Spiritualism Challenged : A Rejoinder
By C. E. M. JOAD ARE spiritualistic manifestations genuine or fraudu-' lent ? A very definite answer to that -was given by Colonel Elliot in last week's Spectator. He asserted that after fifteen years' continuous investigation the Occult Committee of the Magic Circle, of which he is chairman, is unable to " point to a single observation in favour of Spiritualism." This, on the whole, bears out my own experience. He also adduces the low intellectual level of the communications purporting to originate in discarnate surviving human personalities. Agreed again ! Spirit messages,' the fact is, alas, too obvious, arc not remarkable for their intellectual content. After studying numbers of them I have come to the conclusion that, if ghosts have souls, they certainly- have no brains. The view that my soul survives without my intelligence is to me morally repugnant, and I hope, therefore, although I am fully aware that the fact of my hope is no argument, that things are not as the Spiritualists state.
What then ? Then, Colonel Elliot seems to suggest; the medium must be cheating, or, if not consciously cheating, must he the vehicle of messages which originate in his completely commonplace human unconsciousness. But what kind of fifteen years' investigations were they that have led Colonel Elliot to so momentous a con- clusion ? Did the investigations, for example, really continue over the whole of that period,: or did they occur very occasionally, say, once or twice a year or less ? How many mediums has he investigated, and what sort of mediums ? Has he in all this time seen nothing which intrigued his curiosity, nothing which subsequent investigation failed to explain away ? And is he quite sure that, if disearnate spiriti did not send the messages, it was always the medium, conscious or unconscious, who did ?
I cannot resist putting these questions to Colonel Elliot because, although, as I have said, - I am' not a Spiritualist—I do not see how in the present state of our knowledge the Spiritualist _hypothesis can be .either affirmed or denied-- I am nevertheless thoroughly puzzled by the phenomena which, during an apprentice- ship to psychical reselareh very much shorter.: than that of Colonel Elliot, I have hind the luck to observe. -Events occur; I am convinced, - under conditions which rule Out the hypothesis of trickery, of whose causation we arc quite simply ignorant. If Colonel Elliot insists that the hypothesis of trickery can never in any absolute sense be ruled out, I must, of course; agree. The most; it seems to me, that can be demanded or expected is that, as a result of one's personal inspection of the system of Controls used in the seance room and of one's personal knowledge of the other persons partieipatii in the experiment, including the medium, one should be in a position to make -a judgement to this effect : " It seems to me more unlikely, physically speaking, -that the medium, in spite of these controls, is' Managing to cheat ; and it seems to me more- unlikely; psYehologically speaking,- that these- friends of mine are wasting their and my time by cheating, than that something is happening which in the preient state. of our knowledge we do not understand." In the nature of- the case such a judgement can never have more than a probability value, but on occasion that value may, and speaking for my own part often has, amounted to something approaching certitude.. What are the phenomena in question ? , I have . no space even for a prolegomenon to a Catalogue: Let .me cite three, one simple; one 'complex; one Merely odd. Let us suppOse that five people sit for three hours in it small room in semi-darkness. One :would expeet the temperature to go up. If it is a seance room in which phenomena. arc occurring, it goes down, the lowest point reached by the thermometer coinciding with 'the period of the maximum' intensity of the phenOmena. This occurrence has been verified again and again by tliermci graphs. Suppose that you place a handkerehief upon a table top which' pivots upon a' balance, so that the removal of 'the handkerchief causes one side- of the balanced top to .rise; the 'other to fall. SuppoSe that as a result an' electrical contact -is .rnade. and an electrieal current started which causes half a dozen flashlight bomhs to .explode and that as a eonseqnence,the plates of three cameras trained upon the table top are exposed and record. Record what ? The handkerchief suspended in mid-air, but not what lifted it. What, then, did _lift it ? The official reply is ectoplasm—that is to say,: the stuff of the medium's body dematerialized into a sort of pulp and exteriorized in order to produce the movements of small objects that occur in the seance room. But is ectoplasm an established fact ? Probably not. Yet something moved the handkerchief. Suppose, finally, that a girl who is said to be the centre of polter- geist .phenomena is introduced into your laboratory, and sits in broad daylight playing with her toys. In due course small objects drop off window ledges, metal letters turn up in drawers and in people's pockets, marked coins disappear and mysteriously reappear, while weals and teeth marks suddenly appear on the.arms and chest of the. girl. What then ? Frankly, I do not know. But I suggest that neither belief • nor denial but investigation is the only appropriate reaction.
Here, . then, if I am right, is a field . of phenomena urgently demanding investigation by scientific methods in a spirit of scientific detachment. The field borders ou a number of neighbouring territories—physics, philo- sophy, psychology, even theology—but it . has, it is obvious, the closest affinities with abnormal psychology and physiology. That an invisible substance should be able to interrupt infra-red rays directed upon an object, and produce movements on the part of that object, constitutes, it is -clear, a problem for the physicist. But that the substance should be connected with events occurring in the medium's body, his rate of breathing, for example, is a matter of interest to the physiologist. If ectoplasm could be established as a fact, the fact would interest the physiologist enormously. And not only the physiologist ; for there seems to be some evidence that the material something which effects the movements of small objects is directed by an intelligence just as the moulding and movements of ectoplasm, if ectoplasm is indeed a fact, would seem to be directed by an intelligence. Here, then, would seem to be yet one more puzzling example of that most puzzling of all relations, the relation bet weer mind and matter. Now, if fome of the phenomena of psychical research are produced by some kind of intelligence using and informing matter for its purposes much as the fingers of a pianist. play upon and produce effects upon the piano, the result would be to confirm some of us in the inveterate dualism which, in spite of all the difficulties in the path we persist in holding. The human personality, on this view, is neither all bode nor all mind, is in sonic sense both. It is constituted. that is to say, by two principles, which, though they interact, arc distinct. Psychology is here brought into the field, with philosophy as its close attendant.
I have had space only to indicate a few of the problems that psychical reicarch raises, but I hope I have said enough to convey to the reader something of the exaspera- tion which so many of us feel on finding the baffling phenomena of this no-man's land lying between psychology and physiology treated as a mast upon which enthusiasts proceed to nail the flags of a fanatic faith and a scarcely less fanatic scepticism, and, where so little is known, rush to supply the place of knowledge by converting their conjectures into dogmas.
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