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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 3a

Science and the Soul

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Science and the Soul.

Introduction.

This is pre-eminently a Scientific age. Almost every week I witnesses some new discovery or the introduction of a new invention. It is not an easy matter, in fact, to keep pace with the almost magic strides which Science-is taking to-day. Wonder follows upon wonder, and there is not much risk in advancing the belief that we have at last entered upon a Golden Age which, in the brilliancy of its Scientific achievements, will far and away eclipse any similar development since the world first started on its, possibly, unending career of evolutionary progress.

In all its varied ramifications Science is shedding lustre on the times in which it is our privilege to live, greatly ameliorating the material conditions of existence and facilitating intercourse between the nations of the earth; and at the same time lifting men to a higher plane of mental thought, and by illumining their minds and augmenting their knowledge of Natural laws, is giving a potent stimulus to that spirit of inquiry without the exercise of which there can be no advance in the more important spheres of human action. Doubt spells inquiry, and inquiry spells progress. Hence all the most progressive minds of all the ages have been doubters and, consequently, inquirers, and it is along that path alone that has come all that accumulation of knowledge in the domains of Science, Philosophy, and Religion which is the fortunate inheritance of the present generations of men.

The leaders of these movements have, of course, been derided, scoffed at and persecuted, and in very many instances have been tortured and subsequently put to death rather than act the part of traitor to their conscience, be false to what they believed to be true, stiflers of the voice of duty, and disloyal to their God. The spirit—divine in its origin—which influenced those men, lives on, and is to-day manifesting itself in the unpopular declarations of some of the most eminent minds of the twentieth century. They are fighting for what they believe to be Truth, and though at times discouraged when "facing fearful odds," the hope of ultimate victory is a constant spur to continued persistence. They know that—

Truth crushed to earth will rise again,
The eternal years of God are hers.

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You cannot kill Truth. It would not be Truth if you could. Truth is everlasting. It springs from God Himself and is equally enduring. It is only error that fails to survive. As old Gamaliel, the tutor of the illustrious Paul, expressed it in New Testament phraseology two thousand years ago, when Peter and the others were arraigned before the Ecclesiastical Court of that day for the heresy they were alleged to have preached—"And now I say unto you, refrain from these men and let them alone; for if this counsel, or this work be of men, it will come to nought; but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it, lest haply ye be found even to fight against God Himself."

He was a fine old philosopher was Gamaliel, and we, in our day, would do well to emulate his example of broad-minded toleration when encountering those with whose Scientific, Philosophic or Religious views we happen to be at variance. Unhappily, there is too much of the opposite spirit displayed in these so-called tolerant times, and amongst no section of the community do you find it more prominently in evidence than amongst many of those who profess to be followers of the Prince of Peace, whose precepts they cordially endorse, but whose example of love and forbearance they so often fail to reproduce. In spite of the opposition of the past, however, Science has continued to push its way to the front and will unquestionably continue to advance, notwithstanding the bitterest bigotry of the narrowest minds and all the jeers and ridicule it may yet have to encounter.

I am led to make these remarks because of the nature of some of the facts I propose to submit in the course of this treatise, and of the unreasoning and illogical antipathy sometimes exhibited towards those who feel they are neither degrading themselves, nor belittling their Creator, by obeying the command of the Master—"Seek and ye shall find"—no matter along what channel their investigations may lead them. But before alluding further to this particular phase of the subject—the Transcendental phase—let us briefly review some of the other marvellous Scientific developments which have in recent years arrested the attention of intelligent and thoughtful men, and which appear almost miraculous in their mysterious detail.

The Wonders of Electricity.

Many years have passed since men ceased to wonder at the telegraphy and they are now becoming quite familiarised with the marvels of wireless telegraphy. Yet how many of them try to understand something of the process whereby messages can be sent by a transmitter and correctly recorded by the receiver, page 3 although the two stations are thousands of miles apart, and have no visible connecting medium between them ! Of what interest is it to them to be informed that the atmosphere which surrounds the earth is interlaced with channels of ether—that mystic something which is lighter than the lightest gas—and that these lines of ether are the unseen courses along which the electric current is conducted for the purposes of wireless telegraphy? They are too much engrossed in material things to give thought and study to ascertaining something of the. mystery of these sublimer forces—these Laws of God, which form a more vital part of the mighty universal scheme of Creation than all the other forces with which we are more or less familiar.

Scientists are now beginning to realise that it is the invisible that is the real, and that the seen is only the effect of invisible causes. We see this exemplified in wireless telegraphy, and what, in my opinion, is more wonderful still, is that other marvel of Scientific attainment—wireless telephony.

This remarkable discovery of the twentieth century is to-day but in its infancy. The experiments, however, which have been so successfully conducted in Europe and America indicate that the possibilities which lie before it are well nigh boundless. This planet of ours, in fact, seems destined to be reduced to the dimensions of a drawing-room respecting the freedom with which we shall be able to converse with each other in the years that are to be. Space would then be annihilated, and the sense of separation would almost cease to exist.

To show that this conception is not necessarily the imaginative conjecture of an idle fancy, one of the more prominent workers engaged in perfecting and extending this wonderful process recently discussed the future of wireless telephony in terms like these—"The day will come when copper wires, gutta-percha covers, and iron bands will only be found in museums; when a person who wishes to speak to a friend, but does not know where he is, will call with an electrical voice which will be heard only by him who has a similarly-tuned electrical ear. He will cry : 'Where are you V And the answer will sound in his ear : 'I am in the depths of a mine, on the summit of the Andes, or on the broad expanse of ocean.' Or perhaps no voice will reply, and he will know that his friend is dead."

This certainly reads very much like romance. So did wireless telegraphy when it was first mooted and so have clone many other, at one time, incredible Scientific achievements. Romance, in the realm of Science, has a very peculiar knack of transforming itself into a prosaic and indisputable reality, and this experience may be page 4 repeated in the actual realisation of what to-day may seem impossible in regard to this predicted development in wireless telephony. It is, in short, just about time the word "impossible" was erased from the vocabulary of the English language. Most intelligent men and women have now reached a stage of mental expansion enabling them to recognise that nothing is impossible, and seeing that Science is so rapidly and completely conquering space we ought to frame our minds for the reception of any fresh development in any realm, no matter how sensational and how unexpected such developments may be.

Mankind has been amazed by Science time after time in the past—more particularly in recent years—and these surprises will doubtless continue to be sprung on the world as "knowledge grows from more to more." To be able to reproduce the human voice over long distances without the aid of wires would have seemed miraculous to a less-enlightened generation, and if our grandmothers had been told that this development was in store they would certainly have declared that it could only be rendered possible by the performance of a miracle. Ignorance, in fact, always sees the miraculous in an inexplicable circumstance. But it is only miraculous because of our lack of knowledge of those profound Laws of Nature through which the effects are produced.

As men grow in knowledge of God and His wondrous works, miracles diminish, and consequently it is literally true that the age of miracles has passed—not because there are not things happening to-day equally marvellous as most of the events described as miracles, but because the mind of man has developed; because his knowledge has increased in obedience to the divine law of progressive revelation, and because he is beginning to understand something of those higher natural forces which have been in active operation since the beginning of Time, for "with God is no variableness, neither the shadow of a turning."

God's laws are from everlasting to everlasting, and in all their multifarious operations never vary a hair's breadth from their set and beneficent purposes. They are immutable, inexorable, eternal, and the Reason of Man—which has, unhappily, been too long dethroned, but which is at last breaking through the fettering bonds of superstition and tradition—is now beginning to realise that no other arrangement of natural forces could possibly be reconciled with the existence of an Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omni-present Creative Mind.

Passing on, then, to further wonders of these latter days, we come to the transmission of pictures—photographs and scenes—by the use of the telegraphic wire, and in this connection lifelike page 5 portraits have been reproduced by this inscrutable process. The two stations were far apart, but the result was almost faultless, and now we learn that even the wire has been dispensed with and that pictures are to-day actually being transmitted by the wireless method. Wherever the necessary stations are erected, it is claimed, as one of the advantages of this discovery, that portraits of criminals can be faithfully flashed across space, and even the faintest outlines of their finger prints. That is truly wonderful enough, but it seems to be almost equalled as a marvel by the fact that a telegraph operator in London can dispatch a message to Paris, where the electric current agitates a wire connected with one of the Parisian newspaper offices, sets the linotype machine in motion, which machine automatically sets up the telegraphed matter in type and presents it ready for the press, with virtually no one doing any work but the man manipulating the apparatus in London !

Compared with this achievement we can read with complacency that ships are now being installed with an invention for submarine signalling whereby a vessel, many miles from land, in a dense fog, can be informed of her position by signals given with a bell from the lighthouse near the mainland. The warning sound travels under water, strikes the receiver on the vessel, and the captain knows exactly where he is, although previously he might have been in a hopeless haze concerning his bearings. This discovery will obviate many wrecks and may in course of time be the means of saving thousands of precious lives. We are also ceasing to view with our former sense of wonderment the spectacle of a ship sailing through the air, and even the announcement that a speed of 50 or 60 miles an hour has been attained, scarcely induces us to raise our eyebrows.

Another invention naturally leads us to inquire—"Is the telegraph instrument, with its code of dots and dashes, doomed ?" One may well ask the question after learning about the telewriter, by which it is possible to write a message which is reproduced simultaneously miles away in fac simile writing. This wonderful machine has already been brought to such a state of simplicity and perfection that it is in use in several London offices, and before long will probably be used as largely as the telephone is to-day. As soon as the sender's pencil is taken up, the pen of the receiver, miles and miles away, comes out of the ink, and moving as if by magic, traces exactly what is written or drawn at the other end. A message can be signed, and the signature is just as convincing as if it were the original Amongst other things it is proposed to use the telewriter for advertising purposes, and very shortly we may page 6 expect to see writing without hands being done in shop windows in order to attract the passers-by.

But if all these things are to be considered almost inconceivable in their bewildering ingenuity, what about the Lynnoscope—an invention by means of which it is claimed that anyone will be able to see around the world ? We have not heard much about this discovery yet. Mr. John Wellesley Lynn is the inventor, and he declares he has proved by experiment that the instrument will allow people in London to see their fellow beings in America instantaneously; that it will reflect any written message to the most distant place, and that it will enable any person to see right through any human being or solid substance as if they were not there.

"The Lynnoscope consists of three distinct instruments," says the inventor—"(i) the operator, (2) the transmitter, (3) the receiver. All that is necessary in sending reflections any distance overland is to fix a transmitter on the highest available point—a hill-top or a tower—and the image is correctly reflected on the receiver. It will be possible to present an actual reflection of the Derby as it is being run, to an audience at a matinee at any London theatre. I do not mean a living cinematograph picture, he goes on, "but an actual reflection of the event as it is in progress. I have secured perfect reflections at a distance of 186 miles, and I have photographed scenes 80 miles away. I experimented at Buckingham Palace, and the Lynnoscope made a lady who was present apparently invisible. Sir Thos. Lipton and others have interested themselves in the invention, and have written expressing themselves perfectly satisfied with the experiments. I have been at work on this invention for nine years, and was working all the time on a pre-conceived scheme. A curious accident, however, helped me to the solution. I was working in my study with my apparatus, and, on looking through it, saw what appeared to be a hole in place of the floor. I found to my surprise that I could see right through carpet and floor to a transmitter in the cellar. I have been awarded a diploma at the Inventions Exhibition for optical discoveries, and am willing to show what I can do before any committee of Scientific experts."

According to this, there will be no necessity for us presently to go to the old country to see our friends. By looking through this instrument in Australia we shall be able to see them going to church on Sunday, and on the Monday morning we shall have the unspeakable joy of watching them "hanging out the clothes!" Again I ask—" Have we room for the word 'impossible' when contemplating even the most sensational predictions which Science has yet to fulfil?" Does not the whole trend of Scientific attainment clearly demonstrate that anything and everything is possible page 7 Let us, then, dismiss that word from our minds and be prepared for any wonder that has yet to be revealed!

Solid Matter Abolished—Nothing Exists but Corpuscles of Electricity.

Accompanying the foregoing developments must be mentioned the discovery of the X Rays and the recent declaration of Scientists that there is no such thing as solid matter. That which we call solid matter has been found to consist of an aggregation of atoms—infinitely small, so small, in fact, that 100,000 of them would only cover a square inch—and these atoms appear to be subdivided into something infinitely smaller still. These latter inconceivably minute particles have been named electrons by certain physicists, and corpuscles of electricity by others. So that in the final analysis we find nothing but electricity as the basis of all matter.

The whole universe is one vast ocean of electric energy—heaving, pulsating, always in a state of flux and incessant activity. It was Sir William Crookes, the brilliant British Scientist, who first advanced this theory some thirty years ago, and he has lived to see it accepted by the more celebrated of his gifted colleagues. Amongst these is Professor Edgar Lucien Larkin, the well-known Astronomer and Director of the famed Lowe Observatory, in California, who has recently contributed a striking series of erudite articles on the subject to the columns of the Harbinger of Light From these articles I cull the following extracts relating to what he describes as "the recent mighty discoveries in those almost inscrutable realms of the new higher Science of electricity—

"The Science began when that great pioneer, William Crookes, made his first and now classical and historical experiments with his glass, high vacuum tubes. Human eyes for the first time saw matter put on an entirely new condition. It became radiant. He called it Radiant Matter, or matter in a Fourth State. This was in 1879. At once every physical, chemical and electrical laboratory in the world became scenes of the most intense activity. After classes were dismissed, University professors locked the doors and worked all night delving and digging round about the base of Nature.

"The most skilful glassblowers were employed to make new, strange, and perfect tubes. And mechanical skill was taxed to the limit in making air-pumps to exhaust the air in these new tubes, so that finally less than the one-millionth part remained. This was for the purpose of allowing the electrical particles to fly from end to end as free as possible from collision with the molecules of air. These almost empty tubes of hard glass had page 8 platinum terminals or electrodes fused through the end walls, and these were connected by wires to sources of electricity at enormous pressures. When the electricity was turned on, wonders entirely unknown were displayed.

"I was astonished when I made my first demonstration before students with a Crookes' tube. The bombarding particles were turned on platinum, and this obdurate metal became white hot in an instant. Strange but supernal lights glowed in the vacuum. These were of surpassing beauty, and were at once sent into the spectroscope for analysis. Illimitable wonders were again revealed, and every Scientific man in the world buckled on armour in which to explore this new and infinitely wide field, in which everything was new.

"With rare prescience and with a sagacity always characteristic of Crookes, he said that the streams through the tubes consisted of negatively electrified bodies—each inconceivably small. This statement is the basic rock now lying under the most wonderful of all Sciences, if indeed one can be called more wonderful than another. For all those engaged in these studies can now see, and are fully aware, that the universe is—what shall I say?—hundreds of millions of times more majestic, complex and intricate than ever conceived by the most vivid imagination. It is one grand homogeneous unit, and we humans are integral parts thereof, especially our minds. Crookes said that the particles flying at terrific speed were charged negatively. In 1895 Perrin proved this to be true.

"Crookes' particles are now called corpuscles. A few physicists call them electrons. But the point is that nothing else, whatever, is in existence. Thus everything—all atoms of matter and of mind—are made of corpuscles, and these are made of pure electricity, and nothing else. This is the inevitable tendency and trend of the latest Science, mental and material. For the entire activity of the universe consists of concentration and radiation—a flux and flow of corpuscles toward and away from a centre.

"Telepathy consists of a flow of corpuscles away from a mental centre and impact on another. And telekinesis is caused by the motion of corpuscles. So is everything. There is no such thing as a phenomenon. The universe and all within are in the clutch of law. Thoughts are things—currents of real corpuscles. Cells in brains are transmitters and receivers of corpuscles, and these only. The body and its organs, together with the brain and nerves, unite into one complex electro-bio-mental machine. Its sole output is corpuscles, and it receives corpuscles only. Life and mind are electrical.

"Since the discovery of hydrogen, its atom has been the smallest and lightest body known. It is so small that the most powerful minds—those of the world's ablest mathematicians, have never been able to think, or even begin to think, how minute it is. Yet it weighs as much as 1700 corpuscles ! These are the carriers, makers, workers, and builders. They made the entire visible and invisible universes, one within the other."

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Professor Edgar Lucien Larkin,

Professor Edgar Lucien Larkin,

Director of Lowe Observatory, California.

"You know how strenuously I have written for 40 years all over the world in 70 different papers and magazines on Natural Science and rigid Materialism—over 4000 articles which I now see clearly were on the wrong side. Now I am studying and writing all the time on Psychology and Mental Subjects."

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Elaborating still further on the theme Professor Larkin says :—

"Matter is chemically inert unless nascent. Thus the most recent and world-astounding declaration of Science is that nothing exists but electricity in the form of inconceivably small discrete particles or bodies called corpuscles. . . Corpuscles in a nascent state vibrate, oscillate, undulate and revolve with velocities far and ever beyond hope of comprehension. These motions, and these only, constitute the entire life of the Universe. Then our minds, our very thoughts, conscious and sub-conscious, are flows of corpuscles. Radium sends out flows of corpuscles, and so do cells in the brain. Positively thoughts are as real as are these corpuscles . . and doubtless our own marvellous minds are made of corpuscles.

"Thus the Universe is a unit, although there are actually billions of suns, and, without doubt, trillions of minute invisible planets like the earth and other planets of our little solar system, all of which, even up to trillions, amount to next to nothing in the mighty cosmical edifice. . .

"Now, since all suns are composed of like phases of matter, and as all matter known to spectroscopists can be resolved into corpuscles, it can be said that nothing is in existence beside. But when the corpuscles are obtained the ablest physicists and chemists cannot possibly detect any difference between them and electricity. So we say that the entire Universe and all things it contains are made of electricity. But corpuscles are so far beyond all powers of imagination that no hope can be had of thinking about their ultimate nature."

After perusing these mind-whirling statements, the reader will probably want to stop and "take breath"! They, are, however, endorsed, amongst others, by that brilliant astronomer, M. Camille Flammarion, who last year published a work in which he declares that matter, of which we make so much, does not really exist, and that the Universe is a mighty organism which is ruled by dynamics of a psychic order. That which we term matter, then, is simply an agglomeration of tiny particles of electricity attracted to each other by some inscrutable Law of Affinity. It is not a solid at all. It is a mosaic of electric corpuscles and perhaps this fact furnishes an explanation of its being so easily penetrable by the marvellous X Rays.

Telepathy Scientifically Demonstrated.

A wonderful age, this, in which to live ! But there are greater marvels than any of these revelations in store. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive" the glories and wonders that are yet to be revealed. The Scientific demonstration and acceptance of the fact of telepathy page 10 is a step in the direction to which I refer—the revelations of what Professor Zöllner, the eminent German Scientist, calls Transcendental Physics, which seem destined to conclusively prove the continuity of existence and the immortality of the soul.

Mr. W. T. Stead, the brilliant journalist and social reformer, and the confidant of Emperors and Kings, has told us over and over again that he is in daily communication with friends at a distance to whom he sends telepathic messages, and receives answers by the same mysterious channel, upon which he acts as though he had actually been in conversation with the party with whom he has thus been invisibly connected. "I find this a great convenience," he says, "for it saves a lot of personal interviewing, and consequently a lot of time."

Here, then, we have two minds communicating with each other, and Sir William Crookes tells us that if he were to-day beginning his investigations in the Transcendental realm he would base his researches upon this supreme and proved mental fact of telepathy, because, if two minds, whilst still in the flesh, can communicate with each other, he sees no reason why two minds—one in the flesh and the other out of the flesh—should not be able to do the same.

The transference of thought, then, from one mind to another, is to-day accepted by official Science, and this has naturally led to an investigation of the nature of thought, with the result that thoughts are now described—not as mere "nothings," but as palpable, though invisible, "things " which shoot forth from the mind like the electrons which dart from a piece of radium, and go careering through space until they strike some receptive mind with which they have an affinity, and the individual is correspondingly influenced thereby. If the thought is evil it will influence him for evil. If it is good it will influence him for good, There is no more impressive statement in the whole of this work than that which I have just presented. Only think of it ! Thoughts are things, and your thoughts and my thoughts, by the influence they exert, may possibly determine the ultimate destiny of immortal souls !

Thoughts and Emotions Photographed.

Professor Larkin describes thoughts as "electric corpuscles" darting hither and thither with inconceivable rapidity in search of a congenial lodgment, and to show that this conception of the nature and power of thought is no empty flight of the imagination, it will only be necessary to draw attention to the photographic experiments conducted by Dr. Baraduc, the eminent nerve specialist, page 11 of Paris. If thoughts are things, he considered it should be possible to photograph them. He accordingly prepared a special apparatus, with an exceptionally sensitive plate attached, and under the most conclusive conditions obtained a series of strikingly distinct, and, in some cases, most beautiful pictures of these thought forces and emotions, as will be seen from the frontispiece to this little work.

These pictorial wonders were reproduced in the Illustrated London News some time ago, and their publication caused a great sensation in the Scientific circles of Europe. One of these photographs represents a column of prayer. By arrangement with half-a-dozen devout persons, a prayer meeting was held in an apartment at the top of the Eiffel Tower. The special camera was arranged in position, and at a given moment Dr. Baraduc took the picture. The result was a very clear and impressive representation of the thoughts and aspirations of these intensely earnest souls rising like a column of incense as though ascending direct to the very throne of God. He has also taken good thoughts and bad thoughts of certain individuals, placid thoughts and stormy thoughts, and the pictures they produce are most remarkable—some beautiful in their sweet and tranquilising aspect, whilst others resemble a veritable mental typhoon, according to the humour of the subject at the time the photo was taken.

Dr. Baraduc further believes that psychic powers can be applied to the treatment of diseases, and in this connection the pictures representing the forms of benedictions and of a flow of curative force at Lourdes during the performance of a "miracle" are certainly very suggestive. The wonderful cures wrought at Lourdes. year after year have hitherto been regarded by the majority of people, either as frauds or purely imaginary occurrences, but it is now known that they are well-based Scientifically and are too real to be any longer disputed. They are, apparently, due to that Spiritual "gift of healing," of which Paul writes, and the potential curative agency is a mysterious psychic emanation which is sufficiently palpable to impress a sensitive plate.

"I am not a Spiritualist, nor a doctrinaire," says Dr. Baraduc, "but speak from experience, and I declare I have found forces surrounding man which have been registered on photographic plates. Man is surrounded by an atmosphere of personal ether. Every human being has an impalpable double, which reproduces his form and which allows us to explain ghost stories and the phenomena of double sight Call it soul, if you like, or astral body. I have photographed this ether double 80 hours after death. When my wife died I photographed a nebulous globe which escaped from her like a soul. You see, there are forces in this page 12 world and forces in the other world. When, in the name of truth, Spiritual scientists unite with Material scientists, we will arrive at a knowledge of the synthesis of the forces which regulate our life and our immortality, for man does not belong to this planet only, but to the starry spaces in which his thoughts revolve."

Nor are we indebted to Dr. Baraduc alone for this revelation. Colonel Albert de Rochas has conducted similar experiments with great success, and in The Annals of Psychical Science in February last he contributes an illustrated article showing not only remarkably vivid representations of thought forces, but also of the partial and complete severance of the astral body from its physical counterpart, the complete astral form being identical in outline with the human body. "We have a natural body and we have a spiritual body," says St. Paul. Was it this astral body to which Paul alluded as the spiritual body ? Was he aware of the existence of this duplicate which we are only just discovering ? And, it should be remembered, the camera cannot lie !

Fighting the Materialist.

If, then, mind can communicate with mind, if thoughts are things, and if they can be photographed, it will at once be seen that we are entering upon a field of study of transcendent interest, and we have only to go one step further and we immediately inquire—Can the Scientist offer us any absolute and conclusive answer to the question, "If a man die, shall he live again ?" That is the all-important question, to which mankind requires a positive and decisive reply. Neither the poet nor the philosopher can give a convincing answer, and theologians admit they are equally impotent to furnish us with proof. We may "believe" in an after life, but mere "belief" is not knowing, and if the dense Materialism which has taken possession of a large proportion of the race—with its most powerful exponent in Haeckel—and which, perhaps, more than any other influence is at present impeding the progress of the Christian Church, is to be effectually and finally dispersed, the answer must come from the experimental investigations of the Scientists, and from these alone. We must have, not only mental, but objective evidence of the survival of the human personality.

The solution of this problem seems to be vital to the continued well-being of the Christian Church, and therefore the best friends the Church possesses to-day are those who, for the time being, may be derided and ridiculed, but who are nevertheless working assiduously to supply that unanswerable demonstrative proof which will hurl the Materialist from his pedestal and give a new and irresistible page 13 impulse to the spread of spiritual truths. This, then, is the stupendous problem that has for many years past been engaging the minds of the leading Scientists of the age, and some of them, at least, tell us that the mystery has been solved—that they have discovered absolutely irrefutable proof that the continuity of consciousness is a demonstrated fact, and that when we leave these physical bodies the real man—of which this outward form is but the semblance—enters upon a higher stage of existence in obedience to that great undeviating law of evolution which reigns throughout the universe.

Now, if this very definite claim is really based upon Truth it is just as well that we should know it—especially as it is made on the authority of such eminent Scientists as Dr. A. Russel Wallace, Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, Professor Zöllner Professor Lombroso, and M. Camille Flammarion, among many other less familiarly known celebrities, to say nothing of the hosts of philosophers and poets, and of men ranking on the highest summit in Literature, Art and the Church—all of whom sing the one song of assured immortality.

As men and women possessing intelligence and reason, and desiring above all things that the mystery should be solved, we cannot dismiss the conclusions of these intellectual giants with a careless wave of the hand and declare that it is all a delusion. This is surely not the attitude of the man who is loyal in his adherence to Christianity and who sincerely desires to see the Materialist overthrown. It is rather the attitude of the man who is, unconsciously no doubt, the greatest enemy of the Church and that which the Church represents, and at the same time the friend of those whose soul-killing Materialism operates as an extinguisher of the spiritual life of the people.

Transcendental Experiments.

I may point out that these Scientific investigations have been carried on with great thoroughness, with the most scrupulous scrutiny and under strictly Scientific test conditions. Many of these tests seem almost ludicrous in their exacting requirements, but the very fact that they were so rigid as to absolutely preclude all possibility of fraud or delusion makes them the more valuable and gives the results greatly added weight. The investigations, moreover, have extended over a very long interval of time. It is not a matter of a year or two, or even of a decade. From 30 to 40 years have elapsed since the study of psychic phenomena was taken in hand by the leading Scientific minds of that time, and in more recent years the subject has received the closest attention of page 14 Scientists in England and America, and in Germany, France and Italy.

Certain peculiarly constituted persons called Psychics, or Sensitives, or Mediums, or "Automatists," as Sir Oliver Lodge describes them, have been found from time to time possessing in a very remarkable degree that mysterious agent known as psychic force, which is given off from their organisms as an invisible emanation, and which is said to be the potent agency through which the manifestations witnessed have been obtained.

There was a time when these manifestations were regarded either as delusions or frauds. That, however, was before the Scientists took their investigations systematically in hand, and now, after years of experiment, and after taking all the precautions which human ingenuity could devise to safeguard themselves against trickery, these brilliant lights in the Scientific firmament unanimously declare these almost stupefying phenomena to be absolutely real, absolutely genuine. That, at any rate, is an enormous advance, for we now know that we are dealing with a great reality, and not with an imposture or an imaginary freak.

I wish, however to explain that although the whole of these Scientific investigators have pronounced the phenomena to be real they are not at the present time unanimous as to the cause. The more prominent of them—such as Wallace, Crookes, Lodge, Zöllner, and Lombroso—declare the results to be due to the operations of invisible intelligences—of the spirits of men and women who formerly lived upon the earth. Others—like Professor Morselli, the distinguished Italian psychologist—tell us that they have no room in their mental fabric for the "Spiritual," and that they do not know what to make of the wonders they have seen. Although he cannot at present accept the Spiritual hypothesis, however, Professor Morselli by no means exhibits a blind and unreasoning antagonism to this theory. In an article he contributed recently to the Corriere della Lara, of Milan, he says :—

"Spiritualism, bound up, as it is, with the beliefs of the ancients, and associated with all the great religions and philosophies of the world, deserves to engage the attention and respect of the most liberal, as well as of the most prejudiced man of Science. It can no longer be passed over with derision and almost indifference, because it is an hypothesis which commands the assent of intellects of the highest order."

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