Chapter 15

This is one side of the case. The other side now calls for presentation. This is that the great body of scientists utterly reject the theory of spiritism, and look upon its manifestations as due to fraud, misconception, credulity, or some other of the weaknesses to which human nature is liable. As regards the opinions arrived at by the prominent scientists mentioned, these men are looked upon by their fellows of the great scientific body as mentally warped, or as having allowed themselves to be victimized by impostors. The fact that Professor Crookes has continued one of the most acute and deep searching of investigators into the phenomena of physics, and that his results in this direction are accepted without question, and that Professor Wallace is acknowledged to be one of the leading thinkers of the day, has not sufficed to clear them of the doubt which rests upon their sanity or their critical judgment in this particular, and the very attempt of any one to investigate the so-called spiritual manifestations is widely looked upon as an evidence of credulity or some greater mental weakness.

This result may seem singular, yet it is not without abundant warrant. It must be borne in mind that the phenomena in question differ essentially in character from those with which science is usually concerned. The field of scientific investigation is distinctly the material; the facts with which it deals are those apparent to the senses, or which can be tested by material instruments; its discoveries are generally susceptible of but one interpretation; its methods are capable of being indefinitely repeated, and its results, if justly interpreted, are unvarying in character. None of these postulates fully applies to the spiritistic investigation. Here the conditions differ, the results vary, the methods can rarely be exactly repeated, conscious beings, instead of unconscious instruments, are the agents employed, and the secret thoughts and purposes of such agents are very likely to vitiate the result, and open a field of doubt which does not exist in the investigation of the inorganic world.

This is one of the causes of the doubt of scientists. It is not the only or the chief cause. The latter is the fact that the claims of spiritism lift man into an entirely new domain of the universe, remove him from the great field of the material with which he is physically affiliated and to which his senses are closely adapted, and place him in a region beyond the scope of the senses, a vast kingdom which is held to underlie or subtend the physical, and which the ordinary outlook of the scientist fails to perceive. It requires no strain of the imagination to admit the existence of a new constituent of the atmosphere. It requires a great strain to admit the existence of a new constituent of the universe, a vast spiritual substratum to the domain of matter. Religion, with its ideal tests, has long maintained this to be a fact. Science, with its rigid material tests, sternly questions it, and demands that the existence of an inhabited spiritual realm shall be incontestably proved by scientific evidence before it can be accepted.

This demand is a reasonable one. The world is growing rapidly more scientific, and the old method of arriving at conclusions is daily losing strength. Beliefs based on ideal or imaginative postulates, once strong, are now weak. Faith founded on ancient authority is active still, but promises to become obsolete. The way of science is growing to be the way of the world, and in the time to come intelligent men will doubtless demand incontestable evidence of any fact which they are asked to accept.

As regards the phenomena in question, however, it cannot be said that they have been fairly or fully investigated by scientists. They have been set down as the work of charlatans, and their apparent results ascribed to fraud, collusion, credulity, and mental obliquity in general. The fact, that of the scientists who have exhaustively investigated the spiritistic phenomena, a considerable number have accepted them as valid, has had no effect upon scientists as a body, who, in this particular, occupy the position which they accuse non-scientists of maintaining, that of forming opinions without investigating phenomena.

This attitude of the scientific world toward these problematical occurrences is quite comprehensible. Throughout the nineteenth century the attention of scientists has been almost wholly directed toward the investigation of the forms and forces of matter, the phenomena and principles of the visible universe. In this they entered, at the opening of the century, upon an almost virgin field, which they have wrought with great diligence and with remarkable results. It is very possible, however, that in the twentieth century no such undivided allegiance will be given to the phenomena of matter, but that the attention of scientists will be largely diverted from the physical to the psychical field of investigation, which may prove to be a far broader and more intricate domain than we now have any conception of.

Psychical phenomena have attracted some attention during the recent century. One by one the problems of hypnotism, unconscious cerebration, double consciousness, telepathy, spiritism, and the like, all at first set down as unworthy of consideration, have forced themselves upon the attention of observers, and each of them has been found to present conditions amply worthy of investigation. This work has hitherto been performed by occasional individuals, but the number of workers in experimental psychics is steadily increasing, and their domain of research broadening, and we may reasonably look forward to results approaching, perhaps exceeding, in interest those reached in material investigation.

There is a whole world before us, that of the mind and its phenomena, fully equal in interest and importance to the world of matter, and presenting as numerous and difficult problems. Hitherto it has largely been dealt with from the ideal or metaphysical standpoint; only recently has it been subjected to physical analysis, and already with striking results. During the century before us it is likely to attract a wide and active circle of investigators, with what results it is impossible to predict. This is the only way in which the problem of the existence or non-existence of a spiritual life can be solved to the satisfaction of those of a scientific turn of mind, and this solution must be left to the future to attain.

In the present work we are concerned with man's past rather than his future. It is what man has come from, not what he is going to, that forms the subject of our inquiries. We have been led into these remarks simply as an outcome of a brief consideration of man's relations to the spiritual element of the universe, and may close our work with the suggestion that the problem of human evolution may be immensely greater than that involved in the study of the ancestry of man.

THE DAWN OF REASON Or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals

By JAMES WEIR, Jr., M.D.

_Author of "The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire" etc._

16mo. Cloth. $1.25

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Review of Reviews.

"This book presents evidences of mental action of the lower animals in a clear, simple, and brief form. The author has avoided technicalities, and has also resisted the temptation of the psychologist to indulge in metaphysics. Dr. Weir has relied for evidence on the results of his own independent study of biology at first hand, disregarding the second-hand data used by many of the authors once regarded as standard authorities in this department of research."

The Nation:

"The title raised in our mind some vague fears that we might find physiology and psychology mixed up inexpertly with metaphysics; but we see in the writer a close observer, who takes his stand on firm ground, and goes into the objective world of animals for his facts."

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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK

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Transcriber's note

The following changes have been made to the text:

Page 133: "these forests dwarfs" changed to "these forest dwarfs".

Page 146: "adepts in the art of concealment" changed to "adept in the art of concealment".