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Science Is Proving Our Immortality- --By Sir Oliver Lodge
Leading British Scientist Affirms That
Facts Show Memory and Affection
Are Not Limited by Matter and That
Personality Persists Beyond Death
THE most remarkable message from science to mankind for many years was the inaugural
address of Sir Oliver Lodge, president of the current meeting of the British Association
for the Advancement of Science at Birmingham, England, delivered on Wednesday. Sep
tember 10. This address which, owing to exigencies of space and time, was only briefly reported
In daily newspapers throughout the world, is here given fully. Sir Oliver maintained that
the immortality of the soul is supported by scientific evidences.
Sir Oliver is one of the greatest electricians and chemists in England, and made discoveries
that rendered wireless telegraphy possible. He is an especially high authority on the nature of
the ether. In his address he says that a belief in the ultimate continuity of all mind and matter
Is essential to science; that facts have convinced him that memory and affection are not lim
ited by the association with matter and that personality persists beyond bodily death. He con
tends against the tendencies of some scientists to deny the existence of anything which makes
no appeal to organs of sense.
By Professor Sir Oliver
President of the British Association
I HOLD that science is incompetent to make
comprehensive denials, even about the
ether, and that it goes wrong when it
makes the attempt. Science should not deal
in negations; it is strong in affirmations, but
nothing based on abstraction ought it to pre
sume to deny outside its own region. It often
happens that tiling- abstracted from and ig
nored b, one branch of science may be taken
into consideration by another.
Experimental scientists should not deny the
existence of spirit apart from matter, for they
know nothing, experimentally, of the ether of
space, the substance which binds all matter
throughout the universe together
1 am not alone in feeling the fascination of
this portentous entity. Its curiously elusive
and intangible character, combined with its
universal and unliving permeance, its appar
ently inflnite extent, Its definite and perfect
properties, make the ether the most interesting
as it Is by far the largest and most funda
mental ingredient in the material cosmos.
Matter it is not. but material it is, it be
longs to the ma'erial universe and is to be
investigated by ordinary methods. But to say
i is is by no means to deny that it may have
: >i ntal and spiritual functions to subserve In
some other order of existence, as matter has
in this
1 he ether of space is at least the great en
gine of continuity It may be much more, for
without it there could hardly be a material
universe at all Certainly, however, it is es
sential to continuity; ft is the one all-per
meating substance which binds the whole of
the particles of matter together. it Is the
uniting and binding medium without which, if
matter could exist at all. it could exist only
as chaotic and Isolated fragments, and It Is
the universal medium of communication be
tween worlds and particles And yet it is
possible for people to deny Its existence, be
cause it is unrelated to any of our senses, ex
cept sight—and to that only In an indirect
and not easily recognized fashion.
Life itself introduces an incalculable element
into many phenomena. The vagaries of a
fire or a cyclone could all be predicted by
Laplace’-, Calculator, given the initial positions,
velocities and the law of acceleration of the
molecules; but no mathematician could calcu
late the orbit of a common house fly. A
physicist into whose galvanometer a spider
had crept would be Hable to get phenomena
of a kind quite Inexplicable, until he discovered
the supernatural, 1. e., literally superphysical,
cause. I will risk the assertion that life In
troduces something incalculable and purposeful
amid the laws of physics; it thus distinctly
supplements those laws, though it leaves them
otherwise precisely as they were and obeys
them all.
We see only its effect; we do not see life
Itself. Conversion of Inorganic Into organic
is effected always by living organisms. The
conversion under those conditions certainly
occurs, and the process may be studied. Lite
appears necessary to the conversion, which
clearly takes place under the guidance of life,
though in Itself it is a physical and chemical
process. Many laboratory conversions take
place under the guidance of life, and, but for
the experimenter, would not have occurred.
Again, putrefaction, and fermentation and
purification of rivers and disease are not
purely and solely chemical processes. Chem
ical processes they are. but they are Initiated
and conducted by living organisms. Just when
medicine is becoming biological, and when the
hope of making the tropical belt of the earth
healthily habitable by energetic races is at
tracting the attention of people of power,
philosophizing biologists should not attempt to
give their science away to chemistry and
physics.
Scientific men are hostile to superstition,
and rightly so, for a great many popular su
pp’-stitions are both annoying and contempti
ble; yet occasionally the term may be wrongly
applied to practises of which the theory is un
known. To a superficial observer some of the
practises of biologists themselves must appear
grossly superstitious. To combat malaria Sir
Ronald Ross does not indeed erect an altar;
no, he oils a pond, making libation to presiding
genii. What can be more ludicrous than the
curious and evidently savage ritual, insisted
on by United States officers, at that hygienic
ally splendid achievement the Panama
Canal —the ritual of punching a hole in every
discarded tin. with the object of keeping off
disease! What more absurd, again in super
ficial appearance than the practise of burn
ing or poisoning a soil to make It extra fertile!
The Will Not Explained
by Biology.
Biologists in their proper field are splendid,
and their work arouses keen interest and en
thusiasm in all whom they guide into their
domain. Most of them do their work by in
tense concentration, by narrowing down their
scope, not by taking a wide survey or a com
prehensive grasp. Suggestions of broader
views and outlying fields of knowledge seem
foreign to the intense worker, and he resents
them. For his own purpose he wishes to ig
nore them, and practically he may be quite
right. The folly of negation is not his. but
belongs to those who misinterpret or misapply
his utterances and take him as a guide in
region where, for the time at least, he is a
stranger. Not by such aid is tin universe in
its broader aspects to be apprehended. If peo
ple in general wore better acquainted with
science they would not make these mistakes.
They would realize both the learning and the
limitations, make use of the one and allow for
tae other, and not take the recipe of a practical
Lodge, F. R. S., D. Sc.,
lor the Advancement of Science
worker for a formula wherewith to Interpret
the universe.
So if ever In their enthusiasm scientific
workers go too far and say that the things they
exclude from study have no existence in the
universe, we must appeal against them to di
rect experience. We ourselves are alive, we
possess life and mind and consciousness, we
have first hand experience of these things
quite apart from laboratory experiments.
They belong to the common knowledge of the
race. Births, deaths and marriages are not
affairs of the biologist, but of humanity; they
went on before a single one of them was un
derstood, before a vestige of science existed.
We ourselves are the laboratory in which men
as science, psychologists and others, make ex
periments. They can formulate our processes
of digestion, and the material concomitants of
willing, of sensation, of thinking; but the hid
den guildlng entities they do not touch.
So. also. If any philosopher tells you that you
do not exist, or that the external world does
not < ;t, or that you are an automaton without
free will, that all your actions are determined
by outside causes and that you are not re
sponsible—or that a body cannot move out of
its place, or that Achilles cannot catch a tor
toise the i In all those cases appeal must be
made to twelve average men, unsophisticated
by special studies. There Is always a danger
of -rror In interpreting experience, or in draw
ing inferences from it; but In a matter of bare
fact, based on our own first-hand experience,
we are able to give a verdict. We may be
mistaken as to the nature of what we see.
Stars may look to us like bright specks in a
dome, but the fact that we see them admits of
no doubt. So, also, consciousness and will are
realities of which we are directly aware, just
directly as we are of motion and force, just
as dearly as we apprehend the philosophizing
utterances of an agnostic. The process of seeing
the plain man does not understand; he does not
recognize that It is a method of ethereal teleg
raphy; le knows nothing of the ether and its
ripples, nor of the retina and Its rods and
.•ones, nor of nerve and brain processes; but
he sees and he hears and he touches, and he
wills and he thinks and Is conscious. This is
not an appeal to the mob as against the phil
osopher; It Is an appeal to the experience of un
told ages as against the studies of a generation.
How consciousness became associated with
matter, how life exerts guidance over chem
ical and physical forces, how mechanical mo
tions are translated into sensations all these
things are puzzling and demand long study.
But the fact that these things are so admits of
no doubt, and difficulty of explanation is no
argument against them. The blind man re
stored to sight had no opinion as to how he
was healed, nor could he vouch for the moral
character of the healer, but he plainly knew
that whereas he was blind now he saw. About
that fact he was the best possible judge. So
it is also with "this main miracle that thou art
thou. With power on thine own act and on
the world".
But although life and mind may be excluded
from physiology, they are not excluded from
science. Os course not. It is not reasonable to
say that things necessarily elude investigation
merely because we do not knock against them.
Yet the mistake is sometimes made. The ether
makes no appeal to sense, therefore some are
beginning to say that it does not exist. Mind
is occasionally put into the same predicament.
Life Is not detected In the laboratory, save in
Its physical and chemical manifestations; but
we may have to admit that it guides processes
nevertheless. It may be called a catalytic
agent.
How Our World May Look
to Another Planet.
To understand the action of life Itself, the
simplest plan is not to think of a microscopic
organism or any unfamiliar animal, but to
make use of our own experience as living
beings. Any positive Instance serves to stem
a comprehensive denial, and If the reality of
mind and guidance and plan Is denied because
they make no appeal to sense, then think how
the world would appear to an observer to whom
the existence of men was unknown and undis
coverable, while yet all the laws and activities
of nature went on as they do now.
Suppose, then, that man made no appeal to
the senses of an observer of this planet. Sup
pose an outside observer could see all the
events occurring in the world, save only that he
could not see animals or men. He would de
scribe what he saw much as we have to de
scribe the activities initiated by life.
If he looked at the Firth of Forth, for in
stance, he would see piers arising in the water,
beginning to sprout, reaching across in strange
manner till they actually join or are joined by
pieces attracted up from below to complete the
circuit ta solid circuit round the current). He
would see a sort of bridge or filament thus
constructed, from one shore to the other, and
across this bridge insect-like things crawling
and returning for no very obvious reason.
Or let him look at the Nile and recognize
the meritorious character of that river in pro
moting ne growth of vegetation in the desert.
Then let him see a kind of untoward crystal
lization growing across the beginning to dam
the beneficent stream. Blocks fly to their
places uy some kind of polar forces; "we can
not doubt" that it is by helio or other tropism.
There is no need to go outside tlu? laws of
mechanics and physics; there is no difficulty
about supply or energy none whatever—ma
terials in tin cans are consumed which amply
account for all the energy, and all the laws of
1-? - “r< ob< jed The absence of any design,
too. is manifest, for tae effect of the structure
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Sir Oliver Lodge, the Great Scientist and Author of the Remarkable
Address on Immortality and the Existence of the Soul After Death.
Is to flood an area up-stream which might have
been useful, and to submerge a structure of
some beauty, while down stream its effect is
likely to be worse, for it would block the course
of the river and waste it on the desert were
it not that fortunately some leaks develop and
a sufficient supply still goes down —goes down
in fact more equably than before, so that the
ultimate result Is beneficial to vegetation and
simulates intention.
If told concerning either of these structures
that an engineer, a designer In London, called
Benjamin Baker, had anything to do with it the
idea would be preposterous. One conclusive
argument is final against such a superstitious
hypothesis—he is not there and a thing plainly
cannot act where it is not. But although we.
with our greater advantages, perceive that the
right solution for such an observer would be tlie
recognition of some unknown agency or agent.
It must be admitted that an explanation in
terms of a vague entity called vital force would
be useless and might be so worded as to be
misleading; whereas a statement in terms of
mechanics and physics could be clear and
definite and true as far as it went, though it
must necessarily be incomplete.
But, it will be said, this is unfair, for we
know that there is design in the Forth Bridge
of the Nile Dam; we have seen the plans and
understand the agencies at work; we know that
It was conceived and guided by life and mind.
It is unfair to quote this as though it could
simulate an automatic process.
Not at all. say the extreme school of biolo
gists whom I am criticising, or ought to say it
What Is Worth Reading About Mexico
Ry Josephine Story.
FOR days and days now Mexico has held
stage centre of the world’s news. For
an intelligent understanding of this news
from modern Mexico one should know some
thing of the dusky races which were living and
laboring in that country before Columbus
crossed the seas. For a good working knowl
edge of those people and their condition read
"The Conquest of Mexico," by William 11. Pres
cott.
This book furnishes a most interesting ac
count of the ancient civilization of the coun
try. then describes the coming of Cortez, sum
ming up its importance in these words: "Among
the remarkable achievements of the Spaniard
of the sixteenth century, there is no one more
striking to the imagination than the conquest
of Mexico. The subversion of a great empire
by a handful of adventurers, taken with ail its
strong, picturesque accompaniment, lias an air
of romance rather than of sober reality."
To judge Justly the Mexico of to-day it is im
portant to know the Mexico of the early part
of the sixteenth century, for from that coun
try a civilization which might have instructed
Europe was crushed out by Spain—Spain, whose
evil destiny it has been to ruin two civiliza
tions. Oriental and Occidental, and thereby to
ruin herself.
Historical fiction serves as an excellent ap
petizer for the study of history, so at this stage
of your Investigations, read "The Fair God."
by Wallace It is a romance of the last
of the Tzins and the coming of Cortez in 1519.
The story is warm and vital and human, is
rich with sympathetic understanding and is
written with uncommon charm.
To know something of our own relations
with the turbulent country to the south of us.
read “Mexico and the United States," by Ma
tias Romeo, and then, when you see in glaring
headlines. Northern Mexico in Armed Opposi
tion to the Government!” 'tis time to shake
your head knowingly and reflect- -aloud, if
you have an audience—'“History is repeating
self'" and reach for the best life of Sam
Houston your library affords. His defeat of
the Mexicans at San Jacinto in 1836 makes
thrilling reading. Andrew Jackson said of
Houston: "Thank God, there is one man at
least in Texas whom the Almighty had the
making of and not the tailor’"
Now swing into fiction again and read Amelia
E. Barr s “Remember the Alamo." and ' The
they ere consistent, there is nothing but chem
istry and physics at work anywhere; and the
mental activity apparently demonstrated by
those structures is only an illusion, an
epiphenomenon; the laws of chemistry and
physics are supreme, and they are sufficient to
account for everything!
Well, they account for things up to a point;
they account in part for the color of a sunset,
for the majesty of a mountain peak, for the
glory of animate existence. But do they ac
count for everything completely? Do they ac
count for our own feeling of joy and exaltation,
for our sense of beauty, for the manifest beauty
existing throughout nature? Do not these
things suggest something higher and nobler
and more joyous, something for the sake of
which all the struggle for existence goes on?
Surely there must be a deeper meaning in
volved in natural objects. Orthodox explana
tions are only partial, though true as far as
they go. When we examine each parti-colored
pinnule in a peacock's tail, or hair in a zebra's
hide, and realize that the varying shades on
each are so placed as to contribute to the gen
ial design and pattern, it becomes exceedingly
difficult to explain how this organized co
operation of parts, this harmonious distribu
tion of pigment cells, has come about on merely
mechanical principles. It would be as easy to
explain the sprouting of the cantilevers of the
Forth Bridge from its piers, or the flocking of
the stones of the Nile Dam by chemiotaxis.
Flowers attract insects for fertlliz.ation, and
fruit tempts animals to eat it in order to carry
seeds. But these explanations cannot be final.
Lone Star,” by Eugene P. Lyle, Jr. The latter
story contains a vivid description of the awful
massacre at the Alamo in 1836, and has Davy
Crockett and Santa Ana, the treacherous, as
leading personages.
For that period in its history, when Mexico
was rilled by a member of the reigning family
of Austria, who was placed in power by the
French Emperor. Napoleon 111., read "Maximilian
and Carlotta,” by J. M. Taylor. Poor Maxi
milian! Poor mad Carlotta! There was trag
edy enough in their lives to move the most
rabid king-hater to pity.
"The Missourian.” a novel by Eugene P. Lyle,
Jr., is true enough to the history of this period
to be of value. A dashing young Confederate
officer and a fascinating girl from the court of
Napoleon try to aid Maximilian. Romance is
rampant. There are plots and counter plots;
rewards and retributions, and the story echoes
to the thunder of rushing cavalry and rings
witli the clink of spurs.
To get nearer to our own times, read “Diaz,
Master of Mexico," by James Creelman. In his
introduction the author says: "The object of
this work is to explain tile most interesting
man of the most misunderstood and misrepre
sented country in the world." The book is
jervaded by a great personality, and so vividly
written that one's teeth fairly chatter while
Diaz makes his escape through a shark-infested
tea.
F. Hopkinson Smith, who, whether working
with brush or pen. always illuminates his sub
ject. has written "The White Umbrella in Mex
ico"; there is "Unknown Mexico,” by. K. S.
Lumholtz; "The Awakening of a Nation,” by
C. K. Loomis; "Picturesque Mexico.” by Mrs.
M. R Wright; and within the last year there
has been published "Coming Mexico." by
Joseph King Goodrich. This book is less of a
prophecy than its title indicates. It touches
upon Mexicon history, industrial conditions,
foreign relations and the attractions of the
country for tourists.
And now. fresh from the press, comes "Mex
ico To-day." by George B. Winton. It con
tains information as to the country's history,
its politics, its religious and social conditions,
with emphasis on the missionary interests and
the attempts to foreward a Protestant move
ment in Mexico.
Read a tew of these books, or ail of them,
and you will approach your morning news with
mind and eyes opened to a bigger, broader
understanding of the Mexican situation.
We have still to explain the Insects. So much
beauty cannot be necessary merely to attract
their attention. We have further to explain
this competitive striving toward life. Why do
things struggle to exist? Surely the effort must
have some significance, the development some
aim. We thus reach the problem of existence
Itself and the meaning of evolution.
The mechanism whereby existence en
trenches itself is manifest, or at least has been
to a large extent discovered. Natural selection
is a vera causa, so far as it goes; but if so
much beauty is necessary for insects, what
about the beauty of a landscape or of clouds?
What utilitarian object do those subserve?
Beauty in general is not taken into account by
science. Very well, that may be all right, but
it exists nevertheless. It is not my function to
discuss it. No; but it is my function to remind
you and myself that our studies do not exhaust
the universe, and that it we dogmatize in a
negative direction and say that we can reduce
everything to physics and chemistry, we gibbet
ourselves as ludicrously narrow pedants and are
falling far short of the richness and fullness
of our human birthright. How far preferable
is the reverent attitude of the Eastern poet:
“The world with eyes bent upon thy feet
stands in awe with all its silent stars."
Superficially and physically we are very
limited. Our sense organs are adapted to the
observation of matter, and nothing else di
rectly appeals to us. Our nerve-muscle-system
is adapted to the production of motion in mat
ter, in desired ways, and nothing else in the
material world can we accomplish. Our brain
and nerve systems connect us with the rest of
the physical world. Our senses give us infor
mation about the movements and arrange
ments of matter. Our muscles enable us to
produce changes in those distributions. That
is our equipment for human life, and human
history is a record of what we have done with
these parsimonious privileges.
Our brain, which by some means yet to be
discovered connects us with the rest of the
material world, has been thought partially to
disconnect us from the mental and spiritual
realm, to which we really belong, but from
which for a time and for practical purposes we
are Isolated. Our common or social associa
tion with matter gives us certain opportunities
and facilities combined with obstacles and dif
ficulties which are themselves opportunities
for struggle and effort.
Through matter we become aware of each
other, and can communicate with those of our
fellows who have ideas sufficiently like our
own for them to be stimulated into activity by
a merely physical process set in action by
ourselves. By a timed succession of vibratory
movements (as In speech and music), or by a
static distribution of materials (as in writing,
painting and sculpture), we can carry on in
telligent Intercourse with our fellows; and we
get so used to these ingenious and roundabout
methods that we are apt to think of them and
their like as not only the natural, but as the
only possible modes of communication, and
that anything more direct would disarrange
the whole fabric of science.
We Should Not Deny Things
We Cannot Sense.
It is clearly true that our bodies constitute
the normal means of manifesting ourselves
to each other while on the planet, and that if
the physiological mechanism whereby we ac
complish material acts is injured the convey
ance of our meaning and the display of our
personality inevitably and correspondingly
suffer.
So conspicuously is this the case that it has
been possible to suppose that the communi
cating mechanism, formed and worked by us,
is the whole of our existence, and that we are
essentially nothing but the machinery by which
we are known. We find the machinery utiliz
ing nothing but well known forms of energy,
and subject to all the laws of chemistry and
physics—it would be strange if it were not
so —and from that fact we try to draw valid
deductions as to our nature, and as to the im
possibility of our existing apart from and in
dependent of these temporary modes of ma
terial activity and manifestation. We so uni
formly employ them, in our present circum
stances, that' we should be on our guard against
deception due to this very uniformity. Ma
terial bodies are all that we nave any control
over, are all that we are experimentally aware
of; anything that we can do with these is
open to us; any conclusion we can draw about
them may be legitimate and true. But to step
outside their province and to deny the exist
ence of any other region because we have no
sense organ for its appreciation, or because
(like the ether) it is too uniformly omnipresent
for our ken. is to wrest our advantages and
privileges from their proper use and applv
them to our own misdirection.
But if we have learnt from science that Evo
lution is real, we have learnt a great deal. I
must not venture to philosophize, but certainly
from the point of view of science Evolution is a
great reality. Surely evolution is not an illusion;
surely the universe progresses in time. Time
and Space and Matter are abstractions, but
are none the less real: they are data given
by experience; and Time is' the keystone of
evolution. “Thy centuries follow each other,
perfecting a small wild flower.”
We abstract from living moving Reality a
certain static aspect, and we call it matter;
we abstract the element of progressiveness,
and we call it Time. When these two abstrac
tions combine, co-operate, interact, we get real
ity again. It is like Poynting’s theorem.
The only way to refute or confuse the theory
of Evolution is to introduce the subjectivity of
time. That theory involves the reality of time,
and it is in this sense that Professor Bergson
uses rhe great phrase, "Creative Evolution."
I see the whole material existence as a steady
passage from past to future, only the single
Instant which we call the present being actual.
The past is not non existent, however, it is
stored in our memories, there is a record of
it in matter, and the present is based upon it;
the future is the outcome of the present, and
is the product of evolution.
We Must Have a Destiny
of Some Sort.
Existence is like the output from a loom.
The pattern, the design for the weaving, is in
some sort “there" already; but whereas our
looms are mere machines, once the guiding
cards have been fed into them, the Loom of
Time is complicated by a multitude of free
agents who can modify the web, making the
product more beautiful or more ugly according
as they are in harmony or disharmon.v with the
general scheme. I venture to maintain that
manifest imperfections are thus accounted for,
and that freedom could be given on no other
terms, nor at any less cost.
The ability thus to work for weal or woe is
no illusion, it is a reality, a responsible power
which conscious agents possess; wherefore the
resulting fabric is not something preordained
and inexorable, though by wide knowledge of
character it may be inferred. Nothing is in
exorable except the uniform progress of time;
the cloth must be woven, but the pattern is
not wholly fixed and mechanically calculable.
Where inorganic matter alone is concerned.
there everything is determined. Wherever
full consciousness has entered, new powers
arise, and the faculties and desires of the con
scious parts of the scheme have an effect upon
the whole. It is not guided from outside but
from within; and the guiding power is Imma
nent at every instant. Os this guiding power
we are a small but not wholly insignificant
portion.
That evolutionary progress is real Is a doc
trine of profound significance, and our efforts
at social betterment are justified because we
are a part of the scheme, a part that has be
come conscious, a part that realizes, dimly at
any rate, what it is doing and what it is aim
ing at. Planning and aiming are therefore
not absent from the whole, for we are a part
of the whole, and are conscious of them in
ourselves.
Either we are Immortal beings or we are not.
We may not know our destiny, but we must
have a destiny of some sort. Those who make
denials are just as likely to be wrong as those
who make assertions: in fact, denials are as
sertions thrown into negative form. Scientific
men are looked up to as authorities, and should
be careful not to mislead. Science may not
be able to reveal human destiny, but it cer
tainly should not obscure it. Things are as
they are, whether we find them out or not; and
if we make rash and false statements, pos
terity will detect us —if posterity ever troubles
its head about us. lam one of those who think
that the methods of Science are not so limited
in their scope as has been thought; that they
can be applied much more widely, an ! that the
Psychic region can be studied and brought
under law, too. Allow us, anyhow, to make the
attempt. Give us a fair field. Let those who
prefer the materialistic hypothesis by all means
develop their the«is as far as they can: but let
us try what we can fio in the Psychical region
and see wfliich wins. Qur methods are really
the same as theirs -the subject-matter differs.
Neither should abuse the other for making the
attempt
The “Voices” of Socrates
and Joan of Arc.
Whether such things as intuition and revela
tion ever occur is an open question. There are
some who have reason to say that they do.
They are, at any rate, not to be denied off
hand. In fact, it is always extremely difficult
to deny anything of a general character, since
evidence in its favor may be only hidden and
not forthcoming, especially not forthcoming at
any particular age of the world's history, or at
any particular stage of individual mental de
velopment. Mysticism must have its place,
though its relation to Science has so far not
been found. They have appeared disparate
and disconnected, but there need be no hostil
ity between them. Every kind of reality must
be ascertained and dealt with by proper meth
ods. If the voices of Socrates and of Joan of
Arc represent real psychical experiences they
must belong to the intelligible universe.
Although I am speaking ex cathedra, as one
of the representatives of orthodox science, I
will not shrink from a personal note sum
marizing the result on my own mind of thirty
years' experience of psychical research, begun
without predilection—indeed with the usual
hostile prejudice. This is not the place to
enter into details or to discuss facts scorned
by orthodox science, but I cannot help remem
bering that an utterance from this chair is no
ephemeral production, for it remains to be crit
icized by the generations yet unborn, whose
knowledge must inevitably be fuller and wider
than our own. Your president, therefore,
should not be completely bound by the shackles
of present-day orthodoxy, nor limited to be
liefs fashionable at the time.
In justice to myself and my co-workers I
must risk annoying my present hearers, not
only by leaving on record our conviction that
occurrences now regarded as occult can be ex
amined and reduced to order by the methods of
science carefully and persistently applied, but
by going further and saying, with the utmost
brevity, that already the facts so examined
have convinced me that memory and affection
are not limited to that association with mat
ter by which alone they can manifest them
selves here and now, and that personality per
sists beyond bodily death. The evidence ,to my
mind, goes to prove that discarnate intelli
gence, under certain conditions, may interact
with us on the material side, thus indirectly
coming within our scientific ken; and that
gradually we may hope to attain some under
standing of the nature of a larger, perhaps
ethereal, existence, and of the conditions regu
lating intercourse across the chasm. A body
of responsible investigators has even now
landed on the treacherous but promising
shores of a new continent.
The Evergrowing Garment
of a Transcendent God.
Yes, and there is more to say than that. The
methods of science are not the only way,
though they are our way, of arriving at truth.
"Uno itinere non potest perveniri ad tarn
grande secretum.” (It is not possible to reach
by one way alone so great a secret.)
Many scientific men still feel in pugnacious
mood towards Theology, because of the exag
gerated dogmatism which our predecessors on.
countered and overcame in the oast. They
had to struggle for freedom to find truth in
their own way; but the struggle was a mis
erable necessity, and has left some evil effects
And one of them is this lack of sympathy, this
occasional hostility, to other more spiritual
forms of truth. We cannot really and seriously
suppose that truth began to arrive on this
planet a few centuries ago. The pre-seientific
insight of genius—of Poets and Prophets and
Saints was of supreme value, and the access
of those inspired seers to the heart of the uni
verse was profound. But the camp followers,
the scribes and pharisees, by whatever name
they may be called, had no such insight, only
a vicious or a foolish obstinacy; and the
prophets of a new era were stoned.
Now at last we of the new era have been
victorious; we inherit the fruits of the age
long conflict, and the stones are in our hands.
Let us not fall into the old mistake of think
ing that ours is the only way of exploring the
multifarious depths of the universe and that
all others are worthless and mistaken. The
universe is a larger thing than we have any
conception of, and no one method of search will
exhaust its treasures.
Men and brethren, we are trustees of the
truth of the physical universe as scientifically
explored; let us be faithful to our trust.
Genuine religion has its roots deep down in
the heart of humanity and in the reality cJ
things. It is not surprising that by our meth
eds we fail to grasp it; the actions of the
Deity make no appeal to any special sense,
only a universal appeal, and our methods are,
is we know, incompetent to detect complete
uniformity. There is a principle of relativity
change nothing in us responds; we are deaf
and blind, therefore, to the immanent grandeur
around us, unless we have insight enough to
appreciate the whole, and to recognize in the
woven fabric of existence, flowing steadily
from the loom in an infinite prpgress toward
petrectim, the ever-growing garment of a
55. ■■■ —axUssr God.