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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 3a

"Why do they Bring these Peculiar Things?"

"Why do they Bring these Peculiar Things?"

I am now going to anticipate a question which I am sure many of the readers of these details will ask—"Why on earth do they bring these peculiar things ?" In the first place it does not really matter why these objects are brought. The all-important consideration is the stupendous fact that they are brought. This is the unanimous declaration of the most illustrious Scientists of the time. However, the question raised is not a difficult point to answer.

The motive actuating these unseen intelligences is, of course, to demonstrate to people on the earth that they have survived the ordeal of death and that there exists another real and, in many, respects, perfectly natural, though invisible, world—a world of moral, intellectual and spiritual activity, whose inhabitants are ceaselessly ministering to the needs of their earthly brethren and endeavouring to prove by actual experimental demonstration that page 61 there is a life beyond the grave. Is it possible to afford more convincing proof by any method other than the one adopted—the bringing of tangible, visible objects, which can be handled and preserved, and whose arrival can only be explained by the hypothesis that the operators are the spirits of men who previously lived upon the earth ?

But why bring birds' nests with eggs from India, dripping seaweed and live fish ? Let the reader try to suggest anything that could possibly be brought which would produce a more convincing series of tests !

If these invisible agents were to bring a cedar pencil, a handker-chief, a toothpick or a pocket knife, it might reasonably be suspected that either the medium or one of the sitters had the articles secreted about his or her person and that they had escaped detection. But no such objection can be raised when the apports brought are of such a character that it would be quite impossible to overlook them in the course of a careful search—a piece of tapestry 11ft. long and 5ft. wide, for instance, or the flowing robes of a Chinese mandarin with hat and pig tail complete.

It is the very nature of the objects that constitute the peculiarly convincing character of the tests. Many of the articles received cannot be purchased "for love or money" and no ornithologist in Australia can name some of the peculiar birds that have come to hand.

Besides, it has to be remembered that these spirit performers are said to have been Hindus in earth life, and were at that time probably interested in the manifestations of occult forces as the Yogi and Fakirs of India are to-day. They have apparently carried forward with them into the next world all the predilections and peculiarities of temperament which characterised their earthly career, and consequently they take as much delight in producing these phenomena to-day as they probably did when performing less marvellous feats in the flesh.

Of course, to people who imagine that the spirit of man—the real man—undergoes some miraculous change at death, becomes suddenly transformed into some mysterious being, totally unlike it was before, and goes off to some mystic spirit world away among the stars, never to return, the explanation offered must appear quite meaningless. It therefore remains for them to analyse their reasons for their pre-conceived theory, and see if they can find any evidence to support it.