chapter ix

trance or possession is defined by Myers, in the same list of proofs, as 'a development of Motor Automatism resulting at last in a substitution of personality'; and this harmonizes with the theory of the control of a living organism by discarnate spirits, and is supported by an overwhelming mass of scientific experiment. Telepathy suggests the possibility of communication between the living and the living and between the living and the dead, and, we may add, between the dead and the dead--as in Fairyland--without the consideration of space or time as known in the lower ranges of mental action; and that the communication does not depend upon vibrations from a material brain-mass. Telepathy in these first two aspects has been likewise accepted as a scientific fact by workers in psychical research like Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, William James, and by many others. All such phenomena as these, now being so carefully investigated and weighed by men thoroughly trained in science, are, so to speak, the protoplasmic background of all religions, philosophies, or systems of mystical thought yet evolved on this planet; and in all essentials they confirm the x-quantity presented in the evidence of the Fairy-Faith.

Dr. G. F. Stout, an able representative of the school of non-converts to the theories in psychology propounded by Myers and by psychical research, states his position thus:--'But, at least, my doubt is not dogmatic denial, and I agree with Mr. Myers that there is no sufficient reason for being peculiarly sceptical concerning communications from departed spirits. I also agree with him that the alleged cases of such communication cannot be with any approach to probability explained away as mere instances of telepathy.'[589] In addition, Dr. Stout says:--'The conception which has been really useful to him is that of telepathy. Given that communication takes place between individual minds unmediated by ordinary physical conditions, we may regard intercourse with departed spirits as a special case of the same kind of process. And clairvoyance, precognition, &c., may perhaps be referred to telepathic communication either with departed spirits or with other intelligences superior to the human.'[589] In this last phrase, 'intelligences superior to the human', Dr. Stout assumes our own position, that hypothetically there is good reason for thinking that discarnate non-human intelligences--such as the Irish call the _Sidhe_--may exist and communicate with, or influence in some unknown way, the living, as during 'mediumship' and in 'seership'.

Mr. Andrew Lang points out, in his reply to Dr. Stout's criticism, that the only legitimate scientific resource for overthrowing Myers's position, since the evidence is 'mathematically incapable of explanation by chance coincidence', is to say that several people are deliberate forgers and liars. And he adds:--'To myself (but only to myself and a small circle) the evidence is irrefragable, from our lifetime knowledge of the percipient.'[590] But the animistic position does not by any means depend upon the evidence presented by Myers, no matter how incontestably reliable it is. We have only to examine the voluminous publications of the _Society for Psychical Research_ (London) to realize this, and especially the _Report on the Census of Hallucinations of Modern Spiritualism_, by Professor Sidgwick's Committee (_P. S. P. R._, London).

PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND ANTHROPOLOGY IN RELATION TO THE FAIRY-FAITH

_According to a special contribution from Mr. Andrew Lang._

Mr. Andrew Lang, who has done a special service to science by showing that psychical research is inseparably related to anthropology, has favoured us with a statement of his own position toward this relationship and has made it directly applicable to the Fairy-Faith. In a general way, but not in some important details (as indicated in our annotations) we agree with Mr. Lang's position, which he states as follows:--

Mr. Evans Wentz has asked me to define my position towards psychical research in relation to anthropology. I have done so in my book, _The Making of Religion_. The alleged abnormal or supernormal occurrences which psychical research examines are, for the most part, 'universally human,' and, whether they happen or do not happen, whether they are the results of malobservation, or of fraud, or are merely mythical, as _human_ they cannot be wisely neglected by anthropology.

The fairy-folk, under many names, in many tongues, are everywhere objects of human belief, in Central Australia, in New Zealand, in the isles of the Pacific, as in the British Isles, Lowland or Highland, Celtic in the main, or English in the main, I conceive the various beings, fairies, brownies, _Iruntarinia_, _Djinns_, or what you will, _to be purely mythical_. I am incapable of believing that they are actual entities, who carry off men and women; steal and hide objects (especially as the _Iruntarinia_ do); love or hate, persecute or kiss human beings; practise music, vocal and instrumental; and in short 'play the pliskies' with which they are universally credited by the identical workings of the human fancy. They tend to shade away, on one side, into the denizens of the House of Hades--phantasms of the dead. The belief in such phantasms may be partially based on experience, whether hallucinatory or otherwise and inexplicably produced.[591]

As far as psychical research studies report of these phantasms it approaches the realm of 'the Fairy Queen Proserpine'. As far as such research examines the historical or contemporary stories of the _Poltergeist_, it touches on fairies: because the Irish, for example, attribute to the agency of fairies the modern _Poltergeist_ phenomena, whether these, in each case, be fraudulent or, up to now, be unexplained.

There are not more than two or three alleged visions of the traditional fairies in the annals of psychical research; and I have met with but few sane and educated persons who profess to have seen phantoms at all resembling the traditional fairy; while phantasms supposed to be of the dead, the dying, and the absent are frequently reported. On the whole, psychical research has very little concern with the fairy-belief in its typical forms, and if the researcher did find modern cases of fairy visions alleged by sane and educated percipients, he would be apt to explain them by suggestion acting on the subconscious self.[592]

1 MARLOES ROAD, LONDON, W. _September_ 26, 1910.

Concerning phantasms of the dead into which, as above pointed out, the fairy-folk tend to shade away, Mr. Lang has elsewhere said:--'On the whole, if the evidence is worth anything, there are real objective ghosts, and there are also telepathic hallucinations: so that the scientific attitude is to believe in both, if in either.'[593] And he shows that while anthropologists have explained all animistic beliefs as the results of primitive men's philosophizing 'on life, death, sleep, dreams, trances, shadows, the phenomena of epilepsy, and the illusions of starvation', 'normal phenomena, psychological and psychical, might suggest most of the animistic beliefs.'[593] In _The Making of Religion_, Mr. Lang has expanded this anthropological argument so as to make it even more fully embrace psychical research.

If we apply the brilliant results of Mr. Lang's investigations to our own, it is apparent that the background of the Fairy-Faith, like that of all religions, is animistic, as we have argued in