The Dominion. SATURDAY, JULY 12, 1913. THE MYSTERY OF MIND.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1800, 12 July 1913, Page 4

The Dominion. SATURDAY, JULY 12, 1913. THE MYSTERY OF MIND.

It has been said that one might as well bo out of the world as out of the fashion. This applies not only to women, but also to men; and sometimes to very learned and scientific men. It is not, therefore, surprising to read in tho latest English papers that the Society for Psychical Research has placed itself in the forefront 1 of philosophic fashion by electing M. Henri Berg--1 son, the distinguished author of Creative Evolution, as its . president. M. Bergson is certainly the most famous philosopher, of the day, though opinions may differ as tq tho permanent value of what is new in his contributions to modern thought. During his recent visit to the_ United States all sorts and conditions of men, and women too, Hocked to his lectures; and when ho delivered addresses in England, his audiences were not by any means confined to those who move in academic circles.- Though his subjects aro profound, his style is charming, and he speaks with perfcct ease and fluency, . with hardly any reference to his notes. Yet,_ notwithstanding his wonderful felicity of expression, one is inclined to be a little sceptical as to the capacity of all of his English hearers to fully understand all the phases 1 of his argument, when it is remembered that he speaks in French, and that somo deep students of philosophy candidly confess that they are not always able to follow his- reasoning. However that may be, his speech as president of the Society of Psychical Research proved most enjoyable to his large audience, which in-, eluded Mr. Balfour, Bishop BoydCarpender, Mrs. Henry Sidgwiok, arid Sir William Crookes; and Mr. Balfour, in thanking M. Bergson, declared that it was the. most illuminating address which the society had ever listened to, and that the occasion was one which must be profoundly interesting to tho whole future of the society. The subjects which M. Bergson touched upon were certainly most attractive—the influence of mind upon mind, tho relations of mind and brain, the idea of life after death, the study of the soul. If ever a nation ceases to care about these things it may bo safely said that it is on the down grade; and it is a hopeful sign that of late years there has been a revival of interest in the great problems of philosophy and their bearing upon human life and thought. At one time psychical research and psychology were looked upon with considerable suspicion by orthodox scientists, but they havo now been compelled to_recognise that any attempt to explain life and mind which ignores a whole series of fundamental facts can never pretend to bo complete or satisfactory, and the Society for Psychical Research was founded for the purpose of investigating on strictly scientific lines the mysteries of human personality such as telepathy, hypnotism, suggestion, apparitions, the phenomena of 1 trance, dreams, and the possibility of communication with the spirit world. Of course, as M. Bergson pointed out in his lecture, the methods of physical science cannot be applied _ to psychical experiences. In ■ the investigation of such phenomena we have to rely upon a combination of the methods of the historian and tho detective. There are no _ scientific instruments which can weigh and measuro the mind or plumb its depths. The functions of the brain and tho mind were described- by M. Bergson in a very striking manner. The brain is not the scat of memory, but only an instrument to draw from memory what from time to time we need. It keeps, the spirit fixed on the realities of life; it is the mechanism by which the mind is inserted into the scheme of things. Consciousness transcends the brain, which is its instrument. All the past tho brain keeps masked from consciousncss as by a veil, only allowing so much to penetrate as serves the present, together with such scraps as come through unasked for. But in a crisis, as with a drowning man or one in battle, when there is no future, the veil is torn aside, tho brain as a check and guide to memory ceases to work, and the past, the total sum of a man's consciousness, comes rushing in. M. Bergson quoted the case of a philosopher who survived an ambuscade in a battle in Italy last century. At the, crisis lie had an integral vision of his past life down to the smallest detail. M. Bergson went on to show the bearing of these facts on the question of life beyond tho grave. He contended that if it can be established that the life of the mind is wider than that of the brain, the probability would be in favour of survival, because tho only reason to believe in dissolution of the soul at death is derived from the dissolution of the body. | M. Beroson did not express any : very definite opinions as to the genuineness of the so-called spiritualis- i tic phenomena which have occupied so much of the attention of tho society of which he is now president, i Ho confined his attention mainly to i the philosophical aspects of the question. Indeed, he frankly ad- i mits that ho has not seen anything < of psychical research, nor made ex- i perimcnts or observations. He j thinks, however, that, the society if i doing valuable pioneer work, 'and i

admires the perseverance and ingenuity of its investigations, and the courage with which it has braved the prejudices of a part of the learned world. As an illustration of the unsatisfactory manner in which sonio people (ry to explain away the mysterious powers of the human mind, M. Bf.kgson referred to the case of an officer's wife who dreamt that she saw her husband fall in battle, and the dream turned out to bo true down to every detail in her mental picture. A professor of pathology explained it away by saying that thousands of women whose husbands were fighting had dreamt that they were Tullccf. In one case or another the dream might come true, but they, were the results not of telepathy, " but of coincidence. Such an explanation, M. Bergson claimed, was fallacious, and its fallacy lay in the fact that the professor explained away a concrete .fact verifiable down to the smallest detail by a mere abstraction. To dream that one's husband is dead is one thing; to sec in the dream the place where he fell, the men who were round him, and all the circumstances as they wel'o in truth happening during the dream is another. Telepathy cannot be explained away by statistics. M. Bergson concluded by an interesting little sketch of what might have happened if Newton and Galileo had devoted themselves to psychical, instead of physical, research. Biology would have, taken a different line—the line which the vitalists were even now entering upon. Medicine might have found in treatment by suggestion its main basis. And if in _ somo • undiscovered America physical science had gone as we know it here, the incursion into our world of a steamship or an aeroplane might have raised the same kind of astonished and indignant scepticism which psychical phenomena rouse in some of our scientists to-day. There might even have been a society founded for physical research.