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 hisChristianity and Immortalityand Dr Paterson Smyth in his excellentGospel of the Hereaftertake the same view. Our modern moral sense refuses to believe that a good God 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 God gave him that freedom, and therefore still bears the ultimate responsibility. To retainbelief in a God who can be loved and worshipped, 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 hell. 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 whentheycross 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 substitute 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 God’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 antagonisesChristianfaith, I say most emphatically that on the contrary itsupportsit. Christianity was based on aFact: 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.
[2]Spiritualism: Its History, Phenomena, and Doctrine(Cassell & Co., Ltd.).[3]Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. 29,p.59. (For brevity’s sake I shall hereinafter use the recognised initials “S.P.R.” for the Society.)[4]E.g., Moses and Elias on the Mount.[5]Lord Rayleigh’s lamented death has since occurred, July, 1919.
[2]Spiritualism: Its History, Phenomena, and Doctrine(Cassell & Co., Ltd.).
[2]Spiritualism: Its History, Phenomena, and Doctrine(Cassell & Co., Ltd.).
[3]Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. 29,p.59. (For brevity’s sake I shall hereinafter use the recognised initials “S.P.R.” for the Society.)
[3]Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. 29,p.59. (For brevity’s sake I shall hereinafter use the recognised initials “S.P.R.” for the Society.)
[4]E.g., Moses and Elias on the Mount.
[4]E.g., Moses and Elias on the Mount.
[5]Lord Rayleigh’s lamented death has since occurred, July, 1919.
[5]Lord Rayleigh’s lamented death has since occurred, July, 1919.
Probablyfew 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 amusement to others.
Professor William James says in hisTalks to Teachersthat 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 hell-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 shecould 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 withLightand some of Mr E. W. Wallis’s books, but I soon found my way to theProceedings 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 withMrs 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 ofsomethingsupernormal, 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’sHuman 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 afew 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 myNew 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 ofthe 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 bookPsychical 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 calledImmortality, 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 identity 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 theInternational Psychic Gazettefor 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, concerningwhich 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 identity 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 andwhich 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 Godhead. 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 ofpeople 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 hell, 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 institution 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 ascendEthereal, as we, or may, at choice,Here or in heavenly Paradises dwell.”
“Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit,Improved by tract of time, and winged ascendEthereal, as we, or may, at choice,Here or in heavenly Paradises dwell.”
“Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit,Improved by tract of time, and winged ascendEthereal, as we, or may, at choice,Here or in heavenly Paradises dwell.”
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 toLiterature 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 assertions 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 circumnavigators of Africa came back with their story. But if I do, I shall be wrong. (Histories, bookiv, “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 “BrotherWolf”, of Gubbio, in chapter 21 of theFioretti.) The innumerable miracles in theLittle FlowersandLife of St Francisare repeated in countless other lives; saints are lifted across rivers by angels, they preach to the fishes, who swarm to the shore 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 worshipper. The Virgin of the Pillar, at Saragossa, restored a worshipper’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 InnocentIIIestablished the Inquisition, but failed to strangle the infant Hercules. In 1209 began the massacre 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 PaulVand UrbanVIIIkept 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 famouse pur si muoveis 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 formulæ 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 associated 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 thepositive 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 bookHume, and J. S. Mill in hisEssays on Religion, made short work of the “impossibility” attitude. Says the former inScience and Christian Tradition, page 197:
“Strictly speaking, I am unaware of anything that has a right to the title of an impossibility, except a contradiction in terms. There are impossibilities logical, but none natural. A ‘round square’, a ‘present past’, ‘two parallel lines that intersect’, are impossibilities, because the ideas denoted by the predicates round, present, intersect, are contradictory of the ideas denoted by the subjects square, past, parallel. But walking on water, or turning water into wine, are plainly not impossibilities in this sense”.
No alleged occurrence can be ruled out as impossible, then, unless the statement is self-contradictory. Difficulty of belief is no reason. It was found difficult to believe in Antipodes; if there were people on the under side of the earth, “they would fall off”. But the advance of knowledge made it not only credible but quite comprehensible. People stick on, all over the earth, because the earth attracts them more powerfully than anything else does. Similarly with some miracles. They may seem much more credible and comprehensible when we have learned more. Indeed, the wonders of wireless telegraphy, radio-activity, and aviation are intrinsically as miraculous as many of the stories in the world’s sacred writings.
This is not saying, however, that we are to believethe latteren bloc. They must be taken individually, and believed or disbelieved according to the evidence and according to the antecedent probability or improbability. The standing still of the sun (Joshua,x) does not seem credible to the scientific mind which knows that the earth is spinning at the equator at the rate of one thousand miles an hour and that any sudden interference with that rotation would send it to smithereens, with all the creatures on its surface. Of course, a Being who could stop its rotation could perhaps also prevent it from flying to smithereens; but we have to extend the miracle in so many entirely hypothetical ways that the whole thing becomes too dubious for acceptance. It is simpler to look on the story as a myth.
But such things as the clairvoyance of Samuel (ISamuel, x), and even the Woman of Endor story, are quite in line with what psychical research is now establishing. And the healing miracles of Jesus are paralleled, in kind if not in degree, by innumerable “suggestive therapeutic” doctors. Shell-shock blindness and paralysis are cured at Seale Hayne Hospital and elsewhere in very “miraculous” fashion. And turning water into wine is not more wonderful than turning radium into helium, and helium into lead, which nature is now doing before our eyes. These things, therefore, have become credible, if the evidence is good enough. Whether evidence nineteen hundred years old can be good enough to take as the basis of serious belief is another matter. Scientific method insists on a high standard of evidence. We must be honest with ourselves, and not believe unless the evidence satisfies our intellectual requirements. But the modern and wise tendency is to regard religion as an attitude rather than as a belief or system of beliefs. It does not stand or fall with the miracle-stories.
Theamount of nonsense that is talked, and apparently widely believed, about telepathy, is almost enough to make one wish that the phenomenon had not been discovered, or the word invented. Without any adequate basis of real knowledge, the “man in the street” seems to be accepting the idea of thought-transference as an incontrovertible fact, like wireless telegraphy—which latter is responsible for a good deal of easy credence accorded to the former, both seeming equally wonderful. But the analogy is a false one. There is a great deal of difference between the two. In wireless telegraphy we understand the process: it is a shaking of the ether into pulses or waves, which act on the coherer in a perfectly definite way and are measurable. But in spite of much loose talk about “brain-waves”, the fact is that we know of no such thing. Indeed, there is reason to believe that telepathy, if it is a fact at all—and I believe it is—may turn out to be a process of a different kind, the nature of which is at present unknown. For one thing, it does not seem to conform to physical laws. If it were an affair of ripples in the ether—like wireless telegraphy—the strength of impact would vary in inverse ratio with the square of the distance. The influence would weaken at a known rate, as more and more distance intervened between sender and recipient. And this, in many cases at least, is not found to be so, consequently Mr Gerald Balfour and otherleading members of the Society for Psychical Research incline to the opinion that the transmission is not a physical process, but takes place in the spiritual world.
I have said that I believe in telepathy, yet I have deprecated too-ready credence. What, then, are the facts?
The first attempt at serious investigation of alleged supernormal phenomena by an organised body of qualified observers was made by the London Society for Psychical Research, which was founded in 1882 by Henry Sidgwick (Professor of Moral Philosophy at Cambridge), F. W. H. Myers and Edmund Gurney (Fellows of Trinity), W. F. Barrett (Professor of Experimental Physics at Dublin, and now Sir William), and a few friends. The membership grew, and the list now includes the most famous scientific names throughout the civilised world. In point of prestige, the society is one of the strongest in existence.
The first important work undertaken was the collection of a large number of cases of apparition, etc., in which there seemed to be some supernormal agency at work, conveying knowledge; as in the case of Lord Brougham, who saw an apparition of his friend at the moment of the latter’s death. The results of this investigation were embodied in the two stout volumes calledPhantasms of the Living(now out of print, but an abridged one-volume edition has recently been edited by Mrs Sidgwick (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1919), and in Vol.x. of theProceedingsof the Society. As the outcome of this arduous investigation, involving the collection and consideration of about 17,000 cases and extending over several years of time, the committee made the cautious but memorable statement that “Between deaths and apparitions of the dying person a connexion exists which is notdue to chance alone”. This guarded statement was carefully worded in order to avoid committing the society to any definite (e.g.spiritualistic) interpretation. Some of the apparitions occurred within twelve hours before the death, some at the time of death, and some a few hours afterwards. But these latter of course do not prove “spirit-agency”—though indeed sometimes they seem to render it probable—for the telepathic impulse or thought may have been sent out by the dying person, remaining latent—so to speak—until the percipient happened to be in a sufficiently passive and receptive state to “take it in”.
Definite experimentation was also made, of various kinds,e.g., one person would be shown a card or diagram, and another (blindfolded) would maintain a passive mind, saying aloud what ideas “came into his head”. Some of these experiments—which are still required and should be tried by those interested in the subject—indicated that the concentration of A’s mind did indeed sometimes produce a reverberation in the mind of B. In a series conducted by Sir Oliver Lodge, the odds against the successes being due to chance can be mathematically shown to be ten millions to one.
For this new fact or agency, Mr Myers invented the word “telepathy” (Greektele, at a distance, andpathein, to feel), and defined it as “communication of impressions of any kind from one mind to another, independently of the recognised channels of sense”.
But I wish to say, and to emphasise the statement, that this transmission, though regarded as highly probable by many acute minds, cannot yet be regarded as unquestionably proved, still less as occurring in a common or frequent way. We have all of us known somebody who claimed to be able to make peopleturn round in church or in the street by “willing” them, but usually these claims cannot be substantiated. It is difficult to eliminate chance coincidence. And the folks who lay claim to these powers are usually of a mystery-loving, inaccurate build of mind, and therefore very unsafe guides. Moreover, how many times have they “willed” without result?
One reason why I deprecate easy credence, leaning to the sceptical side though believing that the thing sometimes happens, is, that there is danger of a return to superstition, if belief outruns the evidence. If the popular mind gets the notion that telepathy is more or less a constant occurrence—that mind can influence mind whenever it likes—there is a possibility of a return to the witchcraft belief which resulted in so many poor old women being burnt at the stake in the seventeenth century. I prefer excessive disbelief to excessive credulity in these things; it at least does not burn old women because they have a squint and a black cat and a grievance against someone who happens to have fallen ill. Unbalanced minds are very ready to believe that someone is influencing them. I have received quite a number of letters from people (not spiritualists) who, knowing of my interest in these matters, got it into their foolish heads that I was trying some sort of telepathic black magic on them. I had not even been thinking about them. It was entirely their own imagination. One of these people is now in an asylum. I think she would probably have become insane in any case—if not on this, then on some other subject—but these incidents almost make me wish that we could confine the investigation and discussion of the subject to our own circle or society until education has developed more balanced judgment in the masses. But of course such a restriction is impossible.The daily press and the sensational novelists have got hold of the idea. We must counteract the sensational exaggerations, which have such a bad effect on unbalanced minds, by stating the bare, hard facts. Here, as elsewhere, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. It is the half-informed people who are endangered. The remedy is more knowledge. Let them learn that, though there is reason to believe that under certain conditions telepathy is possible and real, there is nevertheless no scientific evidence for anything in the nature of “bewitching”, or telepathy of maleficent kind. This cannot be too strongly insisted on. Let us follow the facts with an open mind, but let us be careful not to rush beyond them into superstition.
Variouspopular novelists, such as George Du Maurier inTrilby, and E. F. Benson inThe Image in the Sand, have taken advantage of the possibilities which hypnotic marvels offer to the sensational writer, and have put into circulation a variety of exaggerated ideas. This is regrettable. Of course the novelist can choose his subject, and can treat it as he likes; it is the public’s fault if it takes fiction for fact, or allows its notions of fact to be coloured or in any way influenced by what is avowedly no more than fiction.
But it is certain that it is thus influenced. It is therefore desirable that the public should be told from time to time exactly what the scientific position is—what the conclusions are, of those who are studying the subject in a proper scientific spirit, with no aim save the finding of truth. This will at least enable the public to discriminate between fact and fiction, if it wants to.
No doubt the phenomena in question have been often discovered, forgotten, and rediscovered; but in modern times the movement dates from Mesmer. Friedrich Anton Mesmer was born about 1733 or 1734. In 1766 he took his doctor’s degree at Vienna, but did not come into public notice until 1773. In that year he employed in the treatment of patients certain magnetic plates, the invention of Father Hell, a Jesuit, professor of astronomy at Vienna.
Further experiments led him to believe that thehuman body is a kind of magnet; and that its effluent forces could be employed, like those of the metal plates, in the cure of disease. Between 1773 and 1778 he travelled extensively in Europe, with a view to making his discoveries better known. Also he sent an account of his system to the principal learned bodies of Europe, including the Royal Society of London, the Academy of Sciences at Paris, and the Academy at Berlin.
The last alone deigned to reply; they told him his discovery was an illusion. Apparently they knew all about it, without investigating. There is no dogmatism so unqualified, no certainty so cocksure, as that of complete ignorance.
The method at first was probably a system of magnetic passes or strokings of the diseased part by the hand of the doctor. But, as the patients increased in number, a more wholesale method had to be devised. Consequently Mesmer invented the famous “baquet”. This was a large tub, filled with bottles of water previously “magnetised” by Mesmer.
The bottles were arranged to radiate from the centre, some of them with necks pointing away from it and some pointing towards it. They rested on powdered glass and iron filings, and the tub itself was filled with water. In short, it was a sort of glorified travesty of a galvanic battery. From it, long iron rods, jointed and movable, protruded through holes in the lid. These the patients held, or applied to the region of their disease, as they sat in a circle round thebaquet. Mesmer and his assistants walked about, supplementing the treatment by pointing with the fingers, or with iron rods, at the diseased parts.
All this may seem, at first sight, very absurd. But the fact remains that Mesmer certainly wrought cures. And apparently he frequently succeeded in curing orgreatly alleviating, where other doctors had completely failed. It is no longer possible for any instructed person to regard Mesmer as a charlatan who knowingly deluded the public for his own profit. His theories may have been partly mistaken, but his practical results were indubitable.
It is also worth noting that he treated rich and poor alike, charging the latter no fee. He was a man of great tenderness and kindness of heart, devoted to the cause of the sick and suffering; and the accounts of his patients show the unbounded gratitude which they felt towards him, and the respect in which he was held.
The orthodox doctors, of course, felt otherwise. They were envious and jealous of the foreign innovator and his success. And his fame was too great to allow of his being ignored. Consequently the Royal Society of Medicine (Paris) appointed a commission to inquire into the new treatment. The finding, of course, was adverse. The investigators could not deny the cures, but they fell back on the recuperative force of nature (vis medicatrix naturæ) and denied that Mesmer’s treatment caused the cure.
Obviously, Mesmer, having treated his patients, could not prove that they would not have recovered if he hadnottreated them; so his critics had a strong position. But, on the other hand, neither can an orthodox doctor prove thathiscures are due tohistreatment. If it isvis medicatrix naturæin one case, it may be the same in the other.
Modern medicine is more and more coming to this conclusion—is abandoning drugging as it abandoned bleeding and cautery, and is leaving the patient to nature. This is a significant fact.
But there is good reason to believe that Mesmer’s treatment was a real factor in his cures, for in manycases the patient had been treated by orthodox methods for years without effect. Perhaps, as the doctors said, it was “only the recuperative force of Nature”, but if the doctors could not set that force to work, and Mesmer somehow could, he is just as much entitled to the credit of the cure as if he had done it by bleeding or drugging. However, by one sort of persecution or another, he was driven out of Paris, and more or less discredited. After a visit to England, he retired to Switzerland, where he lived in obscurity until his death in 1815.
The method was kept alive by various disciples, such as the Marquis de Puységur, Dupotet, Deleuze, and many more, but in an amateurish sort of way. The first-named found that in one of his patients he could induce a trance state which showed peculiar features. In trance, the man knew all that he knew when awake, but when awake he knew nothing of what had happened in trance. This second condition thus seemed to be equivalent to an enlargement of personality.
Both in England and France the medical side came to the front again, in the hands of Braid (a Manchester surgeon who first used the term “hypnotism”, from Greekhypnos, sleep, and whose bookNeurypnology, or the Rationale of Nervous Sleepwas published in 1843), Liébeault, Bernheim, Elliotson, and Esdaile.
Elliotson and Esdaile still believed in a magnetic effluence, but the idea was given up by Braid and the “Nancy school” (the investigators who followed the lines of Liébeault of Nancy), for it was found that patients could be hypnotised without passes or strokings or any manipulation. Braid told his patients to gaze fixedly at a bright object,e.g., his lancet. Liébeault produced sleep by talking soothingly or commandingly filling the patient’s mind with the idea ofsleep. In some cases it was found that patients could hypnotise themselves by an effort of will (this was confirmed more recently by Dr Wingfield’s experiments with athletic undergraduates at Cambridge), and this disposed of the hitherto supposedly necessary “magnetic effluence” from the operator.
The most modern opinion is pretty much the same. Dr Tuckey, who learnt his method from Liébeault himself, and who practised for twenty years in the West End of London, is convinced that the whole thing is suggestion. So is Dr Bramwell, who shares with Dr Tuckey the leading position among hypnotic practitioners in England. The latter, it may be remarked, was the first qualified medical man to write an important book on the subject in English, after Braid.
The tendency now is to give suggestions without attempting to induce actual trance. It is found with many patients that if they will make their minds passive and receptive, listening to the doctor’s suggestions in an absent-minded sort of way, those suggestions—that the health shall improve and the specified symptoms disappear—are carried out. The explanation of this is “wrapped in mystery”. No one knows exactly how it comes about. But it seems to be somewhat thus:
The complicated happenings within our bodies, such as the chemical phenomena known as digestion and the physical phenomena such as blood circulation and contraction of involuntary muscles, seem to imply intelligence, though that intelligence is not part of the conscious mind, for we do not consciously direct the processes. They go on all the same—for example—when we are asleep. Presumably, then, there is a mental Something in us, which never sleeps, and whichruns the organic machinery. If we could get at this Something, and give it instructions, a part of the machinery which is working wrongly might get attended to and put right. Unfortunately, the ordinary consciousness is in the way. We cannot get at the mechanic in the mill, because we have to go through the office, and the managing director keeps us talking.
Well, in hypnotic trance, or even in the preoccupied “absent-minded” state, we get past the managing director—who is asleep or attending to something else—into the mill. We get at the man who really attends to the machinery. We get past the normal consciousness, and can give our orders to the “subconscious” or “subliminal”—which means “below the threshold”. In Myers’ phrase, suggestion is a “successful appeal to the subliminal self”, but exactly how it comes about, and why the patient usually cannot do it for himself but has to have the suggestion administered by a doctor, we do not know.
Of course the word “suggestion” does not really explain anything. It is a word employed to cover our ignorance. Suggestive methods are as empirical as Mesmer’s. In each case a successful appeal is made to the recuperative forces of nature,vis medicatrix naturæ;but exactly how or why suggestion does it, we know no more—or hardly any more—than we know how and why Mesmer’sbaquetdid it. The fact remains, however, that the thing is done. What we lack is only a satisfactory theory.
At one time it was thought that only functional disorders could be relieved. But it is now recognised that the line between functional and organic is an arbitrary one. If we cannot find definite organic change in tissue, we call the ailment functional; but nevertheless some change there must be, though microscopicor unreachable. Consequently even functional disorders are at bottom organic; and, though of course grave lesions produce the gravest disorders, there is noà prioriimpossibility in a hypnotic cure of even the most radical tissue-degeneration.
However, as a matter of practical fact, the “mechanic” has his limitations, like the normal consciousness. He is not omnipotent. Consequently we cannot be sure of being able to stimulate him to the extent of a cure. It depends on his knowledge and power. But he can always do something, if we can get at him. The chief difficulty is that in many people he is inaccessible.
For instance, I have many times submitted myself to the treatment of Dr Tuckey and another medical friend, without effect. I have each time tried my best to help, making my mind as passive as I could; for I was sure that if a suggestible stage could be reached, some troublesome heart symptoms and insomnia could be alleviated. But I was never able to reach a state even approaching hypnosis. I suppose my normal consciousness could not put itself sufficiently to sleep. Being interested in the scientific aspect of the subject, my consciousness watched the process and analysed its own sensations, instead of “letting go” and subsiding out of the way.
As to the proportion of susceptible persons, observers differ. Wetterstrand and Vogt hold that all sane and healthy people are hypnotisable, and Dr Bramwell’s results among strong farm labourers at Goole support that view. Patients with nervous ailments are difficult to hypnotise; out of one hundred such cases in his London practice, Dr Bramwell only influenced eighty. This is the percentage of susceptibles found by Drs Tuckey and Bernheim also.
The insane are usually unhypnotisable, probably because of their inability to concentrate their attention. Out of the 80 per cent. of sane susceptibles, only a small proportion go off into hypnotic sleep; ten according to Tuckey, rather more according to the experience of Bramwell, Forel, and Vogt. Most of the susceptible, however, though retaining consciousness, may be deprived of muscular control. For example, if told that they cannot open their eyes, they find that it is so.
The various “stages” of hypnosis shade gradually into each other, and classifications are not much good. Charcot’s three stages of lethargy, catalepsy, and somnambulism are now discredited as true stages. In good subjects they are producible at will, and as observed at the Salpêtrière they were almost certainly due to training.
I have no space for the quoting of detailed medical cases, but it is desirable to emphasise the practical facts and to make the subject as concrete as possible to the reader, so I will quote just one, as illustration, from Dr Bramwell’s contribution toProceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol.xiv, page 99.
“Neurasthenia; suicidal tendencies. Mr D——, aged 34, 1890; barrister. Formerly strong and athletic. Health began to fail in 1877, after typhoid fever. Abandoned work in 1882, and for eight years was a chronic invalid. Anæmic, dyspeptic, sleepless, depressed. Unable to walk a hundred yards without severe suffering. Constant medical treatment, including six months’ rest in bed, without benefit. He was hypnotised from June 2 to September 20, 1890. By the end of July all morbid symptoms disappeared, and he amused himself by working on a farm. He can now walk forty miles a day without unduefatigue.” Similar cases are now being recorded in the military hospitals. Soldiers make excellent “subjects”.
It has been much debated whether a hypnotised person could be made to commit a crime. Probably not; it is difficult to be quite sure, but the evidence is on the negative side. True, a hypnotised subject will put sugar which he has been told is arsenic into his mother’s tea, but his inner self probably knows well enough that it is only sugar. On the other hand, it is certain that a hypnotiser may obtain a remarkable amount of control over specially sensitive subjects, particularly by repeated hypnotisations.
I have seen hypnotised subjects who seemed almost perfect automata, obeying orders as mechanically as if they had no will of their own left. Certainly no one, either man or woman, but particularly the latter, should submit himself or herself to hypnotic treatment except by a qualified person in whom full trust can be reposed. And, even then, in the case of a woman patient, it is well for a third person to be present.
But the stories of the novelists, about subjugated wills, hypnotising from a distance, and all the rest of it, are quite without adequate foundation in fact. There is very little evidence in support of hypnosis produced at a distance, and in the one case where it did seem to occur there had been repeated hypnotisations of the ordinary kind, by which a sort of telepathic rapport was perhaps established (Myers’Human Personality, vol.i, page 524).
Hypnotism against the will is a myth; except perhaps in here and there a backboneless person who could be influenced any way, without hypnosis or anything of the kind. The Chicago pamphleteer who wants to teach us how to get on in business by developinga “hypnotic eye” is merely after dollars. It is all bunkum.
There is a sense, however, in which hypnotic treatment can be a help in education and in strengthening the character. Backward and lazy children could probably be improved, and I know cases in which sleep-walking and other bad habits have been cured by suggestion. From this it is but a step to dipsomania, which can often be cured. Dr Tuckey reports seventy cures out of two hundred cases.
F. W. H. Myers, to whose genius doctors as well as psychologists owe their first scientific conceptions in this domain, was extremely optimistic here. He held that though we cannot expect to manufacture saints, any more than we can manufacture geniuses, there is nevertheless enough evidence to show that great things could be done.
“If the subject is hypnotisable, and if hypnotic suggestion be applied with sufficient persistency and skill, no depth of previous baseness and foulness need prevent the man or woman whom we charge with ‘moral insanity’, or stamp as a ‘criminal-born’, from rising into a state where he or she can work steadily and render services useful to the community” (Human Personality, vol.i, page 199). Experiments on hypnotic lines ought certainly to be carried out in our prisons and reformatories. As to the formerly alleged dangers of such experimentation—dangers of hysteria, etc., alleged by the Charcot school which is now seen to have been quite on a wrong tack—they do not exist, if the operator knows his business.
Says Professor Forel: “Liébeault, Bernheim, Wetterstrand, Van Eeden, De Jong, Moll, I myself, and the other followers of the Nancy school, declare categorically that, although we have seen many thousands ofhypnotised persons, we have never observed a single case of mental or bodily harm caused by hypnosis, but, on the contrary, have seen many cases of illness relieved or cured by it”. Dr Bramwell fully endorses this, saying emphatically that he has “never seen an unpleasant symptom, even of the most trivial nature, follow the skilled induction of hypnosis” (Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol.xii, page 209).
A proof thatintellectualpowers outside the normal consciousness may be tapped by appropriate methods is afforded by the remarkable experiments of Dr Bramwell, on the appreciation of time by somnambules. He ordered a hypnotised subject to carry out, after arousal, some trivial action, such as making a cross on a piece of paper, at the end of a specified period of time, reckoning from the moment of waking. In the waking state, the patient knew nothing of the order; but a subliminal mental stratum knew, and watched the time, making the subject carry out the order when it fell due.
The period varied from a few minutes to several months, and it was stated in various ways,e.g.on one occasion Dr Bramwell ordered the action to be carried out in “24 hours and 2880 minutes”. The order was given at 3.45p.m.on December 18, and it was carried out correctly at 3.45p.m.on December 21. In other experiments, the periods given were 4,417, 8,650, 8,680, 8,700, 10,070, 11,470 minutes.
All were correctly timed by the subliminal stratum, the action being promptly carried out at the due moment. In the waking state the patient was quite incapable—as most of us would be—of calculating mentally when the periods would elapse. But the hypnotic stratum could do it, and this shows that there are intellectual powers which lie outside the field of thenormal consciousness. The argument could be further supported by the feats of “calculating boys”, who can sometimes solve the most complicated arithmetical problems, without knowing how they do it. They let the problem sink in, and the answer is shot up presently, like the cooked pudding in the geyser.
But these things are still in their infancy. Psychology is working at the subject, but we do not yet know enough to enable us to venture far in the direction of practical application of hypnotic methods in education. It seems likely, however, that further investigation will yield knowledge which may be of inestimable practical value in the training of minds, as well as in the curing of mental and bodily disease.
Ithas been said, as a kind of jocular epigram, that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. With similar truth it may be said that Christian Science is neither Christian nor science, in any ordinary sense of those words. Still, perhaps we ought to allow an inventor to christen his own creation, even if the name seems inappropriate or likely to cause misunderstanding; and, Mrs Eddy having invented Christian Science as an organised religion—though, as we shall see, borrowing its main features from an earlier prophet—we may admit her right to give a name to her astonishing production. In order that the personal equation may be allowed for, the present writer begs to affirm that he writes as a sympathetic student though not an adherent.
Mary A. Morse Baker was born on July 16th, 1821, of pious parents, at Bow, New Hampshire. Her father was almost illiterate, rather passionate, a keen hand at a bargain, and a Puritan in religion. All the Bakers were a trifle cranky and eccentric, but some of them possessed ability of sorts, though Mary’s father made no great success in life. His daughter made up for him afterwards.
The first fifteen years of Mary Baker’s life were passed at the old farm at Bow. The place was lonely, the manner of life primitive, and education not a strong point in the community. Mrs Eddy afterwards claimed to have studied in her girlhood days Hebrew,Greek, Latin, natural philosophy, logic, and moral science! It was, however, maintained by her contemporaries that she was backward and indolent, and that “Smith’sGrammar, and as far as long division in arithmetic”, might be taken as indicating the extent of her scholarship. There is certainly some little discrepancy here, and perhaps Mrs Eddy’s memory was a trifle at fault. She made no claim to any acquaintance with this formidable array of subjects in the later part of her life, and it seems probable that her contemporaries were right. Her physical beauty, coupled with delicate health, seem to have resulted in “spoiling”, for even as a child she dominated her surroundings to a surprising extent.
In 1843 she married George Glover, who died in June, 1844, leaving her penniless. Her only child was born in the September following. After ten years of widowhood she married Daniel Paterson, a travelling dentist. In 1866 they separated, he making some provision for her. In 1873 she obtained a divorce on the ground of desertion. In 1877 she married Asa Gilbert Eddy, who died in 1882.
So much for her matrimonial experiences, which may now be dismissed, as they had no particular influence on her character and career. To prevent confusion, we will call her throughout by the name which is most familiar to us and to the world.
The chief event of Mrs Eddy’s remarkable life, the event which put her on the road to fame and fortune, occurred in 1862. This was her meeting with the famous “healer”, Phineas Parkhurst Quimby. This latter was an unschooled but earnest and benevolent man, who had made experiments in mesmerism, etc., and who had found—or thought he had found—that people could be cured of their ailments by “faith”.He therefore began to work out a system of “mind-cure”, which he embodied in voluminous MSS. Patients came to him from far and near, and he treated all, whether they could pay or not. Quimby was much above the level of the common quack, and his character commands our respect. He was a man of great natural intelligence, and was admirable in all his dealings with family, friends, and patients.
Mrs Eddy visited him at Portland in 1862, her aim being treatment for her continued ill-health. She claims to have been cured—in three weeks—though it is clear from her later letters that the cure was not complete. Still, great improvement was apparently effected, for she had been almost bedridden, with some kind of spinal or hysterical complaint, for eight years previously. But Quimby’s effect on her was greater mentally even than physically. She became interested in his system, watched his treatment of patients, borrowed his MSS., and mastered his teachings. In 1864 she visited him again, staying two or three months, and prosecuting her studies. She now seemed to have formed a definite desire to assist in teaching his system. No doubt she dimly saw a possible career opening out in front of her; though we need not attribute her desire entirely to mere ambition or greed, for it is probable that Quimby did a great amount of genuine good, and his pupil would naturally imbibe some of his zeal for the relief of suffering humanity.
In 1866 Quimby died, aged sixty-four. His pupil decided to put on the mantle of her teacher, but more as propagandist and religious prophet than as healer. In this latter capacity perhaps her sex was against her. (Even now the average individual seems to have a sad lack of confidence in the “lady doctor”!) But she was poor, and prospects did not seem promising. Forsome time she drifted about among friends—chiefly spiritualists—preparing MSS. and teaching Quimbyism to anyone who would listen. (She afterwards denied her indebtedness to Quimby, claiming direct revelation. “No human pen nor tongue taught me the science contained in this book,Science and Health, and neither tongue nor pen can overthrow it.”—Science and Health,p.110, 1907 edition.)
Though unsuccessful as healer (in spite of her later claim to have healed Whittier of “incipient pulmonary consumption” in one visit), she certainly had the knack of teaching—had the power of inspiring enthusiasm and of inoculating others with her ideas. In 1870 she turned up at Lynn, Mass., with a pupil named Richard Kennedy, a lad of twenty-one. Her aim being to found a religious organisation based on practical results (the prayer of faith shall heal the sick, etc.), it was necessary to work with a pupil-practitioner. Accordingly she and Kennedy took offices at Lynn, and “Dr Kennedy” appeared on a signboard affixed to a tree.
Immediate success followed. Patients crowded the waiting-rooms. Kennedy did the “healing” and Mrs Eddy organised classes, which were recruited from the ranks of patients and friends; fees, a hundred dollars for twelve lessons, afterwards raised to three hundred dollars for seven lessons. Before long, however, she quarrelled with Kennedy, and in 1872 they separated, but not before she had reaped about six thousand dollars as her share of the harvest. It was her first taste of success, after weary years of toil and stress and hysteria and eccentricity. Naturally, like Alexander, she sighed for further conquest.L’appétit vient en mangeant.And, though in her fiftieth year, she was now more energetic than ever.
Her next move was the purchase of a house at 8, Broad Street, Lynn, which became the first official headquarters of Christian Science. In 1875 appeared her famous book,Science and Health, With Key to the Scriptures, which was financed by two of its author’s friends. The first edition was of a thousand copies. As it sold but slowly, she persuaded her chief practitioner, Daniel Spofford, to give up his practice and to devote himself to advertising the book and pushing its sale. Since then it has been revised many times, and the editions are legion. Loyal disciples of the better-educated sort have assisted in its rewriting, and it is now a very presentable kind of affair as to its literary form. Most, if not all, of the editions have been sold at a minimum of $3.18 per copy, witheditions de luxeat $5 or more, and the author’s other works are published at similarly high prices. All Christian Scientists were commanded to buy the works of the Reverend Mother, and all successive editions of those works. It is not surprising that Mrs Eddy should leave a fortune of a million and a half dollars. It may be mentioned here that she moved from Lynn to Boston in 1882, thence to Concord (New Hampshire) in 1889, and finally to a large mansion in a Boston suburb which she bought for $100,000, spending a similar sum in remodelling and enlarging. The modern prophet does not dwell in the wilderness, subsisting on locusts and wild honey. He—or she—has moved with the times, and has a proper respect for the almighty dollar and the comforts of civilisation.
In 1881 was founded the Massachusetts Metaphysical College. This imposingly-named institution never had any special buildings, and its instructions were mostly given in Mrs Eddy’s parlour, Mrs Eddy herself constituting all the faculty. Four thousand students passed through the “College” in seven years, at theend of which period it ceased to exist. The fees were usually $300 for seven lessons, as before. Few gold-mines pay as well as did the “Metaphysical College”. The fact does not at first sight increase our respect for the alleged cuteness of the inhabitants of the States. But, on further investigation, the murder is out. Most of these students probably earned back by “healing” much more than they paid Mrs Eddy. Our respect for Uncle Sam’s business shrewdness returns in full force.
The experiment of conducting religious services had been made by Mrs Eddy at Lynn in 1875, but the first Christian Science Church was not chartered until 1879. The Scientists met, however, in various public halls of Boston, until 1894, when a church was built. This was soon outgrown, and 10,000 of the faithful pledged themselves to raise two million dollars for its enlargement. The new building was finished in 1906. Its auditorium holds five thousand people. The walls are decorated with texts signed “Jesus, the Christ,” and “Mary Baker G. Eddy”—these names standing side by side.
The following examples, culled almost at random, will further show how great is her conviction that she has the Truth, how vigorously she bulls her own stocks (somehow, financial metaphors seem inevitable when writing of Mrs Eddy):
“God has been graciously fitting me during many years for the reception of this final revelation of the absolute divine Principle of scientific mental healing”. (Science and Health,p.107.)
“I won my way to absolute conclusion through divine revelation, reason and demonstration”. (Ibid., p.109.)
“To those natural Christian Scientists, the ancientworthies, and to Christ Jesus, God certainly revealed the Spirit of Christian Science, if not the absolute letter”. (Ibid., p.483.)
“The theology of Christian Science is truth; opposed to which is the error of sickness, sin, and death, that truth destroys”. (Miscellaneous Writings,p.62.)
“Christian Science is the unfolding of true Metaphysics, that is, of Mind, or God, and His attributes. Science rests on principle and demonstration. The Principle of Christian Science is divine”. (Ibid., p.69.)
The following maybe quoted as an example of mixed good and evil, with a certain flavour of unconscious humour:
“Hate no one; for hatred is a plague-spot that spreads its virus and kills at last. If indulged, it masters us; brings suffering to its possessor throughout time, and beyond the grave. If you have been badly wronged, forgive and forget: God will recompense this wrong, and punish, more severely than you could, him who has striven to injure you”. (Miscellaneous Writings,p.12.)