Man Is A Spirit

PREFACE ACTS differ in importance, but it is a fundamental article of the faith of science that all facts are important in some degree. The import of some of them may not be clear at first, but continued collection brings about the possibility of valuable references. An orbit cannot be computed from one or two points given many are necessary. Similarly a number of facts the more the better-may be required before we see their meaning. But there is a meaning, and it is worth our while to amass details patiently. This is the modern spirit-to inquire of Nature instead of building philosophic word structures into the blue. Observation and record are the watchwords. A large acquaintance with particulars often makes us wiser than the possession of abstract formulas, hovever deep, says William James in the preface to his Varieties of Religious Experience. And particulars may be either subjective or objective. A dream is as much of a fact as a bomb is. It is a psychological fact the other is a physical fact. Collection of psychological facts is a late development in science, and we have not got far yet, particularly as regards facts of psychical research kind. But they will turn out important, if we study them carefully. The present volume, in the selection of its facts, may seem to start out from an assumption namely, that human personality is more than a collection of material particles, or, crudely and popularly put, that there is a spirit in man. But it is not an assumption. It is an inference, cautiously made after years of observation, from another range of facts, some of which are described in an earlier volume called Psychical Investigations. This present book, therefore, does not stand alone, even as regards its author. And its general tendency is supported by a huge mass of literature, of which the Proceedings of the Society for Physical Research furnish the best illustration from the scientific viewpoint. The Society, of course, has no creed. It exists for investigation. But in the opinion of most investigators its results are strongly suggestive of the scheme presented by F. ITT. H. Myers in his great work, Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death and that shown my own researches have led me to accept. It is difficult to give in few words any idea of such a large subject, but the following may help. Telepathy, or transference of ideas from mind to mind through channels other than the lmown sensory ones, suggests but does not prove super- physical action. Clairvoyance, automatic writing, and trance speech often produce true matter unknown to the sensitive and sometimes unknown to any- one present. The supposition of telepathy from distant people, vho do not know and are not known to the sensitive, is a reasonable guess in default of anything better, but it does not seem likely and in some cases it is unacceptable. And a few cases are on record-one in the following pages-of information being given which was possessed by no living mind, but which was possessed by the person purporting to communicate. Swedenborg describes an experience of this kind, which was taken seriously even by the sceptical Iiant. Apparitions are sometimes seen by sane and healthy people, at or after the time of death of a person not known to be ill or in danger of the Proceedings of the S.B.R. contains the result of many years investigation of this phase, and the chance explanation is mathematically ruled out. Many curious physical phenomena, such as movement of objects without contact, occur with- out the conscious will of those present, and information is given, sometimes going beyond the knowledge of the sitters. Other phenomena occur or are alleged to occur...