SIR OLIVER LODGE AND THE SPIRIT WORLD.

Evening Star, Issue 12926, 14 April 1908, Page 3

SIR OLIVER LODGE AND THE SPIRIT WORLD.

Sir Oliver Lodge has already been proved beyond possibility of doubt to have been the consistent and docile dupe of the fraudulent medium Eusapia. whoso exposure a few years ago dealt a staggering blow to the progress of psychical research and gravely imperilled Sir Oliver's own reputation for scientific thoroughness. And this deception is very far from being tho only one which has been practised upon men of distinguished scientific capacity in recent years. Nor do psychical investigators meet the other great requisite of psychical investigation—the requirement that hypotheses shall not outdistance the facts observed. Nobody who has read A. R. Wallace's ' Miracles "and Modem Spiritualism ' can fail to have noticed the chasm which lies between his description of the particular experiments which he and his friends claim to have made and the elaborate hypothesis of the spirit-world and the life to come which he pretends that these experiments will warrant, but which, as a matter of fact, they do not in the least bear out. The same criticism may be made upon Sir Oliver Lodge's recent experiments. So far no atom of proof has been furnished to the world at large that tho phenomena which ho claims to have witnessed are not—to leave out of the question for tho moment tho jiossibilily of fraud on the ]>art of any of his " an tomat ists"—the result, not of supernatural causes, but of some natural law with the full manifestation of which we arc not at present perfectly acquainted. Sir Oliver claims that what ho hears are the voices of the dead. He has yet to prove that he is not really listoning to his own voice or to that of some meml>or of his audience. So barren has spiritualism been of results that the world goes on from year to year practically unconscious of it 6* operations, and certainly -unmoved by a single one of tho •'discoveries" it professes to have made. It has not yet told us anything that the world regards as new or valuable, or that could not have been imagined without its assistance. In research of this kind science is never obstructive, but she is always judicial, and claims as her due the fullest proof alike, of facts and of hypotheses. ' Otherwise she would bo false to her trust, for the demand for proof, even to demonstration, is of hoi- very essence. The phenomena arc never subjected to any " tests" but such as the devotees of spiritualism themselves devise. Tho moment it is proposed to make use of tho electric Tight and tho detective when apparitions present themselves there is an immediate veto. Sir Oliver has recently been writing to 'The Times' on means of dispelling the fog in London. It is a pity that he cannot loam that, a process of this kind should begin at borne and in certain quarters of his own brain.— ' Argus,' March 28.