I.

The recent applications of electricity in wireless telegraphy and wireless telephony, while proving nothing in themselves as to the nature or permanence of personality, are valuable as enabling us to illustrate the difficulties as well as the possibilities of proving the existence of life after death.

In order to form a definite idea of the problem which we are about to attack, let us imagine the grave as if it [unclear: were] the Atlantic Ocean, as it appeared to our forefathers [unclear: before] the days of Christopher Columbus. In order to [unclear: make] the parallel complete, it is necessary to suppose that [unclear: the] Atlantic could only be traversed by vessels from east [unclear: to] west, and that ocean currents or strong easterly gales [unclear: rendered] it impossible for any voyager from Europe to [unclear: America] to return to the Old World. We shall thus be [unclear: able] to form a simple but perfectly clear conception [unclear: of] difficulties which I am now about to discuss.

If Christopher Columbus after discovering America had been unable to sail back across the Atlantic, Europe would after a time have concluded that he had perished in an ocean which had no further shore. If innumerable other voyagers had set out on the same westward journey and had never returned, this conviction would have deepened into an absolute certainty. Yet Christopher Columbus and those who followed him might have been living and thriving and founding a new nation on the American continent.

What would have happened in those circumstances? In all probability the faith even of the most ardent believers in the reality of Columbus's great vision would have grown dim. If it did not altogether die out, it would be due to the fact that from time to time, in the dreams of the night, their friends saw him alive and well in a strange new world. But everything would be shadowy and unreal as a dream.

Now let us transport ourselves from the time of Columbus to our own day. We must assume that the original physical impossibility of crossing the Atlantic from west to east still continues. But in the intervening centuries the men who had crossed from east to west have increased and multiplied, and have built up a great nation with an advanced civilisation on the American continent. Like us they discover telegraphy, like us they invent and use the telephone. After a time they discover and apply the principle of wireless telegraphy, and after that they perfect the wireless telephone.

The terrors of the unknown would not daunt for ever the intrepid spirits of European explorers. A ship or ships would be equipped to cross the Atlantic. When their crews and passengers landed on the further shore they would discover, to their infinite amazement, not only that a vast continent existed within five days' steam from Liverpool, but that those who were thought to have perished had founded a great commonwealth in the New World. What would immediately happen?

The newcomers, finding themselves unable to return, would at once endeavour to utilise all the resources of modern science to enable them to communicate their great discovery to the Old World. They would endeavour to perfect and extend the use of wireless telegraphy, so as to enable them to flash the good news to their friends on the European shore. At first they would fail from the lack of any receiving station on this side. But after a while, by some happy chance, a wireless message from America might be caught on some sea coast Mareoni station.

When that message arrived, how would it be received? In all probability it would be fragmentary, incoherent, and apparently purposeless. It would be set down to some practical joker or regarded as some random message sent out from somewhere in Europe. And so for a long time the attempt to communicate information would fail. After an interval a more coherent message would arrive. Efforts would be made to answer, but the replies might not arrive when anyone was in attendance at the other side; the instruments might not be properly attuned, the messages might be so mutilated as to be unintelligible. A few cranks who had never lost the faith, traditional and dim, that there was a world beyond the seething waste of waters, would go on experimenting, wasting time and money, and exposing themselves to the ridicule of the scientific world.

At last, after innumerable disappointments, it is possible that the captain of the last exploring expedition page ii might succeed in getting through a message, clear, direct to the point, such as this:—

From Captain Smith, of the Resolute s.s., to Lloyds, London. Alive and well. Discovered new world filled with descendants of Christopher Columbus and his men.

What would follow the receipt of such a Mareonigram? It would probably arrive so many years after the expedition had sailed that no one would at first remember who Captain Smith was. When the records were looked up, and the existence of the ship and its commander recalled, there would be some sensation, and a good deal of discussion. Efforts to reach the unknown land would be renewed, but the majority of practical, common-sense men of the world would regard the message as a practical joke, while men of science would prove to their own complete satisfaction the absolute impossibility of any such new world xisting, and, a fortiori, of any such message being authentic.

But after a time more messages would come. Some method would be discovered of despatching replies and of receiving answers. At last the scientific world would wake up to the recognition of the fact that a prima facie case had been made out for the strange, the almost incredible, phenomena that seemed to point to the possibility that there was another world beyond the Atlantic, and that its inhabitants could by means of wireless telegraphy communicate with Europe. The difficulties they would encounter would be the identical difficulties which confront us in our quest for certainty as to life after death. But with patience and perseverance and careful allowance for the obstacles in the way of trans-oceanic intercourse, the existence of the American continent would in the end be established as firmly as I believe the existence of the Other World is very soon about to be established, beyond all question or cavil.