Chapter I

. It is desirable now to state what is known as to the conditions in which they exist.

These conditions have been for thousands of years the subject-matter of positive statements. The sacred writings and inscriptions, and the traditions of the various religions that have flourished in olden times or are still professed are full of descriptions of the religions in which discarnate spirits pass their time and of the manner of their lives in the spirit-world. Magicians, wizards, witches and necromancers of all kinds have, it is said, received copious information to the same effect. And during the last seventy years Spiritualistic literature has added abundantly to the common stock.

In spite, however, of all this, great uncertainty prevails. The statements to which reference has been made are, in well-nigh all cases, of what is called an “unverifiable” character; that is to say, they are not capable of test and confirmation by any mundane methods of enquiry. But although an unverifiable assertion is incapable of normal proof it may still be capable of disproof. If, for example, it be self-contradictory it must, of course, be rejected. And if two separate unverifiable statements contradict each other it is obvious that they cannot both be true: one of them, at least, must be false, while the other remains doubtful. Furthermore, if an unverifiable piece of information be opposed to some clearly-established fact or well-proved doctrine no reasonable person will regard it as worthy of credence.

This book is not concerned with the question of whether the accounts of miracles and other supernormal details in the Bible are or are not to be believed. The purely religious view of the matter need not be dwelt upon. Nor will it be of any practical utility to take into consideration the history of magic and the doings of magicians as distinguished in the popular idea from religion and its ministers. What is alone needful to be mentioned is the evidence that has been more or less scientifically accumulated in modern times in connection with psychical phenomena and with communications understood to have taken place across the border-line between living humanity and the spirit-world. Much of this evidence is, as has already been said, unverifiable, and a good deal of it can be disproved. But there remains a very substantial residuum that demands recognition and acceptance by men of education who are free from prejudice and willing to be guided by reason; and this is the trustworthy source of a certain degree of precise knowledge with regard to the conditions of life beyond death.

The most striking fact that thus comes under observation is the readiness with which communication can be opened up with discarnate spirits by persons who are naturally capable of recognising their presence. It happens frequently that in less than a minute after the commencement of a “sitting” indications are given of one or more spirits being in attendance; and it is very rarely indeed that any sitting remains altogether blank. If, then, we reflect that since “Spiritualism” has become a cult sittings have taken place, and are still taking place, day by day, week in and week out, and from year’s end to year’s end, we are forced to regard this world as being still the habitat of many a discarnate spirit. The conclusion thus arrived at is confirmed by the less systematic phenomena of dreams, phantoms, haunting, “possession,” second-sight, clairvoyance, automatic speech and writing, the spontaneous movements of material objects and other like occurrences; merely, however, to the extent of their being really due to the denizens of the spirit-world, which is acknowledged to be the case in many instances.

The certainty thus arising that great numbers of spirits do not leave the earth when they become separated from the human bodies they have inhabited suggests a doubt as to whether any spirits at all go to some other sphere. The evidence available does not remove the doubt. It is true that discarnate spirits sometimes volunteer statements with regard to another world, and sometimes in reply to questions give particulars as to their residence in such a region. But this information is of the unverifiable kind, is often “nonsense,” as Sir Oliver Lodge has said, and is frequently demonstrably false; while it is always discredited by the fact that the spirit who claims to be a resident in a far-distant sphere of being is nevertheless self-admittedly present in a London room or wherever else the sitting may take place. The contradiction is never explained away in any reasonable manner. It may be said, therefore, to be highly probable that death merely opens the way to a further term of existence in this world, and that the spirits of the departed remain for the period of such term in the more or less near neighbourhood of the relatives and friends they have left behind them.

The idea of such post-mortem existence being also limited in time arises naturally, and is to be reasonably inferred, from the evidence now being considered. Although discarnate spirits are very numerous, their number, so far as they manifest themselves, is altogether insignificant when compared with that of the deaths that occur from day to day; while if we take into account the consideration that the entire soul-population of the earth becomes discarnate from generation to generation, that is to say, every thirty years or so, we are faced by the fact that living persons are but as a drop in the ocean of possible individual existences. We have also to bear in mind that each of these existences is separate from the rest, and does not originate either from nothing or from inanimate matter or from inanimate energy, as may possibly be the case with Life. If, then, souls when disembodied remain perpetually in this world, it follows, first, that there must be a continual supply of fresh souls coming in from some other region of the universe; and, secondly, that of all these millions of millions of active intelligences only one, here and there, is able or willing to make its presence known to mankind. These conclusions are of so extravagant a character as to be unacceptable; and if it be possible to frame an hypothesis that avoids the difficulties they involve, it would be a reasonable proceeding to adopt such an alternative view.

Psychical philosophy has in all ages been furnished with at least one “working hypothesis” of the kind required. Its scientific name is “metempsychosis,” which in more popular language is known as “transmigration.” It teaches that after death the spirit enters into some other human body which happens to be living and unprovided with a soul; and the doctrine is frequently extended to include the idea that the new habitat may even be the body of one of the lower animals. Many of the most famous thinkers of Greece and the Orient were associated with the belief in question. It is to be found in the Bible and other sacred writings, and forms a part of the religions of many races throughout the world. It cannot, therefore, be lightly disregarded as a mere fantasy unworthy of consideration by civilised people in the twentieth century.

As a matter of fact, the theory of transmigration fits in with modern observations. It does away with the necessity of a perpetual supply of fresh souls from extra-mundane regions. It also is consistent with, and explains, the absence of any vast overwhelming spirit-population. Moreover, it is the logical concomitant of our common, everyday experience. We are familiar with the occurrence of what we call “births,” that is, the coming into existence of new human bodies. We know also that these new bodies become, in some way or other, the temporary abodes of souls--the tenancy being sometimes a matter of minutes only and sometimes enduring for rather more than one hundred years. We see for ourselves that the habitation suits the tenant and that the tenant suits the habitation. What, then, can be more natural and fitting than that, when the tenant, for some reason or another, has to quit his dwelling, he looks out for another abode of much the same kind? So far from this course of action being fantastic and improbable, it is pre-eminently likely. The play of mere imagination is to be found altogether with those mental speculators who talk of the supposed departure of discarnate spirits to supposed spheres of existence beyond the earth.

It is quite conceivable, and probable enough, that some little time elapses between “death” and “reincarnation.” Hence it is to be expected that there is always a greater or less number of discarnate spirits dwelling temporarily, and a little disconsolately, perhaps, in the air-occupied space surrounding the earth; and this expectation is borne out by actual observation. It is to be surmised, furthermore, that spirits awaiting re-embodiment will feel themselves more at home, as it were, if they remain in the immediate proximity of the localities they inhabited and the persons they knew before “death.” Here, again, we find the surmise to accord with experience. Some places are undoubtedly “haunted”; and it is equally certain that some persons are haunted also; for it would otherwise be impossible to account reasonably for the well-known fact that sitters at _séances_ habitually open up communications with their deceased relatives and friends who have always been perfect strangers to the mediums with whom the sittings take place. The spirits are not brought by the mediums; they are introduced by the sitters themselves, who are quite unconscious of being thus accompanied or “haunted.” To deny this is equivalent to maintaining the absurdity that every real medium is _en rapport_ with all the deceased relatives and friends of every living human being. The soul of a medium is not endowed with powers vastly greater than those of ordinary souls; any more than a discarnate spirit is able to know and do very much beyond what he was aware of or could accomplish during life. If either mediums or spirits were capable of really marvellous achievements we may be sure that now and again some daring soul would contrive to startle mankind; and as no such feat has been recorded through the ages (“miracles,” religious and otherwise, are not here referred to), it is a fair inference that our deceased friends are not vastly different from, or, at any rate, are not vastly superior to, what they were when we knew them here.

Coming now to the question of the form in which discarnate spirits exist, all the available evidence of a verifiable or logically-acceptable character goes to show that in the spirit-world there are not any differences of type corresponding to what are found among human beings. Spirits are not white, black, brown, yellow and red; they are not Anglo-Saxon, Teutonic, Scandinavian, Gaelic, Arab, negro, Mongolian or Polynesian. If the contrary were the case it would, by this time, have become apparent. Something of this lack of evidence may perhaps be due to the fact that modern psychical research has for the most part been conducted by English and American investigators, while most of the communications with spirits have involved the use of the English language and have been recorded in that tongue. Hence it is to be supposed that the spirits who have taken part in the proceedings have been only those possessing a knowledge of English; yet, even in that case, souls of many earthly races might have been expected to come forward. And as the same argument applies to the less numerous instances of psychical investigations by French, Italian, Spanish, German, Swedish, Russian, etc., students of the occult, the conclusion is inevitable that spirits are not divided into racial categories even though they may differ in what may be termed bodily characteristics and developments.

That spirits have organised bodies is clear. The “stuff” of which their bodies are made is, however, not ordinary matter. We already know by Dr. Crawford’s experiments--mentioned in