Part 2 (2/2)

_*Supernormal._--Of a faculty or phenomenon which transcends ordinary experience. Used in preference to the word _supernatural_, as not a.s.suming that there is anything outside nature or any arbitrary interference with natural law.

_Supraliminal._--See _Subliminal_.

_Synaesthesia._--See _Secondary Sensations_.

_Synergy._--A number of actions correlated together, or combined into a group.

_Telekinesis._--Used of alleged supernormal movements of objects, not due to any known force.

_*Telepathy._--The communication of impressions of any kind from one mind to another, independently of the recognised channels of sense.

_*Telaesthesia._--Any direct sensation or perception of objects or conditions independently of the recognised channels of sense, and also under such circ.u.mstances that no known mind external to the percipient's can be suggested as the source of the knowledge thus gained.

_*Telergy._--The force exercised by the mind of an agent in impressing a percipient,--involving a direct influence of the extraneous spirit on the brain or organism of the percipient.

_Veridical._--Of hallucinations, when they correspond to real events happening elsewhere and unknown to the percipient.

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Maior agit deus, atque opera la maiora remitt.i.t.

--VIRGIL.

In the long story of man's endeavours to understand his own environment and to govern his own fates, there is one gap or omission so singular that, however we may afterwards contrive to explain the fact, its simple statement has the air of a paradox. Yet it is strictly true to say that man has never yet applied to the problems which most profoundly concern him those methods of inquiry which in attacking all other problems he has found the most efficacious.

The question for man most momentous of all is whether or no he has an immortal soul; or--to avoid the word _immortal_, which belongs to the realm of infinities--whether or no his personality involves any element which can survive bodily death. In this direction have always lain the gravest fears, the farthest-reaching hopes, which could either oppress or stimulate mortal minds.

On the other hand, the method which our race has found most effective in acquiring knowledge is by this time familiar to all men. It is the method of modern Science--that process which consists in an interrogation of Nature entirely dispa.s.sionate, patient, systematic; such careful experiment and c.u.mulative record as can often elicit from her slightest indications her deepest truths. That method is now dominant throughout the civilised world; and although in many directions experiments may be difficult and dubious, facts rare and elusive, Science works slowly on and bides her time,--refusing to fall back upon tradition or to launch into speculation, merely because strait is the gate which leads to valid discovery, indisputable truth.

I say, then, that this method has never yet been applied to the all-important problem of the existence, the powers, the destiny of the human soul.

Nor is this strange omission due to any general belief that the problem is in its nature incapable of solution by any observation whatever which mankind could make. That resolutely agnostic view--I may almost say that scientific superst.i.tion--”_ignoramus et ignorabimus_”--is no doubt held at the present date by many learned minds. But it has never been the creed, nor is it now the creed, of the human race generally. In most civilised countries there has been for nearly two thousand years a distinct belief that survival has actually been proved by certain phenomena observed at a given date in Palestine. And beyond the Christian pale--whether through reason, instinct, or superst.i.tion--it has ever been commonly held that ghostly phenomena of one kind or another exist to testify to a life beyond the life we know.

But, nevertheless, neither those who believe on vague grounds nor those who believe on definite grounds that the question might possibly be solved, or has actually been solved, by human observation of objective facts, have hitherto made any serious attempt to connect and correlate that belief with the general scheme of belief for which Science already vouches. They have not sought for fresh corroborative instances, for a.n.a.logies, for explanations; rather they have kept their convictions on these fundamental matters in a separate and sealed compartment of their minds, a compartment consecrated to religion or to superst.i.tion, but not to observation or to experiment.

It is my object in the present work--as it has from the first been the object of the Society for Psychical Research, on whose behalf most of the evidence here set forth has been collected,--to do what can be done to break down that artificial wall of demarcation which has thus far excluded from scientific treatment precisely the problems which stand in most need of all the aids to discovery which such treatment can afford.

Yet let me first explain that by the word ”scientific” I signify an authority to which I submit myself--not a standard which I claim to attain. Any science of which I can here speak as possible must be a _nascent_ science--not such as one of those vast systems of connected knowledge which thousands of experts now steadily push forward in laboratories in every land--but such as each one of those great sciences was in its dim and poor beginning, when a few monks groped among the properties of ”the n.o.ble metals,” or a few Chaldean shepherds out.w.a.tched the setting stars.

What I am able to insist upon is the mere Socratic rudiment of these organisms of exact thought--the first axiomatic prerequisite of any valid progress. My one contention is that in the discussion of the deeper problems of man's nature and destiny there ought to be exactly the same openness of mind, exactly the same diligence in the search for objective evidence of any kind, exactly the same critical a.n.a.lysis of results, as is habitually shown, for instance, in the discussion of the nature and destiny of the planet upon which man now moves.

Obvious truism although this statement may at first seem, it will presently be found, I think, that those who subscribe to it are in fact committing themselves to inquiries of a wider and stranger type than any to which they are accustomed;--are stepping outside certain narrow limits within which, by ancient convention, disputants on either side of these questions are commonly confined.

A brief recall to memory of certain familiar historical facts will serve to make my meaning clearer. Let us consider how it has come about that, whereas the problem of man's survival of death is by most persons regarded as a problem in its nature soluble by sufficient evidence, and whereas to many persons the traditional evidence commonly adduced appears insufficient,--nevertheless no serious effort has been made on either side to discover whether other and more recent evidence can or cannot be brought forward.

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