Now I come to Sir Oliver Lodge, F.R.S., Dr. Sc., L.L.B., the brilliant and level-headed physicist whom we all admire and who is at the present time Professor of Physics of Birmingham University, of which scholastic institution he is the able Principal. We admire him for his distinguished attainments and also for the deeply religious sentiment that permeates his nature. He is also one of the intellectual ornaments of the Psychical Research Society of England and for very many years has devoted close attention to this absorbing and all-important problem. His religious fervour appears to have spurred him on in his investigations to discover the whereabouts and conditions of the "Unknown": because he realizes that it is only through the demonstrations of Science that the fact of an after-life can be established and because he sees that the proof of that fact will sound the death-knell of that spirit of Materialism which has so lamentably arrested the Spiritual movements of the world. The details of the nature of the phenomena page 24 Sir Oliver has witnessed have not yet been published, and therefore I will simply reproduce in his own language an extract from an address delivered by him before the Society for Psychical Research as recently as the end of January last. He says :—

"The phenomena of automatic writing strikes some of us as if it was in the direct line of evolutional advance—it seems like the beginning of a new human faculty. First of all, the evidence led us to realise the truth of telepathy; and that was the first chapter of the new volume that we have set ourselves to explore.

"I am going to assume, in fact, that our bodies can, under certain exceptional circumstances, be controlled, directly or temporarily possessed, by another or foreign intelligence, operating either on the whole or on some limited part of it. The question lying behind such a hypothesis, and justifying it or negativing it, is the root question of identity—the identity of the control.

"This question of identity is, of course, a fundamental one. The controlling spirit proves his identity mainly by reproducing, in speech or writing, facts which belong to his memory, and not to the automatisms memory. And notice that proof of identity will usually depend on the memory of trifles. The objection raised that communications too often relate to trivial subjects shows a lack of intelligence, or, at least, of due thought on the part of the critic. Our object is to get, not something dignified, but something evidential; and what evidence of persistent memory can be better than the recollection of trifling incidents which, for some personal reason, happen to have made a permanent impression ?

"We find the late Edmund Gurney and the late Richard Hodgson and the late F. W. H. Myers, with some other less known names, constantly purporting to communicate with us with the express purpose of patiently proving their identity, and giving us cross-correspondence between different mediums. We also find them answering specific questions in a manner characteristic of their known personalities, and giving evidence of knowledge appropriate to them.

"Not easily or early do we make this admission. In spite of long conversations with what purport to be the surviving intelligences of these friends and investigators, we were by no means convinced of their identity by mere general conversation, even when of a friendly and intimate character such as, in normal cases, would be considered amply and overwhelmingly sufficient for the identification of friends speaking, let us say, through a telephone or a typewriter. We required definite and crucial proof, a proof difficult even to imagine, as well as difficult to supply.

"The ostensible communicators realise the need of such proof just as fully as we do, and have done their best to satisfy the rational demand. Some of us think they have succeeded; others are still doubtful.