as stored in the object
handled? how does it influence the medium? how the communi-
cator? how recall incidents forgotten by him until that moment?
and how facilitate communication? Such are some of the puz-
zling questions that arise, as soon as we begin to put our theory
to the test, and see how far it assists us in clearing up the present
difficulties.

Are we to conceive this influence, this emanation, this " aura,"
as in some sense magnetic or electrical? If so, then how are we
to diflFerentiate the magnetism or the electricity of one person
from that of another — for magnetism and electricity are not sup-
posed to be in any sense " personal " in their nature, but rather
universal, and intimately associated with every particle of matter
in the universe — living and not-living. Evidently, there must be
some means of differentiating the influence of one person from
that of another, and this would render the influence " personal "
and distinguish it from the ordinary magnetism or electricity, of
which we are accustomed to speak. Is it, then, to be conceived
as in some sense vital in character— consisting in, or partaking of,
the vital energy of the person to whom the article formerly be-
longed? Well, what is this vital energy? Has it ever been
measured, ever detected by any of the delicate instruments which
science has perfected — instruments so delicate that they can
measure the energy of light waves, or detect the heat of a candle
at the distance of half a mile? Have such instruments ever de-
tected the existence of any vital force or vital energy — semi-
material, or semi-fluidic, in character? We know that they have
not. It is true that the early mesmerists contended that such
an influence actually existed, and produced many facts in sup-
port of their contention; but these facts have now all been
accounted for by the laws of conscious and unconscious sugges-
tion; and, though I should be the last to contend that such an
influence does not and cannot exist, the influence will never be
proved by mesmeric experiments, but must have other, inde-
pendent facts in its support, if it desires to be accepted by the
scientific world.

Granting, again, for the sake of argument, that such an influ-
ence or effluence does exist, in spite of the fact that it has never
been detected, how are we to conceive it as stored within the ob-

Correspondence, 539

ject handled or worn? Is it merely contained within its structure,
like water in a sponge ; or does it become an actual part or prop-
erty of the object, like gravitation? One cannot well conceive
it to be the latter ; and it seems to be definitely disproved by the
fact that it can be lost or dissipated, for which reason the articles
in question are wrapped up in oil or rubber cloth, and otherwise
protected. If it is merely present within the article, again, as
water is present in a sponge, how does it influence the medium
and the communicator? Is the influence lost or dissipated by
much handling, or does it remain forever in the object? Experi-
mental evidence would seem to point to the latter conclusion,
though nothing definite can be said, as yet. The evidence af-
forded by the oil or rubber cloth might again be cited, in sup-
port of the theory that it is lost through handling.

Still, granting that such a physical, or vital effluence or influ-
ence exists, how does the medium become aware of its existence?
We should have to suppose it is by means of the sensory nerves ;
and, of these, the nerves of touch are the ones involved, since all
the other senses are more or less dormant or incapable of render-
ings assistance in the detection and recognition of such an influ-
ence. If, then, this influence were in some manner transmitted
along the nerves of touch to the brain, and there associated with
other impressions, we might begin to form some faint idea of
the process involved — were it not for certain difficulties, which
the casual reader invariably overlooks. Among these are the
following.

In order that the incoming nervous impulse or sensation may
be distinguished from any other tactile sensation, it must possess
some peculiarity distinctly its own, for otherwise it would be
merely registered in the brain as is any other tactile sensation
whatever, and would excite no especial psychic impression, one
way or the other. The sensation would be carried along the
nerves to the brain as is any other tactile sensation, and would not
appear to be essentially distinct from these. But if the nervous
impulse, conveyed from the hand to the brain, be along the me-
dium's own nerves, we must surely conclude that this nervous
impulse is the medium's also — for otherwise we should have to
assume that an altogether alien and foreign nerve-fluid of some
sort was introduced into the nerve channel (innoculated, as it
were), and that this impulse, travelling to the brain, influenced it
in its own peculiar way. This imparted nervous impulse, bear-
ing the characteristics of the nervous system of the other person
(the person deceased, on our present hypothesis) and belonging
to that person's nervous system, we might conceive that it would
act upon the medium's brain (as a tactile sensation) in a manner
somewhat peculiar, and different from the ordinary tactile sen-
sations of the medium, and would excite the brain and nervous

540 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

sytem in a different way. That is, the brain would, pro tern.,
function in a manner familiar to the communicator, but unfa-
miliar to the medium. Of course, this is all conjecture, pure and
simple, and is based upon the supposition that some sort of
nerve impulse is passed from the object itself into the nerves of
the hands, and by them conveyed to the medium's brain — a fact
for which we have no confirmatory evidence whatever. I am not
saying that such might not be possible ; for if we can conceive the
nervous mechanism of the medium's body (as, on the " posses-
sion " theory, we are bound to conceive) usurped and controlled
by a spirit, we can imagine or conceive many things. And cer-
tainly this theory is as rational as any other; none other ac-
counting for the facts equally well. What we should have to
conceive, then, on this theory, is that this peculiar and charac-
teristic nervous impulse reached the medium's brain, while still
carrying with it its own peculiarities, and that it impressed that
brain in its own peculiar way ; and that this impression was rec-
ognized by the intelligence controlling the brain and utilizing
it for the time being — all of which, taken, together, seems to me
to be a pretty good strain upon one's credulity. We have the
facts to account for, however, which are an equal strain upon our
credulity and must be explained in one way or another, or the
problem given up altogether.

The manner in which such objects might be supposed to in-
fluence the medium's brain is now clear, and we can conceive
that the controlling intelligence, acting upon the brain and
nervous mechanism of the medium, might be influenced by the
peculiarly familiar functioning of a certain center or set of cen-
ters; and so arouse, in him, the associations which were previ-
ously lacking; or enable him to recall certain facts, before for-
gotten. In this way communication would be facilitated, to
just that extent, and so render the communications clearer and
more relevant to the occasion.

It is true there is another way of accounting for the ob-
served facts, or a very large portion of them. To this view very
few of the objections formerly raised can be said to apply, be-
cause we are nut led into any of the intricate speculations which
the former, and commonly-held theory, necessitated. In this
case, we might conceive that the influence is purely psycholog-
ical, and that the communicator merely remembers more facts
connected with a certain person, place or thing, by reason of his
seeing the article in question. This would involve nothing more
occult than a simple association of ideas — the sight of the object
■-Hringing up to the mind of the communicator a chain of thoughts,

ilthen latent; of memories long forgotten. This would dis-

» of the physical-influence theory, and all the difficulties it
pnts, and is consequently much to be preferred, if it covers

{p!i

Correspondence. 541

and explains all the facts. It is doubtful, however, if it does so.
Thus, in those cases where an article is brought and placed upon
the table or in the medium's hand, which the supposed control
did not know, when alive (and hence could not recognize and as-
sociate with anything), the explanation can hardly be said to ap-
ply. For this article, too, seems to greatly facilitate the com-
munications, and to better them (to say nothing of the well-
attested phenomena of psychometry) and this would be far more
easily explicable on the physical-influence theory than on the
mental-association theory. And this objection would also apply
to those cases in which objects belonging to other persons were
presented to the medium, and the communications facilitated in
like manner. Again, if the mental-association theory were the
true one, and sufficient to account for the facts, why should we
have to wrap up the articles presented so carefully — for if phy-
sical influences had nothing to do with the article or the medium's
impressions therefrom, it should make no diflFerence to either
medium or communicator whether the articles were exposed to
the atmosphere and miscellaneous handling, or not. Yet, so far
as I have been enabled to learn, there is a decided difference — so
great, in fact, as to altogether annul the, effects of the experi-
ment altogether. So that, while there are many points in favor
of the mental-association theory, it has not everything its own
way, as some persons think; and, indeed, it is doubtful if it
really explains many of the facts in the case at all.

There is yet another objection to the mental-association theory
which I might urge in this place. It is this : It would have to
be assumed that the communicator could actually see the object
presented, — for otherwise the theory would not hold. If he had
to depend- upon touch alone, all the difficulties, above enumer-
ated, would at once present themselves for solution. No; he
must see the object, as with the physical eye, in order to asso-
ciate it with any scenes, events, or persons in his past life. Now,
we have very little evidence that spirits can see our material
world, as we see it, at all; the spirits themselves state this, on
numerous occasions; their failure to procure information, read
books, etc., is a further indication of this; and it is in fact ad-
mitted by all those who have closely studied and brought in re-
ports upon the Piper case. Certainly they do not see when com-
municating; though they may possibly see, very dimly and indis-
tincly, at other times. This is a subject that will stand working
out in greater detail, on another occasion ; and as I believe Dr.
Hyslop intends doing so, I leave that branch of the discussion —
merely calling attention to the fact that all the objections for-
merly raised to this theory still apply: the communicator can
only associate with other things an object which is familiar to
him, and which suggests such associations; and any unfamil-

542 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

iar object would never arouse these associations, and never
could.

It will be seen, then, as the upshot of this discussion, that
the popular impression (that some "aura" emitted from the
object impressed the nervous mechanism of the medium, and in-
fluenced the controlling intelligence, through it), is not ncarlj
so simple an explanation as at first sight appeared, but one that
is highly detailed and complex, and, when analyzed down to
its core, is not really intelligible at all, — unless we are prepard
to make some monstrous assumptions, and advance hypotheses
for which we have no adequate evidence, and for which there is
no analogy in the physical or mental worlds. But, as befwc
pointed out, the facts must be explained, in any case, and tbe
field is open for explanations that will really explain. Perhaps
some of our readers may be enabled to throw some ligfht on tins
question : for my own part, I must confess it is to me a baffliar
and as yet an insoluble mystery that stares us in the face, m
defies adequate explanation.

HEREWARD CARRINGTOK.

BOOK REVIEWS.

Seen and Unseen, By E. Kathbrine Bates. Greening and Company,
Limited. London, 1907.

This volume is the story of Miss Bates' own experiences in the field
of psychic phenomena, and is a remarkably interesting book. The pab-
lishers, judging from the advertising circular accompanying it, ronst
have had some misgivings about publishing the book, and no doubt
would not have been tempted by it a generation ago. But thanks to the
twenty-five years' work by the English Society, the subject may now
receive respectful attention. And yet even in England the publisher
speaks in a tone of half apologry for such an undertaking, and with less
excuse, it seems to the reviewer, than mi^ht be the case in this country,
where money-making and the half-baked mtelligence which accompanies
it still scoffs at the subject as " off color." We are taught here to be-
lieve that English intelligence has made Philistinism unrespectable.
This, however, may be confined to the members of the Society which
publishes little enough to suggest anything supernormal.

Whatever we may think of the facts in Miss Bates' book, we cannot
impeach her for lacking a sense of humor. This humor is one of the dis-
tinguishing features of the book and the stories in it. I have often thought
that it was the origrin of the sense of humor that decided the develop-
ment and civilization of man. Anything can be made credible with it,
and much would have to be doubted without it. However this may be,
the book is not at all uncritical and exhibits a sufficiently scientific spirit
to justify its perusal with that seriousness which facts always demand,
especially if they are collective in their nature, as they certainly arc in
this volume.

There are two incidents which are associated with the names of Mrs.

Book Reviews. 543

Cadwell and Mrs. Stoddart Gray that Americans who know something
of their performances would shake their heads at. as their reputation was
not very savory. But Miss Bates is careful both to state most exactly
the conditions of the phenomena and to limit them as much as possible
to mental appearances. The tincture of the physical about them is mini-
mized or distrusted, and certain features of them are interesting, no mat-
ter what we ma^ think of their connections. What one has to admire
most, however, is the courage to state them, and if the reader does not
like them he may have his explanation and his evidence for it. The in-
cidents are good examples of what we most naturally shrink from when
found in dubious associations. And it is in this country that the most
shameless frauds have occurred.

The other incidents are of a different and a better character, especially
as they exclude physical phenomena. They are so very numerous and
so well told that we must leave them to interested readers to whom we
should highly recommend the book. Its narrative is racy, humorous,
detailed, and intelligent, leaving nothing to be wanted for general read-
ing. It will require some familiarity with scientific views to offer and
entertain explanations, but it has not been the purpose of the book to
discuss theories, but simply to narrate experiences, leaving to the
reader to form and defend his pet theories.

One incident will g^ive a clear idea of what the contents of the volume
are. It was an experience of Miss Bates with a sceptical brother. A
young student of Oxford had shown ability with Miss Bates to produce
table tipping and she and he used often to experiment with it for amuse-
ment, troubling themselves very little about explanations. After telling
some of the things done by them. Miss Bates proceeds with the incident
mentioned.

" I can next recall a flying visit from a brother of mine, who had just
spent three months, on leave from India, in America, where he had
taken introductions, and had been the guest of various hospitable naval
and military men, who had shown him round the Washington Arsenal,
West Point Academy, and so forth. My kind old host had begged him
to take us on his way back to London, and I remember well his look of
utter amazement when Morton and I had lured him to ' the table ' one
afternoon, and he was told correctly the names of two or three of these
American gentlemen.

" * I must have mentioned them to my sister in my letters,' he said,
turning to the younger man. I knew this was not the case, but it was
difficult to prove a negative.

" It was a relief, therefore, when my brother suggested what he con-
sidered a ' real test,' where previous knowledge on my part must be ex-
cluded.

" * Let them tell the name of a bearer I had once in India — he lived
with me for more than twelve years — always returning to me when I
came back from English furlough, and yet at the end of that time he sud-
denly disappeared, without rhyme or reason, and I have neither seen nor
heard of him since. I know my sister has never heard his name. That
would be something like a test, but of course it won't come off,' he added
cynically.

" The wearisome spelling out began. The table rose up at R, then at
A.

"Quite wrong,* my brother called out in triumph. 'I knew how it
would be when any real test came. Fortunately, too, it is wildly wrong
— neither the letter before nor the letter after the right one. so you can-
not wriggle out of it in that way.'

'"Never mind. Major Bates/ said Morton Freer, good-naturedly.
' Let us go on all the same, and see what they mean to spell out'

544 Journal of the Aftterican Society for Psychical Research.

** Fortunately, we did so, with a most interesting result, for the right
name was given after all, but spelled in the Hindoostanee and not tk
European fashion. The name in true Hindoostanee was R4in Din--bGt
Europeans spelt it Rham Deen — and so my brother had entirely forgottec
when the A was given that it had any connection with the man's name
When the whole word was spelt out, of course he remembered, and the
his face was a study!

"' Good gracious ! it is right enough and that is the real Hindoo-
stanee spelling, too. I never thought of that when the A came! '

" I think this episode knocked the bottom out of his scepticism for
some years to come."

The reader has the whole volume before him of incidents as inter
esting and as well told as this. I can only call the reader's attention u
two or three remarkable chapters. One is " Hauntings by the Uxmg
and the Dead," containing an interesting story of a place haunted by *
living person. It is so unusual that it excites interest on any theory o:
its explanation. The chanter which narrates Miss Bates' experieact
with Mrs. Piper and the alleged communications of Stainton Moses is ^
interesting as anything that has occurred through that case. Readcj
too, of the Piper case will be interested in some purported communio^
tions about " Imperator " and his character. These are in the Appendix
But they exhibit some very sensible views and striking incidents regard-
ing that personality. We should certainly commend the book to aE
psychic researchers, and tho they may wish in the end to have heiTte:
scientific pabulum, they will lose nothing in an acquaintance with tbb
record.

JAMES H. HYSLOP.

Spiritualism (The Physical Phenomena), With Facsimile Illustrations c
Thought-Transference Drawings and Direct Writing. By Edwarc
T. Bennett, Assistant-Secretary to the S. P. R., 1882-1902. With a
Brief Introduction by Sir Oliver Lodge. London.

To those students of psychical research who have made a carcft'
study of the Proceedings and Journals of the London Society for Psr
chical Research, and of Myers* Human Personality^ this little book wili
not contain much new material; but to all others it will prove a book oi
great interest. The first three chapters deal with the evidence for ihc
movements of objects, the production of sound, and the appearance c
light — all without any apparent physical cause. The two next chapter-
deal with the physical phenomena witnessed in the presence of D. D
Home and William Stainton Moses respectively; while the last five chap^
ters deal with the evidence for The Divining Rod; Thought-Transference
Materializations; Spirit-Photography; and "The Summing-Up of the
Whole Matter." It will be seen that the book covers a bi^ field, ba:
very briefly, since the total number of pages in the book is but 140
That, however, does not alter its worth, as it represents a very fair sum-
ming-up of the evidence for the physical phenomena, as accumulated by
the English S. P. R.; as well as g^iving us, on occasion, some interesting
new material — as in the Chapter on spirit-photography, e. g.. in which is
given the results of some experiments by Mr. J. Traill Taylor, originally
printed in the British Journal of Photography. Space forbids any dis
cussion of this book's contents, which is practically a mass of cases, and
very little discussion of results; I can but say that a careful perusal of the
book will amply repay the reader, and will furnish him with a brief re-
view of the most important positive evidence he is likely to obtain of the
physical phenomena of spiritualism.

H. C

Treasurer's Report. 545

La Psychotherapie Dans Ses Differents Modes. Par A. W. Van Renterghbm.
Amsterdam, pp. 184. 1907.

This is an address delivered before the International Congress of
Psychiatry, Neurology, and Psychology at Amsterdam in August, 1907.
The appendix contains accounts of a number of cases which illustrate the
generalizations of the address.

Dr. Van Renterghem iinds a reaction against the use of psychothera-
peutics and undertakes to defend it. He grives a short history of the
work in this field, preliminary to a criticism of Du Bois* position, which,
in spite of all that has been done, tries to be sceptical and to discredit
hypnotic therapeutics. Du Bois seems to misunderstand hypnotism, and
apparently identifies it with thaumaturgical ideas, a view for which, in
fact, there is no excuse on the part of any intelligent man in this stage.

The cases quoted represent the most interesting part of the little vol-
ume, and it is a pity for the general reader that they are in French in-
stead of English. The book ought to be, however, a very useful one to
those who are interested.

TREASURER'S REPORT.

The following is the Treasurer's Report for the quarter be-
ginning June 5th and ending September 12th :

Receipts.

Membership fees $1,010.00

Sale of literature 5132

Total $1,061.32

Expenses.

Publications $1,139.49

Investigations 523.20

Salaries 525.00

Lecture Tour 345.00

Stamps 74.00

Job Printing 19.75

Sundries 61.23

Total $2,687.67

The reader will observe that the expenses were $1,626.35
more than the receipts. Unless the membership can be greatly
increased this will be much greater the next quarter. The item
for sundries include $16.20 for books on our list which were sold,
so that a part of the $51.32 in the Receipts is mere profit, the rest
coming from sales of our own literature.

The expenses for the lecture tour are explained as follows:
The Board of Trustees granted $500 for this tour to be under-
taken in behalf of an increased membership. The actual cost of
the tour was as indicated in the Report of the Treasurer. But

546 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

net receipts for lectures in two places amounted to $202 which
were turned into the treasury of the Institute and not mentioned
in the above receipts from members, so that the real expenses of
the tour were $143. The increase of membership has not been
what it ought to have been, judging from the kind of interest
manifested in the lectures.

JAMES H. HYSLOP,
Treasurer.

ADDITIONAL MEMBERS.

Fellows.

McConnell, Strubbe, 806 Hibernia Bldg., New Orleans, La.

Members.

Bunnell, James S, 2727 Dwight Way, Berkeley, Cal.
Cameron, Margaret A., 223 West 83rd St., New York.
Cheney, Judge Wm. A., 1046 South Hill St., Los Angeles, Cal.
Farrand, H. A., Pleasantville, N. Y.
Hunt, A. M., Peyton Chemical Co., Montgomery Block, San

Francisco, Cal.
Hyde, Austin J., Box 98, Rumford Falls, Me.
Keeler, Charles, 2727 Dwight Way, Berkeley, Cal.
Mills, Walter Thomas, 4529 12th Ave. N. E., Seattle, Wash.
Noyes, George W., Kenwood, Madison Co., N. Y.
Schenck, Dr. P. L., 95 Sixth Ave., lirooklyn, N. Y.
Two Worlds, The, 18 Corporation St., Manchester, England.
Vedder, Frank W., 64 Brvant St., N. W., Washington, D. C.

Associates.

Johnson, Samuel, c|o C. F. Hovey & Co., 33 Summer St., Boston,

Mass.
Pope, Dr. Carlyle, mo Euclid Ave., Cleveland, Ohio.
Sporleder, Louis B., Walsenbury, Colo.
Somers, Kate B., Hotel Raphael, San Raphael, Cal.
Stebbins, L. C, Small Maynard & Co., 15 Beacon St.. Boston,

Mass.

Total Number of Fellows, Members and Associates (Oct.,

1907) 65^

Additional Members lo

Total 677

Vol. I.— No. 12. December, 1907.

JOURNAL

OF THE

Aierican Society for Psychical Research

CONTENTS

Gbrbsai. Abticlss: paok
Human Peraonaiity • - - • 547
Some PeatUTM In Mcdiamistic Phe-
nomena 564

Editokiai. :- 590

iKCiDBirrs:

EjtperimiBitai Apparition - - - 596

CourB8Poin>BNCK : paok

Imagination and Pijchic Phenomena - 602
Replies to Mr. Carrinffton's Critidam

ofM.Akaakof 605

Book Rbvixws ------ 611

Additional Mkmbbrs - - - - 613

HUMAN PERSONALITY.

APPREHENSION OF ONE'S OWN PERSONALITY.

By Hartley B. Alexander.

III.

Approach to the difficult question of self-knowledge might
seem most natural by way of a consideration of self-con-
sciousness. But self-consciousness is a relatively late and
extraneous devolopment of experience. Indeed, except as
precipitated in reflection, it is little more than a pervasive
flavor, a seasoning, of the simpler conscious processes; it is
never strictly a state of mind but rather a way of accepting
experience — a prejudice of the idiosyncratic personality, one
might say.

It is, then, not in self-consciousness, but in the more prim-
itive experience, within which this arises that clues to the self's
nature must be sought. Now the immediate and striking
impression of this primitive experience is of extreme frag-
mentariness and localness. Perceptions, feelings, thoughts,
are all broken and ephemeral. They come as scant touches
of fact, hints of reality which it is ours to fill out or interpret
as need or facility may incline. Our most concrete sensa-
tions are nine-tenths inference and the vast majority of our

548 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

psychical haps, could they be disentangled from the general
texture would be found too gossamer to serve any tug of ex-
perience. Only their multitudinousness enables the general
impression, their incessant variegation producing the "mental
play " which forms the color-tone of our conscious life. The
individual tingles and swelters, the flickers and glares and
buzzes and hums, the flutters of anticipation, the dumpish
discontents, all the stresses and balks in the awful business of
thinking — these are but the hurrysome bubbles of reality,
and it is only by dint of their mutual accelerations, turn by
turn boosting one another into the focus, that we give due
heed to each, and so perform the material obligations of life.

Such ephemera are perforce concerned mostly with tem-
porary interests — bodily stokerage, mental jockeyings, ad-
justments, preliminaries, conveniencies. Environment exacts
from us a deal of mental clutter just to remind us that we live
in a social world, and doubtless there is educational value in
the experience so urged forth; it furnishes material ballast
and steadies us in our general trend. But it is not the experi-
ence we live for. It is too utterly transient to point any perma-
nent, motivating interest. Such interests come rarely to the
surface. Nature is infinitely deliberate, infinitely tentative,
in her procedures ; there are no blind rushes to the goal, but
the exhaustless preparation of one who can abide unmeasured
time. It is matter of little wonder, then, if the telling ex-
periences of human life come only at spacious intervals, sel-
dom at our behest and never at our command to hold. They
are wild, free instants, vouchsafed rather than chosen.

The significant fact is that we live not for the routine but
for the rare moment. The proof, curiously enough, is sel-
dom interbound in the exceptional experience itself. We
have too little active discrimination or a too strong prepos-
session for " affairs " to be quick and adept in recognizing
what is of vital significance for ourselves. But time is test and
temperer. It is their relative permanence which concretes
for us what we call " things," physical objects ; it is what
turns out to be that we name truth; and it is his living past
which makes the reality and limns the contour of each human
character.

Human Personality. 549

Eventually this character makes itself known by the na*
ture and harmony of the experiences which it has assimilated.
We cannot predict what we are going to remember or what
we are going to profit by ; but after a course of years we find
that there has taken place a selection and interweaving of
certain past events which has built up for us a background of
definite feeling and predilection. This may be said to be
symbolized to the mind by the memory-series most spontane-
ously owned, — for the memory by the fact of preservation
gives evidence of the original impressiveness of that which
it records, while at the same time, by the transmutation it in-
variably suffers, its warp or bias, it becomes a symbol of the
personal equation and a gauge of inner growth.

But rarely or never is the memory portraiture vividly
complete. We have "on tap" very little accurate knowledge
of ourselves. We are continually discovering unsuspected
whims and bents and knacks; perhaps the fundamental zest
of life lies just in this element of self-surprise, learning what*
we are in finding out what we can do. I presume the fullest
and fairest internal account should be the experience tradi-
tionally ascribed to the drowning man — a sort of bioscopic
review of his past in prestissimo time. Yet it should be
noted that the mere succession of salient scenes is not in itself
significant. The scenes are but symbolism of the character
which has chosen them, and before there can be real self-
understanding there must be an internal criticism, an appre-
ciation, analogous to our critical appreciations of an artist's
work. What memory preserves for us are selections,
sketches, adumbrations, of experiences, the unique elements
being set forth with that proper exaggeration which is the
artist's license. Hence, meanings appear that were quite
unrecognized at the moment of experience, indicating some
happy concord of the event with the hidden impulsions of
our nature.

It is perhaps worthy of by-remark that among the re-
membered facts many are the mintage of dreams, that (at
least for early childhood) the dreamworld has in large part
been the real world. This fact may have reason: the com-
parative freedom from busybody sensation which in the

550 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

dream stattf allows sharper and deeper impression of what is
to be meaningful. The dream gives free rein to the hidden,
creative motive, enabling it to present experience in a fons
more appropriate to its design than could be by mere tst
phasis of the run of affairs.

So the notable trait of the time-fabricated mind is that h
has its own peculiar way of looking at things. It is fonncd
by a synthesis of select experiences, each having some spcdi
accord with the anticipated scheme or mode which is to be
its way of thinking. Eventually all that it entertains htr
comes overcast with the glamour of its peculiar nature, aac
forms an assemblage of symbols of our proper selves, so ths:
we can say of a style of thought, " That is mine, my view, iet
artistry." The foundation of the individual human character
is thus an inner and instinctive shaper of the man's perccfK
tions and tastes, a formative principle or force which is tb
very essence of himself, — though by a strange and paradox-
ical necessity of nature it seems rather to be some inner
genius or familiar, half alien, half shadow.

The paradox is, of course, the paradox of that inward Ik.
self-consciousness. Consciousness in its ordinary processes
is a temporizing between character and environment; its
concernments are with trivialities, temporary interests
Character, so far as realized, is a kind of autobiography. 2
synthetic selection from the life-history as preserved in mem-
ory. But in all this there is no self-consciousness: self-coc-
sciousness is not needed for mere experience, and so far fron
being a part of the memory-experience, the latter is rather
its object and its antithesis. Self-consciousness, in fact, is a
confessed untruth : it is not an awareness of the self, but of a
kind of relation subsisting between the self and its objects
Primarily it arises as a sense of antagonism between the
achieved and the sought experience, between the wish of the
true self and the will of the environment. It is a setting oi
actual against ideal experience, and in its bitterest concen-
tration a condemnation of the actual for the sake of the ideal
It is the recognition of the existence of a true self to whici
we are not and can never be quite true, and it comes into
keen being as the surface moil of the inner conflict. The **V

Human Personality. 551

that it proclaims is a contentious, dissatisfied " I," setting up
inward deficiences against uncompromising outward fact,
milled betwixt inner weakness and outer perversities, and
pleading of its Ideal relief from its painful bondage to a for-
eign reality.

What I believe to be my earliest memory is of a sultry
summer day in a room where a brother and sister were at play
while I sat withdrawn on a bench at the window. A white
china dish with a bar of yellow soap was on the window-sill,
and the panes were covered with moisture so that the sun
shone through yellowed and sicklied. I remember gazing
curiously at the soiled gingham dress I wore, at the stocking
crumpled down over the shoe. A strange irrational loneli-
ness had laid hold on me, and the ugliness of the soap, the dis-
tressful yellow sun, the incomprehensible self in the incom-
prehensible gingham dress, all gradually merged into a vague
and desolate wonder, how I could be I, so helplessly small in
the midst of a big unmindful world. It was the utter forlorn-
ness which only childhood knows, and which comes in child-
hood never again with the keenness of that first moment in
which is felt the frailty of the puny self set to follow its soli-
tary way.

Self-consciousness never quite overcomes this first child-
ish bewilderment. In fact, it never becomes a real under-
standing of the self. It is always a restricted, local, emo-
tional self-regard, colored by present awkwardness, irritated
by vanities rebuked, piqued by Nature's indifferences. If,
for the nonce, it be assumed at the behest of a cold intention,
while we resort to deliberate self-survey, it loses its natural
warmth and prick and becomes a mere fiction. The reflec-
tive self-consciousness of the psychologist is nothing less
than the mind out of focus; it is a state only to be attained
by disciplinary nurturings, to be held only by solemn cod-
dlings, and its ostensible character — subjective distorted into
objective — is a contradiction in terms.

Yet for all its stilted nature, self-consciousness is perhaps
the most significant of our inner tokens. It is significant not
as an intelligent apprehension of the self but for the fact of
apprehension. The very fact that it feels a grievance with

552 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

manifest Nature makes it indicative of an experience more
inclusive than any which present reality knows; it implies,
that is, the whole man.

Self-consciousness must not be mistaken for self-knowl-
edge. Common experience teaches this well enough, yet the
empirical plausibility of the self-conscious state constitutes a
formidable bias. A Napoleon's cool consciousness of his
own ambitions, his own powers, is bound to seem to him a fair
measure of himself. But the real measure can be given only
in the historical portrait got by scientifically deducing the
accidents due to environment and so showing what of the
world's addition went to his making. Doubtless Napoleon's
contained self-perception was to him a true token : it actually
designated a real and capable self. Yet it was not knowl-
edge of that self. Its function was locally dynamic ; to impel
to the confident career. But even so it was symptomatic of a
condition or power in the world, Napoleonhood, which, when
from his making the world's share is deduced, is the residual
truth of the Napoleonic self.

For our purposes, this symptomatic character of self-
consciousness is its central interest. Even where it does not
define, it unequivocally points the fact of a persistent and
dominant " control " in human nature, forming the core of
human personality.

IV.
Let us take stock of progress. We have seen that men
judge of one another, first, the fact of consciousness other
than their own, and, second, the fact of characters dominat-
ing these consciousnesses by an inner and profound control.
We have seen, again, how within his own conscious experi-
ence a man is made aware of the existence of its control, his
character; first, by the selective synthesis of his memories
built into a symbolism of the ego ; and, secondly, by self-con-
sciousness, which is significant as the sign of a process of ad-
justment of the inner character to the outer circumstance,
and hence as a token of the verity of the inner being.

Now I wish to be as direct as possible. The facts arc:

Human Personality. 553

(i) A consciousness. (2) A life-history more or less fully
reflected in the conscious life. (3) A " control " — be it force
or factor — making the consciousness what it is from moment
to moment and moulding the life-history to the unity and
consistency that enables us to give it a personal name.

The bald question follows : Is this " control " a real
agent, an elemental being holding the hegemony of man's
constitution? or is it a physical force, or a sporadic eddy of
forces, in the inclusive mechanism of Nature? Have we to
do with a soul in the old Scholastic sense of the word, an
ens sfnrituale? or are we merely concerned with the subtle in-
volutions of some yet undiscovered "organic ray?"

Fortunately the question requires no apriori pros and
cons. Though Hume and Kant have demonstrated that we
can think without explicit reference to a thinking agent, they
have not made the conception of such an agent irrational and
they are far from having given any explanation of the actual
generation of thought; the soul has become empirically un-
necessary, perhaps, but not irrational nor unphilosophical.
As for a physics of human personality, if it exist at all it is
rather as an arrogation of the scientific consciousness than as
an hypothesis of scientific thought.

We have, then, no call for metaphysical discussion. The
question is primarily an evidential one, and on this count it is
instructive merely that its asking is reasonable. Its mere
intelligibility implies some empirical evidence for the truth of
its suppositions ; they are at least thinkable of reality. Fur-
ther, the conception of the soul must have some sort of bio-
nomic significance for the human species in the order of Na-
ture. It plays a long role in the story of our mental evolu-
tion and it is not credible (from what we know of Nature,
from the inner principles of reason itself) that a conception
with so significant a history could have arisen without a real
ground in man's constitution. We have in part seen what
that ground is : the consistency of hunian conduct and the in-
dividuality of human thought and perception ; but we have
as yet no inkling of what must be the essential character of
the soul — spiritual or material, conscious or physical, — and it
remains to be seen if its conscious manifestations are ever
such as to give real clues to this character.

554 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

The portrait of any given man at any given time depicting
just his displayed mental and physical traits could never be
an adequate portrait. John Doe, here and now, is much
more than his body and his thoughts. He is more even than
these plus his past, his history. Indeed, his primary signifi-
cance is not in all this ; his primary significance is the series
of possible actions and thoughts which he represents, his
potentialities. These potentialities may, for aught we know,
be historically unreal; they may represent no actual conduct
destined to take place; John Doe may die next moment.
Nevertheless, we cannot think him without them ; we cannot
think him as not being them; they are a part of what he is
for us in his estate as man.

An instinct is an elementary example of such potentiali-
ties. An instinct is described as a predisposition to act in a
certain way in a given narrowly determined situation; it is
never an actual event until the situation occurs. Yet we
doubt the reality of instincts no more than we doubt the real-
ity of physical laws ; they are part of what we are bound to
count on in estimating John Doe ; they are essential features
of his human entelechy, and like all possibilities, represent
qualities which we cannot help judging to have a foundation
of current reality even though it be not now, and may never
be, called into manifest play. No man — in this world, at
least — ever exhausts his possibilities. Each human life de-
velops as its accidents permit, and we, judging the man, give
him credit for powers which a happier fortune might have
called forth. We form our conception of him sub specie aeter-
nitatis, realizing that the haps and issues of a lifetime are all
too meagre to give his adequate measure.

" Human nature " as a category of our thinking means to
us that man's self as a real factor in the world is potentially
greater than its current history. In other words, Nature has
exceeded the exigencies of his destined career and has made
him better than his opportunities. This truth is the key to
our whole social consciousness, and it is the bd,sis of all inter-
course between man and man. It is the rationale of human
progress and the ground of human freedom. In our mental
life it is evidenced by the endless series of ideal constructions

Hufnan Personality. 555

— imaginings, schemes, plans, hypotheses — ^which form the
prefaces of our actions. In our natures, as they develop, it is
represented by the evolutional motifs which they reveal, the
actualities of to-day being conceivable only as the expression
of some impulse or power latent in time past. Aristotle was
the first great evolutionist, for he proclaimed that no being is
bounded by its present display, its actuality ; its essential na-
ture is rather a form which now and here it only partially em-
bodies; its essential nature includes its potential being, and
without reckoning potentialities as real, evolution is non-
sense.

We have, then, already a partial clue to the character of
man's hidden self : It must be an ideal, form-giving charac-
ter ; it must represent life-motif and hold a kind of balance of
power as between events, so yielding what we call freedom
of choice ; it must^be made up of anticipations of experience
held as in perpetual leash for the possible occasion of their
realization. A man's soul cannot be less than the sum of his
capabilities, and since these are invariably deduced from their
partial display in the conduct which aims to realize them, it
is hardly thinkable that the soul can be other in kind than a
fuller, inner realization, — that is, its nature must be an ex-
tension of our own idealizing consciousness.

But we are not to rest here. Another set of facts gives
evidence to the same conclusion.

Lying at the very heart of man's capable life are those
spontaneities of thought and imagination expressed to 'con-
sciousness in what I called heretofore the mind's individual
artistry. Even the simplest mental processes betray this
artistry. It appears in perception in the wilfulness of our
points of view ; no two people see the same thing in the same
light, for the light is an inner, individual illumination. It ap-
pears again in thinking. "Association of ideas " has long
been a key phrase in descriptions of mental phenomena, but
it explains nothing; it merely narrates the fact that conscious-
ness passively views series of selected ideas presented to it.
The significant point is that ideas are " selected " as if by
conscious will yet not in consciousness ; they are selected ac-
cording to rationality and relevancy yet by no conscious rea-

556 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

soning. Here is the action of a proper intelligence which yet
does not appear. The supreme aid comes from the mind's
hidden part: there is a state of puzzle, a melange of tugs and
tags, doubts and debates, and then the unannounced precipi-
tate solution. A state of insight springs from some power of
thought more clear-sighted, less annoyed by obtrusive sensa-
tion, than are ordinary speciously conscious powers. Here
again we have evidence of the enlargement of mind beyond
its conscious bounds.

But the most palpable case of the intervention of the sub-
conscious is in imagination. Imaginative creations are so
utterly spontaneous and individual, so fraught with self-sur-
prise, so masterful of other mental forms, that we ascribe
them almost as matter-of-course to the workings of some
hidden inspiration. They are not the gift of outer but of in-
ner nature, and their beauty is wholly or largely due to our
recognition in them of this inner nature ; it is the divine im-
press of the creative personality. The inception of the im-
aginative act is the " suggestion," — an event of anysoevcr
sort which the after-event may own as its antecedent; the
suggestion is a cue to the imaginative creation, but it has in
itself no dynamic power. It is laid hold of by the imagina-
tion, it is vitalized, metamorphosed, and bye and bye appears
the creation, — perhaps a half-caught wonder-form rousing to
pursuit, perhaps the coronate beauty. Between the sugges-
tion and the achievement there is a lacuna : a period of incu-
bation, transformation, creative craftsmanship, inner growth
— call it what we may, the essential fact is a great change
wrought in darkness and in a mode no man prevised. Some-
where within the personality of man is a hidden power capa-
ble of recognizing in suggestions their possibilities and of
moulding them to its own peculiar style and intent. Plato
called this the Idea, and we have not yet reached a philo-
sophical surety that can enable us to pronounce it other than
an ideal force.

The potent truth is that the whole of the mind's revelation
is a patchwork. Our mental events are like an artist's sepa-
rate canvases, fragmentary of his whole meaning, and to
achieve a fair portraiture we are compelled to fill in innumer-

Human Personality. 557

able gaps, till our restorations outbalance the verity. Just as
in the perception of a tree we ideally reconstruct the major
portion of what seems to be given by sense, so do we recon-
struct a man's soul (be it our own or another's) ; and just as
our completion of the tree is with physical qualities, so do we
supplement what we perceive of the man with spiritual quali-
ties.

V.

No fact in mental history is better attested than the nat-
uralness of man's recognition of the supplementary part of
his being. Primitive folk display a multitude of odd beliefs
about the soul indicating its independence, in will, in act, or in
presence, of the familiar body and mind to which it belongs.
The Melanesian believes himself able to extract his " life " by
sufficiently powerful magic, and by concealing it from his
enemies, so to protect his body irom harm. The old Egyp-
tian was assured that the Ka, the " life," dwells beside the
mummy through the uncounted years in which it awaits the
summons to again enter and reanimate the body. Teutonic
peoples are far from alone in their belief in a " Doppel-
ganger " executing unawares man's spiritual missions. And
the Roman's cult of his " Genius," dominating his life as a
sort of personal deity, finds an analogue in the " Fravashi "
of the Persian, his representative " in the presence of Or-
mazd."

Such conceptions unmistakably denote man's instinctive
belief in a supplementary self, fulfilling the inadequacies of
the known self, operating in a freer sphere than that to which
he feels himself restricted, and enduring beyond the limits of
his mortality. And however crude and absurd their content,
these beliefs must have their raison d'etre in the inner consti-
tution of man's nature. They must answer to some human
need, and it is no far inference to find that need in man's keen
realization of the mysteriousness of his own manifest being.

Perhaps the psychical significance attached to the " con-
trol " self is best shown in beliefs about inspiration. In prim-
itive conception inspiration is a god's taking hold of a man's
soul for the purpose of uplifting and magnifying it : to give it
vision, insight, ecstacy. Even so low a race as the Australian

558 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

blacks believe in the divine afflatus, the god " singing in the
breast " of sorcerer and poet, and the secret of nine-tenths of
the shamanism and witchery of the barbarians is their rev-
erent belief in the actuality of spiritual enlargement when, at
sacred intervals, a Nature more potent than man's makes his
life its epiphany. The Biblical gifts of tongues and prophecy,
the " enthusiasm " of Orphics and Dionysiacs, the trance-
vision of the Neo-Platonists, the ecstacies of the mystics—
all aver the same fundamental faith, found in all ages and re-
ligions.

Poetic insight is the most universal form of this experi-
ence. All men have their seasons of poesy, and though the
imaginative glow comes but rarely, there is in it an unmis-
takable conviction of a higher power than any the will com-
mands. Hence mankind has come generally to believe in a
kind of ulterior validity of poetic expression, as arising from
a hidden and efficient knowledge, while to those gifted in
poetic power a " genius," or inspirational being, is ascribed,
which the possessors themselves are not expected to under-
stand.

Citings of chapter and verse in the case of such unanalyz-
able phenomena can have only illustrative value ; yet we can-
not properly estimate the biotic meaning of faith in inspira-
tion without observation of the concrete beliefs in which it
issues. And of these, for our purpose, two are especially
instructive. The one is poetic pantheism — ^that exuberant
fullness of the imagination which finds naught too paltry or
too awesome to be alien to its sympathies, which defies, or
perhaps fails to conceive, self-limitation, and is capable of
contentment only in swift and eager appropriation, all Nature
in its thrall. This poetic pantheism, though found in many
moods and expressed in many literatures, is above all typical
of the Celtic bards. In the oldest of Irish lyrics Amergin
sings :

I am the wind that blows upon the sea,

I am the ocean wave.

I am the murmur of the surges,

I am seven battalions,

I am a strong bull,

I am an eagle on a rock,

I am a ray of the sun,

Human Personality. 559

I am the most beautiful of herbs,

I am a courageous wild boar,

I am a salmon in the water, ^

I am a lake upon a plain,

I am a cunning artist,

I am a ^gantic, sword-wielding champion,

I can shift my shape like a god.

And the Cymric Taliesin proclaims :

I have been in many shapes before I attained a congenial form. I
have been a narrow blade of a sword, a drop in the air, a word in a book,
a book in the beginning, a light in a lantern, a boat on the sea, a director
in a battle, a sword in the hand, a shield in fight, the string of a harp; I
have been enchanted for a year in the foam of water. There is nothing
which I have not been.

So also Ossian and Anewin and Llywarch Hen — in each the
same buoyant conviction of the singer's ubiquity, the same
indomitable expansiveness of soul. If we find a flavor of
magniloquence in this vasty mood, it is perhaps because the
mood itself is so difficult for us, educated in the awe of the
world, to achieve. So when we see it modernized in Walt
Whitman it seems like a kind of spiritual boastfulness — noth-
ing Pharasaical, but indecorous exaggeration. There is
something presumptuous in the outspoken assertion of man's
universality; it outleaps our common sureties, though at the
same time it responds to a half-acknowledged conviction that
in inner truth of human nature is indeed transcendent of the
meagre experience humanly vouchsafed.

At once in contrast and in harmony with poetic panthe-
ism is a second poetic belief, belief in the soul's pre-existence.
It contrasts with the pantheism in its modesty and abash-
ment, its sense of present limitation; it harmonizes in the fact
that it, too, is an assertion of the immemorial nobility of man.

Both qualities, the sadness and the exaltation, are in
Wordsworth's "Ode on Intimations" and they are in Plato's
account of him who beholding an earthly imitation of the
divine Beauty feels " some misgiving of a former world steal
over him." But the mood and the belief are not characteris-
tic of reflective civilization only. Doubtless the pantheism
of the bards was a development of the older Celtic notion that
the souls of men are come from the magic western Isles
thither to return at death, or from the yet more primitive be-

560 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

lief in transmigration which has given our nursery tales their
shape-shifting wizards and ogres and their princesses horribly
enthralled in bestial forms. And across the sea appears the
essential idea, just as native and instinctive, among those nat-
ural mystics, the American Indians. Peruvian tribes con-
ceived that souls issue, will-o'-the-wisp-like, from a marsh
and will there again abide after death until born anew into
bodily life, and the more philosophical Aztecs, with a bent
toward fatalism, taught that " no one of those bom into this
world receives his lot here upon earth; rather we bring it
with us in being born, for it was assigned to us before the be-
ginning of the world." And so in their baptismal rites the
Aztecs express their faith in the soul's high nativity : " Our
pitiful lady, Chalchiuhtlicue, your servant here present is
come into this world, hither sent by our father and mother,
Ome-tecutli and Ome-ciuatl, who dwell in the ninth heaven.
We know not what are the gifts he brings, we kno\y not with
what he has been assessed from before the beginnings of the
world, nor with what fortune he comes charged." . . " Be-
hold there is come to earth this little child who is descended
whence reside the supreme gods beyond the ninth heaven

. . sent to us by our father and mother, the celestial
gods."

In all such beliefs there is evident an instinctive effort to
master the secret of that genius of personality which makes
the individual character what it is. They are grounded in
the feeling that the haps and events of a life's experience are
inadequate to explain the soul's possessions, and they indi-
cate, as perhaps nothing else, how thoroughly innate is hu-
man consciousness of an inner, unrevealed self dominating
the apparent life. Their interest is not merely that they are
beliefs in the existence of a soul, nor yet that belief in a soul
is the most ready and natural account of his own nature that
occurs to man, but it lies far more in the fact that they are
interpretations of personality, and interpretations which rec-
ognize an actuating force beneath the current fact of mind.
To what they point should be plain. I cannot repeat too
often that the mere existence of a belief requires an explana-
tion, arid if it be a belief that has served a large purpose in

Human Personality. 561

the development of mind it cannot but represent some sort of
fundamental truth of human nature. It must have a ground
and reason adequate to its effects. Otherwise all our reason-
ings would be belied and all our science be worthless.

In final characterization, we may say that the force im-
plied as the basis of human personality must have at least the
countenance of design ; it achieves a consistent and harmoni-
ous unity, the individual man's character, and this our highest
intelligence cannot represent except as involving its own su-
preme trait — foresight. Thus reason gives us an intelligent,
foreseeing agent, an internal will, as the only conceivable
artificer of our lives, such as we findthem. The soul (that
of which the personality that we encounter forms the living
expression) cannot be less in power or reason than the life
portrayed and if our common belief in human potentiality is
no freakish illusion of nature, if truth is possible, it must be
infinitely more.

The mere fact that this conclusion has had to be sought
with some labor ought to carry the correlative that self-un-
derstanding is attainable only within narrow limits. I have
tried to show why it is that we are often able to comprehend
another's character better than our own, as being without the
present bias that self-judgment involves ; we may be aware
of possibilities in ourselves, but we cannot estimate them —
perhaps because their scope has in it something of the infi-
nite.

It is worth while to note that here, in self-misunderstanding,
as well as in mutual misunderstandings, we have a key to the
mood of tragedy. The motive is perhaps more characteristic
of Greek than of modern drama, for the Greek drama offered
peculiar facilities for its objectification. The self was divided
and its segments separately personified — the human, osten-
sible self as the hapless mortal, the hidden, spiritual self as
the regnant god or Nemesis implacable. The soul's unsus-
pected motives and impulses, with their tendency to seize the
reins and drive to madness, were so suited to portrayal as
divine powers that even we, long dead to paganism, cannot
fail of their awful realism. It is thus that Orestes is pursued
by the snaky-armed Erinyes, Cimmerian shades of the social

562 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

and religious instincts of his ancestors sprung up within him;
it is thus that Philoctetes finds his sophistic Greek self in the
absurd guise of Heracles, downing manhood and vengeance
for politics and prosperity ; it is thus, again, that lawless Aph-
rodite, the aphrosune of every woman's nature, lays hold on
and piteously sacrifices Phaedra despite her desperate insight
and vain strife.

In Phaedra the subtlety of Euripides allows her conscious
self to see uncloudedly the dread leading of the inner will
which yet she is unable to evade. She is a victim of fissured
personality: on the one side her understanding, her social
instincts, her reason crystal clear, all helpless and hopeless;
on the other the indomitable urgency of the dark goddess
within. The source of Phaedra's wisdom — ^wisdom void of
aid — is her quick sensitivity to the unseen influence. She is
keenly aware of the counter-self working her doom and she
struggles desperately against the passion it incites. The en-
igma of human nature is presented for her solution ; its issue
is life or death ; and she, realizing all, attempts it and fails.
Her tragedy is doubly tragic by reason of her foresight. It
is doubly tragic because doubly human, for foresight, intelli-
gence, is pre-eminently the man-distinctive trait, and we have
not yet reached a breadth of sympathy where the heart is not
quicker in its susceptibility to human suffering than to any
other.

Even the morally blind, at the supreme moment, must
have his instant of clairvoyance, of humanity, if his death is
to be truly tragical. So Webster makes Bosola not too
black a villain to die wisely aware of his own lost possibili-
ties:

0» I am gone!
We are only like dead walls or vaulted graves,
That, ruined, yield no echo. Fare you well.
It may be pain, but no harm, for me to die
In so good a quarrel. O, this gloomy world!
In what shadow, or deep pit of darkness,
Doth womanish and fearful mankind live!
Let worthy minds ne'er stagger in distrust
To suffer death or shame for what is just:
Mine is another voyage.

Vere Bosola the mere unenlightened murderer, one could

Human Personality. 563

have no more than a gallows-curiosity in his taking off ; but
when his man's soul comes to the surface, though but for a
moment, we feel the tragic awe of death.

I think that the reason that the tragedy of Hamlet seems
more noble than the far more terrible and pathetic tragedy
of Lear lies in this self-same source; Lear's impulses and
emotions are of an elemental and instinctive kind, the kind we
call " natural " and share with the lower animals ; Hamlet's
intensest living is in his reflective consciousness, the supreme
badge of the human estate. Nor am I sure that the tremen-
dous appeal of the Christ-life to mankind is not greatly due
to the preternatural, the divine foresight of the Man of Sor-
rows.

Enlightenment, then, is at the heart of tragedy. It is
man's consciousness of his coming end, not the pain that he
suffers, that makes human death more terrible than that of
the brute. This consciousness implies in him a power of con-
ceptional creation — ^the thinking that his life might continue,
might yet alter the world in ways which death forestays —
that is distinctive of his spiritual nature and so far as we
know is a fact anomalous in Nature. If death indeed were
all, it would seem as though Nature should have provided
that no man could conceive the order of the world to be such
that he should not die when and as the fact eventuates ; he
should be satisfied with his life's end, knowing no other pos-
sibility and dreaming no will save the natural law. This, I
say, should be if man's aspiration for a bettered and bettering
existence be meaningless in Nature's plan ; but if the evolu-
tion of human consciousness is a factor of the world's ration-
ality and essential constitution, then must this aspiration be
of real significance and find a real satisfaction in the order of
Nature.

Probably the most elusive and certainly the most inde-
scribable of all human experiences are those tensions of con-
sciousness wherein one is beset with the sense of an encom-
passing ' other-world,' nearer than sight or touch yet pass-
ing man's powers to enter in. Often there is the poignant
realization of its nearness, yearnings for its glories and quiet-
ings, as one yearns for the glory and quiet of the still, bright

564 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

stars. And there is eager anticipation, as for the fulfillment
of ancient Messianic prophecies, and there is pride of kingly
power — the new-crowned monarch entering in triumph into
his heritage. Yet ever, even on the verge, the keys of all
mysteries in hand, in the ache of present wonder, in the awe
of revelation, there comes the dumb-deadening pain, the help-
less swing back to the world of matter-of-fact. And the
heart 'is as the heart of the prodigal turned from the ancient
door, and life becomes one long Wanderjahr wherethrough
the exile takes his wistful way in ceaseless search of the lost
portal to his kingdom.

" I have been in many shapes," sings Taliesin, " before I
attained a congenial form." And we — are we not beset with
strange familiarities, with misty recollections, with recogni-
tions which yet are dreams, with unpremeditated knowings
and unremembered wisdoms, presages and prophecies whose
fulfillments betray the unguessed archetypes of our lives?
There is a richness and power and majesty in the world which
unseeing we feel and untaught we know, and our only clues
to the source of this assurance are those moments of promise
when we divine something of the marvel of that spiritual
vision whose revealed glory is yet denied us for these mortal
days.

(To be continued.)

SOME FEATURES IN MEDIUMISTIC PHENOMENA.
By James H. Hyslop.

Readers of the Journal may recall some discussion in an
earlier number (pp. 340-343) regarding the nature of the hfe
after death. It may be useful to give a concrete example of
the difficulties with which we have to contend in the solution
of problems connected therewith, and hence I give the de-
tailed record of a sitting with Mrs. Smead. We are publish-
ing simultaneously with this a preliminary Report on the
Smead case which gives evidence of the supernormal and
shows its exemption from the most natural suspicions enter-
tained against mediumship. Suffice it to say here that Mrs.

Some Features in Mediumistic Phenomena. 565

Smead is the wife of an orthodox clergyman and has never
received any money for her work. Her identity has to be
concealed under the name which I have given, and other ex-
periments than the one I am quoting will have to be relied on
to answer the doubts of the sceptic. I am using the present
record with the assumption that his objections have already
been removed, so that I do not mean to discuss the genuine-
ness of the phenomena in this connection. I wish to take
this for granted, at least hypothetically, for the sake of an
important illustration in the perplexities of non-evidential
phenomena.

Some years ago in the experiments which Mr. Smead was
conducting under my directions, there were apparently some
attempts on the part of the Rev. Stainton Moses, who died
in 1892 in England, to communicate through Mrs. Smead.
But the failure seems to have been as conspicuous as in the
case of Mrs. Piper. Occasionally, however, there are traces
of his personality attempting to manifest itself, and the rec-
ord below is one of them. Mr. Smead was not expecting this
personality to appear at this experiment, but rather hoped
for one who passes as the Cardinal. The manifestation of
Stainton Moses was thus unexpected by both Mr. and Mrs.
Smead. I give the record in full, confusions and mistakes
exactly as they occurred.

It must be remembered, however, that I am not quoting
the record in illustration of what it actually purports to be,
namely, spirit communications. Any reader who wishes to
so interpret the matter may do so, but it is not assumed by
me to be this in fact. I concede any interpretation that the
sceptic may choose to make of it, except that of conscious
fraud. The student of abnormal psychology will see nothing
more in it than secondary personality, and in so far as con-
clusive evidence is concerned it cannot be claimed to be any-
thing else. But I mean to quote it and to consider it as a
psychological production which has to be examined without
regard to the security of its claims to be what it superficially
purports to be. Coming, as it does, in conjunction with
matter that has the same claim to being supernormal as in
the case of numerous similar cases, it becomes a part of the

566 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

problem which is associated with the supernormal. For tk:
reason we may examine its nature and claims in spite of ta
natural temptation to ascribe it the same source as the c
dential matter. The primary interest is to study the proble
which the psychic researcher has before him,when estimatiq
the claims of strictly non-evidential matter to a supemomi
origin. All that is assured at the outset is the fact that d
record was automatically produced and purports to have
spiritistic source. What its rights are to this claim will ha
to be examined, but regardless of these it has considenk
psychological interest in illustration of the large literate
presenting similar superficial credentials.

The record is a recent one, being dated February 6c
1907. I place in parentheses what Mr. Smead said or askr.
during the experiment and as reported by him. In sq^
brackets I place such comments and explanatory notes as wf
necessary afterward to explain the meaning of the record
specific points. Asterisks mean that certain words or fu-
sages of the automatic writing are not legible.

RECORD.

February 6th, 1907.

Present Mr. and Mrs. Smead.

(All ready.)

That is right, we are here, coming here.

(All right.)

coming nearer, yes. it is I be not afraid.

(Very good. The g^ace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with tr
spirit.)

[Mr. Smead thought he was addressing Cardinal L. but th
was not accepted by the communicator.]

Behold ye him. it is Him of whom and to whom tb
speakest.

(Is Jesus Christ present this morning?)

I am with ye in thy endeavor to do the work of Him th
chooses thee, th [' th ' evidently written to convert ' choose
into * chooseth.']

(Who is writing? Is it my Lord and Master, Jesus Chris:

He speaks with thee friend, through another.

(I am delighted. What has he to say to me. I am unwOTti
to be in his presence.)

were that so, would he come to thee, hast thou iK)t ?*

Some Features in Mediumistic Phenomena, 567

learned that he was not a respecter of persons, that all were
equal in His sight that believed.

(I feel as did St. Thomas when he said: ' My Lord and my
God.')

but there are many that do not understand his His [* His *
superposed on the first to erase it.] teachings that now he is help-
ing to enlighten the mind of mankind through these Earthly
channels, its [it] is right for them to be opened to the earth.

(What has he to say to me?)

Come. . . [pause.] That he is and was the creator of the new
Law, yes, and that all should strive to come by the natural way
into this life here and do as near the way as he taught when on
earth, it is a sorrowful thing to es. . . [' es ' erased] behold the
souls of those that [are] on the earth singing praises to Him and
then taking the ways of life into their own hands, it is not as he
said to do, and they are not taught to Honor the Father enough,
else they would value life more, so the error in is in the way the
teachings are set forth to the people of the earth, they do not
understand that if they come here under a delusion that they are
escaping the wrath of the most high, that it can continue here,
that if it so Pleases the Greater Light they must continue the self
same existence as they have just left and that by * * * *
they must perhaps for ages continue where they could only have
remained in the true light there and done their just and right part
of life on the earth to be able to enter into the pleasure of a better
life, that is eternal punishment.

(Does eternal punishment continue forever?)

it continues until they can by pleading [with] and Honoring
the Most High God the Father . . . pleading with Him, I should
have said. . . then, if in his good pleasure he deems it just that
they are alowed [allowed] to go a little higher, but it sometimes
takes them ages, it is as their deeds, so their reward or punish-
ment, the part of eternal punishment is with the soul of the one
that has disobeyed the Father, no creeds can help it after these
deeds are done, the soul must then help itself.

(Cannot we Episcopalians escape punishment by believing in
Christ?)

not from eternal punishment of the way you understand it.

(I do not understand. Please explain.)

* ♦ [they?] the every soul that enters this life has to begin
to work and help itself [written ' itseff '] for a higher existence,
the life here nearest yours is what St. Paul said was the first
heaven, they must that have lied, stolen, or comited [commit-
ted] any of the Greater sin greater sins. . . must remain in

this abode until he has well purged himself of them by prayer to
the f . . .Father, then if he has not thought to do them again he

568 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

may be allowed to go to the Second higher abode and so as you
may see his punishment may continue for ages.

(I supposed that belief in Christ gave everlasting life, not
everlasting punishment. Tell me about this.)

he did not say everlasting life without punishment, so the
deeds done in the body. . .what did I just tell you. [Above mes-
sage read aloud to communicator.] for the deeds, yes.

(I think you are right.)

but the souls that continue on the earth to live righteous and
Godly lives, doing in the [' in the * erased] as in the presence of
God will receive a greater blessing, when entering this life they
do not need to remain on the [' the ' erased] earthwise, but can
gonne [go on] doing good work amongst the souls that are near
the earth as He did when he entered this life, we are tested, yes.

(Do I understand that Christ is Imperator, called by Robert
Hyslop the Greater Light?) [Robert Hyslop is the name of my
father and purports to communicate through Mrs. Smead at
times. Imperator is the assumed name of one of the trance per-
sonalities in the Piper case.]

I would that thou, friend, could see Him.

(Do you mean Christ or Imperator, the Greater Light?)

Christ is a light and was one on the Earth.

(Is Christ Imperator, the Greater Light?)

[Sign of the cross drawn, which is the sign of Imperator] we
could not let the cardinal come this time, as you see, friend, a
greater than he has been with you [' you ' erased] us, yes, and so
we will have him after the Sabbath.

(Who has been with me today?)

yes, Jesus Christus, yes. He has been here adn [* adn '
erased] and do you doubt.

(How can I help doubting? Whom did he talk through?)

S. M. is willing to be an interpreter at all times.

(Did Christ talk through Stainton Moses?)

You still doubt.

(Did Christ talk to me through Stainton Moses?)

I told you at the beginning, yes, he did so. We cannot tell
the [thee] when the friend that came yesterday can come again,
as she exhausts the Light to its extreme.

(Shall I expect the Cardinal the first day after the Sabbath?)

yes, no, no one [on] the first.

(Shall I sit that day?)

yes, but no one to talk yet.

(All right. We shall hold sittings next week as usual.)

yes, we cannot tell the [thee] now. Oh Most Merciful
Father we halve [have] try. . . [erased] tried in our humble way
to do t. . . Thy will, grant us th. . . Th, blessing for thee, friend,
this day, amen."

Some Features in MediumisHc Phenomena. 569

*

The sitting at this point came to an end. But Mrs.
>mead, when she recovered consciousness, reported an inter-
sting vision which was described as follows: —

" A man tall, features clear cut, as if cut from stone like a
nodel, dark hair, peculiar color or complexion, full beard and
nustache, beard about eight inches in length, hair long and
:urly, Jianging over his shoulders, hair parted on left side and
ell over toward the right side. His face was beautiful and
tately. He looked quiet and peaceful with majestic bearing.
-le wore long white robes. The cross was not with him, but
vas seen some distance off."

Mrs. Smead took this apparition to be that of Christ.
The description might very well represent the historical pic-
Lures of him. But Mr. Smead does not, and did not at the
time, in spite of the appearance of the record, believe that he
was in communication with the alleged Savior. He sup-
posed that it was a sermon to him by Stainton Moses.

There are three ways in which we can explain such phe-
nomena, (i) We may say that it is conscious pretension
that a spirit is producing the result; (2) we may call it sec-
Dndary personality; (3) we may say that it is what it claims
to be on the face of it, namely, messages from the deceased
Stainton Moses, under the hallucination that he is acting as
an intermediary for the Savior.

I throw the first of these hypotheses out of account, not
because it is always to be ignored, but because I have reasons
independently of this particular record to neglect it. The
mistakes and confusions, as well as occasional errors in the
spelling which are not natural to Mrs. Smead in her normal
state, and various mechanical features of the writing tend to
justify our disregarding conscious effort to deceive. I say
nothing of its incompatibility with her whole previous life
and what I know of its earnestness. Disregarding it we
must construct some theory which rationally explains the
phenomena, and we have the other two hypotheses to reckon
with in this attempt.

Secondary personality, or unconscious impersonation,
such as is common to dream or somnambulic states, presents

570 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

itself as the most likely view, at least on a priori grounds, and
I have no doubt that the student of psychology would feel
perfectly assured of its applicability and validity. There is
certainly no apparent evidence of a spiritistic source, at least
as judged by the standards which such a theory must adopt
in the present status of that doctrine. It is precisely this
want of supernormal evidence on the face of the phenomena
that makes all attempts at spiritistic explanations seem ab-
surd. This would leave us with the alternative of secondary
personality as the only explanation which would most natu-
rally commend itself.

But accept the hypothesis as satisfactory on a priori
ground, have we any more evidence that it is the true one
than we have of the spiritistic? The phenomena are un-
doubtedly similar to many that present the claim of a spiritis-
tic source and receive the credence of it. But it is precisely
the defect of proper evidence that makes this view incredible,
and the most natural theory would be that of subconscious
impersonation.

A most interesting circumstance in the phenomena is that
which shows a fairly rational view of punishment for sin.
The " communications '' purport to re^present the policy of
nature or Providence with regard to sin, and this is that true
punishment is the consequence of sin and not some artificial
penalty such as we have been accustomed to believe. The
representation is that of conditions in another life and of
what many wish to know regarding it. Moreover it is also
important to remark to the man who advances secondary per-
sonality as the explanation that the type of punishment here
defended is not the one which Mrs. Smead's theology has
held. The idea is comparatively new to her mind. She
would not naturally accept this view from her early teaching.
Her theology makes a very different account of punishment
for sin, and if her subliminal action is producing the results
of her previous experience it would hardly take the course
here manifest. Apparently, then, the hypothesis of second-
ary personality has difficulty in maintaining itself.

I have no doubt that many will prefer the spiritistic the-
ory to account for the phenomena and so would accept them

Same Features in MediumisHc Phenomena. 571

on their own certificate of non-relation to Mrs. Smead's usual
habits of thought. But there are two very important facts
in the record itself which the student of psychology will de-
tect at sight and which afford him a perfectly good excuse for
referring the phenomena to secondary personality. The first
of these facts is the vision at the end of the experiment.
That apparition is the historical representation of Christ and
can most easily be explained by supposing that the general
drift of the thought during the sitting might easily suggest
such a thing to Mrs. Smead's mind. The second and still
more important fact is Mr. Smead's own unwary statement
to the " communicator " earlier in the experiment. When
he, assuming that he was talking to the Cardinal, exclaimed
" the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with thy spirit/' he
gave a most distinct suggestion to Mrs. Smead^s subliminal men-
tal action, and we may assume that the whole impersonation
of Christ was due entirely to that suggestion, and that the
vision at the terminus of it was the result of its momentum as
she was recovering consciousness.

Here the scientific man would say is the advantage of a
verbatim record of all that occurs on such occasions. In all
ordinary experiments a memory report of what was received
would be all that we should have to base our judgment upon,
and unless we were familiar with the delicate influences
which suggestion exercises we should hardly remember our
giving rise to productions like this by some casual remark of
our own. We have, therefore, in this record the superficial
indication at least of a perfectly normal explanation of the
phenomena, especially when we recognize the dramatic char-
acter of some of our dream life. Our dreams often represent
the presence and conversation with us of various personali-
ties living or dead, and as that state is extremely susceptible
to dramatic play of personality, being free of the inhibitions
or arrests which affect the judgment in normal consciousness,
every suggestion is liable to take effect, and as Mrs. Smead is
a very religious woman, or has all her life been addicted to a
religious view of things, it would be perfectly natural that her
mind would take this suggestion in her trance state.

Consequently what the spiritualist might accept as having

572 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

an extramental source, on the ground of rationality and an-
tagonism to the natural convictions of Mrs. Smead, thus be-
comes interpretable by subjective action and all the repre-
sentation of a transcendental life would be such " stuff as
dreams are made of," and the case a good example of what
we have to be on our guard against in our desire to have some
definite knowledge of another world. Any information about
a transcendental existence, coming in this way, has to pass
the ordeal of just such criticism as I have indicated, and stu-
dents will have to learn that the task of certifying the extra-
mental source of such communications is an extremely diffi-
cult one. The circumstance which will strike the average
man of intelligence as absurd is the readiness with which cer-
tain alleged spirits can be called, or the apparent ever-prcs-
ence of any particular person that may attract the fancy of a
medium. We cannot be easily made to believe that great
historical personalities are forever hovering about to make
themselves known to obscure persons all over the world on
all sorts of occasions. It is a suspicious circumstance that
such phenomena should occur, no matter how attractive it
may appear to our prejudices or wishes. Hence it would be
a stumbling block to our belief to expect a ready acceptance
of such phenomena on their superficial character. We might
more easily accede to the claim that Stainton Moses was pres-
ent, but even this would be feasible only on the supposition
that his appearance had some purpose and consistency with
the general scheme of the experiments. If he was only a cas-
ual visitor, as so often appears in phenomena of mediumship
in general, we could hardly accept his claims any more read-
ily than we would those of such a personality as Jesus. It
happens that the appearance of Stainton Moses as an al-
leged communicator in this case was a natural accompani-
ment of the alleged presence of other communicators, as the
same group of personalities have been represented in the
Piper case. On any theory, especially that of secondary per-
sonality, Stainton Moses ought to be represented as a com-
municator here. But this sudden and inexplicable appear-
tnce of Christ can only serve to make us sceptical of any
ource but that of subliminal mental action, and this, not be-

Soffie Features in Mediumistic Phenomena. 573

cause of any prejudices which either scepticism or religious
belief might entertain about its possibility, but because of the
casual and purposeless character of the appearance. When,
therefore, we find such traces of suggestion as Mr. Smead's
exclamation,we may well understand the represented appear-
ance without having our minds perplexed by the semblance
of spirit communication.

But there are some interesting facts which create diffi-
culties for the hypothesis of secondary personality, preferable
as it may seem to the student of abnormal psychology.
While one does not require, perhaps, to insist too rigidly that
the alternatives are to be drawn between subliminal or sub-
jective action and spirit influence, and while we may not feel
attracted to a spirit theory, these facts do not justify an un-
critical confidence in that of secondary personality. If we
accept that view we must justify it in spite of the difficulties
and objections which it has to encounter. I do not conceal
from myself the fact that it has its perplexities as viewed
from a scientific position, and we are bound to recognize
them. Agnosticism in the matter is better than any theory
which does not apply.

The first important fact which is not easily explained by
secondary personality, as usually manifested in connection
with the fact of suggestibility, is the circumstance that Mrs.
Smead does not show any suggestibility whatever in her
trance condition. I have many times tried to apply sugges-
tion to her in the trance and I have not succeeded in securing
any evidence of it whatever. We might limit the rapport to
Mr. Smead, but I have no evidence for that fact. She seems
as thoroughly proof against it as a perfectly normal person
usually is. In this respect she .quite resembles Mrs. Piper
in whom I have found no proof of suggestibility. Possibly
this may be the necessary condition of the trance which is as-
sociated with alleged spirit communications. We, of course,
do not yet understand that state. It is called a trance be-
cause it does not show any material traces of a condition like
that of hypnosis. That is, the contents of what purports to
be communications do not resemble essentially the contents
of hypnotic states under the suggestion of an ordinary oper-

574 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

ator. It is possible for us to obtain a view regarding this
trance which may ally it with hypnotic or somnambulic states.
If we do this, however, we may be required to interpret the
difference through the idea of rapport. We have found in the
experiments of Dr. Moll (Cf. Rapport in der Hypnose, Moll),
that a subject may not be in rapport with any or every one
near by. He may be in suggestible relation only to the oper-
ator, or to one or two others, or even only to the person
whom the operator suggests. Rapport is not a fixed or uni-
versal condition. It apparently exists only in degrees. If,
then, we supposed that Mrs. Piper's and similar trances are
to be distinguished from hypnosis and ordinary secondary
personality only by the nature of the rapport, we may find
why their phenomena take the form of spiritistic communica-
tions. If they are en rapport with deceased persons and not
with the living we can well understand why they do not re-
spond to suggestion from the living, tho the trance state may
be essentially like hypnosis in its other characteristics. I un-
derstand that at one period of her life, the early development
of her mental condition associated with the trance, Mrs.
Piper exhibited phenomena of echolalia, which means that
she echoed whatever she heard uttered in her presence. As-
suming this condition of her mind and body in the trance, and
rapport with deceased persons, we may well comprehend the
automatic nature of her phenomena and their limitation to
real or alleged spirit communications.

Now as we have not found evidence that Mrs. Smead is
in the least suggestible we may well ask how it fares with the
incident which we have here supposed was due to this action.
It is all very well to note the possibility as suggested by the
coincidence between Mr. Smead's exclamation and the trend
of the communications and the apparition at the end, but if
Mrs. Smead is so suggestible as this we should find frequent
indications of its presence in all other instances. But it is
not apparent in anything that I have observed, and I have
been wholly unable to prove it or to produce it by experiment.
Consequently, what I have pointed out as conceivable indica-
n of this has its force considerably diminished, or even

de doubtful.

Some Features in Mediumistic Phenomena. 575

The second fact which disturbs the hypothesis of second-
ary personality is the circumstance that the view of eternal
punishment taken in Mrs. Smead's record is not only quite
diflFerent from the one most natural to her normal beliefs but
shows traces of identity with the view expressed in the
" Spirit Teachings " of Stainton Moses himself, which there
is every reason to believe Mrs. Smead never saw. That
identity is not of the kind that can be treated as scientific evi-
dence, but the resemblance is so close that, the advocate of
secondary personality might well seize it as proof of that
hypothesis, if there were any reason to believe that Mrs.
Smead had ever seen the book. But Mrs. Smead affirms that
she has never seen it, and Mr. Smead has not the book in his
library and has purposely refrained from purchasing it, so
that knowledge of its contents should not influence the per-
sonality claiming to be Stainton Moses. They live at least
one hundred miles from any library which might be supposed
to contain the work, and have never consciously had access
to it in any library with which they are familiar, and this
knowledge is limited to small libraries which are found in
country towns. Tho Mrs. Smead has been familiar with the
planchette since her childhood, she has not only not read lit-
erature on Spiritualism, but was brought up in strict ortho-
doxy and in regions which had few or no library facilities.
The only assumption that can be made regarding the possi-
bility of her having seen the book is that she may either have
seen it casually as a child or have consulted it in some som-
nambulic state, both of which suppositions are considerably
strained, tho conceivably possible. I doubt very much if it
is a fact, especially as it is a book which one would not easily
forget, unless read when too young to remember it. Her
environment and religious habits as a child would most prob-
ably exclude this supposition.

The relation between the thought expressed through Mrs.
Smead and that of the " Spirit Teachings " through Stainton
Moses can be best determined by a comparison. I shall
quote passages from " Spirit Teachings " that the reader may
decide for himself. We must remember that this book of
Mr. Moses purported to be communications from discarnate

576 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

spirits, personalities who allege through Mrs. Piper that they
are the same spirits who communicated through Mr. Moses.
The contents of his book represent their teaching with re-
gard to spirit life and in it they describe the nature of punish-
ment in the life after death.

In one passage, after saying that deceased persons who
have sinned ki this life are free to reform in the next life or to
remain in their sinful desires, the statement of " Spirit Teach-
ings " is as follows : —

" This is the unpardonable sin. Unpardonable, not be-
cause the Supreme will not pardon, but because the sinner
chooses it to be so. Unpardonable, because pardon is impos-
sible where sin is congenial, and penitence unfelt. Punish-
ment is ever the immediate consequences of sin ; it is of its
essence, not arbitrarily meted out, but the inevitable result
of the violation of law."

In another passage, it says : " This mortal existence is but
a fragment of life. Its deeds and their results remain when
the body is dead. The ramifications of wilful sin have to be
followed out, and its results remedied in sorrow and shame."

Again : " To say that we teach a motiveless religion is
surely the strangest misconception. What! is it nothing
that we teach you that each act in this, the seed-time of your
life, will bear its own fruit ; that the results of conscious and
deliberate sin must be remedied in sorrow and shame at the
cost of painful toil in far distant ages ; that the erring spirit
must gather up the tangled thread and unravel the evil oi
which it was long ages ago the perpetrator ? "

This last passage is identical in meaning with the Smcad
record, and in another passage the thought is not less identi-
cal in that the communicator indicates that the sin cannot be
remedied by another but only by the sinner himself, and that
no happiness is possible for him until he grows a purer, bet-
ter, truer man. And in another passage occurs the following:

" The spirit which has been slothful or impure gravitates
necessarily to its congenial sphere, and commences there a
period of probation which has for its object the purification
of the spirit from the accumulated habits of its earth-life ; the
remedying in remorse and shame of the evil done, and the

Some Features in Mediumistic Phenomena, 577

gradual rising of itself to a higher state to that which each
process of purification has been a step/'

There are many long passages with the same import, and
tho the exact language is not found in both sets of records the
identity of thought is clear enough. It is not sufficient to
justify the belief or assertion that they have necessarily the
same source, but considering that Mrs. Smead never saw the
work I have been quoting, and that she was announcing a
doctrine more or less at variance with her natural beliefs, we
may at least entertain a suspicion that their identity is not
due to chance. I do not claim that the matter has a spirit
source in either case. There is no adequate scientific proof
that it had such an origin in the case of Stainton Moses, tho
the teaching was in direct opposition to his native beliefs.
But whatever the source, the identity of the general thought
in both cases is unmistakable, and as it claims to come from
Stainton Moses in the Smead case where his original writings
were not known, the fact has just as much weight against the
hypothesis of secondary personality as the supposition of
their identity has. This may not be great, but it is not a
negligible quantity. Of course, it is possible to regard the
idea expressed in Mrs. Smead's automatic writing as the
natural reaction of her own mind against her orthodox belief,
a reaction possibly caused by the growing interest in the real
or alleged evidence of spirit return through her own writing.
But it is not possible to decide this one way or the other, tho
the admitted possibility of that growth makes it unnecessary
to press the objection to secondary personality on the basis
mentioned. It might be a casual coincidence that the two
should have identical views on a question in which the most
natural tendencies of the mind are to accept the specified
view of punishment. But without denying the explanation
of secondary personality it is quite legitimate to insist that
the identity of the teaching in the two cases is not favorable
to the hypothesis of subjective creation on the part of Mrs.
Smead and that it is consistent with another and more im-
portant theory, even tho that theory be neither provable
nor satisfactory in this case.

I shall not reject the hypothesis of secondary personality.

578 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

in spite of the objections to its assured application. It may
be possible on other grounds than the doubtfulness of the
spiritistic view. But the circumstance that Mrs. Smead has
shown no traces of suggestibility, which had been invoked to
explain the curious claim that the indirect communicator was
Christ, and that the contents of the communications are so
identical, or nearly identical, with those which we might ex-
pect Stainton Moses to believe or to remember, clearly estab-
lishes a duty to as much suspense of judgment on that view
as we may be supposed to feel on other grounds against the
spiritistic doctrine. We are not to feel any special favor for
secondary personality simply because we feel unimpressed
with a less reputable view. It may be wiser to admit igno-
rance on both sides of the subject.

But whatever our individual predilections, all must admit
that it is fair to discuss one possibility as much as another.
We have presented three alternative explanations of the phe-
nomena under review, and rejected the first one as in fact out
of the question, namely, that of conscious fabrication. If we
are entitled to admit the possibility of spirit communication
it should receive such attention as its admitted rivalry with
subliminal mental action entitles it to receive. I do not
grant its possibility on a priori grounds or upon the evidence
in the record. Neither of these reasons would suffice to jus-
tify anything. But the mass of the supernormal that is rele-
vant in many cases to the spiritistic hypothesis, and the exist-
ence in the Smead case of phenomena that classify it with
that of Mrs. Piper make spirit communications such a pos-
sibility that we cannot easily assign its limits, and hence for
the sake of understanding how it may be invoked to explain
incidents in the record under consideration which are not so
easily explicable by secondary personality, I shall tolerate the
spiritistic hypothesis and see what it will effect. I shall not
assume that it is necessarily the true view to be taken, but
simply as one to be tested in the same way as its rival alter-
native.

What I wish to show is that it is possible to suppose the
spiritistic theory in the case without accepting the view that
the communicator is other than Stainton Moses.The believer

Some Feixtures in MediumisHc Phenomena, 579

in the spirit theory is always tempted to take that view on
the face of the returns, so to speak. But in supposing that
spirits have anything to do with the phenomena I do not feel
compelled to assume that Christ is either directly or indi-
rectly the communicator as claimed. We need not go be-
yond supposing that it is Stainton Moses. I do not pretend
that there is any satisfactory evidence of his presence, but
that, with this theory once justified in other cases, it is ra-
tional to try the hypothesis to see how much may be expli-
cable by it which does not seem clear on that of secondary
personality.

Let us, then, assume that Stainton Moses deceased is ac-
tually in " control " and that he is trying to communicate.
We may venture to consider the identity of view in the case
with his past experiences in life to be evidence of his presence
and attempt to communicate, taking this with other refer-
ences to him through Mrs. Smead and more or less evidential
incidents in connection with him. I cannot quote these, as
they would require too much space. Now if there are pecu-
liar difficulties associated with attempts to communicate with
the living, such as are indicated throughout all or nearly all
instances of " possession " mediumship, we may well imagine
a source and explanation for the perplexities involved in the
messages. These difficulties I have summed up as an abnor-
mal mental condition while communicating, in addition to
correlated difficulties in the abnormal condition of the me-
dium. This abnormal mental condition of the communicator
may be compared to a state of secondary personality in its
dreamlike or somnambulic character. It is much more like
somnambulism than chaotic dreaming in many cases, and so
shows an active mental condition, tho it is prevented from
having that rational control which characterizes normal
consciousness.

Now if we suppose this somnambulic condition of Stain-
ton Moses we may well understand that he is suggestible and
liable to all the phenomena which exhibit themselves in sug-
gestible persons. As I have not been able to find suggesti-
bility in Mrs. Smead we may transfer the application of the
hypothesis to the communicator and see how it fits the facts.

580 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

Assuming, then, that Stainton Moses is somnambulic and
suggestible while communicating, we may well understand
how he should impersonate another, provided the same hallu-
cinatory tendencies showed themselves in his mental action
that so often are associated with somnambulic, delirious, and
dream conditions with the living. It is well known that
dreams, deliria, and hallucinations are more or less closely
related to each other in the functions exercised, and somnam-
bulism and hypnosis exhibit the same characteristics in many,
if not all cases. We know what a sense of reality accom-
panies hallucinations, and how easily a morbid mental con-
dition mistakes them for real objects, the person experiencing
them not being responsible for his error of judgment and be-
ing incapable of correcting it. . If this be the condition of
Stainton Moses we may well suppose that Mr. Smead's refer-
ence to Christ created a hallucination in his mind ; i. ^., it put
a thought into his mind which immediately took the form of
reality, and was, in his morbid condition, construed as we do
the objects in our dreams. I have already alluded to the
dramatic play of our dreams in which we carry on conversa-
tions and discussions as real as in life with persons whose
non-reality we rarely suspect until we awaken and look at the
experience from a normal point of view. There is no reason
to deny this condition in Stainton Moses, in this assumed con-
dition for communicating, and in fact there is much to sus-
tain the contention. Impersonation is a marked feature of
such experiences, and every idea that comes into the mind
will naturally take the form of the " apperception mass," or
main thought of the moment, if it does not arrest it, so that,
with this supposed suggestibility of Stainton Moses, he w^ould
naturally impersonate communication with Christ, once he
became possessed with the notion of his reality, itself a pro-
duct of his hallucinatory condition. In the interfusion of
his mental condition with the personality, subliminal person-
ality, of Mrs. Smead, which is presumably suggestible from
the spiritual and not the material side of her being, we may
well suppose that the idea or hallucination is transmitted to
her mind and emerges as a dream or hypnogogic product as
she comes out of the trance.

Some Features in MediumisHc Phenomena. 581

Nor is this supposed interfusion of personalities an a priori
conjecture. It exhibits itself in nearly all mediumistic phe-
nomena. I cannot undertake here to prove it. I only assert
that I am not making the assumption arbitrarily and without
cumulative evidence in other cases. That is, the hypothesis
is not constructed for the occasion. It is the common phe-
nomenon in mediumistic experiences, and all that seems new
—and this may not really be new — is the coincidence between
the impersonation on " the other side " and the vision of Mrs.
Smead in the borderland state.

It is noticeable in the contents of Mrs. Smead's record
that the communications purport to represent the state of
things in a transcendental world. It is said that the system
of punishment is only the continuance of the sinful condition
of this life, that virtue and vice are their own rewards, etc.
Apparently we have material which would answer the query
regarding what the after life is. But if we are to assume
this to be communication from the other world at all, its con-
tents are the memory of Stainton Moses, or at leapt mingled
with the experiences of his memory. We have seen that
there is more or less identity between what his " Spirit
Teachings " taught and this purported communication from
him after death, and if we accept this view of the facts we
have no evidence whatever that he is correctly representing
the conditions of a spiritual world. He is only repeating, in
a somnambulic state, the memories of his earthly life as ex-
pressed in his work, and in that work itself the " control " recog-
nized that the communications were colored by Stainton Moses' own
mind while he was receiving the messages, " Your state now
colors your views," says a passage of " Spirit Teachings."
" Much we are obliged to clothe in allegory, and to elucidate
by borrowing your phraseology." In another communica-
tion the same personality, speaking of a demand by Stainton
Moses for a specific type of evidence, said that the result
would be " imperfect and unreliable, from the admixture of
your own mental action and that of the circle." In still an-
other passage Stainton Moses was told that the communi-
cations are affected by his own mind, especially when he was
not well.

582 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

This same modifying influence would be expected in the
mental habits of Mrs. Smead, and hence, given the somnam-
bulic state of Stainton Moses when communicating,we should
naturally expect a tendency to reproduce more or less of his
memories associated with the very subject which had been
discussed in his own automatic writing when living, and such
they seem to be. Accepting them as such we readily per-
ceive the weakness of supposing that they correctly report
the conditions of the life after death, even tho they suffice to
prove the fact of it. There are no means of testing how
much the mind of Mrs. Smead may have influenced the purity
of the communications.

An interesting incident recently in the Smead case rein-
forces the hypothesis here suggested. In a sitting occurring
a few days before and reported to me at once, my father pur-
ports to communicate, and he alludes to this Cardinal which
has been mentioned in connection with the record under dis-
cussion. He asks Mrs. Smead if this Cardinal may be per-
mitted to serve as a helper in the work of communicating. I
quote the record:

" We would ask that the friend who calls himself C. L. be
granted the permission to help here. Will it be desirable,
friend? He will of times give his former ideas, but of course
[they] are changed with his experiences, as are all our views
in waking in this life."

The italics are my own. But what the passage empha-
sizes is the unconscious evidence which it supplies to the
tendency of spirits to reproduce their memories in some
form, not always in incidents, but often in views, and as
often distorted and made unintelligible by intermixture with
new ideas acquired in their new experience and uncommiini'
cable in sensory terms that can be clear. While all this docs
not prove that Stainton Moses is actualh- cg'^ i* m^icating in
the Smead case it does explain why th*^ F ^h'take that
form, if we assume for hypothetical pu- com-

municating. We have then only to
much evidence in mediumistic ohenon"
lief) that commnnicr a hi|

tion, some of them this

{\

Some Features in MediumisHc Phenomena. 583

well understand the form of impersonation imagined in this
special case.

That such is possible is still further indicated by the com-
mon phenomenon in mediumistic communications, especially
of the subliminal as distinct from the possession type of psy-
chic, that the messages seem to describe objects seen, where
we have only to suppose that the things seen are telepathic-
ally transmitted phantasms. They may be hallucinations of
the veridical type in the medium, produced telepathicallyfrom
an extraneous source, and they may be, in addition, phantasms
in the mind of the communicator, a phenomenon that seems
to be supported by some cases of telepathy between the living.
That is, in some cases, it seems that a predisposition to hallu-
cinatory images in connection with thoughts by the agent is
accompanied by similar conditions in the percipient as at
least an aid in the success of telepathy. Assuming this to be
more true of a spiritual than of a material world, as we may
well do from what we know of subliminal mental action in the
living, we can well imagine that this function figures in that
type of messages which involve apparent description of
things and events in the other life. If we accept it, the whole
set of phenomena fall into easy interpretation on the spirit-
istic hypothesis, and we should only have to await adequate
evidence to prove it to be a fact.

It might be objected that this theory is too complicated.
But I should reply that it is either not complicated at all or
that it is less so than the ordinary hypotheses which are ad-
vanced to eliminate the spiritistic. Besides it would not
make any difference about its applicability if it were as com-
plicated as it may be supposed to be If it explains more ra-
tionally than others it 'would have the preference. But I
must contest the claim, that it is especially complicated, at
least that it is any more complicated than the materialistic
t* — ^ry of subjective hallucinations. All that I am doing is
ppose the same psychological phenomena in a discarnate
we find in an incarnate mind. We find extreme sug-
Mlity and somnambulic conditions very frequently asso-
i in the living, and it is the only explanation which nor-
md abnormal psychology accepts of certain phenomena

584 Journal of 4he American Society for Psychical Research.

in the living. It is no worse to suppose the same laws of
action in the discarnate. It is as simple in one as in the
other, and if it explains it is entitled to recognition as an hy-
pothesis, pending the production of evidence for its actual
truth.

Nor will it alter matters to say or suppose that subjective
hallucinations and abnormal phenomena generally in the liv-
ing are caused by morbid brain conditions, as all such phe-
nomena are mental in nature, no matter what their ante-
cedent cause in brain action. Of course, on the materialistic
theory they are purely cerebral as well as the normal mental
states. But if we have evidence in the proper supernormal
phenomena for the existence of a soul and its survival — and
survival is necessary to prove its existence now — we should
have to treat all normal and abnormal mental phenomena as
functions of the soul, with such interaction between body and
soul as permits at least an efficient causal relation between
them. Hence being mental phenomena in any case and de-
termined by the nature of the mind rather than the occa-
sional or exciting cause, we can understand how hallucina-
tory functions would characterize a discarnate mind in any
abnormal conditions of its exercise. This supposition
would do no violence to any scientific doctrine of a soul and
would have the advantage of as simple an explanation of
certain phenomena having a claim to a spiritistic origin as
any similar phenomena in living minds. In fact, it would
seem that scientific method and the very conception of per-
sonal identity would compel us to suppose the same mental
functions as such in a spiritual world as a condition of sup-
posing any survival at all, and with this granted we should
have abundant right to extend hypotheses of mental action
which explain certain facts in the living to explain similar
phenomena in the deceased. We are thus conforming to the
very demand of science that we avoid the multiplication of
hypotheses. In the procedure here adopted I have only ac-
cepted and. applied the very theory which psychologically ex-
plains the same type of facts in the living, and the question
of simplicity and complexity is, for that reason, excluded
from the account.

Some Features in Mediumistic Phenomena. 585

There is an interesting incident which in some respects
confirms the hypothesis here advanced for mental conditions
on '' the other side." It finds its suggestiveness from the
general theory of idealism accepted by the philosophers.
This doctrine maintains that all our ideas are mental con-
structs. By this is meant that our minds have to form their
own conceptions and representations of reality, that we do
not see things as they in reality are, but that their appear-
ances are the result of mental reaction upon stimuli whose
nature we cannot describe in sense terms or experiences.
These forms of reality as it appears are determined by the
way the mind is affected, and in this material world the bod-
ily senses modify the relation between the outer world and
the inner life. Now there is a distinction between sensa-
tional and inner experience. Sensation occurs only on the
occasion of physical stimuli, but inner mental action and its
conceptions are either not due to external stimuli or are not
related to it in any such way as normal sensations. Now the
subliminal life of the mind, even when it reproduces the forms
of sensory experience, does not represent external reality as
do sensations, and in our dreams, deliria, and hallucinations,
whether systematic or otherwise, we •have functions which
do not depend on correlated physical stimuli or the normal
type to explain their character. That is, inner activity may
simulate a real world, tho the physical conditions which de-
termine a normal experience are not present. The normal
physical functions may be wholly suspended and yet the inner
functions of the mind may completely simulate reality.

Now if a soul exists and survives death it simply casts off
the physical organism which determines its relation to the
physical and sensory world. There remain, by hypothesis,
those inner functions which may produce all the appearances
of reality without its being other than a thought world. In
a life after death the conditions for a more literal realization
of idealism may exist than in the bodily life, and if we could
make the normal condition after death what a philosophic
friend once said to me he wished it were, namely, a rational-
ized dream life, we might well understand many of the re-
ported phenomena which perplex the student of psychology

586 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

and the man of the world in the investigation of spiritk
theories. We would only interpret such phenomena as
are discussing in the light of mental productions without pcv
sical stimuli, productions under the law of habits which r
formed in the body. But whether determined by these hak
or not they would be conceived as subjective activities, n
if telepathy be a more general mode of communication in t:
spiritual world we could understand many phenomena oca-
ring in it which seem perplexing now. Until we bcca=:
familiar with the processes of such a world we should ti£
for physical reality the hallucinatory products of our err
mind. The intermediate state of our development mi^>
fraught with abnormal conditions until we became adjust;
to the new environment.

Now I come to the incident which I had in mind wheE:^
troducing this discussion on the basis of the orthodox idet
ism. I obtained a verbal report recently from a purely f
vate source of some real or alleged communications froe
man who died a few years ago. He was a rising- man in is
department of work and was prematurely cut off by dca:
His family have apparently been in communication with b::
and the evidence for this, not through a professional medic:
is of the same type as the Piper phenomena. In one of
communications, however, while commenting on the pe^
liarities of his spiritual life he stated that he "sometima^
for instance, a man reading a book, but when he approached to ^^
with him he found it was only a thought"

This is sufficiently paradoxical at least to strike our attP
tion, and if we are of the Philistihe type we will summan
reject it as absurd. But as the report can not be treated
fraudulent and as it is not a natural view to take of sod^
world we have only to ask how it comports with other pb
nomena purporting to come from a transcendental life-
think that it will be perfectly easy to explain it on the fe
just suggested. Suppose it to be an hallucination in
spiritual world, if you like, telepathically transmitted fro^
some other spirit, and we have no difficulty in understand:
it. The person who reported the fact to me took it as e^
dence of " thought forms," assuming that " thoughts 2^

Some Features in Mediumistic Phenomena, SS7

things." This may be true for all that I know, but it is more
in accordance with the orthodox idealism and with the multi-
farious incidents of mediumistic communications associated
with subliminal processes of all kinds, to interpret it as a ver-
idical hallucination in the spiritual life, or even a subjective
one, than to suppose it to represent a reality so at variance
with all that we know. Assuming this view of the incident,
we can well comprehend such phenomena as we have provi-
sionally referred to the suggestibility and somnambulism of a
real Stainton Moses communicating under adverse circum-
stances. The same general functions are involved in the ex-
planation of this incident under notice as we assume in that
of Mr. Moses, namely, a liability to hallucinations which are
taken for reality, just as we all do in our ordinary dreams and
deliria.

I am not defending the spiritistic theory of the facts as the
true hypothesis in the record under review, but only its ca-
pacity to explain the facts. It may not be true. The evi-
dential criterion has not been satisfied. But neither is the
evidential aspect of secondary personality satisfied. All that
I have been trying to do is to ascertain which theory explains
certain facts and which does not. It seems to me that the
spiritistic hypothesis best applies to all the phenomena in the
case, even tho it may not be true in fact and tho we might
prefer that of secondary personality if we had consistent evi-
dence in its support.

But the most important lesson from the incidents is that
which shows the reservations we have to make in accepting
as evidence of conditions in a spiritual world, statements that
we assume to come from spirits. There are few records that
offer a better opportunity than this one for testing the claims
to a revelation of transcendental conditions. The evidence
on the whole, taking other incidents into account than those
present, are sufficient to suggest the possibility and nothing
more of spirit communication, and the facts are just perplex-
ing enough to raise serious doubts about it, partly from the
limitations of the theory of secondary personality on the part
of Mrs. Smead, and partly from the natural dubiousness that
the facts could be all that they claim to be. But some unity

588 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

is needed to account for them when fraud is excluded, and
when this can be sought in a combination of supernormal
sources for the messages and an abnormal condition analo-
gous to somnambulism and suggestibility in the living, we
remove all the perplexities apparent in the supposition of the
superficial claims of the matter while we escape the difficul-
ties incident to the hypothesis of subliminal action and fabri-
cation on Mrs. Smead's part. That is to say, we neither ac-
cept the communications as correctly representing a spiritual
world, while we admit the possibility of that source for them,
nor admit the sufficiency of secondary personality as an ex-
planation of them. The analysis also illustrates the fact that
the alternative between subliminal production by Mrs. Smead
and spiritistic reality as apparent is not so sharply drawn as
controversial demands would like to have it, and such a view
illustrates. the need of patience and critical methods in the
treatment of these and similar phenomena.

What we need, to make the hypothesis of secondary per-
sonality perfectly applicable to the case, is more knowledge
of its nature and laws of action. It is all very well to use it
to explain phenomena which we have no reason to believe
are consciously fraudulent and which are not evidential of
the supernormal, but we require to meet the responsibilities
which every man assumes when he presents an hypothesis.
We must be able to apply it to details consistently with the
known facts and to give satisfactory evidence that it is true.
We have not yet determined the nature and limits of sec-
ondary personality, and cannot do more than appeal to it as
a precaution against hasty credulity in more difficult theories
until we have subjected it to a more thorough investigation.
From what we know of the work of Dr. Boris Sidis in Psy-
chopathology and of Dr. Morton Prince in the same field,
especially in the Beauchamp case, we may well entertain a
large extension of the capacities of subliminal impersonation.
But in none of these cases of the psychiatrist, have they
reached the kind of realism and dramatic play which charac-
terizes such instances as we are studying, and hence what-
ever value secondary personality may have for putting limi-
tations on spiritism it will not be a universal solvent until we

Some Features in MediumisHc Phenomena, 589

know more about it. So much we .may as well frankly admit
and demand the means and opportunities for studying it ade-
quately. Its weaknesses, however, will be no excuse for ac-
cepting the alternative hypothesis, which may seem more
difficult of belief than the more familiar phenomena of ab-
normal psychology. The utmost that we can do is to test
the hypotheses for their consistency and possibility, and then
look for the evidence which will prove one rather than the
other. Such evidence we do not possess in the record before
us, and it is not pretended that it is the desired evidence. It
is only an example of the kind of phenomena which exist in
large ^quantities and which more and more demand an in-
telligible explanation.

The case can be summarized in the following manner, as-
suming that we have two general hypotheses which will serve
as the points of view to be at least emphasized as the primary
factors in the phenomena. ( i ) We may hold that the whole
product is one of secondary personality, and this in spite of
the real or apparent difficulties which I have discussed. This
will discredit a transcendental source for the facts. (2) We
may concede that secondary personality is not adequate and,
tho accepting the applicability of the spiritistic theory, we
have no reason to suppose that it rightly represents the al-
leged source of the statements made, at least in so far as the
assumed chief communicator is concerned. It has been with
a view of indicating this limitation of judgment in the case
that I have discussed the spiritistic possibility at all. The
opportunity for sustaining a more or less conservative and
critical method was so important that it could not be lost,
and it must not be supposed that the hypothesis thus enter-
tained has anything like the evidence for its being a fact that
it has for its mere conceivability.

590 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

EDITORIAL.

Members who do not wish to continue their subscriptions
to'the Society should notify the Secretary at the earliest pos-
sible date. We shall discontinue membership if the dues are
not paid before the isth of March, unless some special ar-
rangement is made beforehand.

For the coming year it is intended to publish in the Jour-
nal detailed records of experiments with certain persons of
approved character, and where the results can be said to
have the protection of careful methods. The object is two-
fold. First, it is desirable to show what the phenomena ac-
tually are which purport to represent supernormal informa-
tion. Secondly, it is possible in this way to publish detailed
records of a certain kind which would not easily permit of
publication in collective form.

Many people report remarkable experiences which, in
fact, were probably buried in a mass of chaff which they did
not note at the time and do not remember. The consequence
is that those who hear of these frag^mentary phenomena are
greatly disappointed when they come to experiment for
themselves. It is highly important that we should have
some conception of the real nature of the phenomena which
are reported usually in epitome. The scientific treatment of
this subject requires as much care regarding the chaff as re-
garding the wheat. The publication of a detailed record
each month will serve both to illustrate this aspect of the
problem and to collect a mass of data which may be the sub-
ject of detailed discussion later.

The publication of such records will be accompanied by
such explanation of conditions and notes as will indicate
whether the phenomena deserve recogfnition as supernormal
or not. But it will not be any part of the work to discuss
hypotheses regarding them. Readers will have to form their
own opinions in this respect. The publication is designed
primarily as a record for future discussion and theories.

IncidefUs. 591

INCIDENTS.

The Society assumes no responsibility for anything pub-
lished under this head, and no indorsement is implied except
that it has been furnished by an apparently trustworthy con-
tributor whose name is given unless withheld at his own re-
quest.

TELEPATHY.

The following case is one which may be regarded as illus-
trating, the not proving telepathy. How far it can escape
the suspicion of mere coincidence will have to be determined
by each person according to his tastes or prejudices. There
are numerous enough cases of a similar type to prevent it
from standing alone in human experience.

1094 Dean St., Brooklyn, N. Y.,
January 21st, 1907.
Dr. James H. Hyslop,

Dear Sir: — I send the following instance of telepathy as a
very satisfactory demonstration.

Mr. G. C. Rodgers went out to make a purchase for me. He
ran quickly down from the third floor and I heard the front door
close. At once there flashed into my consciousness, " Go to my
gray trousers." The message seemed to carry its own impulse.
I obeyed without hesitation, surprise or thought of its meaning.
I walked to the wardrobe and my hand at once touched the
bunch of keys in one of the pockets. Then I knew. I put my
hand in the pocket, got the keys, went to the front window and
waited his return. When he came in the gate I threw the keys
down to him. He let himself in at the front door and came
bounding up the stairs. " You got my message," he exclaimed.
" When I realized I had forgotten my keys I sent you a message
to go to my gray trousers and throw them down to me." No
comment could make this stronger.

Yours cordially,

(MRS.) FREDERIKA S. CANTWELL.
I confirm the above.

G. C. RODGERS.

The next incident is from a physician whom I know per-
sonally and who reported a premonition in an earlier number
of the Journal (pp. 168-173). The first report of it was writ-

592 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

ten out and sent me when I asked for the confirmation of the
friend who was associated with it. The account was then
rewritten without having the first one at hand. Owing to
certain differences between the two accounts, as well as the
retention of the common essential points, I publish both of
them. The differences mark important features, the first
one containing valuable incidents which have been, naturally
enough, omitted from the narrative. First accounts appar-
ently are likely to be written with more intensity of interest
and so to contain details which the tedium of second writing
is likely to omit. Besides it is the second account which the
friend confirms.

\ -

Chicago, 111., February i8th, 1907.
My dear Dr. Hyslop :

On November [22], 1906, at five o'clock in the morning I
heard a voice saying : " Wake up, wake up ! Are you going to
sleep all day?" I was awake at about the instant the sentence
was finished, but apparently in a semi-conscious sleep state while
I heard the voice. I got up out of my bed and carefully looked
about to see if any one was near, but found no one near my door
and everything quiet. I then began to think that the voice
seemed familiar, and had a peculiar expression, and after study-
ing a little while I remembered that it was the identical voice of
my friend Dr. Oscar J. Brown, of DeKalb, 111., a town about fifty
miles west of Chicago. I turned over again into the " arms of
Morpheus," and at exactly seven o'clock, or two hours afterward,
I heard a rap on my door and when I opened it there stood Dr.
Brown. I asked him what time he took the train at DeKalb and
he said he took the five o'clock train, and that it left on time. He,
therefore, took the train at exactly the same moment that I heard,
in my semi-wakeful state, his familiar voice.

Dr. Brown is a very good friend of mine and oft-times shares
the bed with me when he remains in the city. When going to
the medical college we Itved in the same flat for about one year
and frequently we went tandem bicycle riding together. Hence
I am not only familiar with his voice, but have, in former times,
been very chummy with him. He has, however, resided in
P^alb since his graduation in 1898. There was nothing special
his visit to the city. The expression was characteristic,
peculiar to him.

DANIEL S. HAGER. M. D.

I

Incidents. 593

Chicago, 111., March 26th, 1907.
On November 22nd, 1906, at five o'clock in the morning, while
I was in a semi-waking or entirely waking state — I really do not
know myself ; perhaps it was in the transitional stage — I heard a
voice say, "Wake up, wake up! Are you going to sleep all
day ? " The voice had a peculiar and familiar sound to it, and
seemed so natural that I at once thought it was at my door, and
I immediately opened the door to see who was there, at the same
time recognizing the voice as that of my friend and former room
mate. Dr. Oscar J. Brown, of DeKalb, 111. To my surprise there
was no one at the door, nor was there any one near by, nor any
sound to be heard. I again retired to bed and after thinking over
the matter for some time I concluded that it was some sort of a
dream condition, and soon fell into the " arms of Morpheus "
again. I thought it rather peculiar and so far out of the ordinary
that it made a lasting impression on my mind at the time. At
seven o'clock, or exactly two hours afterward, I again heard a rap
on my door, and when I arose and opened the door there stood
my frie^id Dr. Brown. The first word I asked was, " Hello, Dr. !
What time did you leave DeKalb?" He informed me that he
left at five o'clock. It requires just two hours to come in from
DeKalb, which is located some sixty miles west of Chicago.
There was nothing in the sound of this voice to indicate that
there was to be anything particular connected with it more than
the usual jovial expression that is characteristic of the doctor.

DANIEL S. HAGER, M. D.

This account was sent to Dr. Brown and he writes the
following to which he subscribed before a notary public.

I have read the above report by Dr. Hager and remember the
trip and that I left DeKalb at five o'clock. I also remember that
he asked me at once as to the time I left DeKalb for Chicago.

OSCAR J. BROWN, M. D.

March 26th, 1907.

The next incident is from the same writer and represents
the voice of his deceased mother coinciding with what might
be regarded as telepathic. The reader will observe in the first
instance that it was the voice of the living apparently indi-
cating some causal relation with the call which followed.
But in the incident to follow, the voice of the deceased person
was connected with a coincidence which is curiously compli-
cated, if telepathy alone is to be the explanation of it.

594 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

Chicago, 111., April 2Sth, 1907.
My dear Dr. Hyslop :

During the fall of 1894, while living on Rush Street, Chicago,
engaged in the printing business with a partner in the old
" Times " building, on Fifth Ave., in the central part of the city,
the following incident occurred which left a deep impression on
my mind, because of the clearness of the voice as well as the cir-
cumstances surrounding the incident.

We sub-rented a part of the office floor to Mr. J. W. Turner,
now of La Grange, 111. Mr. Turner employed a journeyman
printer named Wright and he [the latter] was concerned in the
matter as stated below.

Mr. Wright had requested me to leave the key of the office
over the door in the hallway so that he might be able to enter to
do some work on Sunday morning. I agreed to leave the key
over the door in a certain spot. As the hallway was quite poorly
lighted and it was quite dark, he for some reason failed to find the
key, and as he had come quite a distance he, of course, did not
feel very kindly towards me, when he failed to find the key, a
matter that I regretted very much. An incident in the office be-
fore this time, for which I was partly to blame, had not given Mr.
Wright, perhaps, as high an opinion of me as I was anxious for
him to have. When he was thus disappointed I felt that my
attempt to right the matter might not have left the impression
on his mind that it otherwise would likely have done.

The following Saturday afternoon he again requested me to
allow him to have the key to enter on Sunday. I promised to
leave the key and to be sure that he would find it this time I took
him out in the hallway and showed him exactly the spot where I
would put the key, so that it would be possible for him to reach
for the key in the dark and to be able to find it at once.

My partner in the business and I left the office together late
on Saturday night, and as our minds were occupied on some busi-
ness matters we were discussing, and perhaps because he came
out of the office behind me, therefore locking up the office him-
self. For that reason I did not have my remembrance called to
the key, and naturally forgot my promise to leave my key where
I had stated that I would leave it.

Business troubles, worry and overwork, augmented by the
hard times of '93 and '94, kept me working overtimes a great deal
and, as I now remember, I was very neurasthenic. Each Sunday
morning I tried to make up for want of rest during the week and
slept until about nine o'clock. On this particular Sunday morn-
ing I was unusually tired and I must have slept quite soundly up
to the time of this incident.

At about, or at any rate it must have been within a few min-

Incidents, 595

utes of eight o'clock, (whether I was asleep or semi-awake I do
not know), I heard a voice which sounded like my dead mother's
voice call " Dan, get up ; you are wanted." Instantly I was wide
awake and for the first time since Saturday afternoon remem-
bered my promise. I jumped out of bed and dressed as hurriedly
as possible and ran all the way to my office, about one half mile
distant. As I stepped into the hallway I met Mr. Wright and I
immediately took out my watch and noted the time, at the same
time asking him what time he had arrived there. He informed
me that he arrived at eight o'clock, and not finding the key he had
concluded to wait at least until half-past eight before he would
return to his home. I must, therefore, have heard the voice at
about or exactly the time that he arrived at the printing office and
failed to find the key.

Should I have failed to have arrived there at the time I did,
Mr. Wright would probably have waited for me a few minutes
longer and then have returned home disappointed. It is needless
to say that any ill feeling which he might have held against me
would thus have been intensified, if the kindly relations would
not have been entirely broken, a matter that I would have re-
gretted very much indeed.

The voice then came at just the right time to save me the
dilemma that I, in all probability, should have otherwise unwit-
tingly have gotten into. Coming at this time, it saved me a great
deal of trouble and the chagrin of being a confirmed prevaricator
one week before.

There was no one else on the floor where I slept and no pos-
sible chance for any one to call me, nor had I been used to the
habit of having some one call me at any time in the morning.

I have always considered the voice at this time as one of the
few psychic experiences of this kind in my life, and as I now look
back and know just how neurasthenic I was at the time I am in-
clined to think that the peculiar explosive state of the neuras-
thenia had some relation to this warning voice. This experience
happened before I began the study of medicine.

DANIEL S. HAGER, M. D.

Mr. Wright, the printer mentioned, signs before a notary
public the following statement corroborating the incident.

Chicago, April 25th, 1907.

I remember the incident referred to above by Dr. Hager but
only after fully studying it over as well as relating it to my wife.
She was then working at setting type in the printing office. She
recollected my telling about the key each time. She was not

5% Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

with me, however, at that time. It was only her recollection that
helped me to recall the incident at this date.

D. B. WRIGHT.

Dr. Hager reports that his mother died on April 30th,
1876. She had therefore been dead eighteen years at the
time the voice was heard.

EXPERIMENTAL APPARITION.

The following incident was first told to Dr. Isaac K. Funk
and published « in outline in his book " The Psychic Rid-
dle." The name of the gentleman who reported it had to be
reserved, but I finally obtained consent to communicate with
him, and he has furnished me with the following detailed ac-
count of the experience. It is confirmed by what his wife
knows of her side of the incident and by the statement of a
friend who witnessed some of the circumstances which sup-
port the truthfulness of the story.

New York, April 23rd, 1907.
Dr. James H. Hyslop,

My dear Sir: — ^Your letter of March 21st has remained unan-
swered because of pressure of work and absence from the office.
I have twice, I think, written out an account of my experience for
Dr. Funk, and his copy would practically cover the case. How-
ever, I will comply with your request and state the facts as they
occurred. The date of the experience was at least seven years
ago. The place, a hotel in the city of Buffalo. Just at present, I
am not clear as to which hotel we were stopping at that time.

The event was in connection with a Home Missionary cam-
paign which Dr. K. (now dead). Dr. P. and myself were making.
The time of the week, Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning.
The incident was about as follows :

At I o'clock on Sunday morning, I was awakened from a per-
fectly sound, dreamless sleep, with the consciousness that some
one was in the room. On becoming clearly awake, I saw stand-
ing at the foot of the bed my wife. I remember she wore a dress
which she ordinarily wore about the house when attending to
her morning duties. I was not conscious until later that the
room was absolutely dark. In dress, and every other way, my
wife appeared perfectly natural.

I half sprung up in bed, and exclaimed, " What are you doing
here ! " She replied^ " I thought I would come out and see how

Incidents. 597

you are getting along/' She walked around from the foot of the
bed, where she was standing, to the side and head of the bed
where I was lying, bent over, kissed me, and disappeared. In an
instant I sprang to my feet, realized then that the room was abso-
lutely dark, lighted the gas, and as a result of the experience, was
nervously in a chill, with the cold perspiration starting out all
over the body.

On going down to the breakfast table the next morning, I re-
lated the experience to both Dr. K. and Mr. P. I was so worried
by the whole experience in spite of what I supposed was usually
good, common sense, I made up a sham telegram and sent it to
my wife, asking if a letter had come making a certain engage-
ment. Later in the day I received her reply, " No such engage-
ment ; we are all well."

Upon returning to my home several days later, I was at once
impressed with the fact that my wife was interested with regard
to my sleeping on Saturday night. After some sparring over the
matter, I finally asked her why she asked the questions she did.
She then told me that she had been reading Hudson's " Psychical
Phenomena," in which he had stated that if a person fixed his
mind just at the point of losing consciousness in sleep upon an-
other person, and the desire to meet that person under certain
conditions, that the result with the second party would be prac-
tically as determined by the original experimentor.

After reading me the extract from Hudson, she told me that
on retiring on Saturday night, she had fixed her mind upon the
fact that at one o'clock in the morning, she would appear to me,
and kiss me.

The above are the facts as I now remember them. I have
never had a similar experience and tho she has confessed to me
that she has tried the same experiment at other times, it has never
proved successful, unless it may have been in some disturbing
dream.

Very sincerely yours,

C. W. S.

I have in possession the original letter of Mrs. S., wife of
Mr. S., in which she describes her experiment. This was
sent to me by Dr. Funk and it made unnecessary the re-
writing of the experience to me. It was not possible to ob-
tain the exact date of the experiment described. The letter
v/SLS written to Dr. Funk, as the reader will observe, before
Mr. S. replied to my request for an account of his experience,
and was in response to my inquiry for her narrative of the
experiment.

598 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

Chicago, 111., March 17th, 1907.
My dear Dr. Funk :

Mr. S. has forwarded to me your letter asking if I would give
you my version of the little story told you by him some time ago
and published without names in 'your "Psychic Riddle." Of
course I am very glad to do so. The enclosed sheet of paper con-
tains it as I remember it. The experience occurred at a time
when I was deeply interested in Mr. Hudson's Lazv of Psychic
Phenomena, and when I attempted to put into practice some of
his rules for mental experiments. A number of these attempts
were more or less successful, but the one in hand was the only
unusual result. The others were all in the line of mental healing
and could easily be called coincidences.

Mr. S. feels that he would rather not have our names used
publicly in connection with it, since he is responsible to others in
his professional work. I would not mind at all personally.

Most sincerely yours,

(MRS.) R. T. S.

The following is the narrative as referred to in the above
letter.

Having read a convincing statement made by Mr. Thompson
Jay Hudson, in his ''Law of Psychic Phenomena,'' to the effect that
by a mental process it is possible to appear in visible form to
people at a distance from one's self, I tried the experiment some
years ago, with my husband as object. According to Mr. Hud-
son's directions I went to sleep one night, (at home in Derby,
Connecticut), willing myself to appear to my husband in his
room, whether in New York city, Syracuse, Schenectady, or
Buffalo, I do not now remember. My purpose was to awaken
him from sleep, to attract his attention to myself as I stood on the
opposite side of the room, and, as some act seemed necessary to
the drama, to walk over to his bedside and kiss him on the fore-
head— (I do not remember having spoken or intended to speak.
I am somewhat doubtful of this statement in your book, the not
positive, since some years have passed.)

I remember holding the matter well in mind as long as T was
conscious. Several days later my husband returned. I was most
anxious to know the result of my effort, but did not wish to ask
him outright for fear of hearing failure on my part. After vari-
ous general remarks on both sides with regard to the health of
each during his absence, my husband asked pointedly — "What
have you been doing since I've been gone? Have you tried any
of your psychic experiments on me?" (He knew that I had
been reading the book, but up to that time I had not presumed to

Incidents, 599

attempt anything of the sort myself and he had nothing to base
his question on except my general interest in the subject.)

I replied, " Why, what has happened ? " Then he told me
that he had awakened suddenly, out of a sound sleep, on Saturday
night, about eleven o'clock, and was frightened by seeing me
standing in the room. So real did I seem that he exclaimed,
" Rosa, why are you here ? *' With that I walked over to his bed-
side, kissed him on the forehead, and was gone.

He was thoroughly shaken and alarmed and did not sleep
again for hours. Then I confessed my part of the experience.
The only detail that did not tally in the working out of the
thought with the original plan had to do with time, I had in
mind one o'clock and he saw the vision at eleven, or vice versa.
The hour was not correct.

My husband begged me to try nothing more of the sort on
Saturday night, since it upset him sadly for his Sunday work.

I believe this is substantially the whole story.

R. T. S.

In reply to inquiries for further information regarding cer-
tain features of his experience, Mr. S. makes the following
statements.

New York, June 25th, 1907.
Dr. James H. Hyslop,

My dear Dr. Hyslop : — ^Very briefly, for I have only a moment,
the answers to your questions are as follows : —

1. I did not notice that the room was dark until after the
apparent disappearance of my wife

2. My attention was not drawn to the fact with regard to
the light in the room any more than it would have been if my
wife had walked into any ordinary room at any time in the day.

3. This question which you ask is a difficult one to answer.
Psychologically I am not sure just at what point I was fully
awake. At the cessation of the experience I found myself sit-
ting half out of bed, in a dripping perspiration. The impression,
as I look back, is that of an actual occurrence and in no way a
dream,

4. There was no consciousness on my part of the presence of
any other person in the room other than my wife.

5. So far as I know, Mr. S. had no impressions beyond those
accompanying the resolution just before going to sleep, as I have
stated it in my letter.

6. I have never had any experience of this nature previous to
or since this.

Very truly yours,

c. w. s.

600 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

The psychologically interesting incident of these replies
is found in the answer to question second. The phenomenon
shows a resemblance to the hypnogogic condition which
often precedes or follows certain cases of sleep. It involves
that action of the optical centers which shows that they may
continue their dream or hallucinatory functioning while the
central self-consciousness is normally awake. It suggests a
more or less central source of the phantasms which accom-
pany the condition tho they may have an extraneous origin
in respect of their stimuli.

Inquiry of Dr. P. regarding his recollection of Mr. S/s
experience and hearing it told to him by Mr. S. the next
morning led to the following reply, which is much the same
as the reply to Dr. Funk, of which I have a copy.

South Framingham, Mass., Sept 30th, 1907.
Dr. James H. Hyslop,

My dear Sir: — In answer to your inquiries regarding Mr. S.
First I do not remember Mr. S. telling me anything about an ap-
parition, but I do remember Mrs. S. telling me the following:

She had been reading Hudson's book and she said that when
her husband was away in New York State, either at Rochester or
Buffalo, that she made up her mind to test Hudson's statements.
She said, " for three hours I tried to concentrate my mind on
Charlie and while doing so fell asleep." When Mr. S. came home
he said, " Rosa what have you been up to? " " Why? " she an-
swered, smiling at him. " Why, because you came to my room
in the night and walked up to the bed, looked at me and then
walked out again without speaking." This is all that I can re-
member.

I am sincerely yours,

W. G. P.

Seeing that I had probably led Dr. P. astray by using the
word " apparition," I wrote again indicating that I wished
more particularly to know whether he recalled Mrs. S/s
telling him the incidents of a dream the next morning at the
breakfast table and before he had heard the story of Mr. S.
His reply to this inquiry is as follows :

October ist, 1907.
Dr. James H. Hyslop,

My dear Sir : — ^This morning I spoke to my wife about Mr. S.
nd she helped my memory by saying that when I came home

Incidents. 601

from Buffalo I told her that Mr. S. had told me about his wife's
appearance and that when I went to Mr. S's home I questioned
Mrs. S., who told me what she did to produce the resultsi

I am sincerely yours,

W. G. P.

A critic would perhaps say that Mrs. G.'s memory had
confused the later knowledge with the earlier period per-
haps as a consequence of the question put to her to recall a
certain fact of an earlier date. There is no deciding this issue
now, tho the statement that she remembers Mr. G.'s coming
from Buffalo adds some probability that she may possibly
be correct about the incident being told her. But if Mr. G.
was sufficiently struck with the incident to remember it and
tell of it at home before he heard of the actual coincidence, it
is strange that he does not now recall the fact, as remember-
ing it, in the first instance, shows an interest at the time in the
story regardless of its coincidence with the efforts of Mrs. S.
to produce that particular effect. Of course if he only con-
ceived and told it as a curious dream he may soon have lost
that interest which would be calculated to fix it in the mem-
ory, at least that part of the whole affair which would help
its evidential character.

Inquiry of Mrs. S. for confirmation of the telegram inci-
dent and for information on other features of the incident
resulted in the following reply, which explains itself.

Norwalk, Conn., Oct. ist, 1907.
Dr. James H. Hyslop,

My dear Sir: — Mr. S. has handed me your letter of September
twenty-eighth, enclosing a list of questions which you ask me to
answer. This I do with more pleasure, perhaps, than accuracy ;
for the experiment occurred many years ago and such details as
you mention made little impression upon me at the time.

No. I. As to the telegram, I am not clear. Mrs. S. remem-
bers sending one, but I do not remember it as distinctly as I
ought, to make my testimony on that head of any importance to
you. I have a vague recollection that there was such an one, ask-
ing some question about mail received at home in his absence.

Mr. S. is not now at home and I do not know what he may
have written to Dr. Funk about it.

No. 2. I cannot say positively how long I remained awake
thinking of the act, but should say from half to three-quarters of

602 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

an hour, and when I found myself dropping to sleep I roused my
faculties again several times in order to emphasize my thought
as much, as possible, or rather to concentrate it.

No. 3. I cannot say as to whether I dreamed during the
night, but certainly not in a way to impress any dream upon my
mind. There were no peculiar sensations or experiences on
awakening.

No. 4. I believe I went to sleep in the neighborhood of nine-
thirty or ten o'clock. I am sorry not to be more explicit.

Most sincerely yours,

R. T. H.

It is not surprising that small incidents, not connected
with the main event at the time, should be forgotten, espe-
cially as they had not immediate importance for the individ-
ual concerned. But we always have the chance that such
incidents may fortunately turn up in the memory.

CORRESPONDENCE.

IMAGINATION AND PSYCHIC PHENOMENA.

The Editor of the Journal :
Dear Sir:

I have had occasion recently to consider the part which
imagination may play in observing psychic phenomena, and
while my classification may not meet with the approval of
professional psychologists, I have endeavored to make it fit
the cases which generally cause confusion among laymen.

The vital question seems to be whether an observer and
student (assuming a sane and normal intelligence) may
make the fatal error of imagining an occurrence that never
came off, or of imagining that a thing is true because he has
thought much about it and would not object to its being
true. It is a common opinion that both of those things may
happen and do happen. There is surely good ground for

Correspondence, 603

assuming much faulty mental action, but it seems a great pity
to saddle it all on the faculty of imagination, especially in the
investigation of psychic phenomena. If it were frankly ad-
mitted that many people do not observe carefully and do not
reason closely and logically, the blame might be placed
where it belongs. Curiously enough, these are thfe people
who are prone to accuse others of letting their imagination
supply occurrences.

It seems absurd to believe that any sane and honest per-
son will report a fact which has no objective reality. He
may have observed without sufficient care, or he may have
jumped at a conclusion — both reprehensible traits — but
neither one by any stretching of the meaning of words can
be called imagination. Both habits are exemplified in the
report in Part II of the Proceedings, issued in July, concerning
the movement of objects without contact. Observation was
so faulty that Mr. Carrington described it as no observation
at all, while the mental process of reasoning jumped such
wide gaps as to spell nothing but credulity.

Yet it is probably correct to say that a large majority of
critics would attribute Mr. X.'s experiences and conclusions
to a common phase of imagination.

It has remained for the brilliant editor of " Life " to offer
the proposition that if a man thinks much about a thing he
may end in believing it, which he follows with the suggestive
idea that if it is going to pay in fame and money to believe it
the conclusion is foregone. And yet the editor of " Life "
might think to the point of distraction about a problem, and
even pray (possibly?) that a certain solution might be the
correct one, and further he might print pages which in-
creased the circulation of his periodical enormously, and in
the end be compelled to disbelieve the things he wished were
true. He would doubtless explain that by saying that he
could not go against the facts, and his explanation would be
accepted as legitimate. Yet he is cheerfully willing to assert
that another man with another problem is incapable of hcin^
guided by the hard facts.

Without attempting to assume the authority of the dic-
tionary, is it not fair to say that imajfination in that (iuMiltv

604 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

which permits the mind to form a hypothesis on the basis of
certain facts? Of course this leaves out the planning of
works of art which belong to another realm. In the realm
of science an illustration was given in the effort to ascertain
the form of the earth's orbit. On the basis of certain facts
the astronomer's imagination constructed various hjrpotheses
concerning the earth's orbit, which he proceeded to verify.
An orbit in the shape of an eclipse proved to be the only hy-
pothesis which was capable of complete verification, and so it
was accepted as accurate and final. In this case and similar
ones there is no risk of confusing the observation of facts
with the use of the imagination. The process is a voluntary
one and deliberate and orderly. It shows, too, that the im-
agination cannot work without facts as a basis.

There is an activity of the imagination, however, which
seems to be involuntary and is defective and disordered. A
good illustration is offered in the case of a jealous person.
Certain facts, however slight and unimportant, are observed,
and the individual fear of slights or lack of attention impels
the forming of an hypothesis which is frequently absurd.
" Trifles, light as air, to the jealous are confirmation strong
as proof of holy writ." The trifles exist, however, as a start-
ing point. The trouble is that the individual obsession
makes the working of the imagination defective.

That is the reason that a confirmed Spiritualist is apt to
be a worthless investigator of psychic phenomena. He is
obsessed like the jealous individual.

Many critics ranging in importance from Haeckel and
Jastrow to the editor of " Life," take the ground that all in-
vestigators of psychic phenomena who take the spiritistic
hypothesis are obsessed by their inclination to believe in it
and are consequently worthless investigators. Naturally
their own obsession against any such idea, which they never
hesitate to voice, disqualifies them as completely as the ram-
pant Spiritualist. Their zeal and impatience blind them how-
ever to the logical absurdity of their attitude as devotees of
science.

All readers of Haeckel's " Riddle of the Universe " are
familiar with his expressions of contemptuous pity for men

Correspondence. 605

like Sir William Crookes, as well as with his proof ( ?) that all
psychic activities must be traced to individual cells with the
hope apparently, as Sir Oliver Lodge puts it, that there will
be no attempt to trace them any further. "They met by
chance, the usual way." — the cells. That is proper as a hy-
pothesis, but why is the hypothesis of design evidence of a
disordered imagination ? Don't we make a pack-horse of the
word imagination and load it with what we consider the
errors of our neighbors and friends in observing facts and in
trying to find explanations? Isn't everything shunted unto
the poor beast that we don't want to accept or consider?
Has it not been carried so far that the word has ceased to
have any definite meaning? Of course if the disordered im-
ages of an unbalanced mind are to be popularly considered
imagination, in its true sense, then the conception of imagina-
tion as I have attempted to describe it is false and this analy-
sis is idle. I doubt if that can be maintained. Judgment and
imagination are frequently referred to as capacities which
have an intimate relation. In the report of an English army
officer, recently made public, he spoke of certain incompetent
cadets as having neither judgment nor imagination. That
marks the issue squarely. What is imagination? Is it a
faculty to be trained and used, or is it an intellectual weak-
ness akin to insanity?

G. A. T.

REPLIES TO MR. CARRINGTON'S CRITICISM OF .
M. AKSAKOF.

Readers of the first number of the Proceedings will recall
Mr. Carrington's examination of M. Aksakof's case of a par-
tial dematerialization of the human body. We sent copies of
that number to Madame d'Esperance and to Professor Seil-
ing. In the correspondence which passed between Madame
d'Esperance and Professor Selling he expressed the suspicion
that any reply that he might make to the article might not be
acceptable to us.. This suspicion was quite unfounded, and
we wish to show this to be a fact by the publication of what

606 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,

both have said regarding Mr. Carrington's paper. The fol-
lowing is the letter of Madame d'Esperance: —

Schloss Luga bei Bautzen, Sachsen, July lo, 1907.
Dr. Hyslop,

Dear Sir: — Thanks for your letter of the 2Sth ult., and also
for your courtesy in sending me a copy of your Journal [Proceed-
ings] a copy of which had, however, been previously sent to me
for perusal from London, after which I asked the advice of vari-
ous friends as to the steps 1 should take with respect to the cal-
umnious article referring to me (by H. Carrington) which ap-
peared therein.

Their replies were unanimous that " the article is not worth
your consideration."

I sent the Journal [Proceedings] to Professor Max Seiling,
and enclose you a copy of his reply, on which you can act as you
deem best, as to inviting him to reply to Mr. Carrington.

Personally I decline to touch the matter, beyond mentioning
that the " facts " on which your contributor builds his fabric of
surmises are without any foundation in truth — that I am not, nor
ever have been a professional medium — that I did not " commence
my mediumship under the direct (or indirect) supervision of Mrs.
Mellon," and that the indecent acrobatic performances which he
describes and illustrates are in my case a physical impossibility.

The story of the development of my mediumship and subse-
quent work for Spiritualism is fully and truthfully related in my
book " Shadow Land ;" and from the statements there published
there is nothing to detract, and nothing to add.

Yours truly,

ELIZABETH d'ESPERANCE.

The letter which Professor Seiling wrote in reply to this
is in German, and we give it in that language with a transla-
tion of it in a footnote.

Pasing, 3. Juni, 1907.

Ich habe keine Lust, zu erwidern, da ich riskiren miisste, dass
die Erwiderung nicht aufgenommen wird, was mir schon ofter
vorgekommen ist. Wiirde mir der Redacteur das Buch ztg^-
schickt haben, dann ware veilleicht eher etwas zu machen. Die
Figure auf S. 161 hat mich iibrigens so abgeschreckt, dass icb
mich nicht einmal entschliessen kann, der Unsinn, der so etwas
zu Tage fordern kann, iiberhaupt naher zu studiren.

Sollten Sie die beiden Behauptungen iiber Ihre Medialitat
'och berichtigen, dann weisen Sie doch auf die Unmoglichkcit

Correspondence. 607

dieser Situation bei dieser Oeffnung (7j4Xiij4 inches) hin. An-
genommen aber auch, Sie hatten in diese Lage kommen konnen,
zuriick gekommen waren Sie ntemals, ohne dass cs bemerkt wer-
den ware.*

Professor Seiling evidently thought better of it when he
received a copy of the Proceedings and hence sent us the fol-
lowing reply to the strictures on the case.

Pasing bei Munchen, 7. Aug., 1907.
Dr. James H. Hyslop,

Dear Sir: — My apologies are due to you that a long absence
from home has delayed my reply to your favor of June 25th with
your friendly invitation to express myself with respect to the
critique of Mr. H. Carrington which appeared in Vol. I., Part i,
pp. 131-168, of the " Proceedings of the American Society for
Psychical Research."

I accept your invitation in the interests of truth most will;-
ingly. The more so as I can make my reply very short.

The hypothesis of fraud on the part of Madame d'Esperance
is in my opinion entirely out of the question. Since her visit to
Helsingfors in 1893, I have had opportunities of becoming more
closely acquainted with her and know her to be a highly honor-
able, refined, cultured, and religiously minded person, who looks
upon mediumship in the light of a serious mission. This cannot
fail to impress itself on every reader of the book " Shadow Land,'*
in which Madame d'Esperance relates at length the whole story
of her mediumship.

Madame d'Esperance is not a professional medium; she has
never given a seance for payment. When one remembers that
she, in the middle of a Scandanavian winter, undertook the trou-
blesome journey from Gothenberg in Sweden to Helsingfors in
Finland in order to comply with the urgent and pressing entreat-
ies addressed to her, it is too absurd to believe that she, in addi-
tion to the inconvenience and self-sacrifice, would risk her good
name and reputation by playing such an extraordinary and daring
trick, as that of apparently dematerializing her lower body and
limbs.

* " I have no desire to reply, as I must run the risk of not having the
reply accepted, as has often occurred. If the editor had sent me the book
I might, perhaps, have something to say. The illustration on page 161
has so horrified me that I could not conclude to examine carefully the
preposterous view which was so apparent.

" If you can correct the two assertions regarding your mediumship
you may then call attention to the impossibility of the act attributed to
you in connection with an opening of that kind (754Xii54 inches). As-
suming, however, that you had done this it would never have been pos-
sible for you to get back without having been detected."

608 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

One very important circumstance, upon which M. Aksakof
does not lay sufficient weight, is that the dematerialization phe-
nomenon, in conjunction with the examination of the medium's
person, and probable interference with her astral body, had very
serious consequences for her health. The facts are the follow-
ing:

It was with very great difficulty that after the seance Madame
d'Esperance was able to leave my house. She became weaker
from day to day, pale and apathetic, suffered from an abnormal
inclination to sleep, and was in consequence obliged to resign her
post in the mercantile firm of Mr. Mathews Fidler. Her hair be-
came visibly white and remained so for some time, tho she was
not much over 30 years of age. (Later, as I have seen, when new
hair grew it resumed its natural dark color.)

A full year was spent in costly journeyings and sojourns in
southern health resorts before her health was even tolerably re-
stored. Her mediumistic powers were for a considerable time
completely destroyed and even after years is no more as strong
as formerly.

Putting all this on one side, however, an uninformed person,
ignorant of the medium's personality, might possibly consider
that some points in Mr. Aksakof s report of the seance favored
Mr. Carring^on's attempted explanation, if, for instance, his the-
ory which he illustrates on page 161 had been in any way pos-
sible, but there is in my mind no question of the possibility. The
medium was by no means slender or thin. She could never have
forced her body through an opening iij4 by 7J4 inches. Even if
it had been possible the upper part of the body and bust could not
have assumed a natural position, nor would the dress have fallen
as far down on the front of the chair, nor hang naturally as was
the case. See my sketch, page 146. The principal point, how-
ever, is that, if it had been in any way possible for the medium to
have brought herself into such a position, she could by no possibil-
ity have got her limbs back into a sitting position without being noticed.

One must remember that many pairs of eyes were closely
watching her with most strained attention, waiting to see how
the phenomenon would end. No movement, gesture, or sound
could escape notice.

Concerning the Materialisation Phenomena I shall mention
that in the seven consecutive seances previously held the phenom-
ena were more plentiful and undoubtable. There were, for in-
stance, on several occasions two materialized forms as well as the
medium visible at one time. The materialized forms of children
were seen, and it is to be remarked that these forms built them-
selves up outside the cabinet before the eyes of all the spectators.

These phenomena I have fully described in my work " Meine

Correspondence. 609

Erfahrungcn auf dem Gebictb des Spiritismus " — ^O. Mutze,
Leipzig.

In conclusion I shall draw attention to the fact that the phe-
nomenon of de-materialization has been recently observed by
Professor Richet in seances held in Algiers. (Sec " Annales des
Sciences Psychiques," Novembre, 1905.)

Yours truly,

MAX SEILING.

We are very glad to have Professor Seiling make these
statements in reply to Mr. Carrington, especially as it offers
the opportunity to make clear some points in the scientific ,
treatment of these problems which we are not often enabled
to make.

In the first place, we must remember that Mr. Carring-
ton's task was to examine the evidence for materialization, and
any possibility that the phenomena could be naturally and
normally produced deprives the account of M. Aksakof of
evidential value. There may have been some slips of lan-
guage in Mr. Carrington's criticism which imply more than
was intended. For instance, his allusion to "trickery." But I
understand that his primary object was to show that, whatever
the phenomena may have actually been, they were not evi-
dential of the claims made for them. He was showing that
you could at least explain the facts as well by the means indi-
cated in his criticism as you could by the more mysterious
process. We must remember that the " dematerialization "
was as much an hypothesis as any assumption of trickery
could be, and so far as that is concerned they stand on the
same footing, and if the account of the experiment did not
exclude the supposition suggested by Mr. Carrington there
is no necessity for assuming dematerialization. It would be
better to say non-proven and to entertain no theory at all.

As to the possibility of doing what Mr. Carrington de-
scribed I have seen him do it within one minute, both getting
in and getting out of the aperture in that time with very little
apparent movements of the upper part of the body. The
aperture was I2>4 inches wide and 5^ inches deep at the
sides of the back and 6% inches at the center of the back,
averaging about 6 inches. The back of the chair was per-

610 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

fectly straight, while that of the chair represented by Pro-
fessor Seiling was bent slightly backwards, I should imagine
about ten degrees, a much more favorable condition than in
the chair Mr. Carrington used. Assuming that the light was
as the Report of M. Aksakof describes it, it would have been
exceedingly difficult to see or interpret any movements look-
ing to the result which Mr. Carrington suggests. Moreover
I darkened a room and had him repeat the performance in
my sight. It was not nearly so dark as the room which M.
Aksakof describes and I sat so as to conceal his legs from my
•view, much as a lady's dress would conceal hers, and I could
not tell that Mr. Carrington leaned forward, tho I knew as a
fact that he did so. I could see movements of his body which
were slight and which I would not have interpreted as imply-
ing that he was putting his legs through the aperture at the
back of the chair had I not known that he was actually doing
so.

All this does not prove that Madame d'Esperance actually
did this at the seance. So much will be readily admitted.
But its possibility and the fact that no account of the phe-
nomena excludes it or shows that it was considered show that
the evidential criterion of actual dematerialization was not
present, and the sceptic would remain at least in an agnostic
attitude.

It is interesting to have Professor Seiling's account of the
physical effect on Madame d'Esperance of the seance. That
and much else is in her favor, in so far as normal honesty is
concerned. But there are phenomena of abnormal psychol-
ogy which I think students of psychic research should take
into account and which might well exempt a subject from the
accusation of conscious fraud without removing the right to
entertain mechanical hypotheses which are identical with
those due to conscious fraud. To be sure, Mr. Carrington
did not mention this possibility, and it was not necessary for
the case that he should do so. But we know many psycho-
logical facts which make it possible to suppose that a per-
fectly honest person might do, in an abnormal state, acts
which would be abhorrent to the normal self. And what is
more interesting too is the fact that there may remain a par-

Book Reviews. 611

tially normal consciousness while these are being done and
apparently or actually ignorant of the real status of things.
There are cases of total or partial anaesthesia in which just
such phenomena might occur. I knew one case of total an-
aesthesia of touch while the other senses were perfectly nor-
mal. There is no reason why cases might not occur when
there might be the same " retrecissment du champs de con-
science " analogous to " retrecissment du champs visuel," in
hysterics. If such should occur, and it might well occur in
psychics, much would take place which they might honestly
disclaim. I myself have been in the borderland state be-
tween sleep and waking when I supposed that I was normally
awake looking at something, the visual field being occupied
with a perfectly clear and distinct vision of objects. But when
actually awakening I found that it was a hypnogoic illusion and
not the real objects which I had supposed I was looking at.
Here the central self-consciousness was normal, but all the
rest of the synthetic functions were either asleep or partly so.
Dr. Pierre Janet called attention to this view of such phe-
nomena in the article which we published in the February
number of the Journal of this year (Vol. I., pp. 86-87.) I^
such phenomena occur it is possible to treat cases of the kind
reported by Mr. Aksakof with more leniency, even tho we
are correct about the mechanical aspects of them as common
agencies. I do not pretend to say that Madame d'Esperance
is one of that type, but it would make ordinary suspicions un-
necessary if she did exhibit a type of phenomena which are
probably more frequent than either normal or abnormal psy-
chology now admits.

JAMES H. HYSLOP.

BOOK REVIEWS.

Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Part LIV, Vol. 21. Oc-
tober 1907. pp. 162. Robert Maclehose & Co., Glasgow.
This latest part of the Proceedings of the English Society contains several
most interesting articles. The first is by Dr. T. W. Mitchell on " The Appre-
ciation of Time by Somnembules." The author remarks that all the experi-
ments were conducted along the lines laid down in Dr. Milne Bramwell's ex-

612 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

periments, which were published some years ago in the same way. The pri-
mary object was to eliminate the suggestion which could be supposed to come
from naming the number of days for the action of post-hypnotic suggestion,
and hence a certain number of minutes was named. The assumption was that
the patient, instead of remembering the day and hour from any suggested
date or point of time, would have to calculate it and thus find the time for
action. Dr. Mitchell thinks that in his experiments there was actual counting
of the minutes involved in the suggestion, and the evidence seems to point
decidedly in that direction. But there is still needed some investigation of
the nexus between the subconscious and conscious life, and conceptions which
will explain the adjustment of the two with each other. The perplexity may
lie in the obscurity of the normal mensuration of time without artificial in-
struments. His last experiment tends to show clairvoyance, and if he had
taken this as a basis to work on he might have found a clue. To be sure,
that one experiment is worthless as evidence, taken by itself, but it suggests
the direction in which to look for something intelligible.

The second article represents experiments in telepathy by Miss Miles and
Miss Ramsden. They are most excellent and are among the most suggestive
that the Society has printed. They show the percipient obtaining information
in addition to that about which the agent was thinking at the time. This can-
not be discussed in this limited space. But we should like to see such experi-
ments carried out at greater length.

The third article is one by Miss Alice Johnson on some physical phenom-
ena witnessed by her in America. They were of the type of raps and move-
ments of physical objects. The report on them is very detailed and the dis-
cussion cautious and scientifically conservative. The conclusion is that no
asstfrance regarding independent physical phenomena was secured by the
investigation, and that more evidence is needed to establish a case.

Christian Science. By Mark Twain. Harper & Bros. 1907.
Mark Twain's sense of humor is inexhaustible. In this, his latest
book, he discusses the Christian Science movement from two points of
view — the "personal" and the "impersonal-critical." His own experi-
ences are in his inimitable style, and occupy the first pages of the
volume. The remainder of the book, — though humorous in spots, and all
in the unmistakable literary style of the author, — is nevertheless a critical
and careful study of the Christian Science creed, — its dogmas, supports,
backing, religion, and above all, its founder and head, Mrs. Mary Baker
G. Eddy. Many of the author's statements are revelations indeed, and
serve to throw a flood of light on this truly amazing religion. In the
^Tovring number of churches, in the well-organized center of operation,
in the unlimited faith and backing of this church, Mark Twain sees ar
active opponent to Christianity — so much so, indeed, that he makes the
astonishing prediction that, if things go on as they have in the past, fo:
the next twenty or so years, Christian Science will by that time be shar-
ing the world with Roman Catholicism! In this, however, he may b^
doubted. The blow that has been struck at Christian Science by tt-
recent exposures in McClurc's Magazine, as well as in the publication '
Mr. Clemens' book itself, will tend to disrupt and demolish a creed tr
has undoubtedly " shot its bolt " in the intellectual world, and is now ■-:
the rapid decline. Of course there are good points about the Christii'-
Science creed; no one who has investigated the subject in an imparr-
frame of mind would doubt that, nor does Mr. Clemens doubt it. \r-
they do accomplish marvellous cures on occasion; that no one Wf>c'
doubt either. But the rationale of all these cures should be obvious '•
anyone who is familiar with the laws of conscious and unconscious s:*
gestion — of which they arc one aspect. I need but remind the reader. *

Additional Members. 613

this connection, that Dr. A. T. and Mr. F. W. H. Myers made a careful
examination of the evidence for "miraculous" cures of any kind, but
were unable to find any. Their paper will be found in Proceedings S. P. R.,
Vol. IX., pp. 160-209, entitled "Mind Cure, Faith Cure and the Mir-
acles of Lourdes," and is a most valuable contribution of the subject.
The question of faith and mind-cures is too big a one to discuss in this
place, however. The value of Mr. Clemens' book lies in the fact that it
shows us, most vividly, at once the strength and the weakness of the
Christian Science faith; its strength lies in the fact of its financial re-
sources and dog^matic affirmations; its weakness lies in its own innate
corruption, and in the fact that, in the last analysis, it is not in accord
with any of the demands of common-sense. In this and in many other
ways Mark Twain's book is most useful, — while its style ensures a sus-
tained and lively interest from start to finish.

HEREWARD CARRINGTON.

ADDITIONAL MEMBERS.
Fellows.

Jung, Dr. C. G., Burgnolzli-Zurich, Switzerland. (Honorary
Fellow.)

Members.

Douglas, George William, Tuxedo Park, N. Y.

Stout, H. H., Peyton Chemical Co., Martinez, Cal.

Robertson, Miss Lillian, 902 Alva, Okla.

Winter, Mrs. Thomas G., 418 Groveland Ave., Minneapolis, Minn.

Associates.

Bell, Richard S., Cumberland, Md.

Deacon, Mrs. H., Tuxedo Park, N. Y.

Hill, Mrs. William W., 21 Merrimack St., Concord, N. H.

McCullough, Rev. I. H., 55 S. Crittenden St., San Jose, Cal.

Errata.

February, p. 84. — Footnote should be transferred to p. 83.
February, p. 86. — Footnote should be transferred to p. 85.
February, p. 115. — Line 28 read "The pockets of my clothes, e. g., all

slanting upwards," etc. (Correction noted in Journal, for March, p. 165.)
February, p. 119. — Footnote. Quotation marks omitted after word

" Mars," and before word " Nouvelles."

April, p. 220. — Line 37 read " sphere " for the first " spear."

June, p. 339. — Lines 19-24. Read as given on p. 357, July Journal.

July. p. 351.— Line 14 read " sot " for " not."

October, p. 485.— Last line read " Smead " for " Snead."

November, p. 526. — Line 31 read "inapplicability" for "applicability."

INDEX TO VOL. I

Small Capitals indicate author of article or signed contribution.
Titles of books reviewed or noticed are printed in italics.

Abbott, David P., Spirit slate-
writing and billet tests,
148-160, 244-254, 413-427, 513-
522

Editorial 161

Correspondence on 491-492

Abbott's, David P., Behind the
Scenes with the 'Mediums

(H. Carrington) 492

Aksakof, M., Replies to Mr. Car-

rington's criticisms of.. 605-611
Letter of Elizabeth d*Esper-

ance 606

Letter of Max Seiling.. . .606-609
Remarks of J. H. Hyslop, 609-61 1
Alexander, Hartley B., Human

Personality ...443-459, 547-564
Alexander's, Dr. H. B., Poetry

and the individual 283

American and London Societies,

The 36-37

American Institute for Psychical

Research, Editorial 162

American Institute for Scientific

Research, Objects of the.. 15-27

Nature of the 16-17

Psychopathology 17-22

Psychic Research 22-27

Endowment of the 27-28

Needs of the 28-32

Prospectus 32-35

American Society for Psychical
Research, Organization of

an I

List of members of 61-69

Additional members, 122-124, 180-
181, 236, 285, 349-350, 401-402,
493-494, 546, 612
Amnesia, Cases of (J. H. Hys-

w>P) 57-58

Apparition (Anna Stockinger)

368-369
An experimental 596-602

Apparitions (Hyslop children) 530-5^

Autosuggestion, Phenomena of
instantaneous (Miss Frank
Miller) 293-J96

B 1 A , A visual experi-
ence 55-s-

Babcock, Dr. J R, A remarkabk

mediumistic experience, 382-^

Bates's, E. Katherine, Seen and
unseen (J. H. Hyslop) 542-5^

Bennett's, Edward T., Spiritual'
ism {the physical phenom-
ena) 544

Board of Trustees, Composition

and duties of the 37-38

Book reviews : Behind the scenes
with the mediums, by David
P. Abbott (H. Carring-
ton) 4g2

Beside the new-made grave:
A correspondence; by F.

H. Turner 59-61

Dreams and their meanings;
by Horace G. Hutchinson

(H. Carrington) 174-179

The Law of suggestion; by

Stanley L. Krebs 284

Poetry and the individual;

by Dr. H. B. Alexander. . . ^l
The Psychic Riddle, by Isaac
K. Funk (H. Carrington)

The Psychology of religious
belief; by James Bissett
Pratt 547-34B

Proceedings of the English
Society for Psychical Re-
search 611-612

Christian Science; by Mark
Twain ( H . C arri ngton ) ,

612-613

La Psychotherapie dans ses
differents modes, par A.

Index to Vol. I.

615

IV. Van Renter ghem 545

Seen and Unseen, by E.

Katherine Bates (J. H.

Hyslop) 542-544

Spiritualism ( The Physical
phenomena) by Edward T.

Bennett 544

The Subconscious; by Joseph

Jastrow (J. A. Hat) . .117-121
Harrington, Helen, A dream,

489-491
Carrington^ Hereward, a col-
lective hallucination 1 15-1 16

Editorial 165

Dreams and their meanings;

by H. G. Hutchinson .. .174-I7g
On Dr. MacDougall's experi-
ments 276-283

Dr. MacDougall's reply. .346-347
Omar Khajryam and Psychi-
cal Research 351-356

The Psychic Riddle, by Isaac

K. Funk.,, 397-399

Behind the Scenes with the
Mediums, by David P. Ab-
bott 492

On the influence upon the
communicator's mind of
objects presented to the

medium 536-542

Christian Science, by Mark

Twain 612-613

Carrington, Mr. Hereward, a

member of the Council 108

Carrington's, Hereward, The
Physical Phenomena of
Spiritualism: Fraudulent
and genuine (Frank Pod-
more) 495-502

Catholic Church, The, and Psy-
chic research, Ed 394-397

Chi-wan-to-pel, a hypnagogic
drama (Miss Frank Mil-

. LER) 303-308

Clairvoyance defined 36

Clairvoyance, Apparent (J. E. B.

McCreadv) 486-489

Coincidence (J. H. Hyslop) 533

Communicating, Difficulties of

and confusion in 209-215,

222-227
Communications, Trivial charac-

ter of, complained of... 340-342

Correction, Ed 357

Correspondence, 263-283, 340-343, 370,
440-442, 491-492, 536-542, 602-605
Crookes, Sir William, State-

ment of, — Introduction to
" Notes on seances with
D. D. Home," 502-505

Data, Collection oi, Ed 329-330

Suggestions to members on
the, Ed 330-339» 523-524

Dissolution of the American

Branch 1-2

Dream, A (Helen Carrington)

489-491

Dream or apparition 533-535

Dreams, Coincidental. .261-263, 361-

363, 431-439

Dying, Visions of the (J. H.

Hyslop) 45-55

Editorials (J. H. Hyslop), 35-39, 108-

114, 161-164, 229-234, 255-260,

328-340, 357, 394-397, 427-431,

479-485, 522-527» 590

EiCHiN, John F., An unrecorded
case of premonitory warn-
ing 171-172

Endowment of the Institute 27-28

An endowment fund needed,
Ed 328-329

Esperance, Elizabeth d*, Letter in
reply to Mr. Carrington's
criticism of M. Aksakof . . . 606

Experiments with Mrs. Piper
since Dr. Richard Hodg-
son's death (James H.

Hyslop) 93-107

Further experiments relating
to Dr. Hodgson since his

death 125-148

Conclusion of experiments ;
Theories 183-228

Explanation of terms 36

Facts reported. Explanation of,

not a primary object 109

Fay performances, The (J. H.

Hyslop) 40-45

Financial, Ed 522-523

Floumoy, Th., Introduction to
some instances of subcon-
scious creative imagina-
tion 288-293

Note 302

Fraud excluded from considera-
tion 146-147

Funk's, Isaac K., The Psychic
Riddle (H. Carrington)

397-399
Future life. Correspondence on

conditions of the 340-343

" Glory to God," dream poem

(Miss Frank Miller) 296-301

6i6

Index to Vol. L

Hager, Daniel 5., An unre-
corded case of premonitory

warning 168-171

Telepathy 59I-S9S

Hallucination, A collective (H.

Carrington) 115-116, 165

Hill, J. Arthur, Review of Jo*
seph Jastrow's The Subcon-
scious 117-121

Soul and Body 403-413

Letter on Telepathy 440-442

Editorial 522

Hodgson, Dr. Richard, Corre-
spondence with Dr. J. Mac
Dougall on '* weighing Ihe
soul,".. 263-275, 270-271, 272-273
Hodgson, Dr. Richard (James H.

Hyslop) 2-15

Experiments with Mrs. Piper
since the death of (J. H.

Hyslop) 93-107

Further experiments relating

to 125-148

Conclusion of experiments

relative to 183-222

Theories 222-228

Human Personality (Hartley B.

Alexander) . . .443-459. 547-564
Hutchinson's, Horace G., Dreams
and their meanings (H.

Carrington) i74-i79

Hyslop, James Hervey, Cases of

amnesia 57-58

Coincidence 533

Dr. Mackay on the immor-
tality of the soul 459-478

Dr. Richard Hodgson 2-15

Experiments with Mrs. Piper
since Dr. Richard Hodg-
son's death 93-107

Further experiments relating
to Dr. Hodgson since his

death 125-148

Conclusion of experiments ;

Theories 183-228

The Fay performances 40-45

Identification of personality,

505-512

Needs of the Institute 28-32

Objects of the Institute 15-28

Philosophy, Psychology and

Psychical Research 371-382

Prospectus 32-35

Pseudo-clairvoy . ance 58-59

Remarks on Mr. Carring-
ton's criticism of M. Aksa-
kof 609-611

Some features in mediumistic

phenomena ^ . . . .564-589

Telepathy I73-I74, 308-327.

524-527
Treasurer's Report. .121, 23s 400,

« 545

Trustworthiness of alleged

facts 358-361

Visions of the dying. 45-55

Hyslop children, Apparitions seen

by 530-533

Imagination and psychic phenom-
ena 602-^

Immortality of the soul. Dr.
Mackay on the (J. H.

Hyslop) 459-478

Incident, An untrustworthy.. .358-360
Incidents, Society not responsible
for statements under head-
ing, 39. "4, 165, 261, 358, 43h
486, 5^ 591
Incidents: Apparent dairvoyanoe

(J. E. B. McCready) . .486-489

Apparent premonition 116

Apparition (Anna Stock-

inger) 3^369

Apparitions (Hyslop chil-
dren) 530-533

A case of premonition (C.

H. Willson) 165.168

Cases of amnesia (J. H.

Hyslop) 57-58

Coincidence (J. H. Hyslop) . 533
A collective hallucination (H.

Carrington) 115-116, 165

Dream 431-436

Dream (Helen Carring-
ton) 489-491

Dream or apparition 533-535

Dreams (coincidental).. .^1-263,

361-363
Experimental apparition . . 596-602
The Fay performances (James

H. Hyslop) 40-45

Mediumistic predictions (J.

H. Hyslop) 363-368

The muscular sense in mc-

diumship 528-529

Olfactory hallucination. . .436-439
Pseudo-clairvoyance (J. H.

Hyslop) 58-59

Telepathy (J. H. Hvslop) I73-I74
Telepathy (Daniel S. Ha-
ger) 59X-596

Trustworthiness of alleged

facts (J. H. Hyslck*).. 358-361
An unrecorded case of pre-

Index to Vol. I.

617

monitory warning (D. S.
Hag£r and J. F. Eichin)

168-173
Visions of the dying (J. H.

HYStop) 45-55

A visual experience 55-57

International Psychical Club 399

Janet, Dr. Pierre, Letter of

(translation) 73-93

Jastrow's, Joseph, The Subcon-
scious (J. A. Hill) — 117-121
Krebs'Sj Stanley L., The law of

suggestion 284

Local societies 1 1 i-i 14

McCready, J. E. B., Apparent

clairvoyance 486-489

MacDougall, Duncan, M. D.,
Hypothesis concerning soul
substance with experimental
evidence of the existence of

such substance 237-244

MacDougall, D., Correspondence
with R. Hodgson on

" weighing the soul 263-275

On Dr. MacDougairs experi-
ments (H. Carrington)

276-283
Mr. Carrington's criticism, 343-346

A correction 370

Mackay, Dr. D. S., on the im-
mortality of the soul (J.

H. Hyslop) 459-478

Materialism, The possible or
probable truth of, the prob-
lem to be investigated..iio-iii

Medium defined 148

Mediumistic experience, A re-
markable (Dr. J. F. Bab-
cock) 382-394

Mediumistic phenomena, Some
features in (James H.

Hyslop) 564-589

Mediumistic predictions 363-368

Mediumship, The muscular sense

in 528-529

Members of Society, List of 61-69

Note on 108

Additional.. 1 22- 124, 180-181, 236,
285, 349-350, 401-402, 493-494,
546, 613
Miller, Miss Frank, Some in-
stances of subconscious cre-
ative imagination 287-308

Misunderstanding, A, Ed SMS^

Moore, Rev. Hugh, exposed, Ed. 229
" Moth, The, to the Sun," hypna-
ogic poem (Miss Frank
IillEr) 301-303

Mil

Muscular sense. The, in medium-
ship 528-529

Newspaper stories, Ed 427-43^

Newton, R. Heber, Resignation
of, tendered to Board of

Trustees 37

Withdrawn 108

Nigger-talk incident 97-98, 208

Editorial 479-48o

Objects presented to the medium.
On the influence upon the
communicator's mind of
(H. Carrington) 536-542

Olfactory hallucination 436-439

Omar Khayyam and psychical re-
search (H. Carrington)

351-356

Personality, Human (Hartley

B. Alexander) 443-459»

547-564
Identification of (James H.
Hyslop) 505-512

Phenomena, Real and evidential

nature of reported 109-110

Philosophy, Psychology and Psy-
chical Research (James H.
Hyslop) 371-382

Physical Phenomena of Spirit-
ualism, The (Frank Pod-
more) 495-502

Piper, Mrs. Leonora, now in

England 38-39

Experiments with, since Dr.
R. Hodgson's death (J. H.
Hyslop) 93-107

Podmore, Frank, The Physical
Phenomena of Spiritualism
[a review] 495-502

Pratt's, James Bissett, The psy-
chology of religious belief,

Predictions, Mediumistic 363-36

Premonition, A case of (C. H.

Willson) 165-168

Premonition defined 36

Premonition, Apparent 116-117

Premonitory warning, An unre-
corded case of 168-173

Proceedings, The first number of

the, Ed 161-162

Second number, Ed 357

Proceedings of the English S.

P. R. (review) 611-612

Prospectus 32-35

Pseudo-clairvoyance (J. H. Hys-

.W)P) 58-59

Psychic research 22-27

Scientific object of, £rf... 163-164

6i8

Index to Vol I.

Nature of the problem of,

Bd 229-232

The Catholic Church and,

Ed 394-397

The supernormal in, £(/.. 480-485

Psychical research, Omar Khay-
yam and (H. Carring-
ton) 351-356

Psychopathology 17-22

Putnam, Dr. James J, resigned
from Board of Trustees of
Institute 37

Quentin, Mrs. [pseud], Experi-
ments with 127-128. 139-140

Raupert, J. Godfrey, Lecture of,

misrepresented, Bd 395-397

Recording experiences, Rules for

334-335

Records, Making oi, Bd 255-258

Of experiments, Ed 590

Replies to Mr. Carrington's crit-
icism of M. Aksakof. . .605-611

Savage, Dr. Minot J., resigned
from Board of Trustees of
Institute 37

Sea serpent's vindication. The,

Ed 232-234

Seiling, Max, Letters in reply to
. Mr. Carrington*s criticism
of M. Aksakof 606-609

Slate-writing, Spirit, and billet
tests (David P. Abbott)
148-160. 244-254, 413-427, 513-
522

Editorial 161

Correspondence on 491-492

Smead, Mrs. [pseud], Experi-
ments with 39

Society for Psychical Research,
Dissolution of the Ameri-
can Branch 1-2, 35

Soul, Dr. Mackay on the immor-
tality of the (J. H. Hys-
Lop) 459-478

Soul, Weighing the, Bd 259-260

Soul and Body (J. Arthur

Hill) 403-413

Soul substance, Hypothesis con-
cerning, together with ex-
perimental evidence of the
existence of (Duncan Mac
Dougall) 237-244

Spirit defined 148

Spirit slate- writing and billet
tests (David P. Abbott)
148-160, 244-254, 413-427, 513-
522

Editorial 161

Correspondence on 491-492

Spirits the most rational hypoth-
esis 147-148

Spiritualism. The Physical phe-
nomena of (Frank roD-

more) 495-502

Stockinger, Anna, Apparition... 369
Subconscious creative imagina-
tion, Some instances of
(Miss Frank Miller), 287-308
Introduction (Th. Flour-

nov) 288-293

Phenomena of passing sug-
gestion or of instantaneous

autosuggestion 293-296

" Glory to God," dream poem.

296-301
" The moth to the sun," hyp-
nagogic poem 301-303

Chi -wan-to-pel, a hypnagogic

drama 3P3-3o6

Remarks and explanatory

notes 306-308

Suggestion, passing. Phenomena
of, or of instsantaneous au-
tosuggestion 293-296

Suggestions to members 330-339

Supernormal, The, in psychic re-
search, Ed 480-485

Supernormal knowledge. Nature

of the problem of iio-iii

Telemnesia, nd 522

Telepathy (James H. Hyslop),

308-327
Correspondence on this ar-
ticle (J. A. Hill) 440-442

Editorial 522, 524-527

Telepathy defined 36

As an explanation 147

Cases of..... 173-174, 591-596

Terms, Explanation of 36

Treasurer's Report. .121, 235, 400, 545
Turner's, F. H., Beside the new-
made grave 59-6i

Twain's, Mark, Christian Sci-
ence (H. Carrington) .612-613
Van Renterghem's, A. IV., La
Psychotherapie dans ses

differents modes 545

Verrall, Mrs., Phenomena of, 219-222
Visions of the dying (J. H.

Hyslop) 45-55

Visual experience, A 55"S7

Whaleback, Accident on the.. . 168-173
WiLLSON, Charles Hill, A case

oif premonition 165-166

LIST OF MEMBERS! I d^^ "^ '

OF THE

AmericaD Society for Psychical Researcli

SECTION "B"

OF THE

Afflerican Institute for Scientific Research

1907

THE SOCIETY'S ROOMS

519 West 149tli St.

NEW YORK CITY

LIST OF MEMBERS

1907

Council for 1907.
Professor W. Romaine Newbold.
Professor H. Norman Gardiner.
Professor W. R. Benedict.
Dr. Weston D. Bayley.
Mr. Hereward Carrington.
Mr. William S. Crandall.
Dr. James H. Hyslop.

Secretary and Treasurer.

James H. Hyslop, Ph. D., LL. D.

Honorary Fellows.

Balfour, The Right Hon. A. J., M. P., F. R. S., 4 Carlton Gardens,
London, S. W., England.

Barrett, Prof. W. F., 6 D Vesci Terrace, Kingston, County Dub-
lin, Ireland.

Crookes, Sir William, 7 Kensington Park Gardens, London, W.,
England.

Dana, Dr. Charles L., S3 W. S3d St., New York City.

Dessoir, Prof. Max, W. Goltzstrasse, 31 Berlin, Germany.

Dumas, Dr. George, 49 Bid Saint Germain, Paris, France.

Flournoy, Prof. Th., The University, Geneva, Switzerland.

Janet, Prof. Pierre, 54 Rue de Varenne, Paris, France.

Jordan, Dr. David Starr, Stanford University, Cal.

Jung, Dr. C. G., Burgholzli-Zurich, Switzerland.

Leroy, Eugene Bernard, 51 Rue Miromesnil, Paris, France.

Lodge, Sir Oliver J., The University, Birmingham, England.

Osier, Dr. William, Oxford, England.

Peterson, Frederick, M. D., 4 West soth St., New York.

Rayleigh, Lord, Terling Place, Witham, Essex, England.

Richet, Prof. Charles, 15 Rue de L'Universite, Paris, France.

Schrenck-Notziig, Dr. Freiherr von, 2, Max Joseph Strasse, Mu-
nich, Germany.

Honorary Members.

Podmore, Frank, 6 Holly Place, Hampstead, London, N. W.,
England.

Taylor, Lieut.-Col. G. L. M., 6 College Lawn, Cheltenham, Eng-
land.

List of Members,

Fellows.

Arkell, Mrs. James, Canajoharie, N. Y.

Banning, B. R., 2434 Hillside Ave., Berkeley, Cal. .

Bishop, N. H., Crawford Road and 82d St., Cleveland, O.

Bliss, Mrs. W. H., 6 East 6sth St., New York City.

Bristol, John I. D., Metropolitan Bldg., i Madison Ave., N. Y.

Brown, Miss Ella, Canaan, Conn.

Brown, Ernest, clo Halstead & Co, 304-12 17th St., Jersey City,

N.J.
Brown, Rev. Howard N., 295 Beacon St., Boston, Mass.
Brown, Mrs. Samuel R., 2501 Forman St., Omaha, Neb.
Chadbourne, Mrs. C. M., 37 Madison Ave., New York City.
Clatworthy, T. B., 93 Chambers St., New York City.
Closson, Miss Olivia T., 1359 Columbia Road, Washington, D. C.
Coffin, Mrs. Esther L., Hillside Ave., Englewood, N. J.
Colgate, Robert, 59 William St., New York City.
Colgate, R, R., 100 William St., New York City.
Coolidge, J. T., 114 Beacon St., Boston, Mass.
Cooper, Rear Admiral P. H., Morristown, N. J.
Crandall, William S., 612 W. iisth St., New York City.
Dawson, Miles Menander, 76 William St., New York City.
Desmond, H. W., Cranford, N. J.
Draper, Mrs. Henry, 271 Madison Ave., New York.
Duff, Mrs. Grace Shaw, 87 Riverside Drive, New York City.
Finnigan, John, c|o Hotel Brazos, Houston, Tex.
Forbes, John M., Morristown, N. J.
Forrest, Prof. J. D., 30 Audubon Place, Indianapolis, Ind.
Francis, Mrs. H. H., 188 Church St., Middleton, Conn.
Frankland, Frederick William, Foxton, New Zealand.
Gage, Lyman J., Point Lomo, Cal.

Gary, Mrs. Delia B., 482 East Mound St., Columbus, Ohio.
Gillies, Mrs. George, 180 St. George St., Toronto, Canada.
Glenny, Mrs. Bryant B., 8 Otis Place, Boston, Mass.
Goadby, Arthur, 21 W. 35th St., New York City.
Hall, Prescott F., 60 State St., Boston, Mass.
Hartness, James, Springfield, Vermont.
Higgins, Charles M., 279 Ninth St., Brooklyn, N. Y.
Hillard, Miss Mary K., St. Margaret's School, Waterbury, Conn.
Hodenpyl, Anton G., 7 Wall St., New York City.
Hubbard, Walter C, 138 W. 74th St., New York City.
Hyslop, James H., 519 W. 149th St., New York City.
Judah, Noble B., 2701 Prairie Ave., Chicago, 111.
^-"Mfmann, Werner, 45 North 7th St., Philadelphia, Pa.

on. Miss Elizabeth, Hillside Ave., Englewood, N. J.

cq, Mrs. Julia R., 610 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, N. Y,

1, J. S., Nevada, Ohio.

List of Members,

Lombard!, C, c|o Dallas News, Dallas, Tex.

Marks, Arthur H., 45 Arch St., Akron, Ohio.

Mayer, G. Lewis,, 1831 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, Pa.

McConnell, Strubbe, 806 Hibernia Bldg., New Orleans, La.

Moore, Harry L., 804 State St., Erie, Pa.

Newton, Rev. R. Heber, Easthampton, Long Island.

Newton, Mrs. R. Heber, Easthampton, N. Y.

Parker, Edward W., suite 14, The Lexington, 175 Lexington Ave.,

New York City.
Peyton, W. C, Montgomery Block, San Francisco, Cal.
Philips, Mrs. Stanhope, 19 East 38th St., New York City.
Pope, Miss Theodate, Farmington, Conn.
Pray, E. E., River and Ward Sts., Hackensack, N. J.
Quinby, John W., Box 68, East Bridgewater, Mass.
Schenck, Mr. de Bevoise, New York City.
Schenck, Mrs. de Bevoise, New York City.
Smith, Charles Robinson, 34 W. 69th St., New York City.
Thompson, Albert J., Bloomington, Ind.
Van Deusen, A., 74th St. and Central Park West, N. Y.
Warner, Mrs. Henry Wolcott, 62 East 67th St., New York City.
Webb, Mrs. W. G., 40 Ave. Henri Martin, Paris, France.
Willson, Charles Hill, 104 South Ave., Mount Vernon, N. Y.
Wing, Isaac H., Bayfield, Wis.
Worthington, Mrs. Julia A. H., The Wyoming, New York City.

Members.

Abbott, David, 205 Neville Block, Omaha, Neb.

Adams, Dr. Geo. S., Westborough, Mass.

Adams, Miss Evangeline S., 402 Carnegie Hall, 57th St. and 7th

Allen, Rev. T. E., 304 East 3rd St., Jamestown, N. Y.

Ave., New York City.
American Journal of Psychology, Clark University, Worcester,

Mass.
Anderson, O. W., 512 Masonic Temple, Minneapolis, Minn.
Anderson, Dr. Frank, Med. Inspect. U. S. N., Navy Yard, Mare

Island, Cal.
Annales Des Sciences Psychiques, 6 Rue Saulnier, Paris, France.
Annals of Psychic Science, 1 10 St. Martin's Lane, London, W. C,

England.
Archives de Psychologie, The University of Geneva, Geneva,
Arkell, Bartlett, 37 West nth St., New York City.
Armistead, George, Maryland Club, Baltimore, Md.

Switzerland.
Bacon, Mrs. Marshall L., Tarrytown, New York.
Bailey, Joseph T., P. O. Box 266, Philadelphia, Pa.
Banner of Light, 17 Fayette St., Cambridge, Mass.

List of Members.

Barnes, W. H., Ventura, Cal.

Bayley, Dr. Weston D., Cor. 15th and Poplar Sts., Philadelphia,

Pa.
Beadles, Dr. E. P., Danville, Vir.

Beaman, Middleton G., 211, The Cordova, Washington, D. C.
Bemis, J. W., 704 Equitable Bldg., St. Louis, Mo.
Benedict, Prof. W. R., 3461 Brookline Ave., Clifton, Cincinnati, O.
Bigler, Mrs. W. H., 235 W. 76th St., New York City.
Blair, Miss Mary, cjo Monroe & Co., 7 Rue Scribe, Paris, France.
Blodgett, Henry W., 506 Equitable Bldg., St. Louis, Mo.
Bogle, Charles L., 133 West 104th St., New York City.
Bourne, Mrs. Charles Griswald, 3 East 48th St., New York City.
Bouton, Mrs. John B., 21 Craigie St., Cambridge, Mass.
Boyd, Peter, North American Bldg., Room 1319, Philadelphia, Pa.
Brittain, Nathaniel J., Pacific Union Club, San Francisco, Cal.
Broomell, George D., 496 W. Monroe St., Chicago, 111.
Brown, W. H., 21 Strong Place, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Bryan, C. H., Mt. Sterling, Ky.
Bulletin de la Societe d'Etudes Psychicques, 41 Rue de Rome,

Marseilles, France.
Bunnell, James S., 2727 Dwight Way, Berkeley, Cal.
Caldwell, W. H., 306 Western Union Bldg., Chicago, 111.
Cameron, Margaret A., 223 West 83rd St., New York.
Carpenter, Miss Alice C., i Perrin Road, Brookline, Mass.
Carpenter, E. H., Castine, Maine.

Carrington, Hereward, 511 West 147th S.t., New York City.
Carson, Dr. M. R., 121 N. Main St., Canandaigua, N. Y.
Carter, Dr. C. C, 144 W. Chestnut St., Lancaster, O.
Cassatt, Miss Mary, 10 Rue de Marignais, Paris, France.
Cheney, Judge Wm. A., 1046 South Hill St., Los Angeles, Cal.
Clark, W. E., Parker, South Dakota.
Clawson, George W., c|o Yukon Basin Gold Dredging Co., Ltd.,

Kansas City, Mo.
Cleaveland, Rev. Willis M., Millinocket, Maine.
Colby, Howard A., The University Club, New York City.
Cole, Dr. Hills, 1748 Broadway, New York City.
Collier, W. A. Jr., c|o Barron Collier, Flat Iron Bldg., N. Y.
Coombs, Mrs. Gertrude P., 18 East 58th St., New York City.
Cosby. Major Spencer, War Department, Washington, D. C.
Costa, Jose, 1926 Pine St., San Francisco, Cal.

m*an, James J., P. O. Box 456, Colorado Springs, Col.
mdall, Bruce V., Kenilworth, 111.

chton-Clarke W. H., 321 West 79th St., New York City.
rneti. Dr. A. F., 173 E. Lincoln Ave., Mount Vernon, N. Y.
irtis. Wm. Edmond, 27 West 47th St., New York City,
-iaiky, Judge Abram H., 16 Court St., Brooklyn, N. Y.

List of MetPtbers.

Dangerfield, James, 307 West 70th St., New York City.

Danmar, William, 5 McAuley Place, Jamaica, L. I., N. Y.

Davis, Mrs. Henry C, 1822 Pine St., Philadelphia, Pa.

Dawson, Hon. Wm. M. O., Charleston, W. Va.

Dayton, Mrs. Elizabeth, South Kaukauna, Wis.

Derby, Dr. Hasket, 182 Marlborough St., Boston, Mass.

Derby, Lieut.-Col. Geo. McC, 1015 Carrollton Ave., New Orleans,

La.
Dodge, Ernest G., 448 Fifth St., Brooklyn, N. Y.
Donaldson, James W., Ellenville, New York.
Dorr, G. B., 18 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, Mass.
Douglas, George William, Tuxedo Park, N. Y.
Douglass, George L., 184 La Salle St., Chicago, 111.
Dowson, Mary E., Merry Hall, Ashstead, Surrey, England.
DriscoU, Pres. James F., St. Joseph's Seminary, Yonkers, N. Y.
Duggin, Mrs. Charles, 25 East 38th St., New York City.
Eastman, Dr. B. L., 613 New Ridge Building, Kansas City, Mo.
Edson, Charles F., 050 West 20th St., Los Angeles, Cal.
Edwards, Mrs. Hoffman, Weston, W. Va.
Emmanuel Church, Boston, Mass.
Ensign, C. A., 503 Mahoning Ave., Youngstown, O.
Erickson, L. O., 663 Boulevard Loop, Highland Park, Weehaw-

ken, N. J.
Esty, William, 8^ Elm St., Worchester, Mass.
Farrand, H. A., Pleasantville, N. Y.
First Spiritual Church, 215 Milton Ave., Baltimore, Md.
Fishburn, Rev. W. H., D. D., 519 Linden St., Camden, N. J.
Fisher, Irving, 460 Prospect St., New Haven, Conn.
Fisher, Wm. King, 511 West I52d St., New York.
Fletcher, Mrs. D. U., 240 West Church St., Jacksonville, Fla.
Florence, Charles S., Asotin, Wash.
Fogle, Mrs. H. C, 925 Cleveland Ave., Canton, O.
Foote, George W., 34 Bull St., Newport, R. I.
Ford, Charles T., Central Valley, N. Y.
Fortune, William, 154 Woodruff Ave., Indianapolis, Ind.
Francis, J. R., 40 Loomis St., Chicago, 111.
Funk, Isaac K., 195 Washington Park, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Gammel, H. P. N., El Paso, Texas.
Gardiner, J. H., 18 Grays Hall, Cambridge, Mass.
Gardiner, Prof. H. Norman, 23 Crafts Ave., Northampton, Mass.
Garvin, M. T., Lancaster, Penna.
Gifford, William A., St. Louis Mercantile Library Ass'n, St.

Louis, Mo.
Gildersleeve, W. M., Central Valley, N. Y.
Gilmour, W. Howard, 763 Broad St., Newark, N. J.
Goldthwait, F. H., Springfield, Mass.

8 List of Members,

Goodfellow, Miss Florence H., Murray Hill, N. J.

Gray, Henry G., i6i Madison Ave., New York City.

Green, Mrs. W. F., 25 First Ave., Mount Vernon, N. Y.

Greenwood, Mrs. M. B., 1724 Eighth Ave., W., Spokane, Wash.

Groot, Miss Ellen S., Murray Hill Hotel, New York City.

Guthrie, Dr. L. V., West Virginia Asylum, Huntington, W. Va,

Hager, Dr. Daniel S., 181 W. Madison St., Chicago, 111.

Hanson, H. P., Box 39 R. F. D., Route 5, Harlan, Iowa.

Harbinger of Light*, Melbourne, Australia.

Harman, J. M., Millville, Penna.

Hartshorne, Charles H., Montclair, N. J.

Hartshorne, Miss Cornelia, Milton, Mass.

Hatch, Wm. M., Union City, Mich.

Haubens, Henry, 3509 Hawthorne Ave., Omaha, Neb.

Hauenstein, J. F., Lima, O.

Hauxhurst, Mrs. W., c|o W. Hauxhurst, Calumet Club, New
York City.

Hawley, C. A., D. D. S., 206 E. State St., Columbus, O.

Haynes, Henry W., 239 Beacon St., Boston, Mass. |

Heald, Pusey, M. D., 409 Washington St., Wilmington, Del.

Highbee, Col. G. H., Burlington Savings Bank, Burlington, Iowa. |

Hill, John Arthur, Wensley Bank, Thornton, Bradford, Eng. 1

Hillis, Rev. Newell D wight, 31 Grace Court, Brooklyn, N. Y. j

Hixon, Mrs. Ellen J., Lacrosse, Wis. I

Holman, E. Elizabeth, 1028 Spruce St., Philadelphia, Pa. '

Hopkins, Mrs. Dunlap, 31 East 30th St., New York City.

Howard, Charles A., Aberdeen, South Dakota.

Hughes, George T., Watchung, N. J.

Hunt, A. M., Peyton Chemical Co., Montgomery Block, San Fran-
cisco, Cal.

Hunter, George W., St. Louis, Mo.

Huntington, Miss Margaret, 172 Coeur d' Alene St., Spokane,
Wash.

Hyde, Austin J., Box 98, Rumford Falls, Me.

International Journal of Ethics, 1415 Locust St., Philadelphia, Pa.

Jackson, Francis W., 125 South Grove St., East Orange, N. J.

James, Prof. Wm., 95 Irving St., Cambridge, Mass.

Jameson, David, Citizens National Bank, New Castle, Pa.

Johnson, B. L., 607 Main St., Lacrosse, Wis.

Johnson, G. W., Lawrence Saving & Trust Co., New Castle, Pa.

Jones, Charles N., Equitable BIdg., 120 Broadway, N. Y.

Jones, Henrietta O., The Sevilla, 117 W. 58th St., New York.

Jones, J. B., Asotin, Wash.

Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 194 Boyston St., Boston, Mass.

Journal of Mental Pathology, 28 West 126th St., New York City.

List of Members,

Journal of Philosophy and Psychology, and Scientific Methods,

Sub Station 84, New York City.
Keeler Charles, 2727 Dwight Way, Berkeley, Cal.
Kimball, Miss Hannah P., 350 Otis St., West Newton, Mass.
King, Dr. John S., Elliott House, Cor. Church and Shutter Sts.,

Toronto, Canada.
Krebs, Rev. Stanley L., 845 Hinman Ave., Evanston, 111.
Larkin, Charles H., 137 Hodge Ave., Buffalo, N. Y.
Larkin, John D. Jr., c]o Larkin Co., Buffalo, N. Y.
Lathbury, Rev. Albert A., East Norwich, L. L, N. Y.
Lauritzen, Severin, Holte, Denmark.
Ledyard, Mrs. R. F. H., Cazenovia, N. Y.
Leighton, Mrs. George D., Dublin, N. H.
Levere, Mrs. Rose, The Ansonia, 73d and Broadway, New York

City.
Lewis, David J., Cumberland, Md.
L'Heureux, L., Reserve, La.
Library, Free Public, Worcester, Mass.
Light, no St. Martin's Lane, London, England.
Literary Digest, 44-60 East 23d St., New York City.
Lloyd, Judge Frank T., Camden, N. J.

Long, Prof. Thomas A., 355 North Holbrook St., Danville, Va.
Lowrie, W. J., Central Aguirre, Porto Rico.
Luscomb, Mrs. H. L., 14 Ashforth St., Allston, Mass.
Lyon, Rev. Yale, Hoosac, N. Y.

Macaulay, Mrs. John, Mt. Kisco, Westchester Co., New York.
MacDougall, Duncan, M. D., 131 Main St., Haverhill, Mass.
Madden, W. J., 220 Garfield Place, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Marquis, Rev. J. A., Beaver, Pa.
Marrs, Dr. M. C, Caro, Texas.
May, Mrs. Alice, 15 Decatur St., Brooklyn, N. Y.
Mayne, Earl H., 139 Bay 17th St., Brooklyn, N. Y.
McBeath, J. D., 223 Sawin Hill Ave., Dorchester, Mass.
McChesney, John T., Everett, State of Washington.
McDonald, Dr. Ellece, 13 West 86th St., New York.
McGehee, L. P., Chapel Hill N. C.
McLean, Mrs. C, " Wilcox,'' Aiken, N. C.
Means, Miss Evelyn B., 104 Woodfin St., Ashville, N. C.
Meredith, Mrs. C. M. C., Cedarhurst, Long Island, N. Y.
Metcalf, Mrs. George P., 62 South Dale St., St. Paul, Minn.
Meyer, I., 2028 N. Park Ave., Philadelphia, Pa.
Middleton, A. D., 127 West 92d St., New York City.
Miller, Alex. McVeigh, Alderson, W. Va.
Mills, Walter Thomas, 4529 12th Ave., N. E., Seattle, Wash.
Minneapolis Athenaeum, Minneapolis, Minn.
Morris, Edward L., P. O. Station 3, Norwich, Conn.

10 List of Members,

Myers, Prof. Phillip Van Ness, College Hill, O.

Newbold, Prof. William R., c|o Brown, Shipley & Co., 123 Pall
Mall, London, S. W., England.

Newell, Mrs. John E., West Mentor, O.

Noyes, George W., Kenwood, Madison Co., N. Y.

Occult Review, 164 Aldersgate St., London, E. C, Eng.

Odell, Louis, 2955 Rodriquez Pena, Buenos Ayres, Argentine Re-
public.

Open Court and Monist, 1322 Wabash Ave., Chicago, 111.

Overton, Mrs. W. S., 560 Green Ave., Brooklyn, N. Y.

Ozanne, Charles E., 1952 E. loist St., Cleveland, O.

Parks, Daniel E., c|o Square Deal Mining Co., Cherry P. O., Ari-
zona.

Patterson, J: R,. Peerless Portland Cement Co., Union City, Mich.

Peckham, Orville, First National Bank, Chicago, 111.

Peebles, Dr. J. M., c|o U. S. Consul, Calcutta, India.

Peirce, Mrs. Alice W., c|o Brown, Shipley & Co., 123 Pall Mall,
London, S. W., England.

Perkins, George W., 110 Soutr loth Ave., Mount Vernon, N. Y.

Perkins, Sidney B., 142 Meigs St., Rochester, N. Y.

Perry, Albion A., 5 Foster St., Somerville, Mass.

Perry, Edward Baxter, Camden, Maine.

Perry, Edward W., 159 Nassau St., New York City.

Phelan, Thomas A., 107 West 76th St., New York City.

Philipse, Miss Margaret G., 119 E. 21st St., New York City.

Phillips, Mrs. John C, 299 Berkeley Square, Boston, Mass.

Pinchot, Gifford, 161 5 Rhode Island Ave., Washington, D. C.

Plumb, Max A., c|o Cal. School of Mechanical Arts, i6th and
Utah Sts., San Francisco, Cal.

Polk, Paul M., S. Washington St., Vicksburg, Miss.

Pope, Dr. Carlyle, no Euclid Ave., Cleveland, Ohio.

Post, Mrs. William, Buckhannon, W. Va.

Potter, Mrs. H. A., 95 Harrison St., East Orange, N. J.

Powell, Mrs. H. M., 105 Hamilton Ave., Columbus, O.

Progressive Thinker, 40 Loomis St., Chicago, 111.

Psychophysisches Laboratorium, Joh. Verhulststraat 153, Amster-
dam, Holland.

Putnam, Dr. James, 106 Marlborough St., Boston, Mass.

Putnam, Miss Irene, Bennington, Vt.

Quincy, Josiah Phillips, 82 Charles St., Boston, Mass.

Ralph, Dr. B. B., 218 Rialto Bldg., Kansas City, Mo.

Ramsdell, J. A. P., Newburgh, N. Y.

Rice, Mrs. Ellen F., c|o L. W. Oakes, Bradford, Pa.

Richardson, M. T., 27 Park Place, N. Y.

Robbins, Miss Anne Manning, 91 Newbury St., Boston, Mass.

Robertson, Miss Lillian, 902, Alva, Okla.

List of Members. 11

Roe, A. N., Branchville, New Jersey.

Ryan, Curran Thomas, 302 Third St., Wausau, Wis.

Satterlee, F. L., M. D., Ph. D., 6 West 56th St., New York City.

Satterlee, Mrs. E. R., 60 E. 78th St., New York.

Sawin, Luther R., Mt. Kisco Laboratory, Mt. Kisco, N. Y.

Schenck, Dr. P. L., 95 Sixth Ave., Brooklyn, N. Y.

Scott, Henry P., 902 Market St., Wilmington, Del.

Scott, Mrs. William C, Ardmore, Pa.

Scott, W. A., 99 Notredame St., Montreal, Canada.

Seewald, Henry, clo Clinton H. Blake, Braydon St., Englewood,
N.J.

Sharp, Mrs. Kate, Dresdner Bank, Prager Strasse, Dresden, Ger-
many.

ShattucK, George H., Medina, N. Y.

Sherwood, Mrs. Warner, 465 West 157th St., New York City.

Siegel, Mrs. Henry, 26 East 82d St., New York City.

Smith, Elbert E., Record Bldg., Kansas City, Mo.

Smith, Mrs. Olive Cole, 212 East 46th St., Chicago, 111.

Smith, Wilbur L.. D. O., Loan & Trust Bldg., Washington, D. C.

Smith, William, 600 Castle Street, Geneva, N. Y.

Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D. C.

Society for Psychical Research, 20 Hanover Square, London,
W., Eng.

Solovovo, Count Perovsky Petrovo, 24 Sergievskaia, St. Peters-
burg, Russia.

Snow, C. A., 1812 Newton St., Washington, D. C.

Spiers, Charles E., 23 Murray St., New York City.

Steele, Mrs. Esther B., 352 W. Clinton St., Elmira, N. Y.

Stokes, Dr. Henry M., Bureau of Standards, Washington, D. C.

Stout, H. H., Peyton Chemical Co., Martinez, Cal.

Street, Ida M., 308 Ogden Ave., Milwaukee, Wis.

Strickler, Dr. O. C, New Ulm, Minn.

Stuyvesant, Miss Elizabeth K., Tranquillity Farms, AllamuchV,
N.J.

Sullivan, Harry C, Alpena, Mich.

Swinburne, Elizabeth H., 115 Pelham St., Newport, R. I.

Taylor, Mrs. J. B., Watertown, N. Y.

Taylor, Mrs. Courtlandt, 226 W. 70th St., New York City.

Taylor, W. G. L., 435 North 2Sth St., Lincoln, Neb.

Thacher, George A., 465 East Ash St., Portland, Ore.

The Two Worlds, 18 Corporation St., Manchester, England.

Thomas, Miss Edith M.,West New Brighton, Staten Island, N.Y.

Thompson, Robert J., c|o U. S. Consul, Hanover, Germany.

Thompson, Mrs. G. W., Connellsville, Penna.

Thompson, Rev. G. Tabor, 518 Spruce St., Philadelphia, Pa.

Toole, John R, Bonner, Montana.

Townsend, John R., P. O. Box 307, Colorado Springs, Col.

12 List of Members.

Trimble, R. T., New Vienna, Ohio.

Trowbridge, Mrs. Elizabeth D., i8 Huntington Ave., Boston,

Turner, Herbert B., c|o Small, Maynard & Co., 15 Beacon St.,

Boston, Mass.
Tuttle, James H., Croton-on-Hudson, N. Y.
Tyler, Mrs. Moses Coit, University Place, Ithaca, N. Y.
Tyson, Samuel T., King of Prussia, Pa.

Mass.
Van Deren, H. S., Nashville, Tenn.

Van Norden, Rev. Charles, D. D., LL. D., East Auburn, Cal.
Van Renterghem, Prof. A. W., i Van Breestraat, Amsterdam,

Holland.
Vedder, Frank W., 64 Bryant St., N. W., Washington, D. C.
Wadley, Mrs. H. G., 265 Prospect Ave., Mount Vernon, N. Y.
Waerndorfer, August, 23 Elizabeth St., Baden, Wien, Austria.
Walker, Miss Florence, 70 Gore St., Montclair, N. J.
Wallace, Henry L., P. O. Box 46, Indianapolis, Ind.
Wallis, Lee N., Anadarko, Okla.

Watrous, Mrs. Harry, 352 Lexington Ave., New York City.
Wendell, Arthur R., 412 West 12th St., New York City.
Wesson, David, iii S. Mountain Ave., Montclair, N. J.
Westcott, Mrs. Clarence L., P. O. Box 65, Scarborough-on-Hud-

son, N. Y.
Wheatley, George W., c|o Messrs. Grindley Co., 54 Parliament

St., Westminster, London, S. W., England.
White, Charles H,, Center Sandwich, N. H.
White, J. A., 257 Lincoln Ave., Youngstown, Ohio.
White, John B., Long Building, Kansas City, Mo.
Whitehead, Ralph Radcliffe, Woodstock, Ulster Co., N. Y.
Whittemore, Mrs. Julia S., Naugatuk, Conn.
Wilcox, Franklin A., 933 Madison Ave., New York City.
Williams, Charles W., Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio.
Williams, Major C. C, Bethlehem Steel Co.. South Bethlehem, Pa.
Wilson, Floyd B., loi West 8sth St., New York City.
Wilson, Mrs. Adela C, 161 West 130th St., New York City.
Winslow, Dr. Albert L., 341 North Holbrook St., Danville. Va.
Winter, Mrs. Thomas G., 418 Groveland Ave., Minneapolis, Minn.
Wood, Mrs. C. R., 440 West End Ave., New York City.

Associates.

Alexander, Hartley B., 384 St. James Ave., Springfield, Mass.

Akroyd, Dr. S. A., cor. Princess & Bagot Sts., Kingston, On-
tario, Canada.

Allen, C. S.. Burr Block, Lincoln, Neb.

"" ndrews. Miss G. I. S., West Somers, West Chester Co., N. Y.
'rews, Mrs. Velzora, Quincey, Mass.

List of Members. 13

Atwater, Horace, Norfolk, N. Y.

Babcock, Dr. J. F., Exchange Hotel, Bangor, Maine.

Bailey, Caroline F., Box 582, Camden, Oneida Co., N. Y,

Ballard, Mrs. Gay ton, 31 Jefferson Ave., Brooklyn, N. Y.

Barbour, Miss Hannah M., Wyoming, R. I.

Barker, Mrs. Clarence F., 3942 Ellis Ave., Chicago, 111.

Barnhart, Mrs. C. L., 5417 Bartmer St., St. Louis, Mo.

Bartlett, George C, Tolland, Conn.

Batcheller, Mrs. Tryposa Bates, Aberdeen Hall, North Brook-
field, Mass.

Bates, Dr. C. B., 12 Hawthorne St., Cambridge, Mass.

Beckwith, E. D., c|o First National Bank, Utica, N. Y.

Beebe, George M., Ellenville, Ulster Co., N. Y.

Bell, Richard S., Cumberland, Md.

Benjamin, Mrs. Charles A., 14 Lynde St., Salem, Mass. Summer
address, Ossining, N. Y.

Bennett, Aubrey, 99 Water St., New York City.

Bennett, Edward T., The Rock, Port Isaac, Cornwall, Eng.

Bennett, S. B., Box 16, Pittston, Pa.

Berryhill, Mrs, James G., iioi Pleasant St., Des Moines, Iowa.

Berryhill, Virginia J., iioi Pleasant St., Des Moines, Iowa.

Bigley, M., P. O. Box 280, Joplin, Mo. •

Billingsley, L. W., Billingsley Block, Lincoln, Neb.

Blome, Frederick C., 27 Grand River Ave., Detroit, Mich.

Blydenburg, Miss Florence E., 122 Park Place, Brooklyn, N. Y.

Booth, Charles E., National Arts Club, New York.

Borton, Mrs. F. S., Box 56, Puebla, Mexico.

Bostock, Miss Lillian D., 22 Pierrepont St., Brooklyn, N. Y.

Bozzano, Prof. Ernesto; Salita Emanuele Cavallo, N. 92, Genoa,
Italy.

Bradley, Abby A., Hingham, Mass.

Brainard, Daniel W., Grinnell, Iowa.

Brewster, E. T., Andover, Mass.

Brooks, Geo. L., 903 W. Copper Ave., Albuquerque, New Mex.

Brown, Charles Carroll, 2247 N. Penna. St:, Indianapolis, Ind.

Brown, Mrs. William Reynolds, 79 Park Ave., New York City.

Brundage, J. M., Andover, N. Y.

Buffet, Edward P., 804 Bergen Ave., Jersey City, N. J.

Bull, Dr. Titus, 509 West 149th St., New York.

Bump, J. C, 24 Grand St., White Plains, N. Y.

Burr, Austin H., Richmond, Virginia.

Burr, Henry A., Wilmington, N. C.

Buswell, Dr. Arthur T., Barton, Vermont.

Butler, Mrs. Hermon B., Winnetka, 111.

Card, H. St. J., Augusta, Ga.

Carnahan, Dr. A. B., Oldtown, Greenup Co., Ky.

14 List of Members.

Carpenter, Harriet E., i6 Kennard Road, Brookline, Mass.

Carpenter, Mrs. Esther, 825 Madison Ave., Helena, Montana.

Carpenter, Prof. G. R., Columbia University, New York.

Carr, Mrs. Lucian, 163 Brattle St., Cambridge, Mass.

Carr, W. K., 1403 H St., N. W., Washington, D. C.

Centeno, Mrs., 25 Hyde Park Gate, London, S. W., England.

Chanler, John Armstrong, Merry Mills, Cobham, Va.

Chapman, Miss M. E., 290 Pearl St., Cleveland, Ohio.

Cionglinski, Francois, Vinnitza, Province of Podol, Russia.

Clapp, Mrs. Emma A., 3941 Ellis Ave., Chicago, 111.

Clark, Mrs. Rebecca S., Norridgewock, Maine.

Clarke, Mrs. Olive Rand, Warner, N. H.

Clemens, William W., Marion, 111.

Clifford, Mrs. Nellie Cabot, 18 Tremont St., Boston, Mass.

Cline, May, Harmony, Warraen Co., N. J.

Clinton, De Witt, City Treasurer, 22 City Hall, Worcester, Mass.

Coates, Truman, M. D., Oxford, Pa.

Cole, E. C, 4730 Greenwood Ave., Chicago, 111.

Cole, Fremont, i Madison Ave., New York City.

Cole, Irving W., 200 Lancaster Ave., Buffalo, N. Y.

Coleman, Dr. H. L., Box 29, Farragut, Iowa.

Collier's Weekly, 416 West 13th St., New York City.

Colt, Mrs. James B., Geneseo, Livingstone Co., N. Y.

Cox, J. Cromwell, 281 Lanier Ave., East Ottawa, Canada.

Cox, Mrs. John Watson, 1 1 East 38th St., New York City.

Corbin, G. C, 176 S. Main St., Danville, Va.

Crandall, Dr. Flovd M., 113 West 95th St., New York City.

Crawford, Mrs. Frank, 506 South 27th St., Omaha, Neb.

Crowell, Mrs. J. Hedges, 1044 Fifth Ave., New York City.

Curtis, Prof. Mattoon M., 43 Adelbert Ave., Cleveland, Ohio.

Gushing, Miss Eleanor P., 76 Elm Ave., Northampton, Mass.

Dale, Alan, no St. Nicholas Ave., New York City.

Dallas, Miss Helen A., " Innisfail " Cross Roads, Hampstead,

London, N. W., England.
Davidson, Rev. John M., Xenia, Ohio.
Davis, John W., Atty.-at-Law, Clarksburg, W. Va.
Davis, Warren J., Marinette, Wis.
Deacon, Mrs. H., Tuxedo Park, N. Y.
Dearing, W. S., Box 417, Orange, Cal.
Densmore, Emmet, M. D., Hotel Astor, New York City.
Dickey, E. T., Room 4, Lombard Building, Indianapolis, Indiana.
Dillhoff, Mrs. Amy C, 823 Jefferson Ave., Brooklyn, N. Y.
'^ougan, Miss Rose, 1472 Pearl St., Denver, Colo.

ake, Mrs. A. J., Auburndale, Mass.

ger, George R., 49 Seminary Ave., Auburndale, Mass.

.munds. Miss Lucy, Wood River Junction, R. 1.

List of MetPtbers. 15

Edwards, Miss Katharine, Box 78, Liberty, N. Y.

Emerson, W. H., City Treasurer's Office, Brockton, Mass,

Errain, Charlotte, 20 N. i6th St., East Orange, N. J.

Ettlich, Rev. Carl G. H., Laurel, Pa.

Evans, Mrs. W. G., 13 10 S. 14th St., Denver, Col.

Evans, Thomas R., Le Sueur, Minn.

Faville, Rev. Henry, 919 Main St., Lacrosse, Wis.

Field, Mrs. Hattie M., 17 High St., Clinton, Mass.

Finley, G. I., Kiona, Wash.

Flippin, J. J., 121 West Main St., Danville, Vir.

Folte, G. J., 1034 Myrtle St., Oakland, Cal.

Forfar, Miss A. W., The Majestic, Euclid St., Washington, D. C.

Forrest, J. D., 30 Audubon Place, Indianapolis, Ind.

Franklin Institute, The, 13-17 South 7th St., Philadelphia, Pa.

Franklin, Mrs. A. R., 2209 Nebraska Ave., Tampa, Fla.

Friedlander, Mrs. Rebecca, The Belleclaire, Broadway and 77th

St., New York.
Friendlich, F., 239 West 141st St., New York City.
Frost, H. Louise, Lincoln St., Waltham, Mass.
Gale, Edward Courtland, 59 First St., Troy, N. Y.
Gane, Miss Sarah F., c|o Monroe & Co., 7 Rue Scribe, Paris,

France.
Garriott, Prof. E. B., 1308 Howard St., Washington, D. C.
Gelston, Rev. H. W., 1 13 Allan Boulevard, Kalamazoo, Mich.
Gibbs, Mrs. Ellen, 2426 Virginia St., Berkeley, Cal.
Goddard, Morrill, 2 Duane St., New York.
Goodnow, Henry R., 95 Riverside Drive, N. Y.
Gomery, E. Percy, Richmond, Province of Quebec, Canada.
Gordon, Henry R., c|o Ladd & Wood, 7 Wall St., New York City.
Gower, Dr. J. H., 609 Mack Block, Denver, Col.
Green, O. T., Thousand Island Park, N. Y.
Greenwood, Mrs. I. W., Farmington, Maine.
Griffin, Mrs. Josephine, Mounts Crossing, Lakewood, N. J.
Griffing, Mrs. Jane, 1729 Amsterdam Ave., New York City.
Gunn, Franklin F., Glens Falls, N. Y.
Hackley Public Library, Muskegon, Mich.
Hall, Ira C, Interlaken, Seneca County, N. Y.
Hall, Mrs. Willard P., 2615 Forest Ave., Kansas City, Mo.
Handrich, Hermann, 941 Green ave., Brooklyn, N. Y.
Harnly, Dr. H. J., McPherson, Kansas.
Harris, Robert L., 00 Lenox Ave., New York City.
Hart, Charles E., c|o Cleveland Varnish Co., Cleveland, O.
Hastings, Thomas J., i Wauchusett St., Worcester, Mass.
Hatfield. S. P., 838 Bedford Ave., Brooklyn, N. Y.

Hayes, Dr. Charles H., Chelsea Square, New York.
Heritage, L. T., Emporia, Kansas.

16 List of Members,

Hild, Madame Amelie, 401 Charles Block, Denver, Col.

Hill, Mrs. William W., 21 Merrimack St., Concord, N. H.

Hinrichs, G. H., 19 Peterson Block, Davenport, Iowa.

Hobson, Arthur E., Meriden, Conn.

Hoch, Herman E., 225 Elm St., Lancaster, Pa.

Hoegelsberger, Mrs. Nora, 1305 Q. St., Washington, D. C.

Hoffman, Prof. F. S., Union College, Schenectady, N. Y.

Hoyt, A. W., 31 16 Lyndale Ave., So., Minneapolis, Minn.

Hubbell, G. G., S. W. Cor. Hudson & Floral Aves., Norwood, O.

Hughes, James T., Beauchamp Place, New Rochelle, N. Y.

Humiston, W. H., 228 West 114th St., New York City.

Hunt, Mrs. W. H., Hampshire Arms, Minneapolis, Minn.

Hutcheson, Dr. R. W., Rockville Centre, Nassau Co., N. Y.

Johnson, Mrs. Arthur M., Corcoran Manor, Mt. Vernon, N. Y.

Johnson, Samuel, c|o C. F. Hovey & Co., 33 Summer St., Bos-
ton, Mass.

Joline, Mrs. Adrian H., The Dakotah, 72d St. & Central Park
West, N. Y.

Jones, Edward F., Bingham ton, N. Y.

Jones, Mrs. Jennie F., Martinez, Contra Costa County, Cal.

Judd, Mrs. Sylvester D., Tangerine, Florida.

Keifer, Mrs. Daphne, (West) Lafayette, Ind.

Kendall, Mrs. Frederick W., Hamburg, N. Y.

Keyser, Miss Annie T., 58 Jay St., Albany, N. Y.

Kirkwood, W. P., 1625 Wesley St., St. Paul, Minn.

Klakring, Mrs. Emma, 1137 New Jersey Ave., Washington, D. C.

Kleberg, Rudolph, Yorktown, Texas.

Klee, Charles W., 3224 R St., N. W., Washington, D. C.

Koenig, Mme. Fidele, 69 Monmouth St., Long^ood, Mass.

Kohnstamm, Emil V., Hotel Endicott, Columbus Ave. and 81st
St., New York City.

'Knowles, Hiram, Missoula, Mont.

Knowlton, A. C, Haddon Heights, N. J.

Krebs, G. W. C, Perryville, Md.

Lay, Mrs. H. L., 131 West Third St., Oil City, Penna.

Lee, Blewett, 1700 Prairie Ave., Chicago, 111.

Librarian, City Library Association, Springfield, Mass.

Lindsey, John, Milton, Mass.

Luce, E. Ombra, via Cappuccini, 18, Milano, Italy.

Lukens, Dr. Anna, 485 Central Park West, New York City.

Lundteigen, A., Union City, Mich.

Lutz, R. R., San Juan, Porto Rico.

Macaulay, Mrs. U. B. T., 4288 Western Ave., Montreal, Canada.

MacLean, John, 98 St. Mathew St., Montreal, Canada.

"^'""^ ennan, Colin, Concordia, 125, Havana, Cuba.

Mrs. Frances A. W., Box 208 Audenried, Pa.

List of Members, 17

Madocks, Major H. J., Sydney, Nova Scotia.

Magazine of Mysteries, 22 William St., New York City.

Mangin, Marcel, 102 Rue Erlanger, Paris, France,

Mankell, C. G., 63 Linwood Ave., Buffalo, N. Y.

Mann, George, 134 Peel St., Montreal, Canada.

Mann, Mrs. Helen C. V., Grove Point, Great Neck, Long Is-
land, N. Y.

Mansfield, Mrs. Richard, Seven Acres, New London, Conn.

Martin, Mrs. E. H., 29 Lake View Park, Rochester, N. Y.

Matthias, W. W., Walden, N. Y.

Maynard, Laurens, 108 Mt. Vernon St., Dedham, Mass.

McCain, George Nox, 4008 Pine St., Philadelphia, Pa.

McCollough, Rev. I. H., 55 S. Crittenden St., San Jose, Cal.

McComb, Mrs. James, Port Richmond, N. Y.

McCracken, John, 231 Pine St., Portland, Ore.

McCurdy, Prof. J. F., 72 Spadina Road, Toronto, Canada.

Mcintosh, Herbert, 9 Harvard Ave., Allston, Mass.

Medico Legal Journal, 39 Broadway, New York City.

Merriam, J. S., 41 Liberty St., New York.

Merwin, A. G., 668 Hancock St., Brooklyn, N. Y.

Metcalf, Mrs. George A., The Aberdeen, St. Paul, Minn.

Miles, Franklin, Fort Myers, Florida.

Miller, H. A., Superior, Wis.

Minassian, Philip, 1321 Brandywine St., Philadelphia, Pa.

Mitchell, T. S., I Lothrop St., Plymouth, Mass.

Mitchell, William, 602 W. 146th St., New York City.

Montalvo, Mme. Louise L. de. Box O., Lakewood, N. J,

Moore, A. W., 432 Powers Building, Rochester, N. Y.

Moore, Mrs. T. M., 78 Summer St., Buffalo, N. Y,

Morris, Dr. E. R., Fort Thomas, Ky.

Morris, T. M., Hazleton, Pa.

Moxey, Louis W., Jr., 1213 Race St., Philadelphia, Pa.

Murray, B. C, 112 West Main St., Denison, Texas. .

Myricic, Mrs. Herbert, 151 Bowdoin St., Springfield, Mass.

Narregang, S. W., Aberdeen, S. D.

Nathan, Mrs. Fred, 162 West 86th St., New York.

Newhall, Charles L., Southbridge, Mass.

Newcomb, C. A., 625 Woodward Ave., Detroit, Mich.

Newlin, Mrs. Mary M., Sebring, Ohio.

Nolting, William F., M. D., 106 Johnson St., Brooklyn, N. Y.

Norton, John B., Lawrence, Long Island, N. Y.

Oldham, F. F., Treasury Department, Washington, D. C.

Overton, Miss Gwendolen, 2827 Harvard Boulevard, Los An-
geles, Cal.

Palmer, Dr. E. C, Charlotte, Mich.

18 List of Members.

Parsons, Dr. Ralph L., Greenmount-on-Hudson. Ossining^ Point,
N. Y.

Patterson, Charles B., 33 W. 67th St., New York.

Peabody, Mrs. A. P., 47 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, Mass.

Pearson, Miss Eleanor Weare, 104 East 19th St., New York City.

Perry, Mrs. Edward B., 2278 Kenmore Ave., Chicago, 111,

Pierson, Mrs. A. H., Natchitoches, La.

Phillips, Mrs. Henry, West 4th St., Ottumwa, Iowa.

Place, Mrs. George, 125 East 57th St., New York City.

Place, J. M., 239 North Capital St., Washington, D. C.

Platen, Hugo B., 209 Best Street West, Savannah, Ga.

Poage, John N., College Hill, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Porter, Dr. H. L., Seneca, Mo.

Porter, H. F. J., i Madison Ave., New York.

Posthumus-Meyjes, Mme. R., 25 Laan Copes, The Hague, Hol-
land.

Potter, R. B., 160 Fifth Ave., New York City.

Rahr, Reinhardt, Manitowoc, Wis.

Ramsay, William, 3053 i6th St., Washington, D. C.

Ransom, Stephen, 237 West 131st St., New York City.

Raymond, Reginald, 7937 Elm St., New Orleans, La.

Reed, Mrs. A. H., Brandon, Vt.

Reiber, Ferd., Butler, Pa.

Revue du Spiritisme, 40 Boulevard Exelmans, Paris, France.

Richardson, C. G., Springfield, Vermont.

Riedel, Carl, 1582 East 14th St., Flatbush, Brooklyn, N. Y.

Ring, Henry F., Houston, Texas.

Rockwell, Dr. A. E. R., Worcester, Mass.

Rogers, Dr. Edmund J. A., 222 West Colfax Ave., Denver, Cokx

Roler, Albert H., M. D., 500 N. Y. Life Bldg., Chicago, 111.

Ruutz-Rees, Janet E., Rosemary Hall, Greenwich, Conn.

Sackett, Mrs. L. E., 54 Andrew St., Springfield, Mass.

Salesbury, Mrs. Lister, 604 River St., Hoboken, N. J.

Samuels, M. V., Hotel St. Margaret, 129 West 47th St., New
York City.

Schenck, Miss Ida Z., 19 Liberty St., New York.

Schmid, H. E., M. D., White Plains, N. Y.

Schuyler, M. Roosevelt, 99 Pearl St., New York City.

Schuyler, William, McKinley High School, St. Louis, Mo.

Schweikert, H. C, Central High School, St. Louis, Mo.

Scott, Miss L. B., 28 West 58th St., New York.

Shaw, J. Austin, 1310 49th St., Borough Park, Brooklyn, N, Y,

Sheets, John C, Station K., Cincinnati, Ohio.

Shelden, Miss Mary M., Walnut Valley Times, Eldorado, Kan.

Shipley, Mrs. Marie F., 1337 Dennison Ave., Columbus, Ohio.

Shirley, James, 43 Cedar St., New York City.

List of Members, 19

Simonds, Mrs. F. M., Westover, Colden Ave., Flushing, N. Y,

Smith, Bolton, 66 Madison St., Memphis, Tenn.

Smith, Ernest K., 1660 East 93rd St., Cleveland, Ohio.

Smith, Mrs. H. D., 177 Lake View Ave., Chicago, 111.

Smith, Mrs. Y. C. H., 328 Valerio St., Santa Barbara, Cal.

Smith, William Hawley, 2039 Knoxville Ave., Peoria, 111.

Smith, William P., Crestline, Ohio.

Somers, Kate B., Hotel Raphael, San Raphael, Cal.

Spalding, Bishop F. S., Salt Lake City, Utah.

Sparks, M. B., Batavia, Jowa.

Sporleder, Louis B., Walsenbury, Col.

Stebbins, L. C, Small Maynard & Co., 15 Beacon St., Boston,

Mass.
Steedman, Dr. J. G. W., 4200 Washington Blvd., St. Louis, Mo.
Sterling, Edward C, Redlands, Cal.
Stone, Mrs. C. H., 5562 Clemens Ave., St. Louis, Mo.
Strode, V. K., 867 Kelly St., Portland, Ore.
Strong, Mrs. W. W., 268 Park Place, Kenosha, Wis.
Tatum, Lawrence W., 424 New York Life Bldg., Chicago, 111.
Taylor, Thomas J., 1424 New York Ave., N. W., Washington,

D. C.
Thayer, Rolfert C, 186 West Madison St., Chicago, 111.
Thompson, E. H., 10 Winthrop St., Watertown, N. Y.
Thompson, R. H., 282 W. Aish Ave., Brooklyn, N. Y.
Trask, Spencer, 54 Williams St., New York.
Turner, Albert, Metropolitan Bldg., Madison Ave. and 23d St.,

N. Y.
Tyler, Miss Amelia, Patent Office, Washington, D. C.
Van der Naillen, A., 130 Lawton Ave., Oakland, Cal.
Van Leer, Mary T., East Downingtown, Chester Co., Pa.
Veeder, Dr. M. A., Box 1108, Lyons, N. Y.
Verrall, Mrs. Margaret deC, 5 Selwyn Gardens, Cambridge, Eng.
Vlasto, Madame, i Avenue Bugeaud, Paris, France.
Vulte, Prof. H. T., Teacher's College, Columbia University, New

York.
Wall, Stephen A., 232 Market St., Paterson, N. J.
Walters, H. G., Langhorne, Bucks Co., Pa., 222 N. Bellevue Ave.
Ware, T. B., Mechanicsburg, O.
Warren, Miss M. B., 19 Second St, Troy, N. Y.
Weber, Mrs. Nita B., 806 F. licach. Bilox, Misa
Weeks, Rufus W., Tarry town, N. Y.
Welch, G. W., Ames, Iowa.
Wern, A. W., 1345 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles, CaLt
White, W. F., 660 Johnson St., Portland, Ore*

20 List of Members,

Whiting, Miss Lillian, Hotel Brunswick, Copley Square, Bos

ton, Mass.
Whittemore, Harris, Naugatuck, Conn.
Wickland, Dr. C. A., 6i6 Wells St., Chicago, 111.
Wild, C. R., 209 Bell Block, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Wilkins, Mrs. Mary, 40 Harcourt St., Dublin, Ireland.
Willcox, E. S., Peoria Public Library, Peoria, 111.
Willard, Miss Susanna, 2 Berkeley Place, Cambridge, Mass.
Williams, Mrs. Henry L., 60 Porter Terrace, Lowell, Mass. .
Williams, Rev. Leighton, Amity House, 312 W. 54th St, K«

York.
Wilson, Leonard, c|o Cleveland Varnish Co., 3111 87th St, S.l

Cleveland, Ohio.
Wilson, Mrs. Frank, 50 Ridge St., Orange, N. J.
Wilson, Laura Jane, Urbana, Ohio.
Wood, Mrs. G. W., 2906 F. St., Washington, D. C.
Woodward, Fred E., Box 832, Washington, D. C.
Word, The, Theosophical Publishing Co., 244 Lenox Ave., N

York.
Wyman, Dr. Walter, Stoneleigh Court, Washington, D. C.

Yandell, Miss Matide, c|o Monroe & Co., 7 Rue Scribe, P<
France. •

Total List of Members (1907).

Honorary Fellows 17

Honorary Members ^ 2

Fellows 67

Members 30c

Associates 32^

Total, 1907 71C

Stm^d Urwt^wty LUMfltr,,*

3 bins DD? Bi2 33

0(KS MOT QRCUUIE

CP

u o

si
si

o

I