Psychical Miscellanea Part 2

As to Mr Clodd, his book is better-informed, though frequently unfair.

For instance, in his references to me he is very careful to avoid any consideration of the strong parts of my case. Like the famous theological professor, he looks the difficulties boldly in the face--not _very_ boldly--and pa.s.ses on, without speaking to them. He has obviously read fairly widely, but where he does criticise in detail, he always seizes on weak points and quietly ignores the strong ones. As to personal investigation he is almost entirely without experience. He says he attended a seance about fifty years ago, but has forgotten most of what happened! He says this, with a momentary lapse from his usual cleverness--for it gives away his case--in a letter to the April (1918) _International Psychic Gazette_. In other words, he poses as an authority on a branch of science of which he has no first-hand knowledge. He criticises and dismisses airily the opinions and investigations of those who have worked at the subject for ten, twenty, thirty, or forty years; for it is over forty years since Sir William Barrett brought his experiments in telepathy before the British a.s.sociation. Mr Clodd is a Rationalist, and knows without investigation that these things cannot be. He is as _a prioristic_ as a medieval Schoolman, in spite of his scientific pose. And his prejudices unfortunately prevent him from seeking and studying the facts which might lead him to other conclusions.

I have not said anything about the S.P.R. itself, but may here add a few remarks. Says its official leaflet: "The aim of the Society is to approach these various problems without prejudice or prepossession of any kind, and in the same spirit of exact and unimpa.s.sioned inquiry which has enabled Science to solve so many problems, once not less obscure nor less hotly debated.... Members.h.i.+p of the Society does not imply the acceptance of any particular explanation of the phenomena investigated, nor any belief as to the operation, in the physical world, of forces other than those recognised by Physical Science". In other words, the Society has no creed, except that the subject is worth investigating.

The Society has well over 1,000 members, and is growing steadily. It includes many famous men in all walks of life, and indeed its members.h.i.+p list has been said to contain more well-known names than any other scientific society except the Royal Society itself. Among the Vice-presidents are the Right Honourables A. J. and G. W. Balfour, Sir William Barrett, Sir Oliver Lodge, the late Bishop Boyd-Carpenter and the late Sir William Crookes. The President for the current year is Lord Rayleigh, probably the greatest mathematical physicist now living.[5]

The President of the Royal Society (Sir J. J. Thomson) is a member, also Professor Henri Bergson of Paris, Dr L. P. Jacks (editor of _The Hibbert Journal_) and innumerable other scientists and scholars whose names are known to everyone.

[5] Lord Rayleigh's lamented death has since occurred, July, 1919.

Finally let me a.s.sure you that the S.P.R. is so conservative and suspicious that admission is almost as difficult to obtain as members.h.i.+p of a high-cla.s.s London club. It is extremely anxious to keep out cranks and emotional people of all sorts, and it requires any applicant to be vouched for as suitable by two existing members; and each application is separately considered by the Council. The result is a level-headed lot of members, and the maintenance of a sane and scientific att.i.tude and management.

From the philosophic side it is sometimes urged that we cannot reason from the phenomenal to the noumenal, from the world of appearance to the world of reality; that consequently nothing happening in the material world can prove the existence of a spiritual one. But this is easily answered. We cheerfully agree, with Kant, that a spiritual world cannot be proved coercively and in such knock-down fas.h.i.+on that belief cannot be avoided. But it can be proved in the same way and to the same extent as many other things which we believe and find ourselves justified in believing. For instance, atoms and electrons and the Ether of s.p.a.ce are not phenomenal; no one has ever seen or heard or felt or smelt them; but we infer their real existence from the behaviour of the matter which does affect our senses. Again: we cannot _prove_ to ourselves that other human beings exist, or even that an external world exists; my experience may be a huge subjective hallucination. If I were reading this paper I should not be able to prove to myself that any other mind was present.

Looking around, I should receive certain impressions--sensations of sight--and I should call certain aggregations of these the physical bodies of beings like myself. From the similarity of their structure and behaviour to the structure and behaviour of my own body, I should infer that they have got minds somehow a.s.sociated with them, as my mind is a.s.sociated with my body. But you could not prove it to me. If you got angry with my obstinacy, and knocked me down, I should experience painful sensations, but the existence of a mind external to me--and an angry one--would still be a matter of inference only. But we find that the inference is justified. We find that it "works," and social life is possible. For the purposes, then, both of science and of ordinary life, we do reason from phenomenon to noumenon, from appearance to reality, from attribute to substance; and our reasoning justifies itself.

I affirm, therefore, that the kind of proof which we as psychical researchers put forward for the existence of and communication from discarnate minds, is philosophically the same kind as the proof we have of the existence of incarnate minds. If a short and clear exposition of the point is required, free from any psychical-research bias, I may refer inquirers to the chapter on the Psychological Theory of an External World in J. S. Mill's _Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy_. Our evidence may be insufficient to justify belief--in the opinion of many, it is--and I blame no one for disbelieving; but it is evidence. And if it sufficiently acc.u.mulates and improves in quality, it may amount to a degree of proof at least comparable with that concerning electrons, which are now accepted as real by all physicists.

One or two difficulties may here be briefly referred to:

1. The appearance in Mrs Piper's script of such obvious dream-stuff as messages from Homer, Ulysses, and Telemachus! These are of course absurdities, and no psychical researcher regards them as anything else.

But they are no more absurd than many of our own dreams, and we must remember that automatic writing comes from the dream-strata of the medium's mind, these strata seeming to lie _between_ our normal consciousness and the spiritual world. Consequently messages which really seem to come from beyond: _i.e._, which are evidential--are often mixed with subliminal matter from the medium's mind. As a communicator once said: "The medium's dreams get in my way." All this has to be allowed for, but in good mediums there is not much of it. In my friend Wilkinson's case there is none, for he can distinguish. In Mrs Piper's case there is a little, but it does not invalidate the huge ma.s.s of real evidence that has come. And it at least testifies to her honesty, for no medium would pretend to get messages from people whom everyone knows to be mythical--messages which are indeed comic and therefore enable opponents to score points with the general public by obvious witticisms.

Huxley is often referred to, as having wisely declined to investigate, knowing beforehand that it was all nonsense. Huxley was busy with his own work, and, believing _a priori_ that alleged psychical phenomena were either fraud or self-delusion, naturally declined to give any time to them. We need not regret his decision, for he was doing work that was more important than psychical investigation would have been, just then.

But he was wrong in his _a priori_ belief, or rather unbelief. He had never seen any of these phenomena, but that did not prove that they did not happen. A native of mid-Africa may never have seen snow, but that does not prove that no snow exists.

And it happens that the Dialectical Society went on with its task, appointing committees which investigated without any paid medium. The majority of the investigators were utterly sceptical at first; they were practically all convinced at the finish. I state this merely as a fact, not as a specially important fact; for I find that beginners, when suddenly faced with striking phenomena, are liable to go from the extreme of unbelief to an extreme of belief. When one's materialistic scheme is exploded, there seems no criterion left, and anything may happen. It usually takes an investigator a year or two to adjust himself and to learn to follow the evidence and not overshoot it.

Some people say: "But if communication is possible, why cannot _I_ communicate direct with my own departed loved ones?" The question is seen on reflection, however, to be easily answered. In the first place, we cannot communicate direct even with our friends in the next town; we have to get the help of postmen or telegraph clerks and the like. It is therefore not at all surprising that an intermediary is needed when they are removed further from our conditions. Probably all of us have germs of psychic faculty--though I have not yet discovered any in myself--somewhat as we can all play or sing a little; but the Paderewskis and Carusos are few. Similarly with psychic faculty. Few have enough of it to communicate for themselves. On the other hand, it is much commoner than Carusos are; but of course, when it occurs in a private person, that person does not advertise the fact. Outsiders would either scoff, or say "lunacy", or crowd round asking for "sittings", out of curiosity. Consequently only sympathetic intimates are told, or people who, like myself, are known to be sympathetic investigators. Some of the most remarkable sensitives in England at the present day are of this private kind--people of education and position--and they are not even spiritualists in the sense of belonging to the spiritualist sect.

They are of various religious persuasions, and belong mostly to rather orthodox bodies. There is nothing of the crank about them; they are not Theosophists or Christian Scientists or adherents of any other of what the sergeant called "fancy religions." I may say that the most extraordinary experiences I have ever had have been with a psychic of this kind. I have not alluded to these experiences in my paper, because the matter is private. But I just mention these things because I find that psychic faculties are more common than I once thought, and a sympathetic minister could probably hear of private cases if he let his sympathy and interest be known. But of course, if he is known to have condemned the whole thing as Satanic--as Father Bernard Vaughan does--or as lunacy, people with psychic experiences will take very good care not to tell him about them.

As to details about the nature of the after-life, I have no dogmatic opinions to offer. Probably it is impossible for those over there to describe their experience adequately, in our earthly terms. Such information as we get must be largely symbolical, as when mediums describe a specially good deceased person as surrounded with radiance. I have several times noticed that the relative "brightness" or "radiance"

of a spirit, as described by the medium, has correctly indicated that spirit's character, though the medium had no normal knowledge whatever of either the person's character or even existence. But though our information must probably be mainly symbolical, I think we are justified in believing that we begin the next stage pretty nearly where we leave off here. There is no sudden jump to unalloyed bliss for even such good people as you, no sudden plunge to everlasting woe even for sinners like me. This, I admit, is not in accordance with what I used to hear from the pulpit twenty years ago. But it agrees with what I read now of the opinions of such men as the Bishop of London and Dr J. D. Jones; and other clerical writers, such as Canon Storr in his _Christianity and Immortality_ and Dr Paterson Smyth in his excellent _Gospel of the Hereafter_ take the same view. Our modern moral sense refuses to believe that a good G.o.d will sentence any creature to everlasting pain; and although it may be contended that man has free-will and is therefore the arbiter of his own fate, it still remains that G.o.d gave him that freedom, and therefore still bears the ultimate responsibility. To retain belief in a G.o.d who can be loved and wors.h.i.+pped, I at least must disbelieve in everlasting pain for anyone.

And, added to this moral revolt, there has come a war in which millions of young men have died before their natural time. These young fellows, we feel, are at least in most cases neither good enough for heaven nor bad enough for h.e.l.l. The sensible supposition seems to be--and it is borne out by psychical facts--that they have gone on to the next stage of life, which to most or all of them is an improvement; that they are busy and happy there; that they are still more or less interested in and cognisant of our affairs; that they will come to meet their loved ones when _they_ cross over--of this I have had much evidence--and that they and humanity as a whole are travelling on an upward path toward some goal at present inconceivable to our small and flesh-bound souls.

Some people have objected that psychical research will subst.i.tute knowledge for faith. This is surely a curious objection, and few will advance it. The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof, and my belief is that He wants us to learn all we can about His handiwork.

Nature is a book given to us by our Father, for our good; study of it is a duty, neglect of it is unfilial and wrong. Psychical research studies its own particular facts in nature, and is thus trying to learn a little more of G.o.d's mind. It is not we, but those who oppose us, who are irreligious.

And as to this matter of faith; well, after we have learnt all we can, there will still be plenty of scope left for the exercise of faith in general, for our knowledge will always be surrounded by regions of the unknown. If anyone says that psychical research antagonises _Christian_ faith, I say most emphatically that on the contrary it _supports_ it.

Christianity was based on a Fact: the Resurrection and Appearances of Jesus. Psychical-research facts are rendering that event credible to many who have disbelieved it. Myers says that in consequence of our evidence, everyone will believe, a century hence, in that Resurrection; whereas, in default of our evidence, a century hence no one would have believed it. And to him, personally, psychical research brought back the Christian faith which he had lost.

I hope that the facts and inferences which I have very sketchily put before you will have made it clear that there is some reality in the subject-matter of our investigations, and that these latter powerfully support a religious view of the universe. I believe that we are giving materialism its death-blow; hence the wild antagonism of such well-meaning but belated writers as Mr Clodd. But we are not ourselves religious teachers. That is your domain. You will use our work and its results, as you use the work and results of other labourers in the scientific vineyard. And I think you will find ours specially helpful.

THE EVOLUTION OF A PSYCHICAL RESEARCHER

Probably few of us keep a diary nowadays. I don't. But I somehow got into the habit, soon after I became interested in psychical things, of jotting down in a notebook the conclusions at which I had arrived--or the almost complete puzzlement in which I found myself, as the case might be. Glancing recently through these records of my pilgrimage, it seemed to me that a sketch of it might be of some interest or amus.e.m.e.nt to others.

Professor William James says in his _Talks to Teachers_ that it is very difficult for most people to accept any new truth after the age of thirty; and that indeed old-fogeyism may be said to begin at twenty-five. It is perhaps therefore not surprising that, coming fresh to the subject at thirty-two--in 1905--I found the struggle to psychical truth a very long and arduous affair. Having been brought up on the ministrations of a h.e.l.l-fire-preaching Nonconformist pastor whose theology made me into a very vigorous Huxleyan agnostic, I was biased against anything that savoured of "religion," and moreover "spiritualism" was unscientific and absurd. So I thought, in my ignorance; for I knew nothing whatever of the evidence on which spiritualistic beliefs are based.

However, I fortunately ran up against hard facts which soon cured me of negative dogmatism. I became acquainted with a medium who satisfied me that she could diagnose disease, or rather her medical "control" could, from a lock of the patient's hair; and this without any information whatever being given. Also that the diagnosis often went beyond the knowledge of the sitter, thus excluding telepathy from anyone present or near. But this did not prove that the control was a spirit, so I turned to other investigations.

First, I set myself to "read up". I feel sure that this is the best course for beginners to adopt, after once achieving real open-mindedness.

It enables one to investigate with proper scientific care when opportunity arises, and with much better chance of securing good evidence. Without this preparation, an investigator has little idea how to handle that delicate machine called a medium, and indeed no amount of reading will entirely equip the experimenter, for there are many things which only experience can teach. Also, without this preparation, the investigator will be liable either to give things away by talking too much, or will create an atmosphere of suspicion and discomfort by being too secretive. It takes some practice to achieve an open and friendly manner while never losing sight of the importance of imparting no information that would spoil possible evidence. This of course is desirable from the medium's point of view as well as that of the sitter.

It is hard on a medium if, for example, a really supernormally-got name does not count because the sitter himself had let it slip.

I think my reading began with _Light_ and some of Mr E. W. Wallis's books, but I soon found my way to the _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_, and recognised that here was what I was seeking.

I cannot sufficiently express my admiration, which is as great as ever, for such masterly pieces of evidence as, for instance, Dr Hodgson's account of sittings with Mrs Piper, in volume 13. If we were perfectly logical beings, without prejudice, that account ought to convince anybody; certainly it ought to convince the reader of the operation of _something_ supernormal, and it ought to go a long way towards excluding telepathic theories and rendering the spirit explanation the most reasonable one. But we are not logical beings. We require to be battered for a long time by fact after fact before we will admit a new conclusion. I remember saying, as indeed I noted down in the diary mentioned, that a few of these volumes, with Myers's _Human Personality_, left me in the curious position of being able to say that, though I was not convinced, I felt that logically I ought to be, for the evidence seemed irrefragable. Then I read Crookes' _Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism_, and my logical agreement was accentuated, for Sir William Crookes was my scientific Pope, in consequence of my having worked from his chemical writings, and having an immense admiration for his mind and method. But my actual inner conviction was not much changed. Kant says somewhere that we may test the strength of our beliefs by asking ourselves what we would bet on them. At this point I had not got to the stage of being prepared to bet much on the truth of the survival of human beings or the possibility of communicating with them if they did survive. I thought the case was logically proved, but I didn't feel it in my bones, as the phrase goes. For this, personal experience is necessary; at least it is for an old fogey of over thirty, with my particular build of mind.

And I was fortunately able to get this experience. One of the two best-known mediums in the North of England, Mr A. Wilkinson, happened to live only a few miles away, though he was and is generally away from home, speaking for spiritualist societies from Aberdeen to Exeter, and being booked over a year ahead. However, I was able to get an introduction to him through friends who also carried out investigations with him (described in my _New Evidences in Psychical Research_), and since then, with intermissions due mainly to ill-health, I have had friendly sittings with him continuously. To him I owe my real convictions, and for this I cannot adequately thank him. Without his kindness I could never have achieved certainty; for owing to a damaged heart I could not get about to interview mediums, and there was no other medium within reasonable distance. Besides, Mr Wilkinson has stretched a point in my case, for he does not give private sittings, preferring to confine himself to platform work; and I suppose he makes an exception in my case in view of my inability. I here once more thank him for all he has done for me.

At my first sitting with him he described and named my mother and other relatives, whom he saw apparently with me. I had no reason to believe that he had any normal knowledge of these people; certainly I had never mentioned them to him, and it was in the last degree unlikely that anyone else had. My mother had been dead twenty-two years, and was not at all a prominent person. Moreover, he got by automatic writing a signed message from her, giving the name of the house in which we lived at the time of her death, but which we had left eleven years later. This seemed to be given by way of a test. At later sittings my father and other relatives manifested, with names and identifying detail, and the proof began to be almost coercive. The evidence went beyond any possibility of the medium's normal knowledge, and was characteristic of the different communicators in all sorts of subtle ways. Telepathy alone remained as a possible alternative to the spirit explanation. Then came a peculiar phase, as if there were a definite plan on the part of some of my friends on the other side for the purpose of utterly convincing me by bringing evidence which could not possibly be accounted for by any supposition of a reading of my own mind. A spirit friend of mine would turn up, bringing with him a spirit whom I had never heard of, and saying that he was a friend of his; and on inquiry I would find that it was so--and sometimes it needed a great deal of inquiry, which made it all the better evidence, for it showed how difficult it would have been for the medium to obtain the information; though indeed at this stage the evidence had forced me past crude suspicions of that sort. On other occasions unknown spirits would appear, and I would find that they belonged to the last visitor I had had. Several incidents of this kind are described in my book _Psychical Investigations_. After some years of this kind of experience I became fully satisfied that the spirit explanation was the only reasonable one. Some writers, like Miss Dougall in a recent volume of essays called _Immortality_, invent a complicated hypothesis according to which my mind photographs the mind of a visitor and the medium on his next visit develops and reads off the photograph; but I confess that my credulity does not stand the strain put upon it by such a hypothesis. Besides, I have lately had--as if to get round even such tortured theories as this--evidence giving details which have not been known to any person I have ever met. I was told to write to a certain friend of mine, father of the ostensible communicator. The facts were unknown even to him, but he was able to verify them completely; and they were characteristic and evidential of the ident.i.ty of the ostensible communicator.

If all my results were of the kind I have had through Mr Wilkinson the case would, for me, be so utterly and overwhelmingly proved that doubt would be absurd. But this is too much to expect. I have had many other mediums here, with varying success, but nothing approaching Mr Wilkinson's. In many cases it is fairly obvious that the medium's subliminal--or the control's imagination--has been doing part of the business, no doubt unknown to the medium's normal consciousness. But in no case have I had any indication of fraud. This seems sufficient answer to Mr Edward Clodd's credulous acceptance of the theory of a Blue-Book and inquiry system which enables mediums to post themselves up about likely sitters. It would be the easiest thing in the world for an imitation medium to learn enough about me to give what would seem on the face of it a fairly "good" sitting. But this is never the case. Either the medium fails or he is so successful that normal knowledge is ruled out. On Mr Clodd's theory, I ought to have neither of these extremes; I ought to have no failures, and no results going beyond what inquiry could produce. But I need not labour this point, for Mr Clodd has recently confessed his almost absurd innocence of any first-hand experience. In a letter to the _International Psychic Gazette_ for April, 1918, he said he had been to a sitting about fifty years ago, but he does not remember much about what happened! Yet he sets up as an authority on this branch of experimental science! It is like someone writing on chemistry after being in a laboratory once, fifty years ago.

Some of my most curious experiences, concerning which I have not yet published anything in detail, have been in connexion with crystal vision. I happen to know a sensitive--not a professional medium or even a spiritualist--who has physical-phenomena powers of very unusual and indeed probably unique type. Not only can she see in the crystal and get evidential messages by writing seen therein, but the writing or pictures are visible to anyone present. I have seen them myself. As many as six people at a time, myself among them, have seen the same thing, and not one of the six was of suggestible type or had had any hallucinations. All were middle-aged, except one young lieutenant, and we were indeed a rather exceptionally un-neurotic and stodgy lot. But though the things seem objective--I am going to try to photograph them, also the sensitive, in the hope of confirming the Crewe phenomena--they are somehow more or less influenced by the sensitive's own mind, without her conscious knowledge; for, _e.g._, in one message, purporting to come from my father, I was addressed as Arthur, a name which would be natural to the medium who knows me mostly from printed matter and a few letters, but which is entirely inappropriate in relation to my father. Yet a good deal of evidence of ident.i.ty has come through this sensitive, and this "mixture" does not invalidate the case. Again, a queer feature of this sensitive's powers is that lost objects are frequently found as a result of instructions given in the crystal; and in many of these cases it seems certain that the position of the lost object could not have been known to any incarnate mind, or of course it would not have been left there. In one case it was a valuable ruby; in several others it was Treasury notes. This sensitive also is a medium for very good raps, which all present can hear quite distinctly and which show intelligence, answering questions and so forth.

I have therefore reached the conviction that human survival is a fact, that the life over there is something like an improved version of the present one, and--a comforting thought, supported by much of my evidence--that we are met at death by those who have gone before. Some of my more mystical friends, who have not needed such prolonged jolting to get them out of materialistic grooves, are rather bored with me for dwelling so much on the evidence and on the nature of the next state.

They call it "merely astral"; as for them, their minds soar in higher flights. One friend, a sort of radical High Churchman, said to me some time ago that he was "not interested in the intermediate state". But I rather think that he will have to be. I may be wrong, but I suspect that, whether they like it or not, these good people will have to go through the intermediate state before they get anywhere else. Good though they are, I do not believe they are good enough for unalloyed bliss or union with the G.o.dhead. Such sudden jumps do not happen.

Progress is gradual. Indeed, I have noticed lately that my High Churchman friend has shown much more interest in these merely psychical things. Perhaps he thinks he had better turn back and make sure of the next state and its nature, perceiving that it is a necessary bridge or "tarrying-place" (which is the alternative reading for the "mansions"

of our Father's house) on the way to the heaven which he quite rightly aims at.

As to the future of psychical science and opinion, I feel sure that great things are now ahead. The war, with the terrible amount of mourning it entails, has quickened interest in the subject, and for millions of people the question of survival and the next state has become an urgent and abiding one. Their interest, instead of being almost wholly on this side, is very largely over there, whither their loved ones have gone. Similarly with the soldiers who have come safely through the war. All have lost friends, all have faced the possibility of sudden or slow and painful death. And probably all young people at present, and most adults, have out-grown the crude beliefs of last century's orthodoxy with its everlasting h.e.l.l, and are ready for a more rational system. This is being supplied, backed by scientific proof, by psychical research and scientific spiritualism. It seems likely that the religion of the best minds for the next half-century or so, and perhaps onward, will be something like that which Myers came to hold in his later years. It does not much matter whether the spiritualist sect grows as an inst.i.tution or not. Many people will accept its main belief without feeling it necessary to leave the communion to which they already belong. It seems certain that the idea itself will be the ruling idea in many minds for a long time, and no doubt psychic faculty will become much more common, for thousands are now trying to develop it who never cared to try before. Quite possibly the effort on both sides of the veil, in consequence of so many premature deaths, may bring about a closer communion between the two sides than has ever been known hitherto. A great lift-up of earthly thought would be the result, a perhaps final emergence from the chrysalis stage of materialism; and we shall then be near the time when, as the inspired Milton makes his Raphael say:

"Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit, Improved by tract of time, and winged ascend Ethereal, as we, or may, at choice, Here or in heavenly Paradises dwell."

DO MIRACLES HAPPEN?

Mr G. K. Chesterton, with true journalistic instinct, recently stimulated public interest in himself and other worthy things by engineering a discussion on "Do Miracles Happen?" The debate furnished an opportunity of harmlessly letting off steam, but apparently each disputant "was of his own opinion still" at the finish; though some of the newspapers thought that the affirmative was proved, not by argument, but by the actual occurrence of a miracle at the meeting--for Mr Bernard Shaw was present, but remained silent! Joking apart, however, these discussions are usually rendered nugatory by each debater attaching a different meaning to the word. To one of them, a "miracle" involves the action of some non-human mind; to others it is only a "wonderful"

occurrence, which is the strictly etymological meaning. It is only in the latter sense that orthodox science has anything to say on the subject.

David Hume, in the most famous of his essays, says that a miracle is "a violation of the laws of nature", which laws a "firm and unalterable experience has established". A century later, Matthew Arnold disposed of the question in an even shorter manner. "Miracles do not happen", said he, in the preface to _Literature and Dogma_. Modern science has, speaking generally, concurred.

But the two statements are not very satisfactory. It is true, no doubt, that miracles did not enter into the experience of David Hume and Matthew Arnold; but this does not prove that they have never entered into the experience of anybody else. If I must disbelieve all a.s.sertions concerning phenomena which I have not personally observed, I must deny that the sun can ever be north at mid-day, as indeed the Greeks did (according to Herodotus), when the circ.u.mnavigators of Africa came back with their story. But if I do, I shall be wrong. (_Histories_, book IV, "I for my part do not believe them", says even this romantic historian.)

It is as unsafe to reject all human testimony to the marvellous as it is to accept it all without question. The modern mind has gone to the negative extreme, as the medieval mind went to the other. Take for instance the twenty-five thousand Lives of the Saints in the great Bollandist collection. They are full of miracles, of most incredible kinds; yet in those days the accounts caused no astonishment. There was no organised knowledge of nature, outside the narrow orbit of daily life--and how narrow that was, we with our facile means of communication and travel can hardly realise. Consequently there was little or no conception of law or orderliness in nature, and therefore no criterion by which to test stories of unusual occurrences. Anything might happen; there was no apparent reason why it shouldn't. One saint having retired into the desert to lead a life of mortification, the birds daily brought him food sufficient for his wants; and when a brother joined him they doubled the supply. When the saint died, two lions came and dug his grave, uttered a howl of mourning over his body, and knelt to beg a blessing from the survivor. (Cf. the curious story of St Francis taming "Brother Wolf", of Gubbio, in chapter 21 of the _Fioretti_.) The innumerable miracles in the _Little Flowers_ and _Life of St Francis_ are repeated in countless other lives; saints are lifted across rivers by angels, they preach to the fishes, who swarm to the sh.o.r.e to listen, they are visited by the Virgin, are lifted up in the air and suspended there for twelve hours while in ecstasy they perceive the inner mystery of the Most Blessed Trinity. Almost every town in Europe could produce its relic which has produced its miraculous cures, or its image that had opened or shut its eyes, or bowed its head to a wors.h.i.+pper. The Virgin of the Pillar, at Saragossa, restored a wors.h.i.+pper's leg that had been amputated. This is regarded by Spanish theologians as specially well attested. There is a picture of it in the Cathedral at Saragossa.

(Lecky, _Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe_, vol. 1, page 141.) The saints were seen fighting for the Christian army, when the latter battled with the infidel. In medieval times this kind of thing was accepted without question and without surprise.

About the end of the twelfth century there came a change. The human mind began to awake from its long lethargy; began to writhe and struggle against the dead hand of authority which held it down. The Crusades, as Guizot shows, had much to do with the rise of the new spirit, by causing educative contact with a high Saracenic civilization. Men began to wonder and to think. Heresy inevitably appeared, and became rife. In 1208 Innocent III established the Inquisition, but failed to strangle the infant Hercules. In 1209 began the ma.s.sacre of the Albigenses, which continued more or less for about fifty years, the deaths being at least scores of thousands; but the blood of the martyrs was the seed of further freedom and enlightenment. Nature began to be studied, in however rudimentary a way, by Roger Bacon and his brother alchemists.

The Reformation came, weakening ecclesiastical authority still further by dividing the dogmatic forces into two hostile camps, and thus giving science its chance. Galileo appeared, and did his work, though with many waverings, for Paul V and Urban VIII kept successively a heavy hand on him; he was imprisoned at seventy, when in failing health, and, some think, tortured--though this is uncertain, and his famous _e pur si muove_ is probably mythical. More important still, Francis Bacon, teaching with enthusiasm the method of observation and experiment. The conception of law, of rationality and regularity in nature, emerged; Kepler and Newton laid down the ground plan of the universe, evolving the formulae which express the facts of molar motion. Uniformity in geology was shown by Lyell, while Darwin and his followers carried law into biological evolution. Then man became swelled-headed; became intoxicated with his successes. It had already been so with Hume, and it became more so with his disciples. Man treated his own limited experience as a criterion, and denied what was not represented by something similar therein. Especially was this the case when alleged facts had any connection with religion. Religion had tried to exterminate science, and it was natural enough that, in revenge, science should be hostile to anything a.s.sociated with religion. Consequently, the scientific man flatly denied miracles, not only such stories as the rib of Adam and the talking serpent (concerning which even a church father like Origen had made merry in Gnostic days fifteen hundred years before), but also the healing miracles of Jesus, which to us are now beginning to look possible enough.

This negative dogmatism is as regrettable as the positive variety. It is not scientific. Science stands for a method, not for a dogma. It observes, experiments, and infers; but it makes no claim to the possession of absolute truth. A genuine science, confronted with allegations of unusual facts, neither believes nor disbelieves. It investigates. The solution of the problem is simply a question of evidence. Huxley in his little book _Hume_, and J. S. Mill in his _Essays on Religion_, made short work of the "impossibility" att.i.tude.

Says the former in _Science and Christian Tradition_, page 197: