Henry Sidgwick- Eye of the Universe
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as we proceed, we have included among telepathic phenomena a vast class of
cases which seem at first sight to involve something widely different from a mere
transference of thought.
I refer to apparitions; excluding, indeed, the alleged apparitions of the dead, but including the apparitions of all persons who are still living, as we know life, though they may be on the very brink and border of physical dissolution. And these apparitions, as will be seen, are themselves extremely various in character; including
not visual phenomena alone, but auditory, tactile, or even purely ideational and
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emotional impressions. All these we have included under the term phantasm; a
word which, though etymologically a mere variant of phantom, has been less often used, and has not become so closely identified with visual impressions alone.
After reviewing various suggestions about how such investigations re-
late to anthropology and history (which include the remarks on Theoso-
phy), Myers goes on to pose “a still larger and graver question”: “What
(it is naturally asked) is the relation of our study – not to eccentric or
outlying forms of relgious creed – but to central and vital conceptions;
and especially to that main system of belief to which in English-speaking
countries the name of religion is by popular usage almost confined?”
He notes that the members of the SPR have heretofore “studiously re-
frained from entering on this important question,” and this because they
“wished to avoid even the semblance of attracting the public to our
researches by any allurement which lay outside the scientific field,” since
they “could not take for granted” that their inquiries would “make for
the spiritual view of things, that they would tend to establish even the
independent existence, still less the immortality, of the soul.” They held
it to be essential to “maintain a neutral and expectant attitude,” con-
ducting their “inquiries in the ‘dry light’ of a dispassionate search for
truth.”
This is still their position, Myers explains, and their book does not try
to deal with all “the most exciting and popular topics which are included
in our Society’s general scheme.” Still, even if the “master-problem of
human life” may require more deliberate approaches, psychical research
is now no longer a matter of mere anticipation, but can claim “a certain
amount of actual achievement.” Thus,
We hold that we have proved by direct experiment, and corroborated by the
narratives contained in this book, the possibility of communications between two
minds, inexplicable by any recognised physical laws, but capable (under certain
rare spontaneous conditions) of taking place when the persons concerned are at
an indefinite distance from each other. And we claim further that by investigations
of the higher phenomena of mesmerism, and of the automatic action of the mind,
we have confirmed and expanded this view in various directions, and attained
a standing-point from which certain even stranger alleged phenomena begin to
assume an intelligible aspect, and to suggest further discoveries to come.
Thus far the authors of this book, and also the main group of their fellow-
workers, are substantially agreed.
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Beyond this, Myers allows, more caution must be exercised in claiming
any sort of consensus. But for all that, he does carry on, at length, in a
quite positive way, about
how much support the preliminary theses of religion may acquire from an assured
conviction that the human mind is at least capable of receiving supernormal
influences, – is not closed, by its very structure, as the Materialists would tell
us, to any ‘inbreathings of the spirit’ which do not appeal to outward eye or ear.
And somewhat similar is the added reality which the discovery of telepathy gives
to the higher flights, the subtler shades, of mere earthly emotion.
In brief, the psychical “element in man” must, Myers claims, “hence-
forth almost inevitably be conceived as having relations which cannot be
expressed in terms of matter.” But the other side of this argument is,
obviously, that the case for religion and the case for psychical research
were being brought into intimate connection in public.
This was the theme to which Myers would continue to warm, as he
grew ever more convinced that
Science is now succeeding in penetrating certain cosmical facts which she has not
reached till now. The first, of course, is the fact of man’s survival of death. The
second is the registration in the Universe of every past scene and thought. This
I hold to be indicated by the observed facts of clairvoyance and retro-cognition;
and to be in itself probable as a mere extension of telepathy, which, when acting
unrestrictedly, may render it impossible for us to appear as other than we are. And
upon this the rule of like to like seems to follow; our true affinities must determine our companionships in a spiritual world.
For Myers was personally persuaded that there was no longer any reason
to deny that the investigations into telepathy had led on to a vindication of
his cosmic faith in the “other world” – or rather, the “friendly universe.”
And the “subliminal uprushes” of genius and mutual recognitions of sen-
sitive seekers carried for him a cosmic importance, as though the Apostolic
brotherhood had been written into the structure of the universe.
This evidently worried Sidgwick a good deal. In a singularly revealing
journal entry, he explains:
The Book – Phantasms of the Living – is getting on. Yesterday we heard Myers
read the first half of his introduction. I am rather troubled about the part of it
which relates to religion. M. says roundly to the Theologian, ‘If the results of
our investigation are rejected, they must inevitably carry your miracles along with
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them.’ This is, I doubt not, true, but is it wise to say it? Also it is only true as
regards the ultimate effect. I do not doubt that if we ultimately reach a negative conclusion, this inquiry of ours will in time be regarded by sceptics as supplying the last element of proof necessary to complete the case against Christianity and
other historic religions; but for many generations – perhaps many centuries –
the only difference will be that Chris
tianity, Mohammedanism, etc., will have to
support their miracles instead of being supported by them; and the historic roots of these great institutions are surely quite strong enough to enable them to do this
for an indefinite period – in fact until sociology has been really constructed, and
the scientist steps into the place of the priest. (M )
But he would not remain even this sanguine for long, and the Phantasms
volume would actually trouble him a great deal. He had, in fact, been
working rather hard at getting Myers to tone down his enthusiasms. In a
journal passage from January , – one excised from the Memoir – he
recorded for Symonds’s benefit how he
Had rather an agitating discussion at Massey’s about the book on ‘Phantasms of
the Living’. Hitherto we have agreed that Myers & Gurney are to write it jointly: but I have come to the conclusion that all our appearances in print ought to be
conducted on the principle of individualising responsibility. In this obscure and
treacherous region, girt about with foes watching eagerly for some bad blunder,
it is needlessly increasing our risks to run the danger of two reputations being exploded by one blunder: it is two heads on one neck: “hoc Ithacus velit.” Let us
have the freest and fullest mutual criticism – so that if possible each of us may feel himself morally responsible for our friends’ blunders – but let the responsibility before the world be always to one, that we may sell our reputations as dearly as possible.
I urged this view, but I did not prevail: it was a delicate matter as I was palpably
aiming at ousting F. M. and leaving E. G. as sole author: estimating the superior
trustworthiness of the latter in scientific reasoning as more important than his
literary inferiority. I could see M. was annoyed; but he bore it admirably. Ultimately we compromised thus: M. to write a long introduction and G. the body of the
book. (CWC)
Thus, as this exceptionally candid and accurate assessment reveals,
Sidgwick was indirectly responsible for Myers’s Introduction, though he
apparently would rather have kept Myers out of the volume altogether.
Myers was altogether too ready to believe, and in highlighting the reli-
gious significance of psychical research in the way that he did, he gambled
too much, too precipitously. For what if the critics could make a strong
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counterattack? Gurney’s handling of the volume was, as Sidgwick pre-
dicted, much more restrained, and often struck a note quite different
from Myers’s. Interestingly, Gurney concluded that
though ‘psychical research’ is certain in time to surmount ridicule and prejudice,
and to clear for itself a firm path between easy credulity on the one side and easy
incredulity on the other, the rate of its advance must depend on the amount of
sympathy and support that it can command from the general mass of educated men
and women. In no department should the democratic spirit of modern science
find so free a scope: it is for the public here to be, not – as in anthropological
researches – the passive material of investigation, but the active participators in it.
We acknowledge with warm gratitude the amount of patient assistance that we have
received – how patient and forbearing in many instances, none can judge who have
not tried, as private individuals, to conduct a system of strict cross-examination on a wide scale. But unless this assistance is largely supplemented, our undertaking
can scarcely hold its ground. . . . And here is the practically interesting point; for, till the general fact is universally admitted, the several items of proof must ever
tend to lose their effect as they recede further into the past. This peculiarity of
the subject cannot be gainsaid, and must be boldly faced. For aught I can tell, the
hundreds of instances may have to be made thousands.
This conclusion, coming at the end of two fat volumes carefully and
analytically reporting some instances of supposed telepathic hap-
penings of every conceivable stripe, no doubt reflected the kind of cau-
tious enjoining of “more research” that Sidgwick, at least, thought most
appropriate. Surely, as Gauld observes, Gurney had “found his métier” –
he had written up most of the cases, included a wealth of additional
material on the canons of evidence, and, during this same period, had
also been beavering away at hypnosis and carrying out his duties as the
SPR’s honorary secretary and editor.
As Gauld nicely summarizes it, the “central thesis” of Phantasms is
this:
[C]risis apparitions [those occurring within twelve hours, either way, of the death
of the supposed agent] . . . are best interpreted as hallucinations generated in the percipient by the receipt of a telepathic ‘message’ from the dying agent. That ghosts are hallucinatory is suggested by their complete or almost complete failure to leave any physical traces behind them, and by the fact that they occasionally behave in ways impossible to physical objects. . . . That crisis apparitions are caused by the receipt of a telepathic ‘message’ from the dying person is strongly suggested
by the fact that they can be placed at the end of an unbroken series of cases, a
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series of which cases of experimental and spontaneous telepathy form the early
and middle terms. First of all come the instances of experimental telepathy in
which, let us say, a percipient in one place is able to reproduce a drawing held
before the eyes of an agent in another place. Then come cases of spontaneous
telepathy, which most commonly occur when the agent is undergoing some shock
or strong emotion; thus a lady lying in bed early one morning felt a pain in her
mouth at the moment when her husband was struck painfully in the mouth by
the tiller of his yacht. Next we have more complex cases of spontaneous telepathy,
where the percipient’s experience is not, so to speak, a reproduction of that of
the agent, but is rather founded upon it, the details coming from the percipient’s mind. An example would perhaps be that of ‘arrival’ cases, in which a person
about to arrive at a given spot is actually seen there in advance of his arrival by
someone not expecting him; here what the percipient sees – the agent as he ap-
pears to people other than himself – is most unlikely to correspond closely with
what is in the agent’s mind, so that the details of the picture must presumably be in some way supplied by the percipient. Finally come crisis apparitions themselves, in which the details of the phantom, which often behaves normally and is
normally clad, would seem necessarily to have come from the percipient’s mind;
for the agent may be at the bottom of the sea, or lying in night clothes upon his
death-bed.
The care and thoroughness
of the detailing of these cases has certainly
impressed most everyone subsequently involved in psychical research.
As Gauld suggests, to pass “from even the ablest of previous works to
Phantasms of the Living is like passing from a mediaeval bestiary or herbal
to Linnaeus’ Systema Natura.” But the book did have some formidable
early critics, including C. S. Peirce, who argued that it did not make a
strong enough case that these incidents were not simply chance occur-
rences. The Sidgwick Group had certainly recognized that they needed
to make some sort of case against the alternative theory of chance coin-
cidence, and that they needed “to try to estimate the proportion of the
population which has the experience of seeing a recognised apparition and
the proportion of these cases in which the apparition was veridical.”
Gurney himself had attempted something of a census, receiving answers
from approximately , persons about their experiences with appari-
tions, but this was not deemed sufficient, even by the psychical researchers.
Hence, his concluding plea for greater public involvement in this form of
research must be read as an altogether serious effort at improving his
sampling techniques and establishing some more reliable baseline for
determining the frequency of such apparitions.
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Gurney had made various approaches to this in Phantasms, and it was
manifestly the type of work that he wanted to carry on. His untimely death,
on June , , was of course a terrible blow to these efforts. Sidgwick
wrote to his widow on behalf of the SPR that
nothing that can be said in public will really express our sense of loss. . . . We are determined that the work shall be carried through to whatever result the laws of
the Universe destine for it; we feel it to be now not only a duty owed to humanity,
but also to the memory of our friend and colleague, that the results of our previous
labour should not fail from any faint-heartedness. (M )
As recorded earlier, he was “not yet hopeless of establishing telepathy”