DOES NOT WANT FUTURE LIFE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 229, 15 February 1913, Page 2 (Supplement)

DOES NOT WANT FUTURE LIFE

SIR OLIVER LODGE ON TELEPATHY

Sir Oliver Lodge says some interesting things about telepathy in "Bedrock." as also does Mr. J. Arthur Hill in reply to a critic. Between the whacking of a critic we get these statements: Sir Oliver explains "why we regard telepathy as philosophically important, if real. The fundamental issue is whether consciousness apart from brain has any meaning. Brain, nervous system •uid muscle, in combination, obviously constitute the instrument by which mind manifests itself here and now; and m the absence of its customary living '•rain, normal manifestation admittedly eeases.

'ln the absence of all brain and nerve, probably not ever supernormal psychic manifestation can occur. But it by no means follows mat consciousness and memory cease to exist. A genuine agnostic should grant the possibility, but should go on to ask how on earth we are going to establish their existence, in that case. And we should reply that telepathy appears to be a non-physical process of communication between minds, not as usual between brains—though we refrain from dogmatising oil so difficult

and momentous a proposition—and that it tends to suggest a doctrine intolerable to materialistic philosophy. ''l realise that physical phenomena of an unusual and supernormal kind do occur in the neighborhood of certain persons, without my being able to explain how they occur. All that I can testify to is that something more is involved than is recognised in the present state of orthodox science.

"I am bound to add, however, that my personal view concerning the reality of some abnormal physical phenomena is not shared by many of the leaders in the Society for Physical Research, who still remain sceptical of everything of this kind, though they have been forced by long-continued evidence to a belief in the truth of telepathy. Without mentioning the names of the living, I can say that the late Mr. Podmore belonged conspicuously to this category. "I do hold that our records ought to establish a prima facie case for investigation; and I think that by far the greater part of the evidence which we have actually published—especially the evidence for telepathy —ought to be received with considerable respect. lam safe in saying that Professor Sidgwick—proverbially cautious as lie was—was certainly convinced of the. truth of telepathy—i.e., of the facts which have necessitated the hypothesis as the minimum which must be granted to explain them. '"The Society for Physical Research was founded in explicit accord with the dictum of Professor Huxley:

'The development of exact natural knowledge in all its vast range, from physics to history and criticism, is the consequence of the working out, in this province, of the resolution to 'take nothing for truth without clear knowledge that it is such; to consider all beliefs open to criticism; to regard the value of authority as neither greater nor less than as much as it can prove itself worth." Mr. -T. Arthur Hill, in the same issue, of Bedrock, says:—"Modern science is based on observation and experiment. The experts observe, experiment and infer; the man in the street reads the experts' accounts and believes—if he does believe—on authority. Most men in the street believe iri X-rays; most men in the street disbelieved that the earth revolved round the sun in the days of flnllilco and Copernicus. In each case the opinion of such men is valueless; they have made no first-hand experiment; they are not scientific.

"I am not biassed in favor of a 'future life'—more accurately, survival of personality. Ido not want any future life. I contemplate with something approaching dread and dismay the possibility that my personality will go on existing and suffering after death. I should greatly prefer extinction; and it is extinction that I hope and long for. If T have been driven by sheer force of evidence to believe that personal survival is a fact, I can honestly say that it has been against my will. I had and have a strong 'will to disbelieve'; but

facts are facts, and some of the facts of my experience and that of my intimate friends, are in my opinion most rationally interpreted by the provisional hypothesis (I will not be driven further, even by facts) of discarnate minds still active and able to communicate. This forced conclusion, tentative though it is, I repeat is profoundly distasteful to me. "If I see from my window a passer-by with his umbrella up, I wonder if it is raining. But the man have put up his umbrella to keep the cold wind from a neuralgic fact. It may not be raining at all. If I notice, however, that a distant house-roof shines as if wet, I incline to the hypothesis that it is raining. But the shining may be due to reflected light from a dry tile catching sun-rays just at the right angle to reflect into my eyes. Thus, again, it may not be raining. But if I walk to the window and find the road all wet, the rain hypothesis become plausible again, and, indeed, probable. But a main may have burst, or a watering-cart have passed. Finally, however, I see a score of separate people, each with umbrella up, and then I consider it settled that it is raining, even if my near-sighted eyes cannot actually see the drops.

"Tn this illustration not one of the single facts is enough to convince: but, all together, they suffice. It is somewhat thus in psychical research, as. indeed, in all inductive science. The facts are sticks in a faggot, not links in a chain. One supports another. You may break them singly, but the whole is unbreakable."