Phantasms of the Living - Volume I.. Frank Podmore

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СКАЧАТЬ the Salpêtrière and the experiments of Dean’s Yard have been invoked in explanation of the weird terrors of the Yenisei and the Congo.

§ 9. Passing on from Anthropology to history in its wider acceptation, we find these psycho-physical problems perpetually recurring, and forming a disturbing element in any theory of social or religious evolution. The contagious enthusiasms of the Middle Ages—the strange endemic maladies of witchcraft, vampirism, lycanthropy—even the individual inspiration of a Mahomet or a Joan of Arc—these are phenomena which the professed historian feels obliged to leave to the physician and the alienist, and for which the physician and the alienist, in their turn, have seldom a satisfactory explanation.

Nor do phenomena of this kind cease to appear with the advance of civilisation. In detailed modern histories, in the biographies of eminent men, we still come upon incidents which are, at any rate at first sight, of a supernormal¹ kind, and over which the narrator is forced to pass with vague or inadequate comment.

      But it is, of course, in dealing with the history of religions that our lack of any complete grasp of psychical phenomena is most profoundly felt. And here, also, it is as a result of recent progress,—of the growth of the comparative study of religions,—that we are able to disengage, in a generalised form, the chief problems with which our “psychical” science, if such could be established, would be imperatively called on to deal.

      For we find throughout the world’s history a series of great events which, though differing widely in detail, have a certain general resemblance both to each other and to some of those incidents both of savage and of ordinary civilised life to which reference has already been made.

      The elements which are common to the great majority of religions seem to be mainly two—namely, the promulgation of some doctrine which the religious reformer claims to have received, or actually to communicate, in some supernormal manner; and the report of a concurrent manifestation of phenomena apparently inexplicable by ordinary laws.

Now, with the rise of one religion our Society has already had practically to deal. Acting through Mr. Hodgson, whose experiences in the matter have been elsewhere detailed,¹ a committee of the Society for Psychical Research has investigated the claim of the so-called “Theosophy,” of which Madame Blavatsky was the prophetess, to be an incipient world-religion, corroborated by miraculous, or at least supernormal, phenomena,—and has arrived at the conclusion that it is merely a réchauffé of ancient philosophies, decked in novel language, and supported by ingenious fraud. Had this fraud not been detected and exposed, and had the system of belief supported thereon thriven and spread, we should have witnessed what the sceptic might have cited as a typical case of the origin of religions. A Gibbon of our own day, reviewing the different motives and tendencies which prompt, or spread, revelations, might have pointed to Theosophy and Mormonism as covering between them the whole ground;—from the adroit advantage taken of mystical aspiration in the one religion, to the commonplace action of greed and lust upon helplessness and stupidity which forms the basis of the other.

But if it should be argued from these analogies that in no case of the foundation of a religion would any scientific method of psychical inquiry prove necessary or fruitful, if we knew all the facts; but that such developments might be sufficiently dealt with by ordinary common-sense, or, like Mormonism, by the criminal law, the generalisation would be hasty and premature. We need not go far back to discover two religions whose central fact is not a fact of fraud at all, but an unexplained psychical phenomenon. I allude to the vision-life of Swedenborg, and the speaking with tongues which occurred in the church of Irving,—each of which constitutes a central point of faith for a certain number of intelligent and educated persons at the present day. Of neither of these facts can Science at present offer a satisfactory explanation. The speaking with tongues seems plainly to have been for the most part (though not entirely) a genuine automatic phenomenon. But as to the origin of such automatic utterances (conveyed in speech or writing), as to the range from which their contents are drawn, or the kind of attention which they can claim, there is little or nothing to be learnt from accepted textbooks. We are groping among the first experiments, the simplest instances, on which any valid theory can be based.¹

      The case of Swedenborg carries us still further beyond the limits of our assured knowledge. Of madness and its delusions, indeed, we know much; but it would be a mere abuse of language to call Swedenborg mad. His position must be decided by a much more difficult analogy. For before we can even begin to criticise his celestial visions we must be able in some degree to judge of his visions of things terrestrial; we must face, that is to say, the whole problem of so-called clairvoyance, of a faculty which claims to be not merely receptive but active,—a projection of super-sensory percipience among scenes distant and things unknown.

      And the existence of such a faculty as this will assuredly never be proved by a mere study of the transcendental dicta of any single seer. This problem, too, must be approached, partly through the hypnotic trance, in which the best-attested instances of clairvoyance are alleged to have occurred, and partly through the collection of such supernormal narratives as some of those which find place in the present book.

      Even a sketch like this may indicate how complex and various may be the problems which underlie that “History of Sects” in which a Bossuet might see only the heaven-sent penalty for apostasy against the Church,—a Gibbon, the mere diverting panorama of the ever-varying follies of men.

§ 10. But reflections like these lie on the outskirts of a still larger and graver question. What (it is naturally asked) is the relation of our study—not to eccentric or outlying forms of religious creed—but to central and vital conceptions; and especially to that main system of belief to which in English-speaking countries the name of religion is by popular usage almost confined?

      Up till this time those who have written on behalf of the Society for Psychical Research have studiously refrained from entering on this important question. Our reason for this reticence is obvious enough when stated, but it has not been universally discerned. We wished to avoid even the semblance of attracting the public to our researches by any allurement which lay outside the scientific field. We could not take for granted that our inquiries would make for the spiritual view of things, that they would tend to establish even the independent existence, still less the immortality, of the soul. We shrank from taking advantage of men’s hopes or fears, from representing ourselves as bent on rescuing them from the materialism which forms so large a factor in modern thought, or from the pessimism which dogs its steps with unceasing persistency. We held it to be incumbent on us, in an especial degree, to maintain a neutral and expectant attitude, and to conduct our inquiries in the “dry light” of a dispassionate search for truth.

      And this position we still maintain. This book, as will be seen, does not attempt to deal with the most exciting and popular topics which are included in our Society’s general scheme. And we shall be careful in the pages that follow to keep within our self-assigned limits, and to say little as to any light which our collected evidence may throw on the possibility of an existence continued after our physical death.

      That master-problem of human life must be assailed by more deliberate approaches, nor must we gild our solid arguments with the radiance of an unproved surmise. But it would, nevertheless, be impossible, in a discussion of this general kind, to pass over the relation of psychical research to religion altogether in silence. And, indeed, since our inquiries began, the situation has thus far changed that we have now not anticipation merely, but a certain amount of actual achievement, to which to appeal. We hold that we have proved by direct experiment, and corroborated by the narratives contained in this book, the possibility of communications between two minds, inexplicable by any recognised physical laws, but capable (under certain rare spontaneous conditions) of taking place when the persons concerned are СКАЧАТЬ