established. In telepathic experiments, like those of Professor Murray, some incarnate person is trying to communicate the thought. This is not the case in my sittings with Wilkinson. I am not trying to communicate anything to him; very much the contrary. And I do not find, after long and careful observation, any parallelism between what he says and what I happen to be thinking about. There is, in short, no evidence for the supposition that my mind is read. The evidence points unmistakably to discarnate agency—telepathy from the dead.

TRANCE

The sort of thing I have described is usually known as normal clairvoyance, because the sensitive is in a normal state, not in trance. But there is a further stage, into which, indeed, Mr Wilkinson sometimes passes, in which there is a change of personality, and a spirit purports to speak or write with the medium’s organs. There is nothing weird or uncanny in the procedure, nothing deathly or coma-like; the medium usually sits up and even walks about, though some trance mediums have to sit still and keep their eyes closed. I have had visits from many trance mediums; and most of them have failed to get anything evidential—which at least suggests their honesty, for they could easily have obtained some information about my deceased relatives. But the whole matter of trance control is a thorny problem. Indubitably, evidence of supernormal faculty is sometimes given in this state, but we of the S.P.R. are divided as to what the control really is. Some think it is a spirit, as claimed; others think it is a secondary personality of the medium, as in the remarkable case of split personality described in Dr Morton Prince’s book The Dissociation of a Personality. Mrs Sidgwick, widow of the Professor and sister of Mr A. J. Balfour, has made a careful psychological study of the case of Mrs Piper, given in 657 pages of Proceedings, vol. 28, and her conclusion is that though telepathy from the dead is probably shown, and certainly some kind of supernormality, the controls themselves are dream-fragments of the medium’s mind. I am not qualified to pronounce an opinion on Mrs Piper, not having met her; but as to the trance mediums I have experimented with, I incline to agree with Mrs Sidgwick. I think it may be a dodge of the subliminal to get the over-anxious normal consciousness temporarily out of the way. But this is a psychological detail, and a difficult one, requiring much further study. From the psychical research point of view Mrs Piper’s case may be studied in Proceedings, vols. 6, 8, 13, 16, and a few of the later ones, or some idea of it can be got from Sir Oliver Lodge’s Survival of Man. All the investigators were convinced of either telepathy or something more. Fraud was excluded by introducing sitters anonymously, Dr Hodgson himself introducing over 150 different people in this way, and taking careful notes. I have experimented similarly with Wilkinson, introducing people from distant places such as Middlesex and Northumberland as well as from towns nearer home, either under false names or with no names at all, and being present myself to take notes. Friends of mine have done the same thing. We were unanimously sceptical to start with, probably more sceptical than most of those who will read this paper, for we disbelieved in survival itself. We are now convinced that the fraud theory is out of the question, that at the very least a complicated theory of mind-reading—including the reading of the minds of distant and unknown persons—must be assumed if the theory of survival and communication is to be avoided.

Of late years there has been a great development in automatic writing among quite non-professional mediums—private people who are members of the S.P.R., as for instance the late Mrs Verrall, Classical Lecturer at Newnham—and some noteworthy evidence has been obtained. But it is too complex even to summarise here. It seems to be the work of Gurney, Hodgson, Myers, and Sidgwick, on the other side, for different messages have come through different sensitives, making sense when put together, and sense characteristic of these departed leaders. This had not been thought of, so far as we know, by any living person, and it seems to eliminate telepathy from the living, for the messages are not understood until the bits are pieced together. The evidence fills several volumes of our Proceedings, and students should read them carefully.

There are many other kinds of mediumship or psychic faculty, and many volumes are in existence on each phase; the library of the London Spiritualist Alliance contains about 3,000. I have read about 500 of them, and would not recommend anyone else to do the same. There is a great deal of rubbish among them, though they are not all rubbish. The reading I recommend is the Proceedings of the S.P.R., the writings of Sir William Barrett, Sir Oliver Lodge, Dr W. J. Crawford, and, above all, the great work of F. W. H. Myers, Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death, in the original two-volume edition. The abridged one-volume edition omits many of the illustrative cases. I do not think that conviction is to be achieved by mere reading; books would never have convinced me. But careful reading is perhaps sufficient to lead a fairly tolerant mind to realise that there is something here which must not be dismissed off-hand; something which is worthy of investigation. That is as much as we expect. Sir Oliver Lodge often says that we shall do well if we succeed, in this generation, in modifying the psychological climate, creating an atmosphere more favourable to unprejudiced examination of the facts. We have no desire for revolutions; we want knowledge to grow slowly and surely. The S.P.R. has been in existence only thirty-seven years, and the subject is in its scientific infancy. Take the beginnings of any one science—say, Chemistry, dating it somewhat arbitrarily from Priestley or Dalton—and note what a little way discovery had gone in a like period. With increased numbers of workers the pace increases; but in every science the progress at first must be slow. In psychical research a good start has been made, and the investigators seem to be certainly on the track of something, whether their inferences are right in every detail or not. And every advance in science has extended our conceptions of this wonderful universe. The heavens declare the glory of God in a tremendously larger way than they did in the days of the old Ptolemaic astronomy, though man foolishly fought the Copernican idea because it seemed to lessen our dignity by making our earth a speck on the scale of creation instead of the central body thereof. So with all other phenomena, physical and psychical. We may be sure that all discovery will be real revelation. With this faith—a well-grounded faith—we need not fear advance.

RECENT CRITICISM

I add a few words, rather against my inclination, about recent criticism of a kind which is hardly worthy that name. Two books, one by Dr Mercier and one by Mr Edward Clodd, have had a certain popularity, mainly because they attacked, with a certain smartness of phrase, the book of a greater man. “Raymond” was being widely read and talked about, and its popularity secured some success for these hostile books. Curiously enough, even some of the clergy have quoted approvingly some of the arguments of these rationalists, no doubt much to the glee of Mr Clodd in particular. Now I have said before that instructed criticism is always welcome, for we may hope to learn something from it. But Dr Mercier, on his own statement, came new to the subject at the age of sixty-four, read