Part 14 (1/2)
(_c_) Things that have been well known to the sitter but are at the moment so far forgotten as only to be recalled by the statements of the medium.
(_d_) Things unknown to the sitter.
With regard to things under head (_a_) Mrs Verrall says:
”Some very clearly marked instances have come within my own observation; the cases are not very numerous, but the response from the 'control' to what has been thought but not uttered by me has been so rapid and complete that, were it not for the evidence of the other sitter, I should have been disposed to believe that I had unconsciously uttered the thought aloud.
”Thus, on one occasion, 'Nelly' said that a red-haired girl was in my house that day, and I was wondering whether a certain friend of my daughter's, who is often at the house, would be there, when 'Nelly' added: 'Not So-and-so,' mentioning by name my daughter's friend, exactly as though I had uttered the pa.s.sing thought. Again, when 'Nelly' was describing a certain bag given to me for my birthday, something she said made me for a moment think of a small leather handbag left in my house by a cousin and occasionally used by me, and she said: 'You had an uncle that died; it was not long after that.' The father of the cousin whom I had just thought of is the only uncle I have known, but his death long preceded the giving to me of the bag as a birthday present, which was what she had quite correctly described till my momentary thought apparently distracted her attention to the other bag. I have had in all some five or six instances of such apparently direct responses as the above to a thought in the sitter's mind; but when at 'Nelly's' suggestion I have fixed my attention on some detail for the sake of helping her to get it, I have never succeeded in doing anything but what she calls 'muggling her.'”
Another difficulty arises from the fact that mediums and their controls not infrequently receive impressions as pictures, and these pictures are liable to be misinterpreted. Mrs Verrall writes in her report of her sitting with Mrs Thompson:
”Merrifield was said to be the name of a lady in my family. The name was given at first thus: 'Merrifield, Merryman, Merrythought, Merrifield; there is an old lady named one of these who,' etc. Later, 'Nelly' said: 'Mrs Merrythought, that's not quite right; it's like the name of a garden'; and after in vain trying to give her the name exactly, she said: 'I will tell you how names come to us. It's like a picture; I see school children enjoying themselves. You can't say Merryman because that's not a name, or Merrypeople.' 'Nelly' later on spoke of my mother as Mrs Happyfield or Mrs Merryfield with indifference” (”Proceedings,” part xliv. p. 208).
It is probably for this reason that so much use is made in spirit communications of symbolism. The pa.s.sage in which Mr Myers deals with the use of symbolism in automatic messages, in his work on ”Human Personality,” should be studied in this connection. He points out that there is ”no a priori ground for supposing that language will have the power to express all the thoughts and emotions of man.” And if this is true of man in his present state, how much more does it apply to man in another and more advanced state? With reference to automatic writings he says: ”There is a certain quality which reminds one of _translation_, or of the composition of a person writing in a language in which he is not accustomed to talk.”
As a result of her investigations, Mrs Verrall declares:
”That Mrs Thompson is possessed of knowledge not normally obtained I regard as established beyond a doubt; that the hypothesis of fraud, conscious or unconscious, on her part fails to explain the phenomena seems to be equally certain; that to more causes than one is to be attributed the success which I have recorded seems to me likely. There is, I believe, some evidence to indicate that telepathy between the sitter and the trance personality is one of these contributory causes.
But that telepathy from the living, even in an extended sense of the term, does not furnish a complete explanation of the occurrences observed by me, is my present belief.”
Instances of clairvoyance in children are remarkably numerous. A few weeks ago the Rome correspondent of _The Tribune_ reported that a boy of twelve, at Capua, ”was discovered sobbing and crying as if his heart would break. Asked by his mother the reason of his distress, he said that he had just seen his father, who was absent in America, at the point of death, a.s.sisted by two Sisters of Charity. Next day a letter came from America announcing the father's death. Remembering the boy's vision, his mother tried to keep the tale a secret lest he should be regarded as 'possessed,' but her efforts were vain, several persons having been present when he explained the cause of his grief.”
The explanation of telepathy would hardly seem to fit the case, since the father's death must have occurred at least eight or ten days previous to the vision.
I shall reserve for my next chapter what may be regarded as the cla.s.sic ill.u.s.tration of the marvels of clairvoyance--that of Mrs Piper.
CHAPTER XIV
MRS PIPER'S TRANCE UTTERANCES
Almost alone amongst mediums of note, Mrs Piper of Boston has never resorted to physical phenomena, her powers being entirely confined to trance manifestations. No single medium, not even Helene Smith, has been subjected to such close and continuous observation by expert scientific observers. In 1885, this lady's case was first investigated by Professor William James, of Harvard (brother of the famous novelist). Two years later Dr Hodgson and other members of the Society for Psychical Research began their observation of her trance utterances. This course of observation has continued for twenty years, and nearly all Mrs Piper's utterances have been placed on record. The late Dr Hodgson was indefatigable in his labours to test the genuineness of the phenomena.
He spared no pains, and died, I believe, convinced that all means of accounting for them had been exhausted.
There is so much evidence concerning Mrs Piper, who, two years ago came to England at the invitation of the Society for Psychical Research, and was subjected to numerous tests, that I hesitate how best to typify its purport. Most striking is a letter to Professor James in the Society's ”Proceedings” from a well-known professor, Shaler of Harvard, who attended a _seance_, with a very open mind indeed, on 25th May 1894, at Professor James's house in Cambridge (Boston).
Professor Shaler was disposed to favour neither the medium nor even the telepathic theory. He writes:
”MY DEAR JAMES,--At the sitting with Mrs Piper on May 25th I made the following notes:--
”As you remember, I came to the meeting with my wife; when Mrs Piper entered the trance state Mrs Shaler took her hand. After a few irrelevant words, my wife handed Mrs Piper an engraved seal, which she knew, though I did not, had belonged to her brother, a gentleman from Richmond, Virginia, who died about a year ago. At once Mrs Piper began to make statements clearly relating to the deceased, and in the course of the following hour she showed a somewhat intimate acquaintance with his affairs, those of his immediate family, and those of the family in Hartford, Conn., with which the Richmond family had had close social relations.
”The statements made by Mrs Piper, in my opinion, entirely exclude the hypothesis that they were the results of conjectures, directed by the answers made by my wife. I took no part in the questioning, but observed very closely all that was done.
”On the supposition that the medium had made very careful preparation for her sittings in Cambridge, it would have been possible for her to have gathered all the information which she rendered by means of agents in the two cities, though I must confess that it would have been rather difficult to have done the work.
”The only distinctly suspicious features were that certain familiar baptismal names were properly given, while those of an unusual sort could not be extracted, and also that one or two names were given correctly as regards the ceremony of baptism or the directory, but utterly wrong from the point of view of family usage. Thus the name of a sister-in-law of mine, a sister of my wife's, was given as Jane, which is true by the record, but in forty years' experience of an intimate sort I never knew her to be called Jane--in fact, I did not at first recognise who was meant.