Chapter 15

The George "Pelham" famous in the annals of Psychical Research was a friend of the present writer, and his alleged postcarnate self appeared through Mrs. Piper to the following effect. There could not have been anything cooked up about it; it was my first and only sitting with Mrs. Piper, who knew nothing about me or my friends. In fact, the old theories of some form of fraud, now, in the light of the vast accumulation of later knowledge, seem ridiculous. However the phenomena have to be explained, that explanation is out of date.

G.P. speaks.--"A" [assumed initial. Ed.] "is in a critical state. He's not himself now. He's terribly depressed." Sitter--"Can you tell anything [more] about A?" G.P.--"Friend of yours in body." S.--"Of Hodgson?" [Who was present. This question and the following were mild "tests": I knew the man well. Ed.] G.P.--"Yes." S.--"Did I ever know him?" G.P.--"Yes, you knew him very well. You're connected with him." S.--"Through whom?" G.P.--"Do you know any B----?" [assumed initial. Ed.] S.--"Are A. and I connected through B?" G.P.--"Write to B. and he'll tell you all about it."

It turned out later that A. actually was low in his mind, and that B., whom nobody present knew, _was_ trying to get him occupation. I knew nothing whatever about any such circumstances, nor did Hodgson. To suppose that Mrs. Piper did, would be absurd. _But_ they were known to other minds "in the body," and hence the medium's utterance of them is open to the interpretation of teloteropathy. Similar instances are not rare, but the interpretation of teloteropathy seems to be rapidly losing probability.

In this instance, I _was_ "connected with" B., but only so far as he had become a professor at Yale long after my graduation: I did not know him personally. But my intimate connection with A. was not only direct, but through several persons intimate with us both, including G.P. when living. Mere telepathy, certainly mere telepathy from my mind, would have "spotted" some one of these connections much more readily than the alleged one with B., which was hardly a connection at all.

The _simplest_ solution for the whole business, though perhaps not the most "scientific," or even probable, is that the spirit of G.P. was troubled about A. and habitually thinking of me at the University Club as a Yale man, on my turning up at the séance, was reminded of the solution of A.'s troubles proposed through B., and wanted me to help.

And now to this rather commonplace manifestation comes an interesting sequel illustrating the reach of mind spoken of at the outset. Out of a perfectly clear sky came to me in New York on April 8, 1894, the message from G.P., to look out for A., who was low in his mind, and that B. was trying to get a place for him. On May 29th, Hodgson writes me as follows, showing that the same thing had come up _through the heteromatic writing of A.'s wife at Granada in Spain_, and meant nothing to her or to A.

--You may be interested in the inclosed. Keep private. [This injunction is of course outlawed by time, but I still conceal the names of the parties. Ed.] and please return. I am writing from my den, and haven't copy of your sitting at hand. But I remember that something was said at your sitting _re_ B. and A.

(_Copy of Enclosure._)

"GRANADA, May 6, 1894.

"Dear H.[odgson]:

"Those suggestions from Geo. that I write to B. prove interesting in the light of what I first learned here: that he had been lamenting my silence and had been urging me to a place as ---- [at] Yale where he is. I had no notion of this move on his part till four days ago when I received a letter telling me. Of course nothing came of it, but anything less known than that cannot be imagined. The message came once earlier thro' [his wife. Ed.] to whom George wrote it [heteromatically. Ed.]. George [in life. Ed.] never heard of B. nor saw him, nor did we ever speak of B. to Geo. or Phinuit.... Of course I don't want mention made of the effort of B. to get me the Yale place. What Geo. said was to write to B.; he is a good friend of yours [_i.e._, of A. Ed.]

"All send kind messages. Yrs. ever.

"A----."

Being intensely busy, and not as much interested in the matter as later experiences have made me, I did not at the moment catch the full purport of Hodgson's letter, or write him till June 5th, and did not keep any copy that I can find of my letter. He wrote me on the 8th:

"Thanks for yours of June 5th, with return of A.'s letter. I knew nothing whatever of the circumstances connected with B., neither, so far as I can tell by cross-questioning, did Mrs. Piper."

And I, the present scribe, certainly did not. A. did not. B. alone did, with whatever persons he may have approached on the matter, and Mrs. Piper had presumably never seen one of the group. So where did Mrs. Piper and Mrs. A. get it? The only answers that seem possible are that she and Mrs. A. either got it teloteropathically from one of those absent, or that the postcarnate George Pelham himself wrote her about it, and also told me of it through Mrs. Piper's organism in New York, and four days later was working it into a cross-correspondence through Mrs. A. in Spain. At first blush the latter seems easier; and I am not sure but that it does on reflection.

Hodgson's letter continues:

"I never knew of any B. connected with Yale. When B. was first mentioned at the sitting, I had a vague notion that some B. or other had gone to England or France as United States consul. I also knew the name of ---- ---- B. [a celebrated author. Ed.], and met her after she became Mrs. C. two or three years ago.

"On questioning Mrs. Piper, which I did by referring to books first, I found that she remembered the name of ---- ---- B. when I mentioned it, and connected it in some way with [a certain book. Ed.], which was widely circulated some years ago. This was the only B. that she seemed to know anything about....

"Yours sincerely,

"R. HODGSON."

Now does not all this give a strong impression of an interflow among minds all over--in New York (the place of the sitting), Granada (Mrs. A.'s place of sojourn), Boston (A.'s home), New Haven (B.'s home), and the universe in general (G.P.'s apparent home)--of an interflow free from the limitations of time and space, and independent of all means of communication known to us?

This impression tends to grow deeper with farther study. We have had a cross-correspondence between two incarnate intelligences and one apparently postcarnate. Mr. Piddington has unearthed a cross-correspondence between one apparently postcarnate intelligence and seven "living" ones.

Perhaps the significance of cross-correspondences justifies a little more specific treatment, and even the repetition of a paragraph from the first number of this REVIEW. The topic has lately attracted more attention from the S.P.R. than any other.

If Mrs. Verrall in London and Mrs. Holland in India both, at about the same time, write heteromatically about a subject that they both understand, that is probably coincidence; but if both write about it when but one of them understands it, that is probably teloteropathy; and if both write about it when neither understands it, and each of their respective writings is apparently nonsense, but both make sense when put together, the only obvious hypothesis is that both were inspired by a third mind.

There are many instances of strict cross-correspondence of this type. The one we have given was perhaps more impressive than a stricter one would be apt to be.

* * * * *

Accounts of sittings generally suggest apparent intercommunication independent of time and space between postcarnate intelligences: often the controls say that they will go and find other controls, and, generally, after a short interval, the new control manifests. It is impossible to read many of the accounts, whether one regards them as fictitious or not, without getting an impression--like that given by a good story-teller, if you please, of a life outside this one, among a host of personalities who communicate freely with each other and, through difficulties, with us. The nature of the communication we have already tried to express by "interflow." But all metaphors are weak beside the impression of the Cosmic Soul that has been brought to most of those who have persistently studied the phenomena, as to nearly all those who have speculated _a priori_ on the nature of mind.

* * * * *

Judged by the foregoing specimens, the literature of what we are provisionally considering as hypnotic telepathy would not be regarded as very cheerful. As a whole, however, the pictures it presents from an alleged postcarnate life, are cheerful, and some of them very attractive.

Below are some from an alleged George Eliot. They are from notes of Piper sittings kindly placed at our disposal by Professor Newbold.

To my taste the matter savors _very_ little of the reputed author. And yet assuming for the moment that our great authors survive in a fuller life, presumably they would have to communicate under very embarrassing conditions: for not only would they have to cramp themselves to produce work comprehensible here, but the System of Things would have to limit them, lest their competition should upset the whole system of our literary development, or rather would have involved a different one from the beginning.

My first reading of the alleged George Eliot matter inclined me to scout it entirely. It is certainly not in all particulars what that great soul would have sent from a better world if she had been permitted to communicate anything more profound than we have been left to find out for ourselves, or even if she had had the commonplace chance to revise her manuscript. But on reflection I realized that, although the matter came through Mrs. Piper, it could not have come _from_ her, wherever it came from; and that if George Eliot were communicating tidings naturally within our comprehension, and merely descriptive of superficial experience as distinct from reflection, and were communicating, through a poor telephone, words to be recorded by an indifferent scribe, this material would not seem absolutely incongruous with its alleged source, and to a reader knowing that the stuff claimed to be hers, might possibly suggest the weakest possible dilution or reflection of her. Yet in ways which I have no space for, it abounds in the sort of anthropomorphism that might be expected from the average medium or average sitter, but not from George Eliot.

And now, since writing the last paragraph and going through the material half a dozen times more, I have about concluded, or perhaps worked myself up to the conclusion, that if a judicious blue pencil were to take from it what could be attributed to imperfect means of communication, and what could be considered as having slopped over from the medium, there would be a pretty substantial and not unbeautiful residuum which might, without straining anything, be taken for a description by George Eliot, of the heaven she would find if, as begins to seem possible, she and the rest of us, have or are to have heavens to suit our respective tastes. But what would have to be taken out is often ludicrously incongruous with George Eliot, and taking it out would certainly be open to serious question.

Yet whatever may be the qualities, merits, or demerits of this "George Eliot" matter, what character it has is its own, and different materially from any I have seen recorded from any other control. What is vastly more important, despite the lapses in knowledge, taste, and style, which negative its being the unmodified production of George Eliot, it nevertheless presents, _me judice_, the most reasonable, suggestive, and attractive pictures of a life beyond bodily death that I know of: it is not a reflection of previous mythologies, it is congruous with the tastes of what we now consider rational beings, and might well fill their desires; and it _tallies with our experiences_--in dreams. Yet it is not a great feat of imagination; but in recent times no great genius has attacked the subject, and George Eliot would not have been expected to devote her imagination to it, which raises a slight presumption that what is told is really told by her from experience.

If I had to venture a guess as to how it came into existence, I should guess that somebody within range, hardly Mrs. Piper herself, had been reading George Eliot, or about George Eliot, and the musk-melon pollen had affected the cucumbers. Professor Newbold, for instance, was entirely able involuntarily to create and telepath the stories, and better shaped ones. Some real George Eliot influence may have flowed in too, but on that my judgment is in suspense.

"George Eliot" comes in abruptly to Hodgson, on February 26, 1897. After a few preliminaries, in response to a remark of Hodgson's on her dislike of and disbelief in spiritism, she says:

"... You may have noted the anxiety of such as I to return and enlighten your fellow men. It is more especially confined to unbelievers before their departure to this life."

This remark and the persistent efforts of the alleged G.P. who, living, was a thorough skeptic, would seem strongly "evidential."

_March 5, 1897._

_Hodgson sitting._

[G.E. writes:] "Do you remember me well?... I had a sad life in many ways, yet in others I was happy, yet I have never known what real happiness was until I came here.... I was an unbeliever, in fact almost an agnostic when I left my body, but when I awoke and found myself alive in another form superior in quality, that is, my body less gross and heavy, with no pangs of remorse, no struggling to hold on to the material body, I found it had all been a dream...." R.H.: "That was your first experience?" G.E.: "... The moment I had been removed from my body I found at once I had been thoroughly mistaken in my conjectures. I looked back upon my whole life in one instant. Every thought, word, or action which I had ever experienced passed through my mind like a wonderful panorama as it were before my vision. You cannot begin to imagine anything so real and extraordinary as this first awakening.... I awoke in a realm of golden light. I heard the voices of friends who had gone before calling to me to follow them. At the moment the thrill of joy was so intense I was like one standing spellbound before a beautiful panorama. The music which filled my soul was like a tremendous symphony. I had never heard nor dreamed of anything half so beautiful....

"Another thing which seemed to me beautiful was the tranquillity of everyone. You will perhaps remember that I had left a state where no one ever knew what tranquillity meant."

_March 13, 1807:_ "I was speaking about the songs of our birds. Then the birds seemed to pass beyond my vision, and I longed for music of other kinds.... When, to my surprise, my desires were filled.... Just before me sat the most beautiful bevy of young girls that eyes ever rested upon. Some playing stringed instruments, others that sounded and looked like silver bugles, but they were all in harmony, and I must truly confess that I never heard such strains of music before. No mortal mind can possibly realize anything like it. It was not only in this one thing that my desires were filled, but in all things accordingly. I had not one desire, but that it was filled without any apparent act of myself.

"I longed to see gardens and trees, flowers, etc. I no sooner had the desire than they appeared.... Such beautiful flowers no human eye ever gazed upon. It was simply indescribable, yet everything was real.... I walked and moved along as easily as a fly would pass through a ray of sunlight in your world. I had no weight, nothing cumbersome, nothing.... I passed along through this garden, meeting millions of friends. As they were all friendly to me, each and every one seemed to be my friend.... I then thought of different friends I had once known, and my desire was to meet some one of them, when like every other thought or desire that I had expressed, the friend of whom I thought instantly appeared."

How much all this is like dreams!

_March 27, 1897._ (A good deal of confusion, out of which appears) "He will insist upon calling me Miss, but let him if he wishes. I am very much Mrs. Never mind so long as it suits him....

"I have a desire for reading, when instantly my whole surrounding is literally filled with books of all kinds and by many different authors.... When I touched a book and desired to meet its author, if he or she were in our world, he or she would instantly appear. [Is this purely incidental reiterated claim for female authors, by one of them, 'evidential,' or was Mrs. Piper ingenious enough to invent it? Ed.]...."

The change of the instrument below is a specially dreamlike touch.

_March 30, 1897._ "I wished to see and realize that some of the mortal world's great musicians really existed, and asked to be visited by some one or more of them. When this was expressed, instantly several appeared before me, and Rubinstein stood before me playing upon an instrument like a harp at first. Then the instrument was changed and a piano appeared and he played upon it with the most delightful ease and grace of manner. While he was playing the whole atmosphere was filled with his strains of music."

She wanted to see Rembrandt, and he came, with a quantity of pictures. She wanted a symphony, and an orchestra "of some thirty musicians" at once appeared and gave her several, which she enjoyed to the full.

Now George Eliot was a remarkably good musician. If she wanted an orchestra, she would have wanted at least sixty, and probably more than a hundred. Perhaps they do these things with more limited resources in Heaven? Such an incongruity as this, and the inane dilution of the writing (which of course does not appear at its worst in the selected passages) make a genuine George Eliot control hard to predicate, and yet this control, like virtually every other one, is an individuality, and is less unlike George Eliot than is any other control I know. Will difficulties of communication or any other _tertium quid_, make up the difference? I first read the record with repulsion, and now find in it some elements of attraction.

Do you care for a little more? She wanted to see "angels," and gives a very pretty picture of an experience with a bevy of children. Telepathy from the sitter will hardly account for the following, especially the strange turn at the end, which is signally dreamlike.

"I being fond, very fond of writers of ancient history, etc., felt a strong desire to see Dante, Aristotle and several others. Shakespeare if such a spirit existed. [An odd bunch of 'writers of ancient history'! Ed.] As I stood thinking of him a spirit instantly appeared who speaking said 'I am Bacon.' ... As Bacon neared me he began to speak and quoted to me the following words 'You have questioned my reality. Question it no more. I am Shakespeare.'"

_June 4, 1897._ "... Speak to me for a moment and if you have anything to say in the nature of poetry or prose would you kindly recite a line or two to me. It will give me strength to remain longer than I could otherwise do. [R.H. recites a poem of Dowden's beginning,

'I said I will find God and forth I went To seek him in the clearness of the sky,' etc. Excitement.]

G.E.: 'I will go and see G. and return presently (R.H.: Who says that?) I do. (R.H.: I do not understand what you mean by G.) I do. My husband. Do you not know I had a husband? (R.H.: Do you mean by G. Mr. George Henry Lewes?) [Hand is writing Lewes while I am saying George Henry] Lewes. Yes I do. Oh I am so happy. And when I did not mistake altogether my deeds I am more _happy than tongue can utter_."

As bearing on her feeling for Lewes not many months after his death, the foregoing does not correspond with some widely credited but unpublished allegations.

Now does not all this read as if Mrs. Piper were dreaming of George Eliot, just as any of us might dream? Its quality seems as if it might be a transcript of one of my own dreams, with the important exceptions that the dreamer wrote it all out, and that it is made up from a series of dreams, coming up at intervals for about six months, and apparently only when Hodgson was present, though there are records of George Eliot appearing to other sitters at other seances.

* * * * *

We have, then, groped our way to a vague notion of a dream-life on the part of certain sensitives, which seems to participate in another life, in some ways similar, that is led by intelligences who have passed beyond the body.

We are not saying that this interpretation of the phenomena is the correct one: on the contrary we are constantly haunted by a suspicion that any day it may be exploded by some new discovery. But we do say, with considerable confidence, that of all the interpretations yet offered--even including the pervasive one that "the little boy lied," it surpasses all the others in the portion of the facts that it fits, and in the weight attached to it by the most capable students--even by James, who, however, did not accept it as established, though he gave many indications that he felt himself likely to. Myers definitely accepted it, not from the impressions of the sensitives, but from having them capped by a veridical impression of his own. Through the church service one Sunday morning, he felt an inner voice assuring him: "Your friend is still with you." Later he found that Gurney, with whom he had a manifestation-pact, had died the night before. We are not aware that Myers ever published this, but he told it to the present writer and presumably to others. The convictions of Hodgson and Sir Oliver Lodge were interpretations of the phenomena of the sensitives, though Hodgson, it is now known, was probably mainly influenced by communications from the alleged postcarnate soul of all possible ones most dear to him.

But to return to the sensitives. They seem to be somnambulists who talk out and write out what they see and hear in their dreams. What they see, and consequently what they say, is a good deal of a jumble. They see and hear persons they never saw before. Sometimes they identify themselves more or less with these personalities. Mrs. Piper nearly always does. Those others say many things, and very often correct things, unknown to sensitives, to anybody present, or to anybody else that can be found. Rather unusual among ordinary dreamers, but by no means unprecedented. But from here on the experiences of the sensitives are more and more unusual.

Some of the people Mrs. Piper (I speak of her as the representative of a class) never saw before, and of whom she never saw portraits, she identifies from photographs. Very few people have done that: perhaps very few have had the chance. There have been many times when I am sure I could, if photographs had been presented.

Her personalities and those of many sensitives are nearly always "dead" friends, not of the sensitives, but of the sitters, and abound in indications of genuineness in scope and accuracy of memory, in distinctness of individual recollections and characteristics, and in all the dramatic indications that go to demonstrate personalities. She sees and hears these personalities again and again, and _keeps them distinct_ in feature and character.