Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated)

by SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

  But supposing that they actually do exist what are these creatures? That is a subject upon which we can only speculate with more or less plausibility. Mr. David Gow, Editor of Light and a considerable authority upon psychic matters, had first formed the opinion that they were simply ordinary human spirits seen, as it were, at the wrong end of a clairvoyant telescope, and therefore very minute. A study of the detailed accounts of their varied experience caused him to alter his view and to conclude that they are really life forms which have developed along some separate line of evolution, and which for some morphological reason have assumed human shape in the strange way in which Nature reproduces her types like the figures on the mandrake root, or the frost ferns upon the window.

  In a remarkable book, A Wanderer in the Spirit Lands, published in 1896, the author, Mr. Farnese, under inspiration, gives an account of many mysteries including that of fairies. What he says fits in very clearly with the facts that have been put forward, and goes beyond them. He says, speaking of elementals,

  “Some are in appearance like the gnomes and elves who are said to inhabit mountain caverns. Such, too, are the fairies whom men have seen in lonely and secluded places. Some of these beings are of a very low order of life, almost like the higher order of plants, save that they possess independent motion. Others are very lively and full of grotesque unmeaning tricks.... As nations advance these lower forms of life die out from the astral plane of that earth’s sphere and succeeding generations begin at first to doubt and then to deny that they ever had any existence.”

  This is one plausible way of explaining the disappearance of the faun, the dryad, the naiad, and all the creatures which are alluded to with such familiarity in the classics of Greece and Rome.

  All these evidences as to fairies sink into insignificance compared with the actual photographs which I have published in my Coming of the Fairies. These, in the enlarged edition, cover cases from Yorkshire, Devonshire, Canada and Germany, and show varying sizes as already described. Since its publication I have had an excellent one from Sweden. They are not all supported by the same degree of evidence, but each case is strong and all the cases taken together seem to me to be final, unless we are to reconsider altogether our views as to the nature and power of thought-forms. No criticism has for a moment shaken the truth of the original Cottingley pictures. All fresh evidence has tended to confirm it. I refer readers to the book for the full detail, and for the pictures themselves.

  Some final paragraphs may be devoted to other forms of elemental life for which there is some evidence, though I admit that it is on a very different level from that which sustains the fairies. In Mrs. Tweedale’s Ghosts I have seen, a book which is far more thrilling than any sensational novel, and which can only be matched by the companion volume, Phantoms of the Dawn, will be found several descriptions of fauns, satyrs, and even in one case of a troop of centaurs, which are picturesque and arresting, if not entirely convincing. I know Mrs. Tweedale personally — she is the daughter of one of the famous Chambers brothers of Edinburgh, and I am aware that she is the last woman in the world to exaggerate or trifle with truth. The more remarkable of these elemental stories, however, are given second-hand, so that she cannot be responsible.

  There is one curious case which fits into the idea of a satyr-like creature who had by some mischance wandered out of his own vibration and got entangled in matter. I do not venture to say that this is the actual explanation, but I do maintain that the facts appear to be well-attested and that I know no other solution which would fully cover them. They are to be found in a book called Oddities published some years ago. It is there shown that on a certain year in the middle of last century, after a slight snow-shower, footprints of cleft goat-like feet which were most carefully observed, measured, and even photographed, were found over a hundred miles of ground in Devonshire. These footsteps had apparently all been made in the one night, and extended right across country over all obstacles, including the Teignmouth estuary, where the marks vanished at one side and re-appeared at the other. They were — I quote from memory — about two inches by one in size. If the facts are correctly given, then an elaborate practical joke carried out by a number of people acting in collusion would be the only alternative to the preternatural one, which I have ventured not to maintain but to suggest as a remote possibility. The case attracted much attention at the time and tracings of the prints are to be found in an old number of the Illustrated London News.

  One may well ask what connection have fairies and elementals with the essays upon the fate of the human soul which have formed most of this series? The connection is slight and indirect, consisting only in the fact that anything which widens our conceptions of the possible, and shakes us out of our time-rutted lines of thought, helps us to regain our elasticity of mind and thus to be more open to new philosophies. The fairy question is infinitely small and unimportant compared to the question of our own fate and that of the whole human race. The evidence also is very much less impressive though, as I trust I have shown, it is not entirely negligible. These creatures are in any case remote from us and their existence is of little more real importance than that of strange animals or plants. At the same time the perennial mystery, why so many “flowers are born to blush unseen” and why Nature should be so lavish with gifts which human beings cannot use, would be solved if we understood that there were other orders of being which used the same earth and shared its blessings. It is at the lowest an interesting speculation which gives an added charm to the silence of the woods and the wildness of the moorland.

  IX

  A STRANGE PROPHET

  When one finds that a philsophy is obscure, and when one fails after an earnest effort to get it clear, one may usually conclude that the teacher is also obscure and that the subject has not been clearly thought out. For some time I have endeavoured to get an understanding of Thomas Lake Harris, a mystic about whom there has been the utmost difference of opinion ranging from the Messianic to the diabolical. In my search for truth I have read much that he has written and I have carefully perused his Life and World Work, by a devoted follower, Mr. Arthur Cuthbert, who claims to have shared some of the same psychic experiences. I have also studied Sympneumata, written by Mrs. Laurence Oliphant and edited by her famous husband. Instead of clearing up obscurities this leaves them more obscure than ever. One earnestly wishes that the husband had expounded the matter, since he could write English, instead of the wife with her interminable and involved sentences which average about two to a page. Finally I read the picture of Harris taken by the novelist, Mrs. Oliphant, who was Laurence’s aunt, and who takes a very severe view of the American prophet. At the end of it all I find myself in the same perplexity as ever, and have no sure idea whether I am dealing with a megalomaniac ranter endowed with considerable worldly cunning, or with one who really had a breath of the divine afflatus — whether in fact his philosophy was a cloud of words or whether he had an authentic message.

  I am consoled in my indecision, and reassured as to my own judgment when I clearly see that the astute Laurence Oliphant, after twelve years of most intimate association, cannot answer for the real character of his associate. His famous pen-drawing of him in Masollam pictures a dual personality with two voices and two ranges of vision, and it ends with the words, “He might be the best or the worst of men.” A short sketch of my impressions of this curious man and of his doctrines may be of interest to readers.

  Harris was born in Fenny Stratford in Buckinghamshire in 1823, and was five years old when his parents emigrated to the United States, settling in Utica in the north of the State of New York. This region seems to have been to an extraordinary degree the centre of new religions or pseudo-religious impulses from that time onwards. Spiritualism, Mormonism, and, as I believe, Christian Science all had their original springs in this geographical centre. Harris, who was independent of each of these movements, was destined to make a very definite contribution of his own to the general spiritual urge
and outreach which was characteristic of the time and place.

  His people were narrow Calvinistic Baptists, and at an early age Harris rebelled against their sour doctrines and accepted the wider and more charitable teaching of the Universalists. An officer has told me how upon his inquiring into the religion of a recruit the Sergeant answered, “‘E calls ‘imself a Christadelphian, but to my mind ‘e’s little better than a ‘eathen.” Probably this was the view taken of the Universalists in those days of dogma. It was the nature of Harris to reject all dogmas, until he came to put forward some of his own. He was twenty years of age when he changed his religion, and he has left it on record that his dead mother appeared to him at that time and said, “My dear child, my poor child, you must all remember that God is the father of all men and that all mankind are your brothers.”

  He seems to have been a most eloquent preacher and soon won a considerable name, but the rather vague tenets of his new creed made him crave for something in the nature of concrete proof. Some chance of this was offered at this period by the use of Spiritualism, and in order to get clearer views upon the subject Harris paid a visit to Andrew Jackson Davis, who after some experiences as a hypnotic subject had finally become an inspired medium. The meeting and intercourse of these two men was certainly a notable event, for in their different ways they were both remarkable characters, and each has a niche of his own in religious history. Harris was twenty-four at the time and Davis twenty, two most singular youths. Davis converted Harris to the idea of spirit intercourse and for some years Harris was an enthusiastic preacher and leader. Davis, however, had some peculiar amatory adventures, depicted in his Magic Staff, and Harris, who professed a deeper regard for the marriage vow, was disillusioned and turned as violent an opponent as he had been a friend of the Spiritualistic movement. His attitude seems to have been supremely illogical, for the ill-doings, granting that they exist, of any member of a philosophy cannot alter the facts upon which the philosophy is founded. It would be as reasonable for an inquirer to discard Christianity in order to show disapproval of Judas. The fact remains, however, that Harris was seen no more on Spiritualistic platforms and that his voice was raised against all that he had supported. To anyone who is acquainted with the true tenets of this cult it must be obvious that he had never grasped their meaning and seemed to consider that an artificial hypnotism was essential to mediumship. His objections are mostly founded upon the supposition that one comes in contact with evil spirits. One may find plenty of evil spirits in the flesh, but one chooses one’s company and one finds that it is not difficult to come into contact with the higher ones as well. This great fact Harris ignored and from that moment his life took a turn of its own, and he lost touch with any philosophy which is capable of clear expression, though it influenced strongly a small circle of followers.

  He still ministered to a considerable church in New York, the congregation of which, including Horace Greeley, must have been sorely exercised in endeavouring to keep pace with, or to understand, the spiritual gyrations of their pastor. It was called the Independent Christian Church and was still on universalist lines. He narrates that addresses which he delivered there came to him by what Spiritualists now call automatic writing, and that the purpose and ultimate effect of them was the redemption of destitute children — an admission which one would have supposed must modify his condemnation of spirit intercourse. At this period he was one of those who founded a colony called the Mountain Cave Association, which was dissolved after a short and not too honourable existence. It was this first experiment in communal life which no doubt suggested the larger developments to come.

  It was at this time, about 1850, that Harris received according to his own account a direct revelation from a majestic angel man who turned his thoughts into a special channel. This tale of the direct apparition occurs in Swedenborg’s first vision, in Smith’s revelation of Mormonism, and in Davis’s account of his experience in the hills near Poughkeepsie. Considering the recent close association with the latter seer, it is not entirely impossible that Harris’s vision may have been subconsciously suggested by what he had heard of the apparition seen by Davis. The first fruits of the new departure were a long poem of 6,000 lines which was completed in the extraordinary time of twenty-seven working hours, scattered over fourteen days. It may be said once for all that Harris in this and many subsequent poems, which were so copious that it is doubtful if any writer has ever composed so much, showed himself to be a true poet of a high order. Lawrence Oliphant put him at the very top, and without being able to go so far as that, I should say that he stood very high. There are times when in his strong simplicity of phrase he reminds one of Blake, and there are times when his high spirituality touches the edge of Shelley. As an example of the former I would take:

  “Nine months I lay in a Lady’s womb, She folded me all in her laughing bloom, She hallowed me while I filled and fed From the nectar-wells of her mother-head.”

  As to the latter almost any page from his longer poems would illustrate my meaning.

  Lyrical speech seems to have been his natural expression, which accounts for a certain rhythm and majesty in his addresses. A lady who knew him at that period wrote of him:

  “When in Utica he would come to my sitting-room of an evening and sitting down on a rather high chair — one which allowed him to swing his feet rhythmically, he would compose poetry by the mile — exquisite thoughts, exquisitely worded. My memories of those quiet hours are very beautiful. There was nothing impressive about his person then; he was too thin, really lank, but his eyes were very full of thought and his voice had a rare charm. His poetic utterances were to me like views of sunset and sunrise, which we enjoy internally but which we cannot remember.”

  This last sentence seems to me to be very good criticism, well observed and clearly expressed. The reason seems to be that it is all too transcendental and ethereal. When Tennyson discusses the deeper things of life there are constant touches which bring one back to human experience. Harris is off the ground all the time. There is no anchor by which one may attach him to the current life of man. Hence one reads, as the lady says, with admiration for the limpid verse and the lofty thought, and yet at the end there is little which has remained as part of one’s own mental storehouse.

  And now the time had come when Harris had to strike out a path of his own into the unknown, and a very vague and difficult path it is for anyone else to indicate — far less to follow. There is an objective side to it and there is a theoretical or dogmatic side. The objective side of this system lay in the assertion that by some system of breathing certain psychic results may be obtained, and the mind elucidated as to things divine. It is to be presupposed that such exercises of the diaphragm or solar plexus — for those are indicated as being physically involved — are concomitant with mental and spiritual efforts, otherwise the matter would be no more a sign of progress than results to be obtained by standing upon one’s head. On the other hand, one would suppose that if the mental and spiritual effort had been made the advance would be automatic and independent of physical exertions. However, the theory is as I have stated, and there are found other witnesses, such as Mr. Cuthbert, who assert that they have themselves gone through the early stages of illumination as produced in this fashion. There are said to be seven stages in this advance by breath, each of them to be obtained by long and apparently painful effort. No one save Harris himself had ever attained the seventh, though all his followers, including his successive wives, three in number, were on various rungs of the ladder. The fact that Harris himself was supposed to have passed through the whole seven degrees was the basis for claims which must startle if not convince the general public, since it was seriously stated that the Christ was the only person who had ever done so much. The process, however, seems to have escaped the notice of the apostles, since it is mentioned in no gospel, and Paul, who gave so full a list of the spiritual gifts, has said nothing on the subject.

  At the same time i
t is not to be denied that there is a considerable body of evidence that by a certain control of the breath some exalted mental condition can be obtained. In Swedenborg’s case the more shallow his breathing the more spiritual his frame of mind. Cataleptics appear not to breathe at all, and are from time to time buried alive in consequence, but the condition seems to go with remarkable enfranchisement of the spirit. The Hindoos have reduced it to a system and claim similar results. I can remember in Canterbury, New Zealand, meeting some people who practised it, and who assured me that it was not without danger, as the excursion of the soul leaves an empty house behind, which may attract a parasitic tenant. However that may be, Harris’s general claim meets with some support, though I know no proof that any high spirituality is necessarily associated with what would rather seem to be a curious physiological experiment. This breathing phenomenon is, so far as I know, the only objective part of Harris’s philosophy.

  We come, therefore, to its dogmatic side, which consists in the assertion of the dual sex in every-one, including the Creator. Bi-une is the word which covers the philosophy. So far is it pushed that even a name is given to this second personality, so that the Lady Jessa is associated with the Lord Jesus, and Harris himself is closely intertwined with the Lady Lily to the not unnatural confusion of his earthly wives. So high is the Lady Lily that the whole celestial region after death is named Lilistan. This dual internal mating is supposed to do away with the coarser processes of nature and to free mankind from the lustful morass in which he is accused of wallowing, but as Harris had not only wives but also children, it would appear that the higher path was not all-sufficing.