TO HEAR THE SPIRITS.

Taranaki Daily News, 14 January 1921, Page 6

TO HEAR THE SPIRITS.

A MICROPHONE FOR GHOSTS. t / If a ghost can whisper, the living henceforth will hear. ’EJiat is the substance of the announcement which Mr. Edison has made (says the London Daily Telegraph). He has invented an apparatus which, receiving whatever comes toit from the vasty deep, “will magnify the slightest effort which it intercepts, and give us whatever form of record we desire.” There will be no more need for spirits to communicate by the clumsy and undignified methods of table rapping, through the not always edifying person of a medium, or by startling but incomprehensible shocks. Henceforth they will, if so disposed, ring us up through Mr. Edison’s apparatus. We have no dogmatic convictions as to the possibility, or impossibility of communication between the visible and invisible world, but this # claim seems to us a flitre bold. Mr. Edison is certainly no visionary, yet how can he be sure that the spirits of the dead, if such there be, are able to exert any material power, even “the -lightest conceivable effort,” for which he stipulates? How cam he know that even if they have such power they wi’l decide to use it? We do not gather that he has any very sure and certain hopes of communication. He is not convinced that men have any individual immortality. He describes the human body as composed of myriads of minute entities which live for ever. Ho considers it “conclusively proved that our personality resides in that part of the brain known as the fold of Broca,” and to him the whole question of personal immortality is, “What happens to the master entities” there enthroned? Discharged by death, the rest of us goes about its business, breaks up and seeks new work in the universe. If the “personality entities” also disintegrate there is an end, but, if not, then there is individual immortality, and the ghosts’ microphone “ought to be of some use.” The argument is of interest, but we fear that few psychologists or philosophers will admit there is conclusive proof, or any proof at all, that man’s personality has its local habitation and its being in Broca’s convolution. This is not a matter to be argued here. AVhat We can all judge is the fallacy of the assumption that if human personality continues to exist beyond the grave, it must needs be able and willing to speak to those in this world through Mr, Edison’s microphone or any other medium. Though w’e believe in the will and the desire, we cannot be certain that a being without perceptible existence has the power to use perceptible means. It seems then, that if Mr. Edison’s machine remains dumb, if not “the slightest conceivable effort” is recorded from the unseen, we shall still have no sort of evidence for denying tha't spirits may haunt the vasty deep or that man may have an immortal soul. What confidence wo should gain in affirming our immortality if an effort was recorded, if the dead did speak, is a more doubtful ques- 1 tion; but we may await tlie event before we judge the case.