Phantasms of the Living - Volume I.. Frank Podmore
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Название: Phantasms of the Living - Volume I.
Автор: Frank Podmore
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Эзотерика
isbn: 9781528767743
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1 See, for instance, the Histoire des Camisards (London, 1754), p. 333, note. The view of Cavallier there cited from De Brueys’ Histoire du Fanatisme (Utrecht, 1737), need not be discounted because in the same work he is called a scélérat; that being De Brueys’ generic term for a Camisard leader.
2 No further testimony of Cavallier’s on the subject seems to have been known to the author of the Examen du Théâtre Sacré des Cevennes (London, 1708, p. 34). He is not even stated to have been present, except in the depositions of the discredited witnesses; but on this point they may probably be trusted, as falsehood would have been at once exposed.
1 Thought is italicised in the original: all the other italics are mine.
1 The man who gave this account doubtless received the reward of a few do11ars which had been placed in the editor’s hands. In only one other instance has any payment been made to a witness: in that case the evidence had been spontaneously given, partly in writing and partly viva voce, and the payment was simply for the time occupied in drawing up a more complete written statement.
1 An impression of this sort, occurring at what may naturally have been a time of anxiety, has no evidential weight. The distinctly auditory character of the more recent experience places it in quite a different category.
1 At first sight, this seems inconsistent with the idea of the “reflex” or reciprocal action in the preceding paragraph. But Mr. Godfrey explains what he means as follows:—” I was dreaming: reflection convinced me that the particular words were not uttered in course of natural dream, but by reflex [reciprocal] action: also that they proceeded from myself, and not from any one standing over my bed in the room. It was from any one else’ that confused my meaning. I meant any one in the room, not any one in another house: from her they clearly did proceed.” There does not seem, however, to be any such proof of reciprocal action as Mr. Godfrey supposes; no reason appears why his dream should not have been purely subjective.
2 The letter here quoted was written to me on Jan. 13, 1887. Mr. Podmore says that it entirely accords with Mr. Godfrey’s and Mrs.—’s independent vivâ voce accounts given on the previous Nov. 22. The reason why these details were not included in Mr. Podmore’s notes was that at the moment he was under the impression that they had been mentioned in Mr. Godfrey’s first letter, which was in my possession.
1 As to this note, and the one made on the former occasion, Mr. Godfrey writes, “I am very sorry that I never kept the scraps of newspaper edge upon which I jotted down my reflections, and the words which reached me, in the middle of the night. I jotted them down to exclude any invalidation of the inferences on score of defective memory; not thinking it needful to retain them as a check, when I had copied from them into my letters, they were committed to the flames.”
CHAPTER I.
PRELIMINARY REMARKS: GROUNDS OF CAUTION.
§ 1. WHATEVER the advances of science may do for the universe, there is one thing that they have never yet done and show no prospect of doing—namely, to make it less marvellous. Face to face with the facts of Nature, the wonderment of the modern chemist, physicist, zoologist, is far wider and deeper than that of the savage or the child; far wider and deeper even than that of the early workers in the scientific field. True it is that science explains; if it did not it would be worthless. But scientific explanation means only the reference of more and more facts to immutable laws; and, as discovery advances in every department, the orderly marvel of the comprehensive laws merely takes the place of the disorderly marvel of arbitrary occurrences. The mystery is pushed back, so to speak, from facts in isolation to facts in the aggregate; but at every stage of the process the mystery itself gathers new force and impressiveness.
What, then, is the specific relation of the man of science to the phenomena which he observes? His explanation of them does not lead him to marvel at them less than the uneducated person: what does it lead him to do for them that the uneducated person cannot do? “To predict them with certainty,” it will no doubt be replied; “which further implies, in cases where the conditions are within his control, to produce them at will.” But it is important to observe that this power of prediction, though constantly proclaimed as the authoritative test of scientific achievement, is very far indeed from being an accurate one. For it is a test which is only fulfilled with anything like completeness by a small group of sciences—those which deal with inorganic nature. The physicist can proclaim with confidence that gravitation, and heat, and electricity (as long as they act at all) will continue to act as they do now; every discovery that the chemist makes about a substance is a prophecy as to the behaviour of that class of substance for ever. But as soon as vital organisms appear on the scene, there is a change. Not only do the complexities of structure and process, and the mutual reactions of the parts and the whole, exclude all exact quantitative formulæ; not only is there an irreducible element of uncertainty in the behaviour from moment to moment of the simplest living unit; but there appear also developments, and varieties and “sports,” which present themselves to us as arbitrary—which have just to be registered, and cannot be explained. Not, of course, that they are really arbitrary; no scientifically trained mind entertains the least doubt that they are in every case the inevitable results of prior conditions. But the knowledge of the expert has not approximately penetrated to the secret of those conditions; here, therefore, his power of prediction largely fails him.
This applies to a great extent even to events of a uniform and familiar order. Biological science may predict that an animal will be of the same species as its parents; but cannot predict its sex. It may predict the general characteristics of the next generation of men; but not the special attributes of a single individual. But its power of forecast is limited in a far more striking way—by the perpetual modification of the very material with which it has to deal. It is able to predict that, given such and such variations, natural selection will foster and increase them; that given such and such organic taints, heredity will transmit them: but it is powerless to say what the next spontaneous variation, or the next development of heredity will be. It is at work, not on steadfast substances with immutable qualities, like those of the inorganic world; but on substances whose very nature is to change. The evolution of animal existence, from protoplasm upwards, involves ever fresh elaborations in the composition of the vital tissues. Science traces the issue of these changes, and learns even to some extent to foresee and so to guide their course; it can СКАЧАТЬ