SCIENCE UP TO DATE.

Evening Star, Issue 15065, 23 December 1912, Page 10

SCIENCE UP TO DATE.

THE HIGHER AND LOWER PSYCHISMS. By James Colmer "- (Author of 'Tho Development of Psychology'). [Special Rights Secuhed by the 'Star.'j In this the greatest age that science has known-the facts or fictions of "Spiritism have been constrained to submit themselves to the methods and canons of scientific inquiry. Either these phenomena can bo established and made good like- facts of any other order, ami then there is nothing for it but to believe them ; or eke they are proven or completely disproved, and then we feel no further curiosity about them. Tho attitude of science as such is ono of expectancy.

—The Psychical Society.— I can well remember that, in the early seventies, one of the ablest ministers m the Kirk, the la to Dr Robert Wallace, of Old Greyfnars, Edinburgh, sceptic though ho was supposed to be in thinsrs spiritual laid stress on the necessity for a thorough search into the alleged facts, and evidently looked forward to its being done. There must already have been some talk of the founding of a society with, such a reason for its existence, and, as a matter of fact, a Society for Psychical Research was founded at Cambridge in 1873 by a knot of distinguished Cantabridgians. Its chief author was Fredrick Myers, one of two sons of a Cumberland 'rector— tall, dark, and hectic, an enthusiast and a propagandist, around whom a, little band of cultured men and eager women gathered to listen to his perfervid utterances as soon as he entered a London drawing room. A poet and a critic of rare temper and finest quality, one of the leading liumanists of his time, he might well appear to be dedicated to his high calling and his poet's lite. But, hailing from, the Lake Country, and being acquainted with friends of the great Lake poet, whose bioirrapliy lie has nobly written, he was early "seized bv that passion for "brave translunary things" which possessed Wordsworth. Ever, afterwards in his writings we can perceive him striving to gain an entrance into the transcendent world. Such a man naturally soon became the magnetic pole of a group whose chief members were—Edmund Gitrney, an authority on aesthetics; Henry Sidgwick, one of the most striking academic figures of our time; and Mrs Sidgwick, a mathematician of high rank. These were speedily reinforced by such men as A. J. Balfour and his less-known brother Gerald; that wonderful experimentalist Sir W. Crookes; Professor W. James, the inventor of Pragmatism ; Sir Oliver Lodge, guileless enthusiast but a true physicist; Professor Lord Rayleigh ; P. C. S. Schiller, the Oxford humanist; and the Earl of Crawford—all of whom would have lent distinction to any society. The little band of like-minded men and women was not slow to set to work, and in some 20 published volumes of its transactions it, has stored the purged and certified nairalives whence its members have drawn nutriment for their craving after the unseen. After due consideration it was felt tliafc the harvest of ghostly grain was ready for the mill, and in 1886 Mr Myers and his associates, Gurney and Podmore, extracted the grist of their 12 years' inquest. The treatise, heralded by such a pomp of authority, and appealing to such wide-spread hankerings and curiosities, attracted attention all over Europe. It even cropped up in colonial parliamentary libraries, and gave rise there to such communings as only the most solemn themes excite. Iwo U.S. senators often conversed at Washington on the immortality of the soul.__ Then they were parted for a period of 25 years. Meeting one another casually at a Presidential reception, thev slowlv approached each other. "Any light, Albert?" "None," replied Albert. '"Any light, Lewus?" " None," replied he. And they parted for the last time. That is the key to all such inquiries. What light do they throw on the other world ? It was- chiefly to answer this all-engross-ing question that Myers prepared in 1901 his massive work,' Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death.' He did not, indeed, himself survive to publish it (so eager were these high spirits to enter the state of which, they were so profoundly enamored; for Gurney had preceded him, as if by a summons from beyond), but it was left ready far publication. It made a deep—nay, an extraordinary —impression on the English. French, and American minds. Edition after edition of the costly and bulkv volumes was issued. ".A still fengthy abridgment, to my knowledge, has been taken out 35 times in a comparatively short space from a circulating library of moderate dimensions, and the interest in it is unabated. Curiosity about it is still unslaked. Has science anything to sav on the new foundation and flying buttresses to the old faith newly laid or plated in this remarkable treatise? —Methods and Canons.—

I For it is to Science that its author ap- | peals. TJie subject forming a branch of scientific inquiry, the method lie uses is that of all science, and consist* in a patient, dispassionate, and systematic interpretation of Nature. His argument* axe founded on positive observation and objective experiment. His temper is professedly that of science, and should be open, candid, and straightforward. It is an old appeal with Myers. Thirty years ago he contended that, as we have learnt things natural by the methods of science, now we shall learn things supernatural after the same methods. Never before has science laid itself alongside of the facts; for the first time has it applied itself to ascertain the powers-and destiny of the human soul. It is no haughty, yet it is a bold, challenge ; and it deserves that it should be squarely met. We soon, discover" that the methods of the new science are not entirely those of the old. Myers now confesses that the methods and the canons of evidence are "all to make." How should this be, if they are the same? Do the sciences of astro-physics and of radio-activity use any other methods or apply any other canons than the sciences of physios and astronomy ? Are there any other methods than observation, experiment, and inference, or any other canons than an agreement among sensations? Yes, it appears, there are; and Myers is constrained to admit, or rather is emboldened to contend, that we can learn the nature of the states of disembodied souls by means of " discovery and revelation "—or "observation from without and utterance from within." We at once perceive that we have got on to another plane than that of so-called science, and one where 2 and 2 may possibly make 5, and two straight lines* may enclose a space.

Other examples of the new organon can be given. The evidence for ecstasy, Myers asserts, is stronger than the evidence for any other religious belief? It is common •to all religions; all genuine recorded forms oi ecstasy are akin, and all represent a real fact. What sort of "evidence," we ask, and what kind of a " fact" ? There is, indeed, abundance of evidence to prove the belief in such excursions of the spirit from the torpid, motionless bodv as came to be named by the Alexandrian Neo"ecstasy"; and it is more abundant the further back in history and the further down in culture that we c 0 But what value have the beliefs as evidence of the alleged facts? The Maori or the Australian has (or had) no faintest shadow of a doubt about the objective character or the experience ; but what intelligent person now takes his word for it' Their belief is not doubted, but there is no such evidence of the fact of such excursions as to command assent, If Myers 'considers such "facts" as the experiences of Mrs Piper, the Rev. Stainton Moses, and D. D. Home to prove ,; actual excursions of the incarnate sp lr it from its organism" what is there that he could not prove' The evidence of the facts of science is doubted by none, because it can be at anv fitting moment submitted to any competent person, and from that moment scepticism as neither allowable nor possible. A. Kelvin may at first disbelieve in the actuality of the Roentgen rays, but he yields his assent as soon as these are brought before his--vision. An Agassis; may dispute the doctrine of evolution, bat he would not

have denied, could he have inspected it, the development of the visible series, ex-' humed by March, of the descendants of Eohippos. —The Subliminal Self.— Nevertheless, there are doctrines embraced in the new psychics, and advocated by minds so philosophical as Frederic Myers and William James, for which evidence of a cogent kind, unknown to their authors, can be adduced. E. Von Hartmann was doubtless the first to exhibit the large part played by the unconscious element m human life, and James considered that the discovery of the unconscious por-tion-of the mind was the greatest addition that had been made to psychology in our u m % J 1 ;UI aod in aJI M ?«s. Here be nnds.the fountains of genius, poetry, ?w"Y HCTe is the true sourc « of all that happens outside of our ordinary consciousness—the sensations and perceptions, the feelings and dim strivings that may be both definite and strong, but seldom come into trie clear light of day. Thev belong to both the lower and the higher ends of the mental spectrum, where, at the lowor limit the will sinks into the organic acts.and functions, or where, at the upper limit, the consciousness fades away into unimagin- I able states of trance and ecstasy.

—The Social Self.— This alleged discovery by Myers of a new and deeper self receives unexpected confirmation from a quarter that was unfamiliar to him. In a work published in 1893 (notable as-the year of A. J. Balfour's and Benjamin Kidd s remarkable volumes) a leading French sociologist, Emile Durkheim, asserted the existence of a social consciousness or a- social self such as might readily be confounded with Myers's subliminal self, there are m each of us, he says, two consciousnesses—one that we share with the society to which we belong, and is not our proper selves, but society living and acting within us; while the other represents that in us which is personal and distinct, and constitutes our individuality. When the larger consciousness is brought into play we no longer act in view of our own ends, but seek collective ends. This is not ciuite the subliminal self of Mvers, but it is a groat portion of it, and is" perhaps an avenue to it. Where Myers breaks away is to assume that this consciousness is "an independent 'though related and distinct entity, while in fact the two are solidary with one another and have a single organic .substrate. Myers, on the contrary, holds tlia't this deeper consciousness 16 not only distinct, but detachable and free to wander through the world and in other worlds than ours. Evidently the social consciousness has no sphere outside of the society where it was engendered. There is still another direction in which true science lends a shadowy support to the psuedo-science of psychical research. Myers often refers to the "subliminal uprushes " of the fountains of thought and feeling that seem to flow froan "the depths of our being. They do flow from those depths. They are the "magma," or the deposit of the whole past experiences of the race and of all ancestral races. Both novelists and psychologists have described the ethical and jesthetic sentiments that have been inherited from past generations, and Wordsworth nobly sang of the shadowy recollections of infancy that are the master-light of all our seeing. But again these are the fading traces of long-past ancestral actual experiences that have left in the mind their records and registrations. They are not the work of an independent principle, animated by thoughts won in other worlds, whence they have come. :—The Lower Psychism.—

They belong to the deeper portions of our nature, because, having been originally conscious parts of it, they have sunk into the unconscious and organic portions of it. They aid (if Mr Spencer is right) in accounting for our belief in the universality of the mathematical axioms and in the law of causation, the authority of conscience and the moral instincts. To them may be ascribed our sense of new life in spring, the passion for resurrection, the yearning for immortality. And yet (the scientists agree) they belong to " the lower psychism." They are the powers and presentiments that wake when the higher nature is lulled in a hypnotic slumber, or when it is absorbed by a train of thought or a purpose that makes all else forgotten. The lower centres' act for themselves when the control commonly exercised by the higher centres is in abeyance. Then the one set of centres is detached from the other, and the phenomena so often described are witnessed. Telepathic sensibility (sensibility at a distance), motor automatism (action at a distance), trance, possession, ecstasy, visions of the dead or the distant living, all appear on the arena of consciousness. Are these higher or lower? As stated and described by the Psychical Researches, they are apparently higher. Who would not wish to be Plotinus, Augustine, Joachim of Floris, or Tennyson, or Whitman, returning from a trance, even if he were pale as a dead leaf, as Joachim was? But such things are rare. They are only the exaltation of ordinary faculties in an extraordinary state, and the acts of the lower psychism are usually of a commoner and lower description; they are acts of organic instinct, mechanical habit, blind passion, the collective wrath or madness of the crowd. Where poetry or constructive fiction is produced in such states the product is plainly mimetic and often absurdly inferior. No deep word.no wise saying, no magic tone, no revelation, no true vision have yet come from the abyss. Myers has been dead for 12 years, and Gurney for 24. Has any light beam been thrown by either from the other world on the darkness of this? Yet who knew better than these lofty spirits what it is that we want to know- or how to communicate to our purblind souls what it is that they now know? : The appeal to science,!then, must be dismissed; the appellants have not proved thejLr ewe.