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School of Theology at Claremont

1001 1365363

A Critical Examination

THE BELIEF in a
LIFE AFTER DEATH

C. J. DUCASSE

Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus
Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island

Without prior commitment either pro or contra.
Professor Ducasse approaches the possibility, reality,
or impossibility of survival of the human personality
after the body’s death. He examines impartially the
merits of the considerations - THEOLOGICAL or
SCIENTIFIC, EMPIRICAL or THEORETICAL -
which advocates on either side of the question have
offered.

Various questions which, on reflection, arise on the
subject are set forth explicitly.

A Critical Examination of THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH is a monograph
in The Bannerstone Division of AMERICAN LECTURES IN PHILOSOPHY, edited by
MARVIN FARBER, Ph.D., Department of Philosophy, University of Buffalo, Buffalo,
New York

DUCi

They are purged of the question-begging tacit assumptions, the ambiguities, and the
vagueness which has been responsible for the barrenness of such discussions in the
past. ~

What connection the question of survival has and does not have with RELIGION, with
CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE, and with the FACTS WHICH THE SYSTEMATIC
STUDY OF PARANORMAL PHENOMENA HAS BROUGHT TO LIGHT, this book
makes clear.

The author defines the kind of evidence which, if we should have it, would prove or
establish a positive probability that a given human personality, or some particular
component of it, has survived the body. The various forms are considered which a life
after death, if there be one, could with any plausibility be conceived to take.

Written for EVERYMAN who approaches the question of survival with a wary but
genuinely open mind rather than wishfully, piously, or with adverse prejudice — for
EVERYMAN who is willing to attend with care to the considerations on which
responsible conclusions on this difficult but import matter depend.

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176 pp., 7 il., $8.95

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- MAN FOR HUMANITY: On Con¬
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Howard L. Parsons - HUMANISM
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CHARLES C THOMAS • PUBLISHER • SPRINGFIELD • ILLINOIS

me oeiiei m a Lire mier imniiii

The Belief in a Life After Death

DUCASSE

School of Theology at Claremont

1001 1365363

A (Jritical Examination

THE BELIEF in a
LIFE AFTER DEATH

C. J. DUCASSE

Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus
Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island

Without prior commitment either pro or contra,
Professor Ducasse approaches the possibility, reality,
or impossibility of survival of the human personality
after the body’s death. He examines impartially the
merits of the considerations - THEOLOGICAL or
SCIENTIFIC, EMPIRICAL or THEORETICAL -
which advocates on either side of the question have
offered.

Various questions which, on reflection, arise on the
subject are set forth explicitly.

'Sex. D)

421

D76

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

Publication Number 423
AMERICAN LECTURE SERIES®

A Monograph in

The BANNERSTONE DIVISION of
AMERICAN LECTURES IN PHILOSOPHY

Edited by

MARVIN FARBER, Ph D.
Department of Philosophy
University of Buffalo
Buffalo , New York

The following books have appeared thus far in this Series:

Causality in Natural Science—V. F. Lenzen
Emotions and Reason—V. J. McGill

A Good and Bad Government According to the New Testament—Jean Hering

The Phenomenological Approach to Psychiatry—J. H. Van den Berg

Operationism—A. C. Benjamin

Psychoanalysis and Ethics—Lewis S. Feuer

Culture, Psychiatry, and Human Values—Marvin K. Opler

The Origins of Marxian Thought—Auguste Cornu

Metascientihc Queries—Mario Bunge

Anthropology and Ethics—May and Abraham Edel

Naturalism and Subjectivism—Marvin Farber

The Language of Education—Israel Scheffler

It is the purpose of this series to give representation to all important
tendencies and points of view in Philosophy, without any implied
concurrence on the part of the Editor and Publisher.

HZ!

DHC

A Critical Examination of

THE BELIEF IN A
LIFE AFTER DEATH

Second Printing

C. J. DUCASSE

J \K

Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus
Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island

CHARLES C THOMAS • PUBLISHER

Springfield • Illinois • U.S.A.

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PREFACE

The question whether there is, or can be, or cannot be a life
after death for the individual is seldom formulated unambigu¬
ously, or approached with a genuinely open mind, or discussed
objectively on the basis of the relevant empirical or theoretical
considerations. Persons in whom survival after death is an article
of religious faith generally assume that it and other dogmas of
their religion are, as such, authoritative; and hence that the point
of engaging in discussions of the matter is not to try to find out
whether or not survival is a fact, but only to convince others that
it is a fact—or at least to show them that the reasons which lead
them to doubt or to deny it are invalid.

Persons, on the other hand, who have had training in science,
or at least those among them who do not lay aside their scientific
habits of thought when subjects reputedly religious are concerned,
commonly take it for granted today that the progress of physiolog¬
ical and behavioristic psychology has finally proved that the con¬
sciousness and personality of man is—as they are wont to phrase
it—a function of the nervous system and of certain other constitu¬
ents of the living human body; and hence that there cannot pos¬
sibly be for the individual any life or consciousness after the body
has died.

A position in some ways intermediate between the two just
described is that of the Spiritists or Spiritualists. Survival of the
personality after death is held by them to be not an article o£
faith but a matter of knowledge. That is, they hold it as some¬
thing for the truth of which they have adequate empirical evi¬
dence in the communications, received through the persons they
call mediums, that purport to emanate from the surviving spirits
of the deceased. Thus, irrespective of whether or not that evi¬
dence really proves what it is alleged to prove, the fact that em¬
pirical—ox more specifically testimonial —evidence is what Spiritu-

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

alists appeal to for support of their belief means that, in so far,
they conceive the question of survival as a scientific rather than
as a religious one.

On the other hand, two factors have cooperated in making
Spiritism or Spiritualism claim for itself also the status of a re¬
ligion. One of these factors has been the need to protect the ac¬
tivities of mediums from the application of ordinances or laws
against fortune-tel has been that, because of the

widespread vagueness as to what questions are or are not essenti¬
ally religious, and of the fact that most religions have

asserted that there is for the individual a life after death, there¬
fore belief or knowledge as to such life has uncritically been as¬
sumed to be religious inherently , rather than perhaps only in-
strumentally.

In the present book, the question as to the possibility, reality,
or impossibility of a life after death is approached without com¬
mitment, explicit or implicit, to any one of the three positions
concerning it just described. What the book attempts is a philo¬
sophical scrutiny of the idea of a life after death. That is, it at¬
tempts to set torth, as adequately as possible, the various questions
which, on reflection, arise on the subject; to purge them both of
ambiguity and of vagueness; to point out what connection the
subject does and does not, have with religion; to examine without
prejudice the merits of the considerations—theological or scien¬
tific, empirical or theoretical—which have been alleged variously
to make certain, or probable, or possible, or impossible, that the
human personality survives bodily death; to state what kind of
evidence would, if we should have it, conclusively prove that a
human personality, or some specified component of it, has sur¬
vived after death; and to consider the variety of forms which a life
after death, if any, could with any plausibility be conceived to
take.

Needless to say, this ambitious program is not likely to be
carried through with complete success. Nor—in view of the pre¬
judices and the wishful thinking either on the pro or on the contra
side which infect the great majority of persons who take some in¬
terest in the question—is much of what will be said likely to be
found agreeable by all readers; for the sacredness of a number of

PREFACE

Vll

the “sacred cows” which have influenced the beliefs or disbeliefs
entertained on the subject of survival after death will have to be
questioned.

Moreover, at a few places, the issues to be considered can¬
not, by their very nature, be discussed with any prospect of decid¬
ing them in a responsible manner unless they are first formulated
with greater precision, and their implications then developed
more rigorously, than has usually been done in discussions of the
question as to a life after death. But precision and rigor—even
when utmost care is taken, as it will be, to make its literary form
as psychologically painless as possible—entails the need on the
reader’s part of closer attention than many are willing to give.
For it is much easier to jump to conclusions than to draw them
responsibly—to jump to conclusions provided they be favorable,
if one is moved by wish to believe; or to jump to conclusions pro¬
vided they be adverse, if one is moved by wish to disbelieve.

The issues involved, however, are ultimately so important
that wishful thinking, on either side, will, to the best of the au
thor’s ability, be excluded in this book from his consideration of
their merits.

The author’s obligations to the works of the various writers
discussed or referred to in the text are indicated by the footnotes.
Some portions of the text have appeared as articles in periodicals.
Several Sections of Chapter XI formed part of a communication
presented by the author at the 1957 Interamerican Congress of
Philosophy, which later appeared in the journal, Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research , as an article entitled “Life, Telism,
and Mechanism.” Chapter XVI borrows extensively from an ad¬
dress by the author at the celebration in 1956 of the Fiftieth An¬
niversary of the founding of the American Society for Psychical
Research, which, with the other addresses, was published in the
Society’s journal. Chapters XX and XXV were published as ar¬
ticles, respectively in the International Journal of Parapsychology,
and in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Re -
search. Grateful acknowledgement is here made to the editors
of these periodicals for permission to incorporate into the text
the materials mentioned.

C.J.D.

CONTENTS

Pag

Preface

Chapter Part I

Immortality, Religion, and Science

I. Belief and Disbelief in a Life After Death

1. Life: Physiological or psychological .

2. Immortality, survival, eternal life.

3. Causes of belief in survival .

4. Why a life after death is desired . 1

5. Causes of disinterest or disbelief in survival . 1

6. Causes of, distinguished from grounds for, belief or

disbelief . ... ]

II. Religion and the Belief in a Life After Death. ]

1. The belief in survival not inherently religious ]

2. Religion and religious beliefs. ]

3. Grounds on which belief in survival is based in

Christianity .

4. The moral arguments for belief in a life after death ;

III. The Case Against the Possibility of a Life After Death ;

1. Empirical facts that appear to rule out any possibil¬

ity of survival .

2. Theoretical considerations that appear to preclude

survival .

3. Unimaginability of any plausible form of survival

t THE BELIEF IN A UFE AFTER death

Part II

The Key Concepts

Chapter

IV. What is Material 0 ; and What is “Living” 3S

1. Two questions to be distinguished 4(

2. Which things are “material” 4(

3. “Material derivatively vs. fundamentally 41

4. What is “living” 45

V. What is “Mental” . 4f

1. Which occurrences are denominated “mental” 4 1

2. Introspeci’ action, Intuition 4(

3 “Content” vs “object” of consciousness 41

4 “Mental” derivatively vs. fundamentally 4f

VI. What is “A Mind” 51

1. I he trails in terms of which one describes particular

minds 5!

2. What is a power, capacity, or disposition . 55

3 What a mind is 5 Z

Part III

The Relation Between Mind and Body

VII What Would Establish the Possibility of Survival 5!

1. Summary of the findings of Part II 5!

2. Theoretical possibility; empirical possibility; and

f actuality 6<

3. The tacit theoretical premise of the empirical argu¬

ments against the possibility of survival 6

VIII Mind Conceived as Bodily Processes; Matter Conceived

as Sets of Ideas 6:

J. The contention that thought is a physical process 6

2. Connection to be distinguished from identity 6

CONTENTS

Chapter Pa&

3. Disguised assertions about the word “thought” mis¬

taken for assertions about thought. 6'

4. The radically idealistic conception of material ob¬

jects 61

IX. Two Versions of Psycho-physical Parallelism 7<

1. Mind and body as in “pre-established harmony” . 7<

2. Mind and body as two “aspects” of one same thing 7

3. Mental activity as a “function” of cerebral activity 1 \

X. Mind as “The Halo Over die Saint” . 7

1. Epiphenomenalism . 7

2. Metaphorical character of the epiphenomenalistic

thesis . 7

3. Arbitrariness of the epiphenomenalistic contention

as to causality between cerebral and mental
events . 7

XI. Hypophenomenalism: The Life of Organisms as Prod¬

uct of Mind 8

1. Two hypophenomenalistic conceptions: Plotinus,

Schopenhauer . 8

2. Biological hypophenomenalism distinguished from

cosmological 8

3. The life processes apparently purposive 8

4. Objections to a teleological explanation of life

processes 8

5. The nature, kinds, and levels of purposive activity 8

6. Conation: “blind,” vs. accompanied by awareness

of its conatum 8

7. Desire, and ignorance or knowledge of how to satisfy

it . \

x jj the belief in a life after death

Chapter

8. Autotelism and heterotelism 8

9. What ultimately differentiates purposiveness from

mechanism . 8

10. Servomechanisms 8

11. Creative vs. only activative conations 9

12. The question as to how conation organizes matter 9

13. Telism ultimately the only type of explanation in

sight for the life processes 9

14. Conation in the vegetative, the animal, and the hu¬

man activities 9

15. Hypophenomenalism vs. epiphenomenalism . 9

16. Hypophenomenalism and experimentation . 9

XII. Mind and Body as Acting Each on the Other. 9

1. Interaction as conceived by Descartes . 10

2. Interaction and the heterogeneity of body and mind 10

3. H. S. Jennings on interaction between body and

mind 10

4. What interactionism really contends . 10

5. Which human body is one’s own. 10

6. Interaction and the conservation of energy. 10

XIII. Lamont’s Attack on Mind-Body Dualism 10

1. Dualism and supernaturalism 10

2. Naturalism and materialism 10

3. The senses in which ideas are, and are not, ulti¬

mately private 11

4. Lamont’s position actually an ontological dualism 11

5. Lamont’s account of the mind as a “productive func¬

tion” of the body 11

6. A supposititious puzzle 11

7 “Verdict of science?” or “Turning aversions into dis¬
proofs?”

CONTENTS xii

Part IV

Discarnate Life After Death and the Ostensibly
Relevant Empirical Evidence For It
Chapter Pagt

XIV. Various Senses of the Question Regarding Survival After

Death . \2)

1. The bodily component of a personality. 121

2. Survival—of just what parts of the psychological

component. 121

3. Survival—for how long. 12'

4. “Sameness" in what sense, of a mind after as before

death . 12'

5. Conceivable forms of discarnate life . 12<

6. H. H. Price’s depiction of post mortem life in a

world of images . 12'

7. The architect of a person’s heaven or hell 13<

8. Life after death conceived as physical reembodiment 13<

XV. Survival and Paranormal Occurrences . 13

1. Where empirical evidence of survival might be

found . 13

2. Critique of Rhine’s account of what marks an event

as paranormal. 13

3. Broad’s analytical account of the marks of paranor-

mality . 13

4. The chief kinds of ostensibly paranormal occur¬

rences . 13

5. Questions relevant to reports of paranormal occur¬

rences . 14

XVI. Paranormal Occurrences, Science, and Scientists 14

1. Reports of paranormal occurrences commonly dis¬

missed offhand by scientists. 14

2. What accounts for the dogmatism of scientists on the

subject of paranormal events . 14

XIV

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

Chapter Pa 8

3. Why the paranormal phenomena are regarded as

impossible 14

4. Clash of a reported occurrence with the metaphys¬

ical creed of the natural sciences 14

XVII. Instances of Occurrences Prima Facie Indicative of Sur¬
vival 15

1. Apparitions and hauntings 15

2. “Out-of-the-body” experiences 16

3. Materializations and other paranormal physical phe¬

nomena 16

4. “Possessions” 17

5. Memories, seemingly of earlier lives; and xenoglossy 17

XVIII. Additional Occurrences Relevant to the Question of Sur¬
vival 17

1 Communications, purportedly from the deceased,

through automatists . 17

2. Communications through automatists from fictitious

and from still living persons 18

3. Mrs. Sidgwick’s interpretation of the Piper com¬

munications 18

4. Cross-correspondences 18

XIX. How Stands the Case for the Reality of Survival. 19

1. What, if not survival, the facts might signify . . 19

2. The allegation that survival is antecedently improb¬

able 19

3. What telepathy and clairvoyance would suffice to

account for 19

4 The facts that strain the telepathy-clairvoyance ex¬
planation 19

CONTENTS x>

Chapter Pflg<

5. What would prove or make positively probable that

survival is a fact. 19{

6. The conclusion as to survival which presently ap¬

pears warranted. 20!

Part V

Life After Death Conceived as Reincarnation

XX. The Doctrine of Reincarnation in the History of

Thought 20'

1. W. R. Alger on the importance of the doctrine of

metempsychosis 201

2. Metempsychosis in Brahmanism and Buddhism 2H

3. Pythagoras and Empedocles 21

4. Plato. 21

5. Plotinus. 21!

6. Origen . 21

7. The Jews, Egyptians, Celts, and Teutons 21*

8. Hume. 21

9. Kant . 21

10. Fichte . 21

11. Schopenhauer 21

12. Renouvier 21

13. McTaggart 21

14. Ward. 21

15. Broad 21

16. Various forms of the reincarnation hypothesis 22

XXI. Difficulties in the Reincarnation Hypothesis. 22

1. The materialistic objection to any form of life after

death 22

2. The objection that we have no memory of having

lived before . 22

3. The objection that memory is indispensable to iden-

XVI

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

Chapter Pa <

tity of person 2!

4. The objection that, without memory of one’s acts,

nothing can be learned from experience of their
consequences . 2!

5. The objection that wisdom, virtue, knowledge, and

skills are not innate but are gradually acquired
after birth. Z

6. Native aptitudes, heredity, and growth of the self . 2!

XXII. Incompetent Kinds of Evidence for and Against Rein¬
carnation 2

1. "D£j2t Vu" experiences. 2

2. Illusions of memory 2

3. Paranormal retrocognitions 2

4. Testimony, purportedly from discarnate spirits 2

XXIII. Verifications of Ostensible Memories of Earlier Lives 2

1. The rebirth of Katsugoro 2

2. The rebirth of Alexandria Samona . 2

3. The case of Shanti Devi 2

4. The "Rosemary" case 2

XXIV. Regressions to the Past Through Hypnosis . 2

1. An experiment in New York in 1906 . 2

2. The hypnotic experiments of Col. de Rochas 2

3. The Edgar Cayce "life readings". 2

XXV. The Case of "The Search for Bridey Murphy". 2

1. The hypnotist and author, and his subject. 2

2. Emergence of "Bridey Murphy" during Virginia’s

hypnosis 2

3. The chief documents of the "Bridey Murphy" con¬

troversy 2

CONTENTS

Chapter Pa£

4. The Bridey statements that have not so far been

verified . 28

5. Examples of the Bridey statements that have been

verified . 28

6. The allegation that the true Bridey statements are

traceable to forgotten events of Virginia’s child¬
hood . 28

7. The comments of psychiatrists on the “Bridey

Murphy” case . 2<

8. What conclusions are, and are not, warranted about

the case. 2?

XXVI. How Stands the Case for the Reality of Survival as Re¬
incarnation . 3(

1. Mediumistic communications from minds surviving

discarnate, vs. memories in a reincarnated mind 31

2. Reincarnation as “possession”. 3i

3. Reincarnation and illusion of memory. 3<

4. Extrasensory perceptions vs. memories of an earlier

life . 3'

5. What would be the best possible evidence of rein¬

carnation . 3

Index

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

PART I

Immortality, Religion, and Science

Chapter I

BELIEF AND DISBELIEF IN A LIFE
AFTER DEATH

That there is for the human individual some sort of life
after death has been and still is widely believed. To the majority
of mankind, this idea has not seemed paradoxical nor a life after
death difficult to imagine. It has often been conceived as lived in
a body and surroundings nearly or quite as material as our present
ones, though the future environment and the experiences to be
had in it have generally been thought of as rather different,
whether for the better or the worse, from those of life on earth.

1. Life: physiological or psychological? Persons, however,
who find such a material conception of a future life incredible
either because of its crudity or because of the destruction the
body undeniably undergoes after it has died, are likely to think of
survival in essentially psychological terms and therefore to mean
by “personal survival” more or less what Dean W. R. Matthews
does, to wit, “that the center of consciousness which was in ex¬
istence before death does not cease to be in existence after death
and that the experience of this'center after death has the same
kind of continuity with its experience before death as that of
a man who sleeps for a while and wakes again.” 1

As we shall see eventually, a number of difficulties are im¬
plicit even in this seemingly clear statement. Yet, some meaning
thus psychological rather than physiological has to be given to the
word “life,” if the hypothesis of a life after death is to have any
of the personal and social interest it commonly has. For life in the
merely biological sense of the word—the sense in which even the

1 Psychical Research and Theology, The Sixth Myers Memorial Lecture, Proc.
Soc. for Psychical Research, Vol. 46:15, 1940 41.

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

body of a man in coma, or a vegetable, has life—has, by itself, only
an impersonal scientific interest for us. It acquires any other
only if, or in so far as, an organism alive in this physiological sense
is a necessary basis for life in the sense of conscious psychological
experience. In these pages, therefore, the words, “life after
death”—except at places where a different sense may be indicated
specifically or by context—will be taken to mean at least conscious
psychological experience of some sort, no matter how caused and
whether incarnate or discarnate.

2. Survival, immortality, eternal life. I shall refer to the
belief that there is for the individual a life after death as belief in
survival rather than as belief in immortality; for immortality,
strictly speaking, is incapacity to die, which, as ascribed to a
human consciousness, entails survival of it forever after bodily
death. But survival for some indeterminate though considerable
period, rather than specifically forever, is probably what most
persons actually have in mind when they think of a life after
death. Assurance of survival for a thousand years, or even a hun¬
dred, would, for those of us who desire survival, have virtually as
much present psychological value as would assurance of survival
forever: we should be Doubled very little by the idea of indi¬
vidual extinction at so distant a time—even less troubled than is
now a healthy and happy youth by the knowledge that he will die
within fifty or sixty years.

Persons, on the other hand, who are tired of life; or who have
found it to have for them negative rather than positive value and
believe this to be of its essence; or who, like Professor C. D. Broad
would for some other reason welcome assurance of non-survival;
would be more distressed by prospect of survival for a long pe¬
riod, and even more by prospect of survival forever, than by
that of survival for only a short time.

The expression “eternal life” is sometimes used to express,
in a positive way, what “immortality”—distinguished from simply
survival-expresses negatively. “Eternal” life, as so used, then
generally means life that is everlasting in the future—hie without
end though not without beginning. Conceivably, however, life
might be without beginning as well as without end. This is what

BELIEF AND DISBELIEF

theories such as that of metempsychosis assume, which regard not
only the human body but also the human mind or consciousness
or soul as an evolutionary product.

Similarly, when God’s being is spoken of as “eternal” what
is meant is sometimes that he is both without beginning and with¬
out end—that he always did and always will exist. Perhaps more
often, however, what is meant is that God’s consciousness is time¬
less. Eternal life, then, or consciousness of eternity, whether ex¬
perienced by God inherently or by man on rare occasions, means
a form of consciousness that does not include or that transcends
consciousness of time.

For a person the content of whose consciousness were thus
timeless, the question whether that content endured but a mo¬
ment, or a thousand years, would have no meaning since he
would have no consciousness either of duration or of change.
Indeed, the question could not even present itself to him. But
were external observation possible of the consciousness of such a
person—for example, of a mystic in ecstasy—the observer could
meaningfully say that the other experienced eternal life, or lived
in eternity, for five minutes, or as the case might be, for fifteen,
or for some other finite time, on a given occasion.

3. Causes of belief in survival. The first question which
arises in connection with the idea that there is for the individual
an after-death life is why the belief in it is so widespread.

The clue to the answer is to be found in the fact that each
of us has always been alive and conscious as far back as he can
remember. It is true, of course, that his body is sometimes sunk
in deep sleep, or in a faint, or in coma from some injury or grave
illness; or that the inhaling of ether or some other anaesthetic
makes him unconscious of the surgical operation he then under¬
goes. But, even at those times a person does not experience un¬
consciousness, for to experience it would mean being conscious
of being unconscious; and this, being a contradiction, is impos¬
sible. Indeed, at such times, he may be having vivid dreams; and
these are one kind of consciousness. The only experience of un¬
consciousness a person ever has is, not of total unconsciousness,
but of unconsciousness of this or that; as when he reports: “I am

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

not conscious of any pain/’ or “of any difference between the
color of this and of that,” etc.

Nor do we ever experience as present in another person un¬
consciousness itself, but only the fact that, sometimes, some or
all of the ordinary activities of his body, through which his being
conscious previously manifested itself to us, cease to occur. That
consciousness itself is extinguished at such times is only a hypoth¬
esis which we construct to account for certain changes in the
behavior of another person’s body; or to explain the eventual
lack in him—or, as the case may be, in ourselves—of memories re¬
lating to the period during which the body—his or our own—
was in an inert, unresponsive state.

Lack of present memory of having been conscious at a par¬
ticular past time obviously is no proof at all that one was uncon¬
scious at that time; for if it were, then it would prove that one
was unconscious during the first few years of one’s life, and indeed
during the vast majority of its days, since one has no memory what¬
ever of one’s experiences on any but a very small minority of one’s
past days. That we were conscious on the others is known to us
not by memory of them, but only by inference from facts of va¬
rious kinds.

The fac t, then, is that each person has been alive and con¬
scious at all times he can remember. Being alive and conscious has
therefore become in him an ingrained habit; and habit auto¬
matically entails both tacit expectations and tacit belief that what
is tacitly expected will occur. 2 Just as every step which finds
ground underfoot builds up tacit belief that so will the subse¬
quent steps, and every breath which finds air to breathe, tacit be¬
lief that so will the subsequent breaths, just so does the fact that
every past day of one’s life was found to have a morrow contribute
to generate tacit expectation and belief that every day of one’s life
will have a living morrow. As J. B. Pratt has pointed out, the child
takes the continuity of life for granted. It is the fact of death
that has to he taught him. But when he has learned it, and the
idea of a future life is then put explicitly before his mind, it seems
to him the most natural thing in the world. 3

•CC. C. D. Broad: The Mind and its Place in Nature, p. 524.

•J. B. Pratt: The Religious Consciousness, Macmillan, New York, 1943, p. 225.

BELIEF AND DISBELIEF

Such, undoubtedly, is the psychological origin of the wide¬
spread ingenuous belief that one’s life and that of one’s fellows
does not end at death.

Another root of the idea and belief that persons who were
known to us and have died continue to live—and hence that we
too shall survive after death—is the fact that sometimes those per¬
sons, as well as persons who are still in the flesh, appear to us in
dicams. Especially when the dream was both vivid and plausible,
it easily suggests a view of the human personality which is rather
common among primitive peoples and which has been held even
by some educated and critical persons. It is that each person’s
body of flesh has a subtle counterpart or double, which can be¬
come detached from and function independently of that body;
this separation being temporary as it occurs in periods of sleep
during life, but permanent at the death of the body.

Evidently, such an idea of the constitution of man fits in
very well with the ingenuous natural belief in life beyond death,
for it provides concrete images in which to clothe the otherwise
elusive abstract notion of a personality living on, discarnate.

Belief in a life after death, however, might conceivably origi¬
nate in a given person in either one of two ways less ingenuous
than those described in what precedes. One of these more critical
ways would be out of attention to certain occurrences observed
or reported, and then interpreted as empirical evidence of the
survival of a deceased person. Communications purportedly from
such a person and containing identifying details, received either
through a “medium” or by oneself through automatic writing;
or sight of an “apparition” of the dead person, would be examples
of the kinds of experience in view.

The other possible kind of rational origin which belief in
a life after death might have in a given person would be attention
by him to arguments which, whether really or only seemingly co¬
gent, purport to prove immortality on metaphysical grounds. It
is safe to say, however, that the belief can have this origin only in
a very few persons, and that those arguments, irrespective of their
cogency or lack of it, function in fact for the majority of those
who know and accept them, much rather only as rationalizations
of a belief in immortality they had previously acquired either in

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

the automatic manner described earlier, or out of wishful think¬
ing, or out of uncritically accepted childhood teachings.

We shall eventually consider the merits of both of the above
kinds-empirical and theoretical-of prirna facie evidence for sur¬
vival. At this point, however, what we must ask is why survival
is desired by the many persons who do desire it; and what general
connection obtains between desire and belief, lack of desire and
lack of belief.

4. Why a life after death is desired. One does not actually
desire valued things which one already has or assumes one has.
They get desired only when loss of them occurs or threatens. This,
which is true for instance of desire for air to breathe or for earth
to stand on, is equally true of desire for continuation of life. It
is not until the witnessing or the awareness of death thrusts upon
the mind the question whether the life that was continues some¬
how, that actual desire for life beyond death arises. From then
on, the desire operates automatically to bolster the shaken naive
belief in survival, and the belief in so far becomes a “wishful
belief.”

The desire for survival of oneself and of other persons has
its roots in a variety of more specific desires which death immedi¬
ately frustrates, but satisfaction of which a life beyond death would
make possible even if not automatically insure. In some persons,
the chief of these is desire for reunion with persons dearly loved.
In others, whose lives have been wretched, it is desire for another
chance at the happiness they have missed. In others yet, it is de¬
sire for further opportunity to grow in ability, knowledge, char¬
acter, wisdom; or to go on contributing significant achievements.
Again, a future life for oneself and others is often desired in order
that the redressing of the many injustices of the present life shall
be possible.

Even in persons who believe that death means complete and
final extinction of the individual’s consciousness, the craving for
continued existence is testified to by the comfort they often find
in various substitute but assured forms of “survival.” They may,
for instance, dwell on the continuity of the individual’s germ
plasm in his descendants. Or they find solace in the thought that,

BELIEF AND DISBELIEF

the past being indestructible, the particular life they live will re¬
main ever after an intrinsic part of the history of the world.
Also—and more satisfying to the craving for personal importance—
there is the fact that since the acts of one’s life have effects, and
these in turn further effects, and so on, therefore what one has
done goes on forever influencing remotely, and sometimes greatly,
the course of future events.

Gratifying to one’s vanity, too, is the prospect that, if the
achievements of one’s life have been important or even only con¬
spicuous, or one’s benefactions or evil deeds notable, then one’s
name may be remembered not only by acquaintances and rela¬
tives for a little while, but may live on in recorded history.

Evidently, survival in any of these senses is but a consolation
prize for the certainty of bodily death—a thin substitute for the
continuation of conscious individual life, which may be disbe¬
lieved, but the natural craving for which nevertheless is evidenced
by the comfort which the considerations just mentioned even then
provide.

5. Causes of disinterest or of disbelief in survival. Lack of
belief and even positive disbelief in survival are certainly more
widespread now in Western countries than was the case in earlier
times. Of the various causes which account for this, one of the
chief is probably “the greater attractiveness of this world in our
times and the increase of interests of all sorts which keep one’s
attention too firmly fastened here to allow of much thought being
spent on the other world.” 4

As compared with earlier ages, the standard of living is now
high for the large majority of the populations of Western coun¬
tries. Leisure has greatly increased, and so have political liber¬
ties. Class distinctions no longer firmly stand, as formerly, in the
way of personal ambition. And when there is pie at the baker's
and money for it in one’s pocket, “pie in the sky” is not thought
of and hence not desired. It is when life is hard, joyless, and hope¬
less that one dreams of and longs for escape to another world

4 J. B. Pratt: The Religious Consciousness, The Macmillan Co. N. Y. 1943,

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

where those who on earth were the miserable last shall be the
happy first.

Again, in the present Age of Science the spirit of critical in¬
quiry, with its demand for proofs, has robbed the teachings of re¬
ligion of the authority they had earlier. One consequence of this,
and of the materialistic conception of the nature of man fostered
by contemp ''rary science, has been that the unplausibility—to use
no stronger term—of the picturesque ideas of the life after death
which had been traditional in the Western world has become
glaring. And this in turn has deprived the idea of a future life of
the support which desire for it had previously lent it; for, as
Pratt pointedly remarks, “some sort of belief in at least the possi¬
bility of the object is a condition of any real desire for it.” 5

These are the chief factors which have caused substantial
numbers of persons today to doubt or positively disbelieve that
there is for the individual consciousness any life after the body’s
death; or at least to view the idea of it with little or no interest.
These persons, however, although numerous, are probably still
a rather small minority of the population; for death goes on frus¬
trating of expression one’s love of persons who were dear, and
thereby thrusting upon the living the idea of a life after death,
stimulating in them the desire that such life be a fact; and,
through this desire, fostering the belief that it is a fact.

6. Causes of, distinguished from grounds for, belief or dis¬
belief. It may not be amiss to stress here, however, that the argu¬
ments, the empirical facts, or the longings which suffice to con -
vince some persons that a given idea is true, are not necessarily
sufficient to prove or even to make objectively probable that the
idea is true. For convincing is a psychological process where rhet¬
oric and appeal to bias of various kinds are usually more efficacious
than would be sound logic; and where automatic yielding to long-
established habits of interpretation of appearances commonly
takes the place of scrupulous verification.

It is only in exceptionally rational persons, or in exceptionally
rational moments of the rest of us, or in circumstances where

'op. Cit . p. 2S9.

BELIEF AND DISBELIEF

nothing tempts us to jump to unwarranted conclusions, that only
what suffices to prove suffices to convince; or, when the conclusion
concerned is an unwelcome one, that what does suffice to prove
or to establish a positive probability also suffices to convince.

However, since we are now emphasizing that many beliefs,
for example belief in survival after death, can be and often are
acquired uncritically, i.e., without adequate evidence or perhaps
any evidence that the beliefs are true, impartiality requires us to
stress also that the fact that a given belief has been acquired un¬
critically is not by itself positive evidence that the belief con¬
cerned is erroneous. What its having been so acquired does is
only to put the burden of proof on the person who so acquired
it, and who maintains that it is true.

Chapter II

RELIGION AND THE BELIEF IN A
LIFE AFTER DEATH

Most religions have taught in one form or another that the
"soul” or “spirit” of the individual does not perish when his body
dies, but goes on living in another world where it meets conditions
appropriate to its particular nature and deserts. Hence, before we
turn to an exposition of the grounds on which contemporary na¬
tural science bases the case against the possibility of survival of
man’s consciousness after death, it will be well for us to consider
the relation between religion and the belief in survival, and the
grounds on which theologians—or more particularly Judaeo-Chris-
tian theologians—have affirmed that the belief is true.

1. The belief in survival after death not inherently reli¬
gious. Although, as just noted, belief that the human personality
survives bodily death has been inculcated by most religions, it is
not in itself religious. If the survival hypothesis is purged of
vagueness, is defined in a manner not involving contradictions or
other demonstrable impossibilities, and is dissociated from the ad¬
ditional supposition commonly coupled with it that survival will
be such as to bring reward or punishment to the surviving person¬
alities according as they lived on earth virtuously or wickedly,
then it is no more religious than would be the hypothesis that
conscious beings live on Mars. In both cases alike the question is
simply one of fact—however difficult it may be to get evidence
adequate to settle it one way or the other.

If human personalities survive the body’s death and do so
discarnate, then—although their continued existence is normally
as imperceptible to us as were bacteria before we had microscopes
and as still are the subatomic entities of theoretical physics—those

RELIGION AND THE BELIEF

discarnate personalities are just another part of the population
of the world; and their abode—if the word still has significance in
relation to them—is just another region or dimension of the uni¬
verse, not as yet commonly accessible to us.

The supposition that there is an immaterial, or anyway a
normally imperceptible realm of existence peopled by discarnate
human consciousnesses is, moreover, quite independent logically
of the supposition that a God or gods exist—as independent of it
logically as is the fact that incarnate human consciousnesses now
inhabit the earth: No contradiction at all would be involved
either in supposing that one or more gods exist but that there
is no post mortem human life, or in supposing that there is a life
after death but no God or gods.

But although the belief in a life after death is thus not in¬
herently religious, nevertheless a close connection between it and
religion has obtained throughout the history of man. What I
shall now attempt is to make clear the nature of this connection;
that is, what it presupposes with regard to man’s personality, and
with regard to the relation between his life on earth and the post
mortem life which the religions have taught he will have. For
this purpose, what religion itself essentially is must first be con¬
sidered briefly.

2. Religion and religious beliefs. Even a sketchy acquaint¬
ance with the history of religion suffices to show that the beliefs
and practices which have been taught by the religions of man¬
kind have been very diverse and in many cases irreconcilable. This
entails that no possibility exists of conceiving the essense of reli¬
gion in terms of some core of beliefs or/and practices common to
all the religions—to the non-theistic as well as to the monotheistic,
the polytheistic, and the pantheistic, and to the religions of primi¬
tive as well as of highly civilized peoples—for there is no such
common core. Nor, of course, can the essence of religion be con¬
ceived responsibly as consisting of the teachings of some one par¬
ticular religion, held to be the only “true” religion on the ground
that its teachings are divine revelations; for the question would
then remain as to whether the belief that its teachings are, and
alone are, divine revelations is demonstrably true, or on the con-

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

trary is itself but one among other pious but groundless beliefs.

It follows that only a functional conception of religion can
be comprehensive enough to apply to all the religions; a concep¬
tion, that is to say, according to which religion is essentially a
psychological instrument for the performance of certain functions
ubiquitously important to human welfare, which are not other¬
wise performed adequately in any but a few exceptional cases—
and which e °n religion has often performed none too well.

More specially, this conception is that a religion is any set
of beliefs that are matters of faith—together the observances,
attitudes, injunctions, and feelings tied up with the beliefs—
which, in so far as dominant in a person, tend to perform two
functions, one social and the other personal.

The social function is to provide, for conduct held to be
socially beneficial, a sanction that will operate on occasions where
conflict exists between the private interest of the individual and
the (real or fancied) social interest, and where neither the legal
sanctions, nor those of public opinion, nor the individual’s own
moral impulses, would by themselves be enough to cause him to
behave morally. In such cases, an additional and sometimes suffi¬
cient motivation for moral conduct is provided by religious be¬
liefs, and in particular by a belief in a life after death if this be¬
lief is conjoined, as usually it has been, with a belief that, in that
life, immoral conduct that escaped punishment on earth and
moral conduct that went unrewarded each gets its just deserts
through the inescapable operation of some personal or impersonal
agency of cosmic justice.

To provide the motivation called for, the second of these
two beliefs is of course necessary in addition to the first; for belief
in a future life whose particular content were in no way dependent
on the manner — virtuous or vicious — in which the individual
lived on earth would exert no psychological leverage on him for
virtuous conduct now. To exert this leverage is the function of
the pictures of hells, heavens, paradises, purgatories, and other
forms of reward or punishment, painted by the religions.

It is to be noted that, insofar as those two beliefs, acting
jointly, cause the individual to behave morally, i.e., justly or al¬
truistically, in cases where he otherwise would behave selfishly

RELIGION AND THE BELIEF

or maliciously, those beliefs foster in him the development of
moral feelings and impulses; for as a person acts, so does he tend
to feel and, on later occasions, tend to feel impelled from within
to act again. The long-run effect of the harboring of beliefs
religious in the sense stated could therefore be described as “edu¬
cation of the heart,’—arousal and cultivation in the individual of
the feelings and impulses out of which, even at cost to himself,
issues conduct beneficial or assumed beneficial to his fellows.

The individual, however, is likely to be much more directly
aware of the value his religious beliefs have for him personally
than of the value they have for society through the personal sacri¬
fices they require of him for the social benefit. And what the in¬
dividual’s religious beliefs do for him personally in proportion
to their depth and firmness and to the faithfulness with which he
lives up to them is to give him a certain equanimity in the ups
and downs of life—a certain freedom from anxiety in times of
trouble, and from self-complacency in times of worldly good for¬
tune. To the religious man, his religious beliefs can bring cour¬
age in adversity, hope in times of despair, and dignity in times
of obloquy or frustration. Also, humility on occasions of pride,
prudence in times of success, moderation and a sense of respon¬
sibility in the exercise of power; in brief, a degree of abiding
serenity based on a conception of man’s destiny and on the cor¬
responding scale of values.

The belief in a life after death, in future compensation there
for the injustices of earth, in future reunion with loved ones who
have died, and in future opportunities for growth and happiness,
undoubtedly operates to give persons who have it a measure of
the equanimity they need wherewith to face the trials of this
world, the death of those dear to them, and the prospect, near or
distant, of their own death. But in order to operate psycholog¬
ically in this way for the individual, and through him for the
welfare of society in the way described before, the belief in sur¬
vival and the other beliefs the religions have taught do not at all
need to be in fact true, but only to be firmly believed. Nor do
their contents need to be conceived clearly, but only believably.
Indeed, the vagueness which commonly characterizes them is often
a condition of their believability, for it insulates from detection

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

the absurdities in some of them which would be evident if the
beliefs were clear instead of vague. In order that the beliefs
should function, what needs to be clear is only the sort of conduct
and attitude they dictate.

The fact, then, that belief in a life after death has prom-
inentlv figured in most religions and has with varying degrees of
efficacy participated in performance there of the social and per¬
sonal functions described above, constitutes no evidence at all
that there is really for the individual some kind of life after death.

On the other hand, the psychological fact that what has op¬
erated towards perfonnance of those functions is not truth of,
but simply belief of, the idea of survival, constitutes no evidence
at all that that idea is untrue. For here as elsewhere it is impera¬
tive to distinguish sharply between the question as to whether a
given belief is true—which is a question ad rem; and questions as
to how the given belief affects the persons who hold it, or as to
how they came to hold it—which are questions ad hominem, i.e.,
biographical questions. That a given person came to believe or
to disbelieve a given proposition does not entail anything con¬
cerning the truth or falsity of the proposition unless what caused
him to believe or to disbelieve it consisted of evidence adequate
to prove, or at least to make objectively probable, that the proposi¬
tion is true, or as the case may be, that it is false. But if what
induced the belief or disbelief did not consist of such evidence,
then it leaves wholly open the question of truth or falsity of the
proposition concerned.

3. Grounds on which belief in survival is based in Christian
theology. The grounds on which Christian theologians have con¬
tended that the human personality survives after death are chiefly
of two kinds—empirical, and moral.

The empirical argument consists in pointing at the resurrec¬
tion of Jesus: That Jesus, having died, rose bodily from the dead
proves, it is argued, that the human personality is not destroyed
by death and that the human body admits of being resurrected
after it has died. This proof of “immortality” has been accepted
by millions of Christians and has been regarded as one of the most
precious assurances brought to mankind by Jesus.

RELIGION AND THE BELIEF

Yet the logic of the inference by which human immortality
is deduced from the resurrection of Jesus is so fallacious that the
argument has been characterized by Professor C. D. Broad as one
of the world’s worst. “In the first place,” he writes, “if Christianity
be true, though Jesus was human, He was also divine. No other
human being resembles Him in this respect.” Hence the resur¬
rection of one so radically different from mere men is no evidence
that they too survive the death of their bodies.

The fallacy of the reasoning which would infer the second
from the first becomes glaring if one considers a reasoning of
exactly the same form, but the particular terms of which are free
from the biassing religious commitments that obtain for orthodox
Christians in the case of the Resurrection: Obviously, from the
fact that Tom Jones, who falls out of an airplane and has a para¬
chute, survives the fall, it does not follow that John Smith, who
falls out of the same plane but has no parachute, will also survive.

Moreover, Broad points out that the case of man is unlike
that of Jesus in another respect also: “the body of Jesus did not
decay in the tomb, but was transformed; whilst the body of every
ordinary man rots and disintegrates soon after his death. There¬
fore, if men do survive the death of their bodies, the process must
be utterly unlike that which took place when Jesus survived His
death on the cross. Thus the analogy breaks down in every rele¬
vant respect, and so an argument from the resurrection of Jesus
to the survival of bodily death by ordinary men is utterly worth¬
less.” 1

But anyway, the facts concerning the resurrection of Jesus-
taken as premise in that argument—are not known to us exactly,
or in detail, or with certainty. The men to whom the passages
of the New Testament bearing on the subject are (rightly or
wrongly) ascribed, and the men who passed on from one genera¬
tion to another their own account of what they had heard about
the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus, were not dis¬
passionate historians careful to check the objectivity of the reports
which came to them and to record them accurately. Rather, they
were essentially zealous propagandists of an inspiring message,

1 Religion, Philosophy, and Psychical Research, Harcourt N. Y. 1953, pp. 236-7.

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

bent on spreading it and getting it accepted. As H. L. Willett
points out, “the friends of Jesus were not interested in the writing
of books. They were not writers, they were preachers. The
Master himself was not a writer. He left no document from his
own hand. The first disciples were too busy with the new prob¬
lems and activities of the Christian society to give thought to the
making of records.” l 2 The text of the Gospels was in process of
getting i emulated for several generations. Most of it did not reach
the form in which we have it until some time near the middle of
the second century A.D. Indeed, “the very oldest manuscript of the
New Testament is as late as the fourth century A.D. All the
originals, the autographs, perished at a very early date—even the
first copies of the originals are utterly gone.” 3

These facts easily account for the discrepancies we find, for
instance, between the several statements in the Gospels concerning
the discovery of the empty tomb. Also, for the scantiness of the
descriptions of the appearances of the “risen” Jesus during the
weeks following his death. At the first of these appearances—to
Mary Magdalene at the tomb—he is unaccountably mistaken by
her, who had known him well, for the gardener (John 20- 15);
and later is similarly unrecognized at first by the disciples fishing
in the sea of Tiberias (John 21 -4). Nor is there any clear-cut
statement that his appearances were touched as well as seen. For,
at the tomb, he enjoins Mary not to touch him; and Thomas,
when Jesus appeared to him and to the other disciples, apparently
then felt no need to avail himself of the opportunity he had de¬
sired earlier to verify by touch the material reality of the visible
appearance. And the statement in Matthew 28 - 9 that the two
women, being met by Jesus on their way from the tomb, “took
hold of his feet” may well mean only that, in reverence, they
prostrated themselves at his feet.

That the body which the disciples and others repeatedly saw
appearing and disappearing suddenly indoors irrespective of walls
and closed doors, and likewise out of doors, was not the material

l The Bible through the Centuries. Willett, Clark & Colby, Chicago 1929, p. 220.

•Ernest R. Trattner: Unravelling the Book of Books, Ch. Scribner's Sons, N.Y.

1929, p. 244. Cf. Alfred Loisy: The Birth of the Christian Religion, preface by
Gilbert Murray, Allen Sc Unwin, London 1948, pp. 41-53.

RELIGION AND THE BELIEF

body of Jesus is further suggested by the accounts of his final dis¬
appearance; for the statement that he then “was taken up; and a
cloud received him” out of the disciples’ sight (Acts 1 - 9), or that,
while blessing them, he “was carried up into heaven” (Luke
25-51) could be taken literally only in times when astronomical
knowledge was so lacking as to permit the supposition that the
earth is the center of the universe, and that heaven is some dis¬
tance above the blue vault of the sky.

In the light of these considerations, and of the complete lack
of facts as to what became of the material body of Jesus, the state¬
ments in the New Testament concerning the several appearances
of Jesus after his death make sense only if interpreted as reports
of what are commonly called “apparitions” or “phantasms” of
the dead—an interpretation which, incidentally, is consonant with
Paul’s statement (I Corinthians 15 - 40/44) that the resurrection

of the dead, which “is sown in a natural body;.is raised in

a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual
body,” which Paul, in verse 44, calls also a “celestial” body and
distinguishes from the “terrestrial.” 4

It is appropriate in this connection to note that apparitions
of the dead (and occasionally of the living) are a type of phenom¬
enon of which numerous well-attested and far more recent in
stances are on record; 5 and it is interesting to compare the earliest
testimony we have for the post mortem appearances of Jesus—
which was first reduced to writing some twenty-five years after the
events; which reaches us through copies of copies of the original
written record; and which concerns events dating back nearly
two thousand years—with, for example, the testimony we have for
the numerous appearances in Maine in the year 1800 of a woman,
the first wife of a Captain Butler, after her death.

It is contained in a pamphlet now very rare, but of which
there is an original in the New York Public Library and a photo-

4 That the post mortem appearances of Jesus were not his physical body, but
were “apparitions” in the sense of hallucinations telcpathically induced by the then
discarnate Jesus, is ably contended by the Rev. Michael C. Perry in a scholarly
work, The Easter Enigma, Faber & Faber, London 1959, published since the present
chapter was written.

“See for example G. N. M. Tyrrell: Apparitions, with a preface by Prof. H. H.
Price, London, Duckworth & Co. Ltd., Rev. ed., 1953.

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

stat copy now before me. It was published in 1826 by the Rev.
Abraham Cummings (1755-1827) A.B., A.M., Brown University,
1776. He was an itinerant Baptist minister who visited and
preached in the small villages on the coast of Maine. The pam¬
phlet, of 77 pages, is entitled Immortality Proved by the Testi¬
mony of Sense . It relates the apparitions of the deceased Mrs.
George Butler at a village near Machiasport. ‘‘The Specter,** as
the Rev. Cummings terms her apparition, manifested itself not,
as in most leports of apparitions, just once and to but one person,
but many times over a period of some months and to groups num¬
bering as many as forty persons together, both in and out of doors;
and to Cummings himself in a field, on the occasion when, having
been notified of its appearance, he was on his way to expose what
he had thought must be a delusion or a fraud.

The “Specter” was both seen and heard; it delivered lengthy
discourses to the persons present, and moved among them; it pre¬
dicted births and deaths which came to pass; and on several occa¬
sions sharply intervened in the affairs of the village. Moreover,
the Rev. Cummings had the rare good sense to obtain at the time
over thirty affidavits—reproduced in the pamphlet—from some of
the hundred or more persons who had heard and/or seen the
“Specter.** 6

It is safe to say that most readers of the above summary ac¬
count of the apparitions of the deceased Mrs. Butler will receive
it with considerable skepticism. How much more skepticism, then,
would on purely objective grounds be justified about a series of
apparitions dating back nearly twenty centuries instead of only
a hundred and fifty years, and concerning which we have none
but remotely indirect evidence; whereas in the more recent series
we have as evidence over thirty verbatim statements from as many
of the very persons who observed the apparitions. Judging both
cases objectively—in terms of the criteria applied in court to the
weight of testimony—there is no doubt that the case for the his-

•A readily accessible, detailed account of this extraordinary affair can be found
in William Oliver Stevens’ Unbidden Guests, N.Y. 1945, Dodd, Mead & Co. pp.
261-9 where the essential facts recorded in the pamphlet are presented in more
orderly manner than by Cummings, whose literary ability was low, and whose
recital of the facts is encumbered by tedious theological reflections.

RELIGION AND THE BELIEF

toricity of the appearances of Jesus is far weaker than that for the
historicity of the appearances of Mrs. Butler. And yet, although
we find the latter dubious and perhaps dismiss the account of it
as “a mere ghost story,” we—or anyway millions of Christians—
accept on the contrary as literally true the traditional account of
the appearances of Jesus.

The explanation of this irresponsibility is, of course, to be
found in the great differences between the personalities concerned
and between the historical setting and emotional import of the
lives and deaths of the two. For the personality, the life, and the
death of Mrs. Butler were commonplace and attracted no wide
attention. The only thing that did so in her case was the series of
her apparitions after death. On the contrary, the personality and
the life and the death of Jesus were heroic and spectacular; and
this, together with the inspiring nature of his message, gives great
emotional interest to everything connected with him. This in¬
terest, the hunger to believe it begets, the implanting of the tradi¬
tional stories in childhood, and the fact that it is easy to accept
but hard to doubt what is believed and valued by everybody in
one’s environment—these are the psychological causes which ac¬
count for the fact that most Christians to-day find it easy and
natural to believe in the “resurrection,” i.e., in the reappearance
of Jesus after death, even when the weakness of the evidence for
it is pointed out to them; but on the contrary find the reappear¬
ance of Mrs. Butler after her death difficult to believe even when
the much greater strength of the evidence for it is brought to their
attention.

4. The moral arguments for the reality of a future life.
From the contention that the resurrection of Jesus assures man
of life beyond death, we now turn to the so-called moral argu¬
ments also appealed to in support of the belief in personal survival.

The premise of these arguments is the goodness, justice, and
might ascribed to God. Summarily put, the reasoning is that “if
God is good and God is sufficiently powerful, how can such a
God allow the values (potential or actual) bound up with in¬
dividuals to become forever lost?.The world would be

irrational if, after having brought into being human beings who

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

aspire against so many almost overwhelming odds to achieve
higher values, it should dash them into nothingness.” 7

Again, divine justice assures a future life to man, for, without
one, the innumerable injustices of the present life would never
be redressed. The wicked whose wickedness went unpunished on
earth r perhaps even prospered them would at death be escaping
punishment altogether; and the virtuous who made sacrifices in
obedience to duty or out of regard for the welfare of others would
at death be going finally unrewarded. If moral persons were
not eventually to gain happiness, then morality, in the many cases
where it brings no recompense on earth, would be just stupidity.

Such, in substance, are the moral arguments. Do they prove,
or at least make probable, that there is for man a life after death?

Let us examine first the contention that it would be irra¬
tional to behave morally at present cost to oneself if such behavior
is not eventually rewarded by happiness.

So to contend is tacitly to equate rationality in moral deci¬
sions with fostering of one’s own distant welfare. The truth is,
however, that to behave rationally is simply to behave in ways
which one believes best promote attainment of one’s ends, such as
these may be. And the fact is that men do have not only egoistic
but also altruistic ends: most men do genuinely care, in varying
degrees, about the welfare of other human beings, or of certain
ones among these, as well as about their own personal welfare.
Hence, behavior designed to promote the welfare of another per¬
son whose welfare one happens to desire—and perhaps to desire
more than one's own—is quite as rational as behavior intended and
shaped to promote one’s personal welfare. Thus, if a man’s be¬
havior towards others is motivated on the one hand by belief
that the particular forms of behavior termed moral make for the
welfare of such of his fellow beings as are affected by them, and
on the other by the fact that he does desire their welfare enough
to subordinate his own to theirs, then his behaving in the ways
termed moral is perfectly rational. Indeed, so behaving is the
essence of genuine love; that is, of love that prompts to action
for the beloved’s welfare; as distinguished from love merely senti-

’Vergilius Fenn: First Chapters in Religious Philosophy, Round Table Press,
N.Y. 19S7, p. 279.

RELIGION AND THE BELIEF

mental which sees the loved one essentially as object that arouses
beautiful love-feeling and which therefore uses the beloved as
emotional candy, crippling him in the process if need be.

Moral behavior, on the other hand, is irrational or rather
non-rational, when it consists only of uncomprehending, machine¬
like obedience to whatever code of behavior happens to have been
psychologically planted in the mind during childhood years.

The bearing of these remarks on the contention that morality
unrewarded on earth is irrational if not rewarded after death is
that true morality is rooted in intelligent love and, for the person
whose morality it is, constitutes self-expression and is self-reward¬
ing. Being not investment but generous gift, it takes no thought
of dividends whether on earth or in a future life.

As regards now the contention that if God is good and is
sufficiently powerful, he cannot allow the actual and potential
values bound up with individuals to become forever lost, its ob¬
vious weakness is that its premise is altogether “iffy*': if there is
a God, if he is good, if he is powerful enough to preserve the soul
when the body dies, if the world is rational, if justice ultimately
obtains, then there is for man a life after death! It may be that
these “ifs” are true, but so long as they have not been proved
true, neither has the reality of the future life, which their being
true would entail, been proved.

And the fact is that their truth has never yet been proved nor
even shown to be more probable than not. All the would-be
proofs of the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and per¬
fectly good creator of the world, which theologians and theologiz¬
ing philosophers have elaborated in the course of the centuries
have, on critical examination, turned out to be only ingenious
pieces of wishful reasoning. Indeed, if a God of that description
existed and had created the world, there could be no evil in it;
for the endless sophistries which have been packed into the notion
of “free will” for the purpose of eluding this ineludible conclu
sion have patently failed to do so. Hence, if the world was ever
created, and if it was created by a God, then that God was finite
whether in power or in goodness or in knowledge, or in two or in
all of these respects. Even such a God, however, could be a power¬
ful, wise and good friend, and as such well worth having.

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

In any case, that annihilation of the personality at death
would be an evil-and hence that God would prevent it if he
could—is far from evident. For there is ultimately no such thing
as evil that nobody experiences; hence, if the individual is totally
annihilated at death, the non-fulfilment of his desire for a post
mo 'em life is not an evil experienced by him since, ex hypothesi,
he tlh n no longer exists and therefore does not experience dis¬
appointment or anything else. But, if God does not desire that
man's desire for a life after death be fulfilled, and knows that it
will not be, the non-fulfilment of man’s desire for it is not a dis¬
appointment to God either, and is therefore not an evil at all. On
the other hand, what is an evil—and this irrespective of whether
there is or is not a life after death—is the distress experienced by
the living due to doubt by them that they will, or that their de¬
ceased loved ones do, survive after death.

The remarks in this chapter concerning the nature and func¬
tions of religion, the alleged proofs of the existence of a God of
the traditional kind, the nature of evil, and the implications of the
fact that there is a vast amount of evil on earth, have perforce
been much too brief to deal adequately with questions so heavily
loaded with biassing emotion. 8 If those remarks are sound, how¬
ever, they entail that neither religion nor theology' really provides
any evidence that there is for man a life after death.

But even if there is not, believing that there is does affect
the believer’s feelings, attitudes, and conduct; and to affect these
in the valuable ways described earlier is the function of religion,
which it has performed with varying degrees of success. The func¬
tion, on the other hand, of the arguments on which theology
bases its affirmative answer to the question as to a life after death,
is to make the idea that there is such a life psychologically be¬
lievable by the vast numbers of human beings who, for obvious
reasons, turn to religion rather than to science or to philosophy
for an answer to that momentous question.

•Readers who might wish to see what more elaborate defense of them the
writer would give are referred to what he has written on the subject elsewhere. In
particular, to Chapts. 8, 15, 16, and 17, respectively on What Religion is, Gods,
The Problem of Evil, and Life after Death, of the author’s A Philosophical
Scrutiny of Religion, Ronald Press, New York, 1953.

RELIGION AND THE BELIEF

That these arguments achieve this but nothing more, i.e.,
convince many of the persons to whom they are addressed not¬
withstanding that they really prove nothing, does not mean that
those who propound them are not sincere It means only that,
except in the case of outstandingly rational persons, becoming
convinced and convincing others is, as pointed out earlier, mostly
a matter of rhetoric, of suggestion, of appeal to prejudices or to
fears or hopes; whereas proving or establishing probabilities is a
matter of logic or of empirical evidence.

Chapter 111

THE CASE AGAINST THE POSSIBILITY
OF A LIFE AFTER DEATH

In Chapt. I we were occupied mainly with the variety of
psychological factors which cause people to believe, or as the case
may be to disbelieve, that there is or can be a life after death for
the individual. As pointed out in Sec. 6 of that chapter and again
at the end of Chapt. II, some considerations may induce belief,
or disbelief, and yet constitute no evidence or insufficient evidence
that what is believed is true or what is disbelieved false; for to
convince is one thing, and to prove is another.

In the present chapter, on the other hand, what we shall con¬
sider are the grounds, empirical and theoretical, on which is based
the now widespread belief that the Natural Sciences have by this
time definitely proved that any life after death is an impossibility.
As Professor J. B. Rhine notes in a recent article, “the continued
advance of biology and psychology during the last half-century
has.... made the spirit [survival] hypothesis appear increasingly
more improbable to the scholarly mind. The mechanistic (or
physicalistic) view of man has become the mental habit of the
student of science; and with the wide popular influence of science,
the effect on educated men is well-nigh universal.” 1

What then are, in some detail, the grounds on which the
scholarly mind is maintaining that survival is impossible or at best
improbable?

1. Empirical facts that appear to rule out the possibility of
survival. There are a number of facts—some of common observa¬
tion and others brought to light by the Natural Sciences—which,
it has been contended, definitely show both that the existence of

Research on Spirit Survival Reexamined Journal of Parapsychology, Vol. 20:
124, No. 2. June 1956.

THE CASE AGAINST THE POSSIBILITY

consciousness is wholly dependent on that of a living organism,
and—some of them—that the particular nature of the consciousness
at given times likewise wholly depends on the particular state of
the organism at those times.

a) For one, it is pointed out that nowhere except in living
organisms are evidences of consciousness found.

b) Again, as observation passes from the lower to the higher
animal organisms, the fact becomes evident that the more elab¬
orately organized the body and especially the nervous system is,
the greater, more subtle and more capable of fine discriminations
is the consciousness associated with it.

c) Again, everyone knows that when the body dies, the fa¬
miliar evidences of the consciousness it had possessed cease to
occur; and that, even when the body is still living, a severe blow
on the head or other injuries will, temporarily, have the same
result.

d) The dependence of consciousness on the brain, moreover,
is not only thus wholesale but obtains in some detail. Lesion,
whether by external or by internal causes, of certain regions of
the cortex of the brain eliminates or impairs particular mental
capacities—for example, the capacity to understand written words;
or as the case may be, spoken words; or the capacity to speak, or it
may be to write, notwithstanding that the capacity to produce
sounds or to move the hand and fingers is unimpaired.

Similarly, the capacity for the various kinds of sensations—
visual, auditory, tactual, etc.—is connected in the case of each with
a different region of the brain; and the capacity for voluntary
motion of different parts of the body is dependent on different
parts of the brain cortex, situated along the fissure of Rolando.
The parts of the brain which govern these various sensory and
motor capacities vary somewhat from person to person; and, in a
given person, a capacity destroyed by lesion of the cortical center
for it often returns gradually as, presumably, a different part of
the cortex takes on the lost function. But the fact that the mental
powers are dependent on the functioning of the brain remains 2

•Concerning the general plan of the nervous system, and the dependence of
various mental capacities on particular regions of the brain, see for example pp.
24-35, and the diagrams there, in Warren Sc Carmichael’s Elements of Human Psy¬
chology, Houghton Mifflin & Co. Boston, 1930.

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

e) The dependence is further demonstrated when certain re¬
gions of the brain are radically disconnected from the rest, as by
the operation called prefrontal lobotomy; for marked changes in
the personality then result.

f) Again, changes in the chemical composition of the body
♦luids affect the states of consciousness. The psychological effects
of alcohol and of caffein are familiar to everybody. Various drugs
—mescalin, lysergic acid diethylamide, sodium amytal, sodium
pentothal, heroin, opium, benzedrin, etc.—affect in diverse remark¬
able ways the contents of consciousness, the impulses, dispositions,
and attitudes. Consciousness is affected also by the quantity of
oxygen, and of carbon dioxide, in the blood. And the retardation
in bodily and mental development known as cretinism can be
remedied by administration of thyroid extract.

g) To the same general effect is the fact that, by stimulating
in appropriate ways the body’s sense organs, corresponding states
of consciousness, to wit, the several kinds of sensations, can be
caused at will in a person; and, conversely, the capacity for them
can be done away with by destroying the respective sense organs
or cutting the sensory nerves.

h) Again, the typical differences between the male and the
female personality are related to the differences between the sex
functions of the body of man and those of the body of woman.

i) The facts of heredity show that the particular personality
an individual develops depends in part on the aptitudes his body
inherits from the germ plasm of his progenitors. And observation
shows that the rest depends on the environmental conditions to
which he is subjected from the time of birth onward. How im¬
portant in particular these are during childhood is strikingly
shown by such cases as that of the two “wolf children” of India,
the older case of the “wild boy of Aveyron,” and a few others
where young children had somehow managed to maintain life
and to grow up among animals without human contacts until
later discovered and studied. They had developed various animal
skills, and virtually lost the capacity to acquire the skills, e.g., for
speech, which a child automatically picks up at a certain age when
situated in a human environment. 3

'The Wild Boy of Aveyron, by J-M-G Itard, The Century Co. London 19S2

THE CASE AGAINST THE POSSIBILITY

2. Theoretical considerations that appear to preclude sur¬
vival. That continued existence of consciousness after death is
impossible has been argued also on the basis of theoretical con¬
siderations.

j) It has been contended, for instance, that what we call
states of consciousness—ideas, sensations, volitions, feelings, and
so on—are in fact nothing but the minute chemical or physical
events themselves, which take place in the tissues of the brain;
for example, the chemical change we call a nerve current, which
propagates itself from one end of a nerve fiber to the other, and
then on to the dendrites of another fiber; the electrical phe
nomena, externally detectable by electroencephalography, which
accompany nerve currents; the alterations which, at the synapse
of two neurons, facilitate or inhibit the propagation of a nerve
current from one to the other; and so on.

k) That these various brain processes must be the very
processes themselves, which we ordinarily call mental, follows,
it has been contended, from the fact that the alternative supposi¬
tion—namely, that ideas, volitions, sensations, emotions, and other
“mental” states are not physical events at all—would entail the
absurdity that non-physical events can cause, and be caused by,
physical events. For, it is asked, how could a non-physical volition
or idea push or pull the physical molecules in the brain? Or, con
versely, how could a motion of molecules in the brain cause a
visual or auditory or other kind of sensation if sensations were
not themselves physical events?

l) The possibility of it, one is told, is anyway ruled out
a priori by the principle of the conservation of energy; for causa¬
tion of a material event in the brain by a mental, i.e., by an im¬
material event, would mean that some additional quantity of en¬
ergy suddenly pops into the physical world out of nowhere: and
causation of a mental event by a physical nerve current would
mean dissipation of some quantity of energy out of the physical
world.

(tr. from the 1894 French edition.) Wolf Children of India, by P. C. Squires. Am. J
of Psychol., 1927, No. 38, p. 313. Wolf-Children and Feral Man, by J A. L. Singh
and R. M. Zinng, Harper & Bros. New York 1942. Wolf Child and Human Child,
by A. Gesell, Harper & Bros. New York 1941.

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

The conclusion is therefore drawn that the events we call
“mental” cannot be either effects or causes of the molecular
processes in the nerve cells of the brain, but must be those very
processes themselves. And then, necessarily, cessation of these
processes is cessation of consciousness.

m) Another conception of consciousness, which is more often
met with today than the chemico-physical one just described, but
which also implies that consciousness cannot possibly survive after
bodily death, is that “consciousness” is the name by which we
designate merely certain types of behavior—those, namely, which
differentiate the animals from all other things in nature. Accord¬
ing to this view, for example, an animal’s consciousness of a differ¬
ence between two objects consists in the difference of its be¬
havior towards each. More explicitly, this means that the dif¬
ference of behavior is what consciousness of difference between
the two objects is; not , as commonly assumed, that the dif¬
ference of behavior is only the behavioral sign that, in the ani¬
mal, something not publicly observable and not physical—called
“consciousness that the two objects are different”—is occurring.

Or again, consciousness of the typically human kind called
‘ thought,” is identified with the typically human sort of behavior
called “speech;” and this, again not in the sense that speech ex¬
presses or manifests something different from itself, called
“thought,” but in the sense that speech—whether uttered or only
whispered—/* thought itself. And obviously if thought, or any
mental activity, is thus but some mode of behavior of the living
body, the mind or consciousness cannot possibly survive the body’s
death.

n) In support of the monistic conception of man which the
foregoing facts and reflections point to as against the dualistic
conception of material body-immaterial mind, the methodolog¬
ical principle known as the Law of Parsimony has also been in¬
voked. This is done, for example, in the third chapter of a book,
The Illusion of Immortality, which is probably the best recent
statement in extenso of the case against the possibility of any life
after death. 4 Dr. Lamont there states that the law of parsimony

‘Corliss Lamont: The Illusion of Immortality, Philosophical Library, New York,
1950, Ch. Ill The Verdict of Science, pp. 114-16. Dr. Lamont states, erroneously,

THE CASE AGAINST THE POSSIBILITY

“makes the dualist theory appear distinctly superfluous. It rules
out dualism by making it unnecessary. In conjunction with the
monistic alternative it pushes the separate and independent super¬
natural soul into the limbo of unneeded and unwanted hypotheses

.the complexity of the cerebral cortex, together with the

intricate structure of the rest of the nervous system and the mech¬
anism of speech, makes any explanation of thought and conscious¬
ness in other than naturalistic terms wholly unnecessary. If some
kind of supernatural soul or spirit is doing our thinking for us,
then why did there evolve through numberless aeons an organ
so well adapted for this purpose as the human brain?” (pp.
114-18)

3. The contention that no plausible form of post mortem
life is imaginable. Another consideration still has been brought
up, notably by Lamont in the book cited, as standing in the way
of the possibility of a life after death. It is:

o) the difficulty of imagining at all plausibly what form a
life could take that were discarnate and yet were not only per
sonal but of the same person as the ante mortem one. For to sup¬
pose that a given personality survives is to suppose not simply
persistence of consciousness, but persistence also of the individual’s
character, acquired knowledge, cultural skills and interests, habits,
memories, and awareness of personal identity. Indeed, persistence
merely of these would hardly constitute persistence of life ; for,
in the case of man anyway, to live is to go on meeting new situa¬
tions and, by exerting oneself to deal with them, to enlarge one’s
experience, acquire new insights, develop one’s latent capacities,
and accomplish objectively significant tasks. But it is hard to

that the law of parsimony “was first formulated in the fourteenth century by

.William of Occam, in the words: 'Entities (of explanation) are not to

be multiplied beyond need.' ” The fact, however, appears to be that the form
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem , to which Sir Wm. Hamilton in
1852 gave the name “Occam's razor," originated with John Ponce of Cork in 1639;
and that the law of parsimony was formulated, prior to Occam, by his teacher Duns
Scotus and some other mediaeval philosophers, in various forms; notably, frustra
fit per plura quod fieri potest per pauciora, i.e., the more is in vain when the less
will serve (to account for the facts to be explained.) See W. M. Thorbura, The
Myth of Occam’s Razor. Mind , XXVII (1927) pp. 345 ff.

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

imagine all this possible without a body and an environment for
it, upon which to act and from which to receive impressions. On
the other hand, if a body and an environment were supposed,
but of some “etheric” or '‘spiritual” kind, i.e., of a kind radically
different from bodies of flesh and their material environment, then
it is paradoxical to suppose that, under such drastically different
conditions, a personality could remain the same as before to an
extent at all comparable to that of the sameness we now retain
from day to day or even from year to year.

To take a crude but telling analogy, it is past belief that, if
the body of any one of us were suddenly changed into that of a
shark or an octopus and placed in the ocean, his personality
could, for more than a very short time if at all, recognizably sur¬
vive so radical a change of environment, of bodily form, of bodily
needs, and of bodily capacities.

The considerations set forth in this chapter constitute the
essentials of the basis for the contention that persistence of the
individual’s consciousness or personality after the death of his
body is impossible. Such persistence, Lamont argues, is ruled out
by the kind of relation between body and mind testified to by
those considerations. The connection between mind and body is,
he writes, “so exceedingly intimate that it becomes inconceivable

how one could function properly without the other.man

is a unified whole of mind-body or personality-body so closely
and completely integrated that dividing him up into two separate
and more or less independent parts becomes impermissible and
unintelligible .” 5

It should be noted, however, that both in the allegation that
the considerations reviewed establish the impossibility of survival,
and in the contention that those considerations on the contrary
fail to establish this, certain key concepts are employed. Among
the chief of these are “material,” “mental,” “body,” “mind,” “con¬
sciousness,” “life,” and a number of subsidiary others. Usually, in
controversies regarding survival, little or no attempt is made to
specify exactly the meaning those terms are taken to have, for all
of them belong to the vocabulary of ordinary language and it is

g The Illusion of Immortality. Philosophical Library, New York 1950, pp. 89-

113 .

THE CASE AGAINST THE POSSIBILITY

therefore natural to assume that they are well-understood. And so
indeed they are—in the ingenuous manner, habit-begotten and
unanalytical, that is adequate for ordinary conversational and
literary purposes. But such understanding of them is far from pre¬
cise enough to permit clear discernment of the issues in so special
and elusive a question as that of the possibility or reality of a
life after death for the individual.

The fact is that, so long as our understanding of those terms
remains thus relatively vague, we do not even know just what it
is we want to know when we ask that seemingly plain question—
nor, a fortiori, do wc then know what evidence, if we had it. would
conclusively decide the question or at least establish a definite
probability on one side or the other. Hence, if our eventual in
quiry into the merits of the case outlined in this chapter against
the possibility of survival is to have any prospect of reaching con¬
clusions worthier of the name of knowledge than have been the
findings of earlier inquirers, then we must first of all undertake
an analysis of the pivotal concepts mentioned above. That anal¬
ysis, moreover, must be not only precise enough to define sharply
the issues to which those concepts are relevent, but must also be
responsible in the sense of empirical, not arbitrarily prescriptive.

This is the task to which we shall address ourselves in Part II.

PART II

The Key Concepts

Chapter IV

WHAT IS “MATERIAL”; AND WHAT
IS “LIVING”

Until the last years of the nineteenth century, physicists be¬
lieved that the rocks, metals, water, wood, and all the other sub¬
stances about us are ultimately composed of atoms of one or more
of some seventy-eight kinds—those atoms, as the very word signi¬
fies, being indivisible, i.e., not themselves composed of more mi¬
nute parts.

Since then, however, the progress of physics has revealed the
sub atomic electrons, protons, neutrons, positrons, mesons, etc.
The sub atomic “particles” are at distances from one another that
are vast relatively to their own size, so that a material object, such
as a table, turns out to consist mostly of space empty of anything
more substantial than electric charges or electromagnetic fields.

This state of affairs is what is meant by the statement occa¬
sionally heard that modern physics has “dematerialized” matter—
from which it is sometimes concluded that the traditionally sharp
distinction between matter and mind, or material and mental,
has been invalidated or at least undermined.

Yet, if in the dark one walks into a table, one does not pass
through it but gets a bruise. Whatever may be the recondite sub¬
atomic constitution of the table and of other “solid” objects, they
do anyway have the capacity to resist penetration by other such
objects. Physics has not dematerialized matter in the sense of
having shown that wood, water, air, living bodies, and other
familiar substances do not really have the properties we perceive
them to have. What physics has shown is that their familiar prop¬
erties are very different indeed from those of their sub atomic
constituents.

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

1. Two questions to be distinguished. The allegation that
physics has now shown that the things we call material are not
really material rests only on a failure to distinguish between two
quite different questions.

One of them is about the nature of the ultimate constituents
of all material things and about the laws governing the relations
of those constituents to one another. This is the question to which
theoretical physics addresses itself. The task of answering it is
long, highly technical, and still unfinished. And the answers, so
far as they have yet been obtained, have no obvious bearing on the
problem of the possibility or reality of a life after death.

The other question is on the contrary easy to answer; and
the answer, as we shall eventually see, has bearing on the validity
or invalidity of some of the considerations alleged to rule out
survival. The only thing difficult about the second question is
to realize that we already know perfectly well the answer to it,
and that our failure to notice this is due only to the fact that we
do not clearly distinguish the second question from the first.

For purposes of contrast, the first may be phrased: What do
physicists find when they search for the ultimate constituents of
the things we call “material?” On the other hand, the second
hut of course methodologically prior question is: Which things
are the ones called “material?”

2. Which things are “material?” The answer to the second
of these two questions obviously is that the things called “ma¬
terial” are the rocks, air, water, plants, animal bodies, and so on,
about us; that is, comprehensively, the substances, processes,
events, relations, characteristics, etc., that are perceptually public
or can be made so.

No doubt is possible that, originally and fundamentally, these
things are the ones denominated “material” or “physical;” i.e.,
that they are the ones denoted—pointed at— by these names.
Moreover, unless the physicist already knew, thus as a matter of
linguistic usage, that those things are the ones we refer to when
we speak of “material” things, he would not even know which
things are the ones whose ultimate constituents we are asking
him to investigate and to reveal to us.

WHAT IS “MATERIAL/' AND “LIVING'

The point, then, which is here crucial is that the objects,
events, etc., that are perceptually public are called “material” or
“physical” not because technical research had detected as hidden
in all of them some recondite peculiarity that constituted their
materiality, but simply because some name was needed—and the
name, “material,” was adopted—by which to refer comprehen¬
sively to all perceptually public things.

The case with regard to these things and to our calling them
“material” is thus parallel in all essentials to that of a given boy
called George. He is not so called because scrutiny of him after
birth disclosed to his parents presence in him of a peculiar char¬
acteristic, to wit, Georgeness. Rather, “George” is simply the
name or tag assigned to him by his parents in order to be able to
refer to him without actually pointing at him. Similarly, “ma¬
terial” or “physical” is simply the name or tag assigned by custom
to the part of the world that is perceptually public or is capable
of being made so.

Hence the question as to what recondite peculiarities are pos¬
sessed by material things is intelligible at all and is capable at all
of being empirically investigated, only after one knows which
things are the ones to be examined in order to answer it; that is,
knows which things are the ones named “material”—just as one
can discover the recondite peculiarities of George only after one
knows which hoy is the one named George.

3. “Material,” derivatively vs. fundamentally. Something,
however, must now be added to the statement made above that,
originally and fundamentally, what the expressions “the material
world” or “the physical world” denote is the things, events, proc¬
esses, characteristics, etc., that are or can be made perceptually
public.

The addition called for is that, secondly and derivatively,
those expressions denote also the minute or otherwise unper -
ceivable constituents of whatever is or can be made perceptually
public. The existence and the characteristics of these recondite
constituents are discovered, not of course by perceptual observa¬
tion of them since they are not perceptible; but by theoretical in¬
ference from certain perceived occurrences which turn out to be

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

inexplicable and unpredictable except on the supposition that
they are effects of certain processes among unperceivable constit¬
uents of the perceived things—constituents, namely, having the
very properties in terms of which we define the nature of the
“atoms,'’ “electrons,” etc., which we postulate exist. The reality
of these is then confirmed empirically in so far as the postu¬
lating of them turns out to enable us to predict and sometimes
to control occurrences that are capable of being perceived but
that until then had remained unobserved or unexplained.

The title, then, of those recondite theoretical entities and
events to be called “material” or “physical” is not, like that of
trees, stones, water, etc., that they are perceptually public since
they are not so; but that they are existentially implicit in the
things that are perceptually public.

4. What is “living.” In an article circulated to newspapers
by the Associated Press early in December 1957, Dr. Selman Waks-
man, Nobel prize winner in biology, rightly points out that the
question whether life after death is possible cannot be answered
until its meaning has first been made clear. He then proceeds to
define the meaning he attaches to “life” and to “death” by listing
certain observable and measurable functions—growth, metabolism,
respiration, reproduction, adaptation to environment, and intelli¬
gence—as being those which, together, differentiate living from
non-living material and constitute the “life” of the former; and
by defining “death” as termination of those functions.

After some technical biological elaboration, he comes to the
conclusion that “any belief in life after death is in disagreement
with all the accumulated wisdom and knowledge of modem bi¬
ology”—a conclusion, however, which, notwithstanding its im¬
pressive allusion to biological science, then reduces to the mere
truism that when the functions constituting life terminate they
do not persist!

But, as we stated briefly at the beginning of Chapt. I, there
are two senses in which a man may be said to “live.” One is the
biological sense, defined as by Dr. Waksman in terms of certain
public, measurable processes. The other is the psychological sense.
It is defined in terms of occurrence of states of consciousness —

WHAT IS 'MATERIAL;" AND ‘‘LIVING’

occurrence of the sensations, images, feelings, emotions, attitudes,
thoughts, desires, etc., privately experienced directly by each of
us: that a man is “living” in the psychological sense means that
ones and others of these keep occurring. Moreover life, in this
psychological sense of the term, is what man essentially prizes and
is usually what he means when he speaks of a “life” after the
death and decay of the body.

A biologist would of course be likely to say that, anyway,
states of consciousness are effects of certain of the processes going
on in bodies that are biologically “living”; and hence that when
these die the stream of states of consciousness necessarily ter-
minates. But this does not logically follow from the known facts:
for although the biologist knows that some states of consciousness
are effects of bodily processes, he does not know but only piously
postulates that all of them without exception are so. Moreover,
he does not know that some at least of the states of consciousness
which certain bodily processes cause might not possibly be caus-
able also in some other way, and hence might not go on occur¬
ring after biological life terminates. In any case, the question as
to whether they then can or do go on is not answered by the
truism that when biological life terminates, it does not continue.

Dr. Waksman’s conclusion that biological life after biological
death is biologically impossible escapes vacuousness only if taken
to refer specifically to the idea that “life after death” means resur¬
rection of the flesh; that is, (a) reconstitution of the body after it
has died and its material has been dispersed by decay or by worms,
vultures, sharks, or cremation; and then, (b) resumption in the
reconstituted body of the processes of growth, metabolism, respira¬
tion, etc., which constitute biological “life.”

Such reconstitution and resumption is what indeed is “in
disagreement with all the accumulated wisdom and knowledge of
modem biology.”

The distinction between biological and psychological life
having now been made sharp, it is appropriate to notice that, in
the case of either, being alive is not a matter of wholly or not at
all. When the body is in coma, under anesthesia, in a faint, or in
deep sleep, the processes of “vegetative” life still go on, but such
bodily activities as eating, drinking, seeking food, hiding from or

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

fighting enemies, etc., which are typical of the body’s “animal”
life, are in abeyance, as well as the bodily activities distinctive of
“human” life-examples of which would be speaking, writing,
reading, constructing instruments and operating them, trading,
and the other “cultural” activities.

In the psychological life of human beings, various levels may
likewise be distinguished. The neonate’s psychological life com¬
prises only sensations, feelings, emotions, and blind impulses.
Memory, association of ideas, expectations, conscious purpose, do
not yet enter into it. Soon, however, some states of consciousness
come to function as signs —signs of events or facts other than them¬
selves. At later stages of individual development, psychological
life at a given time may consist only of uncontrolled dreaming,
whether by day or night. At other times psychological life is on
the contrary active—inventive, heuristic, critical, consciously pur¬
posive. And it is conceivable that, if there is any life in the psy¬
chological sense after biological death, such life may consist of
only certain ones of these various kinds of psychological processes.

Chapter V

WHAT IS “MENTAL”

From the things, events, etc., called “physical” or “material, ’
we now turn to those called “psychical” or “mental.” With regard
to these, the same two questions arise as did concerning the others.
Stated here in their right methodological order, they are: (1)
Which events, processes, etc., are the ones named “psychical” or
“mental?” and (2) What characteristic does empirical examine.ion
discover as peculiar to all of them?

1. Which occurrences are denominated “mental”. The an
swer to the first of those two questions is that, originally and
fundamentally, the events, processes, etc. denoted by the terms
“psychical” or “mental” are the inherently private ones each per¬
son can, in himself and only in himself, attend to in the direct
manner which— whether felicitously or not— is called Introspec¬
tion. “Mental” or “psychological” events are thus, fundamentally,
the immediate experiences, familiar at first hand to each of us,
of which the various species are called “thoughts,” “ideas,” “de¬
sires,” “emotions,” “cravings,” “moods,” “sensations,” “mental
images,” “volitions,” and so on; or comprehensively, “states or
modes of consciousness.”

What introspection discloses may to some extent be published
by the person concerned, but is never itself public. To publish
the fact that at a given time one’s state of consciousness is of a
certain kind consists in performing certain perceptually public
acts—vocal, graphic, gestural, facial, or other—that are such as to
cause the percipients of them to think of a state of consciousness
of that kind and to believe that the state of consciousness of the
performer of those acts is of that kind at the time. This is what,
for example, utterance of the words “I am anxious,” or “I wonder
where I parked my car,” or “I remember him,” etc. ordinarily

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

causes to occur in the person who hears them. But the utterer s
state of consciousness, which such words symbolized, is never
itself public in the sense in which the sound of those words, or
the written words, are public. That state of consciousness is in¬
herently private to the particular person, of whose history alone
it is an item-private in the sense that no other person can ex¬
amine it, whereas each person can examine his own states of
consciousness; can, for instance, compare directly the feeling he
calls “anxiety” with the feeling he calls “wonder,” etc.

2. Introspection, Inspection, Intuition. In the case of sen¬
sations, attention directly to them-vs. to what they may be signs
of or to what they may be caused by—is termed by some writers
Inspection rather than Introspection. Inspection in this technical
sense, then, no less than Introspection, is attention directly to
experiences that are inherently private; for, evidently, we cannot
attend to another person’s sensations themselves, but only to his
appearance or behavior. Such knowledge as we have concerning
his sensations results from our automatically interpreting certain
modes of his behavior as signs that, in given situations, he is ex¬
periencing sensations similar to, or as the case may be, different
from, those we are experiencing.

For example, we do not and cannot discover that another
person is, say, color-blind to red-green, by inspecting the sensa¬
tions he has when he looks at grass and at a poppy, and compar¬
ing them with the sensations we have when we look at the same
objects. We discover it by attending to his perceptually public
behavior on such occasions, by noticing that in certain ways it is
consistently different from our own on the same occasions, and
by taking this as signifying that his color-sensations correspond¬
ingly differ from ours.

For the direct kind of experience, whether attentive or in¬
attentive, which when attentive is called specifically Introspection,
or by some writers in the particular case of sensations, Inspection,
a generic name is needed; but no such generic name less cumber¬
some than “State of consciousness, as such” appears to exist in
ordinary language. I have therefore proposed for this elsewhere,
in default of a better, the name Intuition —defining Intuition as

WHAT IS "MENTAL”

occurrence of some state of consciousness, as such , i.e., as distin¬
guished from what it may be consciousness of, in the sense of
may signify.

Intuition, then, may be attentive (clear) or inattentive (dis¬
persed, dim;) and, in so far as attentive, it is then inspcctive, or
introspective, according as the state of consciousness attended to
is a sensation, or is other than a sensation.

3. “Content” vs. “object” of consciousness. The second of
the two questions mentioned at the outset, namely, what internal
character is peculiar to all the events, processes, etc. that are intui
tions as just defined, i.e., are “mental” or “psychical,” is more
technical than the first. Fortunately, it does not need to be gone
into at any length for present purposes. 1 shall therefore say
here, without attempting to argue the point, only that in the case
of the events, processes, etc. in view and only in their case, existing
consists solely in being experienced and being experienced con¬
stitutes the whole of existing. That is, in their case but only in
their case, esse est percipi. This is the peculiarity that differen¬
tiates them from all other things, events, or processes. The term
“Intuition” thus designates the experiencing of such an experi¬
ence—an intuition standing to the intuiting thereof in the same
kind of relation as, for example, a stroke being struck stands to
the striking thereof (not, to the object struck;) that is, :n both
cases equally, as the “connate” or “internal” accusative of the ac¬
tivity concerned, as distinguished from the “alien” or “objective”
accusative of it. Similarly, compare tasting a taste with tasting a
substance, tasting bitter taste with tasting quinine, thinking a
thought with thinking of New York, etc.

Introspection, then, and likewise “Inspection,” is intuition
attentive to its own modality of the moment, instead of, as nor¬
mally, inattentive to it. Its particular modality at any moment
I term the content of consciousness at the moment, as distin¬
guished from the object of consciousness at the moment. 1

In connection with the above account of states of conscious-

x The contentions and the terminological proposals sketched in this and the
preceding two sections are explicated and defended in detail in Chapts. 12, 13 ?nd
14 of my Nature, Mind, and Death Open Court Pub Co. La Salle, 111 1951 . See iu
particular pp. 230-40, 275-80, 293-5, 302.

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

ness, it will be appropriate to comment here briefly on the fact, of
which much is being made these days, that we all possess a vocab¬
ulary, understood by our fellows, for mental states or states of
consciousness. This, it is alleged, means that mental states can¬
not, as generally has been assumed and as asserted in the text
above, be occurrences unobservable by other persons than the
particular one in whom they occur, i.e., be inherently private.

Rather, it is contended, the denotation of the words which
denote mental states must have been learned by us in the same
manner as that of the words which denote physical objects and
events; namely, by our hearing them applied by other persons to
public occurrences which they and ourselves were witnessing—
these, however, being denominated specifically “mental” when
they consisted of modes of behavior of certain special kinds; e.g.,
anger-behavior, goal-seeking-behavior, listening-behavior, seeing-
behavior, etc.

A crucial fact, however, is overlooked by this would-be-in¬
clusive behavioristic account of the manner in which men have
acquired a shared vocabulary for mental states notwithstanding
the latter’s inherent privacy. That crucial fact is that when the
behavior, witnessed by another person, which moves him to em¬
ploy one or another of the “mental” words in characterizing it,
is our own behavior—e.g., when he says to us: “Now, don’t be so
angry" or “Don’t you see that bird?” or “What were you dream¬
ing just before I woke you?” or “You are wondering at my ap¬
pearance today,” etc.—then the words italicized do not denote
for us our behavior , which the other person is attending to but
we are not. Instead and automatically, they denote for us in each
case the mental state itself which we are subjectively experiencing
—feeling, intuiting, immediately apprehending—and which, ir¬
respective of how in particular it may be connected with our be¬
havior at the moment, is anyway not that behavior itself but
something radically different and inherently private. In English,
“anger-behavior” denotes one thing, which is public; and “anger”
denotes another thing, which is publishable but never itself
public. It is only in Behaviorese—the doctrinaire language of
the creed of radical behaviorism—that “anger” denotes anger-
behavior.

WHAT IS “MENTAL"

A recent widely discussed work, Gilbert Ryle's The Con
cept. of Mind y appears largely based on its author’s overlooking
the crucial fact just mentioned. And one contention in it of
which much has been made, to wit, that there are no acts of
will or volitions, is based merely on failure to notice that although
many voluntary acts indeed are not caused by any act of will,
nevertheless certain other acts that are voluntary acts are in ad¬
dition willed acts, i.e., are initiated by deliberate volitions.

4. “Mental,” derivatively vs. fundamentally. There now
remains to point out that, just as the expression “the material
world” denotes not alone whatever events, processes, thing* etc.
are or can be made perceptually public, but also, derivatively,
the imperceptible constituents of them; so likewise the events,
processes, etc. denominated “psychical” or “mental” include not
only those, such as mentioned above, that are introspectively
or “inspectively” scrutinizable, but also, derivatively , ceitain
others which are not accessible to “inspection” or introspection
and are therefore termed “subconscious” or “unconscious” instead
of “conscious.”

These would comprise such items as the repressed wishes or
impulses, the forgotten emotional experiences, the complexes,
censors, etc. which psychoanalysts find themselves led to postulate
as hidden constituents or activities of the human mind, in order
to account for some otherwise inexplicable psychological pecu¬
liarities of some persons.

Such hidden constituents can sometimes be brought to con¬
sciousness under the direction of the psychoanalyst; but the ex¬
ploration of these normally unintrospectable psychological factors
is still in its infancy as compared with the exploration of the
atomic and sub-atomic levels of materiality. The mere fact, how¬
ever, now definitely known, that there are such things as uncon¬
scious, i.e., at the time unintrospectable, psychological processes,
is, when taken together with even the limited knowledge of
them so far obtained, of vast importance for assessment of the
significance of certain of the phenomena alleged to constitute
empirical evidence of survival of the personality after death

Moreover, although the terms “the unconscious,” ‘the sub-

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

conscious/’ are commonly employed in connection with the fac¬
tors brought to light in therapeutic psychoanalysis, nevertheless
factors of the same kinds undoubtedly operate, but ordinarily in
a non-pathological manner, in all of us.

Unconscious also, of course, are various assumptions under
which a particular person happens to proceed, but which he does
not realize he makes because he has never formulated them and
nothing in his experience has happened that would have chal¬
lenged their validity and thus made him conscious of them. Un¬
conscious also at a given time are all those of his memories which
he is not then remembering, and all those of his capacities or
dispositions which he is not then exercising.

Chapter VI

WHAT IS “A MIND"

In a book cited earlier, Dr. Lamont defines mind as “the
power of abstract reasoning,” referring to the exercise of it as ‘ the
experience of thinking or having ideas,” and stating that ideas
“are non-material meanings expressing the relations between
things and events.” 1

But although the power of abstract reasoning mav wtil be
what differentiates human minds from the minds of animals, and
developed human minds from the minds of human infants, yet
human minds comprise, besides the power of abstract reasoning,
various others, wholly or partly independent ul it. This power
could at most be claimed to constitute the intellectual pait of tl.
mind of man; for minds, human as well as animal have also af¬
fective and conative capacities, the existence of which Lamont ai
knowledges but does not include in his definition of mind. His
definition is therefore arbitrary and unrealistic.

1. The traits in terms of which one describes particular
minds. When we are asked to state the characteristics in which
a given person’s mind differs from that of another, what we say
is, for example, that he is patient whereas the other is irritable;
intelligent, and the other stupid; widely informed, and the other
ignorant; self-disciplined, and the other self-indulgent; and we
add whatever else we happen to know about his particular tastes,
opinions, habits, intellectual skills, attitudes, knowledge, personal
memories, character, ideals, ambitions, and so on.

It is in terms of such traits that we spontaneously describe
the particular nature of a particular mind. Correspondingly, the
generic nature of the human mind would be described in terms

l The Illusion of Immortality, pp. 70, 100, 101

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFT ER DEATH

of traits shared by all normal human minds. Examples of such
generic traits would be the capacity to experience sensations—
dizziness, thirst, warmth, pain, color, tone, etc.; the capacity to
form mental images—visual, auditory, or other—as in dreams, in
day-dreams, in memories, and in voluntary imagination; the ca¬
pacity to experience emotions, moods, cravings, and impulses; the
capacity to imagine and desire experiences or situations not at
the moment occurring; and so on.

2. What is a power, capacity, or disposition. Lamont’s defi¬
nition of mind, however, although inadequate for the reason
stated, is sound to the extent that it conceives minds in terms of
“powers.”

The term “power” is nowadays out of favor, as is its virtual
synonym, “faculty,” the utility of which was destroyed by misuse
of it as answer to the question “Why?” The classical horrible
example of such misuse is the vis dormitiva offered as answer to
the question why opium puts people to sleep.

But a power, or faculty, or capacity, or ability, or—to use
the term currently in fashion—a disposition, is not an event and
therefore never can itself be a cause. A power or disposition is a
more or less abiding causal connection between events of particu¬
lar kinds. 2

More specifically, that something T— whether T be a mate¬
rial thing or a mind—has a power, capacity, or disposition D
means that T is such that whenever the state of affairs external
or/and internal to T is of a particular kind S, then occurrence of
change of a particular kind C in that state of affairs causes occur¬
rence in it of a change of another particular kind E.

For example, solubility in water is a power, faculty, ability,
capacity, or disposition of sugar. This means, not that the sugar’s

■No need arises here to go into the question of the nature of causality itself.
I shall therefore say only that a causal connection between events of specified
kinds is a causal law, and that a causal law is a law of causation not in virtue of
its being a law (since some empirical laws are not laws of causation) but in virtue
of the fact that each of the particular sequences, of which the law is an inductive
generalization, was, in its own individual right, a causal sequence. For the analysis
of the nature of causality this assumes, interested readers are referred to Chs. 7, 8,
and 9 of the writer’s Nature, Mind, and Death, Open Court Pub. Co. La Salle.
Ill. 1951.

WHAT IS “A MIND'

solubility causes the sugar to dissolve when it is placed in water;
but that sugar is such that (i.e., behaves according to the law
that) whenever an event of the kind described as “placing the
sugar in water” occurs, then, in ordinary circumstances, that
event causes an event of a certain other kind, to wit, the kind de¬
scribed as ‘‘sugar’s dissolving in water.”

This illustration concerns a material thing—sugar. But the
mental traits of persons are capacities or dispositions in exactly
the same generic sense of these terms, defined above, as are the
material traits of sugar and of other material things.

For example, that a person possesses a memory oj certain per¬
sonal experiences, or of some impersonal fact such as that Socra
tes died in 399 B.C., does not consist simply of occurrences in
him, at some particular time, of mental images of those personal
experiences, or of word-images formulating that impersonal fact,
together with occurrence of what has been termed the feeling of
familiarity. Rather, it consists in that persons be ng such that
whenever a question or other “reminder” relating to those per¬
sonal experiences or to that impersonal fact presents itself to his
attention, then, provided that the circumstances in which he is at
the time be not abnormal, the advent of the “reminder” causes
those images, together with the feeling of familiarity, to arise
in him.

Again, that a person is, say, irritable, does not mean that he
is at the time experiencing the feeling called Irritation; but that
he is such that events of kinds which in most other persons would
not in ordinary circumstances cause the feeling of Irritation to
arise in them do, in similar circumstances, regularly cause it to
arise in him. And so on with the tastes, the skills, the gifts—in¬
tellectual, artistic, or other—the habits, etc., which a person pos¬
sesses. All of them analyze as capacities or dispositions, i.e., as
abiding causal connections in him between any event of some
particular kind and an event of some other particular kind, under
circumstances of some particular kind.

The term “dispositions”, however, although currently in
greater favor than “powers” or “capacities,” is really less felici
tous than these since it suffers from a certain ambiguity of which
they are free and which easily leads to serious misconceptions.

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

For, besides the sense of “disposition” in which the word is syn¬
onymous with "capacity” or with “power,” it has another sense,
in which “a disposition” and the verb “being disposed to . . .
designate an event, to wit, occurrence of an impulse or inclination
to act in some particular manner.

For example, that a given person is at the moment disposed
to forgive a certain injury that was done him means no more
than that, at the moment, an impulse or inclination to forgive
is present in him. This does not mean that he has, or is acquir¬
ing, “a forgiving disposition,” i.e., that similar situations regularly
cause, or henceforth will regularly cause, the impulse to forgive
to arise in him.

3. What a mind is. The distinction essential in connection
with the immediately preceding paragraph is between the nature
of a given mind, and the history of that mind.

The history consists of events. Occurrence of some impulse,
occurrence of awareness of some situation, acquisition or loss of
some habit or capacity, etc., are events; each of them results from
exercise of some capacity, and each is an item in the history of a
mind. On the other hand, an account of the nature of a given
mind is an account of the particular sort of mind it is at the time,
i.e., of the particular set of dispositions, capacities, powers, or
abilities which are what as a matter of course we list when called
upon to describe that particular mind. The events that constitute
a mind’s history doubtless are in large part responsible for that
mind’s having come to be the particular sort of mind it is now.
Rut rental of them is no part of an account of what it now is.

The capacities that together constitute the nature of a mind
are of three comprehensive kinds. These may be denominated
psycho-psychical, psycho-physical, and physico-psychical, according,
respectively, as the cause-event and the effect-event entering in
the description of a given capacity are, both of them, psychical
events; or, the cause-event psychical but the effect-event physical;
or the cause-event physical but the effect-event psychical.

In all three cases the state of affairs, in which the cause-event
and the effect-event are changes, is normally in part somatic and
more specifically cerebral; and in part psychical. Whether this
is the case not only normally, but also invariably and necessarily,

WHAT IS "A MIND"

is another question. Evidently, the possibility or impossibility of
survival after death depends in part on the answer to it.

However, if a mind continues to function after the death of
its body, its functioning would not then normally include exercise
either of its physico-psychical or of its psycho-physical capacities.
That is, such awareness, if any, as a discarnate mind had of phys¬
ical events would be paranormal and more specifically, “clairvoy¬
ant”, i.e., without the intermediary of the bodily sense organs; and
such action, if any, as a discarnate mind exerted on physical ob¬
jects would likewise be paranormal and more specifically “psycho-
kinetic,” i.e., without the intermediary of muscular apparatus

It should be noticed that the various dispositions or capacities
that enter into the nature of a mind constitute together a system
rather than simply an aggregate. For one thing, as Professor broad
has pointed out, some dispositions are of a higher order than
some others, in the sense that the former consist of capacities to
acquire the latter. 3 An aptitude, as distinguished from e.g., a skill,
is a capacity to acquire a capacity. Again, possession of ertain
capacities at a certain time is in some cases dependent on posses
sion of certain other capacities at that time.

A mind, then, is a set of capacities of the three generic kinds
mentioned, qua interrelated in the systematic manner which con¬
stitutes them a more or less thoroughly integrated personality,
and the mind, of which we say that it “has” those capacities, is not
something existentially independent of them, but “has” them in
the sense in which a week has days or an automobile has a motor.
That a mind exists during a certain period means that, during
that period, ones or others of the capacities, which together define
the particular sort of mind it is, function. That is, the existing
of a mind of a particular description is the series of actual occur¬
rences which, as causally related one to another, constitute exer
cisings of that mind’s capacities. A mind’s existing thus consists
not just of its having a particular nature, but of its having in ad¬
dition a history.

But further, just as a material object consists of various parts
interrelated in some particular manner, each of which is itself a

*Examination of McTaggart’s Philosophy, Vol. I: 264-278.

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

material object whose nature is analyzable into a set of capacities,
though to a greater or less extent ones different from those of the
whole; so likewise a mind has parts, normally connected with one
another in a certain manner, each of which, like the whole, anal¬
yzes into some particular complex of capacities, though capacities
to some extent different from those of the whole.

Moreover, in a mind as in a material object, some part of it
may on occasion become dissociated from the rest and perhaps
function independently, although then in a manner more or less
different from that in which it functioned while integrated with
and censored by the rest. As Professor H. H. Price has remarked
somewhere, the unity of a mind is not a matter of all or none, but
rather of more or less. Each of the parts of a mind is itself a mind,
or mindkin, of sorts.

The foregoing account of what a mind is has revealed that
a mind, and a physical substance such as sugar or a physical ob¬
ject such as a tree, ultimately analyze equally as complexes of
systematically interrelated capacities. Had not the word “sub¬
stance" so chequered a philosophical history, we could say that a
mind is as truly a psychical substance as any material object is a
physical substance. Let us, however, avoid the misunderstandings
this might lead to, and say that a mind, no less than a tree or
sugar, is a substantive —using this word as does W. E. Johnson for
the kind of entity to which the part of speech called a “noun”
corresponds. 4

Evidently, the preceding analysis of the nature of a mind in
terms of capacities or dispositions applies not only to the intellec¬
tual or cognitive powers sometimes specifically meant by the term
“Mind,” but also to the emotional, affective, and conative capaci¬
ties sometimes more particularly in view when the terms “soul”
or “spirit,” instead of “mind,” are used. In these pages, therefore,
the term “mind” will be used in the broad sense comprehensive of
“soul” and of “spirit,” as well as of “intellect.” That is, it will
include whatever constituents of the human personality are other
than material in the sense of this term defined in Chapt. V.

* Logic, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1921 Vol 1:9. For a more elaborate account of
the conception of what a mind is, outlined above, the interested reader is referred
to Ch 17 of the author’s already cited Nature, Mind, and Death.

PART III

The Relation Between Mind and Body

Chapter VII

WHAT WOULD ESTABLISH THE
POSSIBILITY OF SURVIVAL

The inquiry we undertook in Part II, as to what exactly the
pivotal terms “material,” “mental,” “mind,” and “life” denote,
was unavoidably somewhat lengthy and technical. It may there¬
fore be well to summarize its findings before we proceed, with
their aid, to an exposition of the case for the possibility of survival.

1. Summary of the findings of Part II. The first qiu ion
considered in Part II was: Which things—i.e., which objects,
characteristics, events, processes, relations, etc.,—are denominated
“material” or “physical.” The answer reached was that, funda¬
mentally, they are the things that are or can be made perceptually
public; and in addition, derivatively, the minute or otherwise un-
perceivable existential constituents of those.

The next question was: Which things are denominated
“alive” or “living.” The answer was that the marks by which
we distinguish them from the things called “dead,” or “inor¬
ganic,” are in general metabolism, growth, respiration, reproduc¬
tion, and adaptation to environment; and that, more particu¬
larly in the case of human bodies, the minimal marks of their
being “alive” not “dead” are breathing, heart beat, and mainte
nance of body temperature above a certain level.

The third question was: Which things—still taking this
word in the comprehensive sense—are denominated “mental” or
“psychical.” We found the answer to be that, fundamentally,
they are the ones capable of being introspectively observed; and in
addition, derivatively, whatever unintrospectable processes, event?,
etc., are existentially implicit in those that are introspectable

The fourth question was: What is “a mind.” Distinguishing

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

between the history of a mind, which consists of a series of events,
and the nature of a mind at a given time in its history, we found
that its nature analyzes as a set of systematically interconnected
“dispositions,” i.e., capacities, powers, abilities; and that each of
these consists in the more or less abiding sufficiency, or as the case
may be, insufficiency, of change of some particular kind C in a
state of affairs of a kind S, to cause change of another particular
kind E in S immediately thereafter. For example, that a person
is of a patient disposition means that kinds of occurrences that
would in similar situations be sufficient to cause most other per¬
sons to feel irritation are in his case insufficient to cause this.

The dispositions, which together constitute the nature of a
mind are, we further found, of three comprehensive kinds: psy¬
cho-psychical, physico-psychical, and psycho-physical, according as,
respectively, the cause-event and the effect-event are both psychi¬
cal, or the cause-event physical and the effect-event psychical, or
the cause-event psychical and the effect event physical.

Lastly, we noticed that existence of a mind having a given
nature consists, not in existence of something distinct from and
“having” the set of dispositions that define that mind’s nature,
but in the series of actual occurrences which constitute exercise
of ones or others of those dispositions; that is, constitute the his¬
torical individuation of a mind having that particular nature.

2. Theoretical possibility, empirical possibility, and factu-
ality. In Chapt III, we set forth the considerations that constitute
the basis—in common knowledge, in the knowledge possessed by
the Natural Sciences, and in certain theoretical reflections—for
the contention that survival of the individual’s consciousness after
the death of his body is impossible. The clarification of key con¬
cepts we achieved in Part II now puts us in position to judge
whether or how far the items of the case against the possibility of
survival are strong and cogent, or on the contrary weak or inept.

If and in so far as they turn out to have either of these de¬
fects, then and in so far they fail to establish the impossibility they
are alleged to establish, and they therefore leave open the possi¬
bility of a life after death. That is, the case for the possibility
(not automatically the reality) of survival consists of the case

POSSIBILITY OF SURVIVAL

against the adequacy of the grounds on which survival is asserted
to be impossible: That a life after death remains a theoretical
possibility would mean that the theoretical grounds alleged to
entail its impossibility are unsound; or, if sound in themselves,
nevertheless do not really but only seemingly entail it. And.. that
survival remains an empirical possibility would mean that sur¬
vival, notwithstanding possible appearances to the contrary, really
is compatible with all the facts and laws of Nature so far truly
ascertained by the sciences.

If critical examination of the merits of the case against the
possibility of survival reveals that, notwithstanding the negative
“verdict of science”, a life after death remains both a theoretical
and an empirical possibility, then certain questions will con
front us.

The first will be as to what prima facie positive empirical
evidence, if any, is available that survival is a fact. Next, we shall
have to ask whether such evidence for it as our inquiry may turn
up is really sufficient to establish survival or the probability of it.
And, if this itself should be dubious, then the methodologically
prior question will force itself upon us, as to what kind and quan¬
tity of evidence, if it should be or become available, would con
clusively prove, or make conclusively more probable than not,
that survival is a fact. Overarching of course these various
problems, there is the question as to what forms survival, if it be
a fact, can plausibly be conceived to take.

3. The tacit theoretical premise of the empirical arguments
against the possibility of survival. One of the facts listed in
Chapt. Ill as allegedly proving that consciousness cannot survive
the body’s death was that a severe blow on the head permanently
or temporarily terminates all the evidences of consciousness which
the body had until then been giving. This, it is alleged, and
likewise the other empirical facts cited in that chapter, shows
that a person’s states of consciousness are direct products of the
neural processes that normally take place in his brain; and hence
that when, at death, these terminate, then consciousness neces¬
sarily lapses also.

This conclusion, however, is based not simply on the oh-

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

served facts, but also on a certain theoretical premise, tacitly and
in most cases unconsciously employed. The nature of it becomes
evident if one considers the prirna facie analogous empirical fact
that smashing the receiver of a radio brings to an end all the evi¬
dences the instrument had until then been giving that a program
was on the air, but that this does not in the least warrant conclud¬
ing that the program was a product of the radio and therefore
had automatically lapsed when the latter was smashed.

The hidden premise of the contention that the cessation at
death of all evidences of consciousness entails that consciousness
itself then necessarily ceases is, evidently, that the relation of
brain activity to consciousness is always that of cause to effect,
never that of effect to cause. But this hidden premise is not
known to be true, and is not the only imaginable one consistent
with the empirical facts listed in Chapt. III. Quite as consistent
with them is the supposition, which was brought forth by William
James, that the brain’s function is that of intermediary between
psychological states or activities, and the body’s sense organs,
muscles, and glands. That is, that the brain’s function is that of
receiver-transmitter—sometimes from body to mind and some¬
times from mind to body.

These remarks are not intended to answer or to hint at a
particular answer to the question of the nature of the relation be¬
tween brain or body and mind; but only to make evident that
the validity or invalidity of the conclusion, from the various em¬
pirical facts cited in Chapt. Ill, that man’s consciousness cannot
survive the death of his body, is wholly dependent on what really
is the relation between body and mind.

Our task in the remaining chapters of Part III must therefore
be to consider the various hypotheses which, in the history of
thought, have been offered concerning the nature of that rela¬
tion, and to decide which one among them best seems to accord
with all the definitely known facts.

Chapter VIII

MIND CONCEIVED AS BODILY PROCESSES;
MATTER CONCEIVED AS SETS OF IDEAS

Among the hypotheses concerning the relation between mind
and body, one of the most ancient is the radically materialistic
one. Let us consider it first; and then its polar opposite, the
radically idealistic hypothesis.

1. The contention that thought is a physical process. The
materialistic conception of mind is that “thoughts,” “feelings,”
ideals,” “mental processes,” or, comprehensively, “states of con¬
sciousness,” are but other names for material occurences of ce.
tain kinds—more specifically, for molecular processes in the tissues
of the brain; or for speech, vocal or sub-vocal; or for discrimina¬
tive and adaptive behavior. This, if true, would entail that the
supposition that consciousness persists after death has terminated
these material activities is absurd because then obviously self¬
contradictory.

But as Friedrich Paulsen long ago and others since have made
quite clear, no evidence really ever has been or can be offered to
support that materialistic conception of mind, for it constitutes
in fact only an attempt unawares to force upon the words
“thoughts,” “ideas,” “feelings,” “desires,” and so on, a denotation
radically other than that which they actually have.

Paulsen writes: “The proposition, Thoughts are in reality
nothing but movements in the brain, feelings are nothing but
bodily processes in the vaso motor system is absolutely irrefuta¬
ble”; not, however, because it is true but because it is absurd.
“The absurd has this advantage in common with truth, chat it
cannot be refuted. To say that thought is at bottom but a move¬
ment is to say that iron is at bottom made of wood. No argument
avails here. All that can be said is this: I understand by a thought

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

a thought and not a movement of brain molecules; and similarly,
I designate with the words anger and fear, anger and fear them¬
selves and not a contraction or dilation of blood vessels. Suppose
the latter processes also occur, and suppose they always occur
when the former occur, still they are not thoughts and feelings.” 1

Words such as “thought,” “feeling,” etc., have two possible
functions. One is to predicate of something certain characters
which the word connotes; the other is to indicate —point at, de¬
note, tag, direct attention to—certain occurrences or entities. And
the fact is that, just as our finger does point at whatever we point
it at, or just as a tag does tag and identify whatever we tag with it,
so do our words denote—name, tag, direct attention to—whatever
we use them to denote. And what we use the words “thought,”
“feelings,” etc., to denote are occurrences with which we are
directly familiar, and which are patently quite different from those
we denote by the words “molecular motions in the brain” or
“modes of bodily behavior.”

Hence, however much there may be that we do not know
about states of consciousness or about bodily processes, however
close and intimate may turn out to be the relation between them,
and whatever the particular nature of that relation may be, it is
at all events not identity.

2. Connection to be distinguished from identity. The point
just made, although elementary, is crucial. Hence, even at the
risk of laboring it, a few words will be added in order to render it
unmistakable.

Let us consider the case, say, of the moon and the earth.
They are connected and influence one another, but the moon
and the earth arc not one and the same thing. Hence it is pos¬
sible to know much about one of them and little about the other.
On the other hand, the thing which the words “the moon” denote
is identically the same thing as that which the words “la lune,”
or the words “the earth’s largest satellite,” denote; and the
identity entails that, although one might not know all three of
these names of that single thing, nevertheless, whatever (other

'Introduction to Philosophy, transl. F. Thilly, Henry Holt and Co. N.Y. 1895,
pp 82-3.

RODILY PROCESSES: MATTER CONCEIVED 55

than some of its names) one happened to know, or to be ignorant
of, about the thing denoted by one of them, one would neces¬
sarily know it, or be ignorant of it, about the thing denoted by
either of the other two names. For one thing only is concerned,
not three.

Now, a parallel conclusion follows in the case of, say, the
word “pain” and the words “a certain motion of the molecules of
the nerve cells of the brain.” If these two sets of words both de¬
noted—i.e., were but two different names for—one single event,
then any person who at a given moment knows pain, i.e., expe¬
riences the particular feeling which the word “pain” denotes,
would necessarily know which particular motion of which par¬
ticular things the words “a certain motion of molecules in the
brain” denote at that moment; for, under the supposition, one
event only would be occurring, but denoted equally by each of
those two different names. But the patent fact is on the contrary
that all men know directly and only too well the event, itself which
the word “pain” denotes. They know it in the sense of experienc¬
ing it, whether or not they happen to know also that it is called
“pain”; whereas no man knows what particular molecular motion
is occurring in the nerve cells of his brain at the time he feels
pain; and only a few men know even that molecular motions occur
there. Moreover, even this they know not empirically and di¬
rectly as on the contrary every man knows pain, but know it only
indirectly through theoretical inferences.

How one comes to learn that “pain” is the English name of
the feeling he or someone else has on a given occasion is one
question; but what that feeling itself is (and no matter what, if
anything, it is called at the time) is another question. One learns
what pain is by having pins stuck into him, and in various other
manners that likewise cause it to occur. “Pain” is the name of
the feeling caused in these various ways.

The concrete occurrences which the word “pain,” and the
words “thought,” “ideas,” “desires,” “sensations,” “mental states ’
etc., denote in English, are quite familiar at first hand to all of
us, for they are directly experienced by us and open to our intro¬
spective attention; and what introspection reveals is, for example,
that the event we denote by the word “pain” when we say “I have

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

a pain” does not in the least resemble- to say nothing of being
identically—what attention to perceptually public facts reveals
when directed perhaps to the cutting or burning of the skin,
or to the writhing or shrinking behavior or to the groans on such
an occasion; or to the words “I have a pain,” or to the (postulated,
not observed) molecular motions in the brain.

All these are material events, and no doubt are connected
with the mental event called “pain,” which occurs when they
occur. But connection is one thing and identity is wholly another.

This simple fact, which becomes patent if only one attends
strictly to the denotation of the “material” and of the “mental”
terms, strangely eludes some of the writers who express them¬
selves on the subject of the mind-body relation. Dr. C. S. Myers,
for example, in his L. T. Hobhouse Memorial Lecture for 1932
entitled “The Absurdity of any Mind-Body Relation,” writes:

“The conclusion which I have at length reached is that the
notion of any relation between mind and body is absurd—because
mental activity and living bodily activity are identical. The most
highly specialized forms of these two activities are, respectively,
conscious processes and the processes of living brain matter.”

(p.6)

But obviously what is absurd is to do, as these statements do,
both of the following things: On the one hand, to mention two
activities, to wit, the activity called “mental” and the activity
called “living bodily activity”—both of which are observable and
when observed are found to be each patently unlike the other;
and yet, on the other hand, to assert that these two utterly dis¬
similar activities are identically one and the same!

Farther on, we shall consider specifically another contention
which is often confused with this and which—however otherwise
open to criticism—is anyway not absurd; namely, the contention
that mental activity and living bodily activity are two aspects
of one same process.

In conclusion, then, since connection is one thing and iden¬
tity wholly another, the fact that the events which the expression
“mental events” denotes, and certain of the events which the ex¬
pression “material events” denotes (specifically, certain neural
or behavioral events) are perhaps so connected as to form a “psy-

BODILY PROCESSES; MATTER CONCEIVED

thophysical unity”—this fact does not entail, as Lamont and others
have alleged, that the unity is indissoluble; but only that, so long
as the connectioJi remains what it has been, the two series of
quite dissimilar events—the mental and the bodily—continue ....
to form “a psychophysical unity”!

What cessation of the connection may entail as regards con¬
tinuance, or not, either of the bodily series or of the mental one,
depends on the specific nature of the connection, and cannot be
inferred simply from the fact that during the life of the body, the
two were in some way united, i.e., closely connected.

3. Disguised assertions about the word ‘thought” mistaken
for assertions about thought. Some additional remarks are called
for at this point in order to account for the fact that such state¬
ments as that thought is really a motion of molecules in the brain,
or is really a particular mode of bodily behavior, have been made
by some intelligent persons and have been considered by them
penetrating instead of absurd as in fact they are

The first thing to note is that of course anybody can devise
and use language that differs from the common language in that
certain words of the common language—for example, the words
“thoughts,” “ideas,” “feelings,” “desires,” “mental states”—are em¬
ployed in the devised language to denote certain things—for ex¬
ample, brain states of certain kinds—which are radically other
than the things they denote in the common language.

Moreover, a person who is using such a subverted language
may be unaware that he is doing so and may assume, as naturally
will his hearers, that when, for instance, he makes the statement
that “thought is really a motion of molecules in the brain,” he is
using the common language

That statement, however, when taken as made in the com
mon language, is so paradoxical that hearers of it are likely to
assume—humbly though in fact gratuitously—that somehow ii
must express a truth which the utterer of it perceives, but which
the hearer is as yet unable to apprehend And the utterer too—
but proudly instead of humbly—is likely to assume this.

On the other hand, if one allows neither humility nor pride
to becloud one’s judgment, then what one perceives is that the

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

statement “thought is really a motion of molecules in the brain”
is in fact not worded in the common language; and that to make
that statement is on the contrary to perform an act of subversion
of the common language.

That is, one perceives that the statement is in fact not an
assertion about thought itself and molecular motion itself, but
only about the words “thought” and “molecular motion;” and
that, in that assertion, the word, “really,” expresses not at all an
insight, but only the utterer’s naive preference for language as in
so far subverted!

The case is thus exactly parallel, except in one irrelevant re¬
spect, to a case where a Frenchman who, using English but hold¬
ing with naive pride that French is the one “real” language, were
to say: “A dog is really un chien.” He would appear to himself
and to others to be talking about dogs, but he would in fact be
talking only about the word “dog” and claiming that it would
be preferable to use instead the word “chien.” The minor and
only difference between the two cases is that “dog” and “chien”
belong to two independent languages but have the same denota¬
tion in each; whereas both the word “thought” and the words
“molecular motion in brain cells” belong to the same language,
to wit, English, but, in it, do not have the same denotation. They
would have it only in (materialistically) subverted English.

The statement that thought is really a motion of molecules
in the brain thus operates as do the statements in which commu¬
nists—sometimes perhaps equally sincerely but then naively—use
“liberation” to denote enslavement and “democracy” to denote
tyranny: Such statements only befuddle both the persons who
make them honestly and the persons who accept them uncritically.

4. The radically idealistic conception of material objects.
Only a few words will now be needed to make evident that the
radically idealistic conception of material objects is invalidated by
the same kind of absurdity which we have seen invalidates the
radically materialistic conception of mind.

Paulsen, it will be remembered, rightly insists that feelings,
sensations, or thoughts themselves, which are introspectively
known to all of us, are what the words “feelings,” “sensations,”

BODILY PROCESSES; MATTER CONCEIVED

or “thoughts” denote, and not the very different things denoted
on the contrary by such expressions as “motions of molecules in
in the brain” or “modes of bodily behavior.”

Now, conversely here, we must insist that when we use the
latter expressions, or the broader expression “material events and
objects,” we denote by them material events and objects them¬
selves, or motions of molecules or modes of behavior themselves
and not, as Berkeley would have it, certain groups of systematic¬
ally associated sensations; for these are something very different
indeed. They are elements in the process of perceiving material
objects, but not in the material objects themselves, which exist
independently of whether they are or are not being perceived.

The contention of a radical idealism would be on the con¬
trary that what the words “material objects” denote is, identically,
the same as what the words “perceivings of material objects” de¬
note; namely the particular kind of state of consciousness which
such perceiving constitutes. As in the case of the analogous radical
materialistic claim, this radical idealistic claim too cannot be
refuted; and this, again not because it is true but because it is
absurd. It can and need be met only by flat denial: The words
“the object perceived” do not, in English as distinguished from
Idealese, denote the same thing as the words “the perceiving of
an object;” and words do denote what we employ them to denote.
To assert that the two expressions denote one and the same thing,
instead of each something different, is not to set forth a novel
truth but only here again to subvert the English language and
thereby to muddle oneself and possibly one’s hearers or readers.
What specifically the relation is between the material object per¬
ceived and the psychological events—sensations and others—that
enter into the process of perceiving the object is a most interest¬
ing but intricate question, into which fortunately we do not need
to go for present purposes. What need be said is only that, what¬
ever may be the relation between the two it is anyway not identity.

C Imp ter IX

TWO VERSIONS OF PSYCHO-PHYSICAL
PARALLELISM

In the present chapter, we turn from the radically material¬
istic and radically idealistic conceptions of the body-mind relation,
which we have now seen to be untenable, and pass to an examina¬
tion of two versions of the conception of it termed Psycho-physical
Parallelism.

1. Mind and body as in “pre-established harmony.” The
“pre-established harmony” conception of the connection between
the series of mental events and the series of bodily events goes
back to Leibnitz. According to him, only “monads” exist—simple,
unextended “substances” whose essence consists in the power of
action and whose exercise of this power consists in having ideas.
A substance, however, is conceived by him as well as by others
in his day as something wholly self-dependent and therefore as
incapable of influencing or of being influenced by the activities
of other substances. Hence the monads “have no windows”
through which anything might come in or go out. The sequence
of their ideas proceeds solely out of their own internal, i.e., psy¬
chological activity. The material world consists of masses of mon¬
ads, whose aggregations, separations, and motions are determined,
not like the internal states of each monad by mental causes, but
solely by mechanical ones. Yet, harmony obtains between the suc¬
cession of ideas in a given monad, and the motions of it and of
the other monads associated with it in what we call its body. On
this view, the correlations which obtain between a man’s mental
states and his bodily states—for example, that a pin prick and pain,
or that volition to move the arm and motion of the arm regularly
go together notwithstanding that neither causes the other—is

TWO VERSIONS OF PSYCHO PHYSICAL PARALLELISM 7]

analogous to the correlation which obtains between the motions
of the hands of two clocks notwithstanding that neither clock,
causes the other to behave as it does.

The explanation of the harmony between the behavior of the
two is of course that it was preestablished by the maker of the
clocks, who so constructed and so set them that they would keep
time to each other. Similarly, on the Leibnitzian view, the hai
mony which obtains between the series of a man s bodily states
and the series of his mental states is due to its having been pre-
established by man’s maker, God.

It is perhaps unnecessary to comment on this quaint concep¬
tion beyond saying that no evidence at all exists that body and
mind are each inherently incapable of influencing the other; nor
is there any evidence that the harmony which obtains between
them was preestablished by a cosmic clock maker

But even if this should somehow happen to be the case,
nothing at all could be inferred from it as to whether or not
mental life continues after the body dies. For inferences as to this
could be drawn only if one knew—whereas in fact one does not-
first that such a divine “clockmaker” as postulated by the preestab¬
lished harmony conception exists; and only if one knew in addi¬
tion what his will is as to survival, or not, of man’s or of some
men’s minds after death.

On the other hand, if one supposes the connection—or more
properly then simply the correlation—between the bodily and the
mental series of events to be a purely de facto parallelism; that is,
one neither due to causation of the events of either series by those
of the other, nor due to causation of both series by some one same
cause distinct from both as in the preestablished harmony concep¬
tion; then, ex hypothesis termination of either series would have
no effect at all on the other. Termination of the bodily series
might, or might not, de facto, be paralleled by termination also
of the mental series. From purely de facto parallelism in the past
and present, nothing at all can be inferred as to the future.

2. Mind and body as two aspects of one same thing. Still
another conception of the connection between mind and body is
of the type envisaged by Spinoza, but divorced in the writings of

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

contemporary biologists and psychologists that accept it from the
theological hypothesis in terms of which Spinoza phrased it.

The connection in view is of the so-called “double aspect”
kind, analogous to that which obtains, for example, between the
two sides of a sheet of paper. There, a creasing of the sheet ap¬
pears as a ridge on one side, and automatically and simultaneously
as a valley on the other side, although the ridge does not cause
the valley nor the valley the ridge.

If the paper analogy is used at all, however, its additional
features also must be considered; for example, the fact that a spot
of color on one side is not necessarily matched by a difference of
any kind on the other side. The implication of the paper analogy
as regards the “double aspect” conception of the connection be¬
tween body and mind is then that one cannot tell whether the dif¬
ference on the material side, which cessation of the body’s life
constitutes, is or is not automatically matched on the other side
by cessation of consciousness, unless one knows independently
what the entity or substance is, of which body and mind are
alleged to be two “aspects;” and knows what properties it, as
distinguished from either of its aspects, has. For only such knowl¬
edge would enable one to judge whether the body’s death is
analogous to, say, the ridging of one side of the paper—which,
because of the properties of the paper sheet, is automatically
matched by a valleying of the other side—or is analogous on the
contrary to the staining of one side—which, again because of the
properties of the paper sheet, is not automatically matched by
any change on the other side.

In short, the supposition that body and mind are two “as¬
pects” of one same thing is wholly metaphorical; and unless and
until the metaphor has been translated into literal terms identify¬
ing for us the entity or substance itself, of which brain and mind
are supposed to be two “aspects,” nothing can be inferred as to
whether the material change—death of the brain—is or is not au¬
tomatically matched by death of the mind.

But no substance or thing having body and mind as two
aspects has ever yet been exhibited, both aspects of which could
be so experimented upon that one might discover what kinds of

TWO VERSIONS OF PSYCHO PHYSICAL PARAI LELISM

changes, if any, and of which aspect, are or are not automatically
paralleled by changes of the other aspect.

Moreover, if it were suggested, as occasionally it is, that the
body itself or the brain is that substance, and that mental activity
is brain activity, but “viewed from within”—from the inside in¬
stead of the outside—then the appropriate comment would ob¬
viously be that the word “inside” as so used really means nothing
at all. For, if one wishes to observe what goes on literally inside
the brain, what one must do is simply to open it up and look.
Such an operation might, in a then facetiously etymological sense
of the word, be termed “Introspection,” but would anyway be
something radically different from what in fact is denominated
Introspection.

Thus, although the “double-aspen” description of the con¬
nection between mind and brain or mind and body has found
favor with a number of biologists and psychologists, it turns out
on examination to be nothing but a vacuous metaphor, from
which nothing at all follows as to whether or not mental life can
continue after death.

4. Mental activity as a function of cerebral activity. A state¬
ment currently much in vogue is that mental activity is a function
of the activity of the brain and nervous system.

The word “function,” (from L. fungere, to perform) has a
variety of meanings, some of which are not wholly distinct from
certain of the others. Most broadly, when two things, A and B.
each of which admits of variations, vary concomitantly, i.e., in
such manner that variation of kind or/and magnitude V (a) of A,
and variation of kind or/and magnitude V (b) of B, occur regu¬
larly together, then the two sets of variations are said to be
functionally related; and either can be said to be a function of
the other.

If, however, the variations gi\en, or instituted, are, say, those
of A, and the variations then observed those of B, then B is termed
the dependent variable and A the independent variable.

If the variations of one of the two functionally related vari¬
ables, say, those of B, occur after the variations of A of which they
are functions, then ordinarily the dependence of the variations

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

of B upon those of A is causal dependence, direct or indirect.
This, apparently, is the meaning which “dependent upon” is in¬
tended to have in Webster’s definition of one of the senses of
“function of” as: “any quality, trait or fact so related to another
that it is dependent upon and varies with that other.” This sense
is usually the one in which thought, or mental activity, is said to
be a function of brain activity; and in which it is said that the
specific function of the brain is to “perform” the various mental
activities—thinking, perceiving, remembering, etc.

In the light of these remarks, it is evident that to speak of
mental activity as a function of brain activity is not to offer a new
description of the connection between the two, different from
all those already mentioned; for each of these asserts that brain
states and mental states are functionally related: If the functional
dependence is causal, and of mental activity on brain activity, then
this is the type of connection, i.e., of function, which epiphe-
nomenalism describes. If the dependence is causal, but is of brain
activity on mental activity, then this type of functional relation
would be describable as hypophenomenalism— the exact converse
of epiphenomenalism. If the functional dependence is causal,
but not exclusively either of mental upon cerebral states, or of
cerebral upon mental states, then what we have is psycho-physical
interactionism. Lastly, if the functional dependence is not causal,
then it constitutes parallelism of one or another of the types
described in what precedes, from which, as we have seen, nothing
can be inferred as to whether survival of the mind after death is or
is not possible.

We shall now consider in turn epiphenomenalism, hypophe¬
nomenalism, and interactionism.

Chapter X

MIND AS ‘THE HALO OVER
THE SAINT”

When a person who has leaned to the purely physicalistic
conception of mind sees that it presupposes the absurdity that
certain of our words do not denote what we do denote by them,
he is likely to adopt in its place the less radically materialistic
conception which the late Professor G. S. Fullerton picturesquely
termed the “halo over the saint” theory of the mind’s relation to
the body.

1. Epiphenomenalism. That theory asserts that mental events
have to brain events much the same sort of relation which the
saint’s traditional halo supposedly has to him: th; halo is an
automatic effect of his saintliness, but does not itself cause or con¬
tribute at all to it. This is the relation which, as between brain
events and mental events, is technically termed epiphenomenalism
(from the Greek epi =z beside, above + phainomai to appear):
the mental events are conceived to be an epiphenouienon of, i.e.,
a phenomenon beside or above certain of the physical events
occurring in the brain; and to be a by product, and hence an
automatic accompaniment, of cerebral activity; but never them¬
selves to cause or affect the latter.

This conception is not, like the radically physicalistic one,
open to the charge of absurdity since, unlike the latter, it admits
that the term “mental events” denotes events that are other than
those denominated “physical” and more specifically “cerebral.”
Epiphenomenalism is thus not strictly a physicalistic monism. But
virtually, i.e., for all practical purposes, it is both a monism and
a physicalistic one, for it holds that the only occurences that
ultimately count in determining behavior are bodily ones and
therefore physical. And this means that if it were possible to do

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

away altogether with a person s mental states without in any way
altering his brain and nervous system, he would go on behaving
exactly as usual, and nobody could tell that he no longer had a
mind.

Now, obviously, if it is true as epiphenomcnalism asserts that
all mental states actually are effects of cerebral states, and also that
no mental states could be caused otherwise than directly by cere¬
bral states, then it follows that mental states and activities cannot
possibly continue after the life of the brain has ceased.

2. Metaphorical character of the epiphenomenalistic thesis.
Let us, however, now examine critically the epiphenomenalistic
conception of the body-mind relation.

It is associated chiefly with the names of T. H. Huxley and
of Shadworth Hodgson. As defined by the latter, it is the doctrine
that ‘‘the states of consciousness, the feelings, are effects of the
nature, sequence, and combination, of the nerve states, without
being themselves causes either of one another or of changes in the
nerve states which support them.” 1 Huxley, similarly, writes: ‘‘It
seems to me that in men, as in brutes, there is no proof that any
state of consciousness is the cause of change in the motion of the

matter of the organism.our mental conditions are simply

the symbols in consciousness of the changes which take place

automatically in the organism; and that.the feeling we

call volition is not the cause of a voluntary act, but the symbol
of that state of the brain which is the immediate cause of that act.” 2

In so stating, however, Huxley ignores the fact that symboliz¬
ing is not a physical but a psychological relation: That S is a
symbol of something T means that consciousness of S in a mind
M that is in a state of kind K, regularly causes M to think of T. 3
Other metaphors used by epiphenomenalists to characterize the
relation between brain states and states of consciousness are that
consciousness is but ‘‘a spark thrown off by an engine,” or (by
Hodgson) ‘‘the foam thrown up by and floating on a wave .... a

1 Theory of Practice, London, Longmans, Green, 1870 Vol. 1:336.

*Collected Essays, Appleton, New York, 1893, Vol. 1:244.

a Cf the writer’s Symbols. Signs, and Signals, Jl. of Symbolic Logic, Vol. 4:41-43,
No. 2. June 1939.

MIND AS ‘ THE HALO OVER THE SAINT''

mere foam, aura, or melody arising from the brain, but without
reaction upon it.” 4

The spark and the foam in these metaphors are indeed by¬
products in the sense that they do not react—or more strictly, only
to a negligibly minute extent—upon their producers. But—and
this is the crucial point—they are themselves, like their producers;
purely physical; whereas states of consciousness, as we have seen
and indeed as maintained by epiphenomenalists, are non physical
events, irreducible to terms of matter and motion The analogy
those metaphors postulate is therefore lacking in the very respect
that is essential: If states of consciousness are effects of brain
activity, they are not so in the sense in which occurrence of the
spark or the foam is an effect of the activity of the machine or of
the water under the then existing conditions; for the spark and
the foam are fragments of the machine and of the wave, but states
of consciousness are not fragments of cerebral tissue.

Hence, if mental events are effects of cerebral events, they are
so in the quite different sense that changes in the slate of the brain
cause changes — modifications, modulations, alterations — in the
state of the mind; the mind thus being conceived in as substantive
a manner as is the brain itself, i.e., as something likewise capable
of a variety of states, and of changes from one to another in re¬
sponse to the action of certain causes.

3. Arbitrariness of the epiphenomenalistic contention as to
causality between cerebral and mental events. This brings us to
another respect in which the epiphenomenalistic account of the
mind-body relation is indefensible, namely, its arbitrariness in as¬
serting that although cerebral events cause mental events, mental
events on the contrary never cause cerebral events nor even other
mental events.

That assertion is arbitrary because if, as epiphenomenalism

*Time and Space, London, Longmans Green, 1865, p 279. The wave and-foam
metaphor is used by Hodgson in this book to characterize a theory of the mind
body relation which he there attacks. But in his Theory of Practice, published five
years later, he embraces the (epiphenomenalistic) theory he had attacked in the
earlier book, and declares entirely erroneous the "double aspect” theory he had
opposed to it there (p. 283). The "wave-and-foam” metaphor is therefore true to
the radically epiphenomenalistic conception of the mind-body relation formulated
in the passage quoted previously from the later book.

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

contends, causation can occur between events as radically different
in kind as, on the one hand, motions of molecules or of other
physical particles in the brain and, on the other, mental events,
then no theoretical reason remains at all why causation should not
be equally possible and should not actually occur in the converse
direction; that is, causation of brain events by mental events.

The paradoxical character of the contention that states of
consciousness never determine or in the least direct the activities
of the body is perhaps most glaring when, as Ruyer points out,
one considers on the one hand painful states of consciousness and
desire to prevent them and, on the other, man’s invention and
employment of anaesthetics: "The invention of anaesthetics by
man supposes that disagreeable states of consciousness have incited
man to seek means to suppress such states of consciousness. If, ac¬
cording to the (epiphenomenalistic) hypothesis, disagreeable con¬
sciousness is inefficacious, how, on the one hand, can it originate
an action? On the other hand, how can a chain of pure causality
(as between brain events) so manage as not to ‘become’ such as to
get accompanied by disagreeable consciousness?” 5

As a matter of fact, the empirical evidence one has for con¬
cluding that occurrence, for example, of the mental event con¬
sisting of decision to raise one’s arm causes the physical rising of
the arm, is of exactly the same form as the empirical evidence one
has for concluding—as the epiphenomenalist so readily does—that
the physical event consisting of burning the skin,—or, more di¬
rectly, the brain event thereby induced —causes the mental event
called pain. If either the conception of causality which the so-
called "method” of Single Difference defines, or the regularity-of-
sequence conception of causality, warrants the latter conclusion,
then, since the one or the other is likewise the conception of
causality through which the former conclusion is reached, that
conclusion is equally warranted.

On the other hand, if the supposition that a volition or idea
or other mental event can push or pull or somehow otherwise
move a physical molecule were rejected, either on the ground of
its being absurd or on the ground that it would constitute a vio-

“Raymond Ruyer: Neofinalisme, Presses Universitaires de France. Paris 1952,
p. 24.

MIND AS “THE HALO OVER THE SAJNT"

lation of the principle of the conservation of energy, then the sup¬
position that motion of a physical molecule in the brain can cause
a mental, i.e., a nonphysical event, would have to be rejected also,
since it would involve the converse absurdity or would involve
violation of that same principle.

Again, if it is argued that mutilations of the brain, whether
experimental or accidental, are known to cause alterations of
specific kinds in the mental states and activities connected with
that brain, it must then be pointed out that, as psychosomatic
medicine now recognizes, mental states of certain kinds generate
corresponding somatic defects; so that here too causation is some¬
times from mind to body, as well as sometimes from body to mind.

The preceding considerations, then, make amply evident that
the epiphenomenalistic theory of the relation between body and
mind is altogether arbitrary in holding that causation as between
brain and mind is always from brain to mind and never from
mind to brain.

Furthermore, it is arbitrary also in holding that all mental
states are effects of brain states; for this is not known, but only
that some mental states—of which sensations are the most obvious
examples—are so. Moreover, observation, as distinguished from
epiphenomenalistic dogma, testifies that, in any case of associa¬
tion of ideas, occurrence of the first is what causes occurrence of
the second. Nor do we know that mental states of certain kinds,
which normally have physical causes, might not- although perhaps
with more or less different specific content—be caused otherwise
than physically. This possibility is suggested by the occurrence of
visions, apparitions, dreams, and other forms of hallucination; for
in all such cases mental states indistinguishable at the time from
sensations are caused somehow otherwise than, as normally, by
stimulation of the sense organs. 8 That even then those states are
always and ivholly effects of cerebral states is not a matter of
knowledge but only of faithfully epiphenomenalistic speculative
extrapolation.

Moreover, if the capacity of mescalin or of lysergic acid
diethylamide to induce hallucinations by physical means should

•See, for instance, the remarkable case of a waking hallucination reported in
Vol. XVIII of the Proc. of the Society for Psychial Research pp. 308-52?.

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

be cited, the comment would then have to be that what needs to
be accounted for is not only that hallucinations then occur, but
also what specifically their content—which in fact varies greatly—
happens to be. That is, do these drugs cause what they cause one
to see in a sense comparable to that in which a painter’s action
causes the picture he paints and sees; or, on the contrary, do they
cause one only to see what one then sees, in a manner analogous
to that in which the raising of the blind of a window on a train
causes a passenger in the train to see the landscape which happens
to be outside at the time?

These remarks are not offered as an argument that, since we
do not know that the specific content of hallucinations has cere¬
bral causes, therefore probably its causes are non-cerebral; for so
to argue would be to become guilty of the fallacy argumentum ad
ignorantiam. They are offered only to underline that this very
fallacy infects the contention that, if, as in fact is the case we do
not know that only some mental states are cerebrally caused, then
probably all of them are so caused.

That all mental states have exclusively cerebral causes is
thus only postulated; and—notwithstanding the contrary empirical
evidence we cited—postulated only out of pious wish to have an
at least virtual physicalistic monism, since a strict physicalistic
one is ruled out by the absurdity pointed out in Ch. VIII, which
it involves. What the epiphenomenalist does is to erect tacitly
into a creed as to the nature of all reality what in fact is only the
program of the sciences dedicated to the study of the material
world—the program, namely, of explaining in terms of physical
causes everything that happens to be capable of being so explained.

The upshot is then that the epiphenomenalistic conception
of the relation between brain and mind not only is not known to
be true, but even arbitrarily disregards positive empirical facts
which appear to invalidate it. Hence the consequence that would
follow if that conception were true—namely that no mental ac¬
tivities or experiences can occur after the brain has died—is itself
not known to be true. That is, so far as goes anything that
epiphenomenalists have shown to the contrary, after-death mental
life—at least of certain kinds—remains both a theoretical and an
empirical possibility.

Chapter XI

HYPOPHENOMENALISM: THE LIFE OF
ORGANISMS AS PRODUCT OF MIND

There is a conception of the relation between mind and
body which is in a certain respect the converse of the epiphenom-
enalistic and which might therefore be termed Hvpophenom-
enalism (Gr. hypo = under + phainomai = to appear.) It is, in
brief, that the living body is a hypophenomenon of the soul or
mind or of some constituent of it—an effect or product or depend¬
ent of it, instead of the converse of this as epipheomenalism
asserts.

Conceptions of this type have appeared several times in the
history of thought, but they have been presented as parts or
corollaries of certain cosmological speculations rather than as con¬
clusions suggested by the results of observation.

1. Two hypophenomenalistic conceptions. In Plotinus, for
example, who conceived the universe as arising from the inef¬
fable One, God, by a series of emanations, the soul is the penulti¬
mate of these, two degrees below God; and the lowest is matter.
Thus, the soul is not in the body, but the body is in, and de¬
pendent upon, the soul, which both precedes and survives it, and
whcse forces give form and organization to the matter of which
the body is composed.

Schopenhauer’s conception of the relation between body and
“soul” is somewhat similar to this, but he does not speak here of
soul or of mind but more specifically of ‘‘will,” which he does
not regard as a part of the psyche. Except in cases where the
will has kindled to itself the light we call intellect, that imper¬
sonal will is blind as to what specifically it craves but nonethe
less creates. Schopenhauer accordingly conceives the body, or
more exactly the body’s organization, as objectification of the
will-to-live; the hand, for example, being an objectification of the

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

unconscious will to be able to grasp. He writes that “what ob¬
jectively is matter is subjectively will. . . .our body is just the
visibility, objectivity of our will, and so also every body is the
objectivity of the will at some one of its grades." 1 And elsewhere
he speaks of a certain part of the body, to wit, the brain, as “the
objectified will to know.” 2

2. Biological hypophenomenalism distinguished from cos¬
mological. In philosophical discussions of the mind-body rela¬
tion, the type of theory of which two classical examples have just
been cited, and for which the name Hypophenomenalism is here
proposed, has received relatively little attention as compared with
epiphenomenalism, materialism, idealism, parallelism, or inter-
actionism. We shall therefore have to provide here ourselves the
formulation of it that would seem most defensible. It will un¬
avoidably have to be fuller than in the case of the familiar other
theories of the mind-body relation.

The first thing we must do is to distinguish between what
may be termed, respectively, cosmological and biological hy¬
pophenomenalism. Cosmological hypophenomenalism would con¬
tend that not only the living body, but also all other material ob¬
jects are hypophenomena of minds, i.e., are products or objecti¬
fications of psychical activity or, as Schopenhauer had it, of Will.

Biological hypophenomenalism, on the other hand, concerns
itself only with the material objects we term “living,” and con¬
tends only that the life, which differentiates living things from
dead or inorganic things, is a product, effect, or manifestation of
psychic activity and more particularly of conation. This is the
hypophenomenalism which alone we shall have in view, for it is
the one directly relevant to the central problem of the present
work, namely, that of the relation between the individual’s mind
and the life and the death of his body. This relation is different
both from the ontological relation between mind and matter in
general and from the epistemological relation between them,
which constitutes mind’s knowledge of matter.

l The World as Will and Idea, Supplements to Bk II, Ch. XXIV p. 52. Haldane
and Kemp Transl. Vol. 3. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. London 1906.

*The Will in Nature, tr. Mrae. Karl Hillebrand, London, George Bell and
Sons, 1897. p. 237.

HYPOPHENOMENALISM: THE LIFE OF ORGANISMS 83

Biological hypophenomenalism does not occupy itself with
the question whether matter in general, or in particular the mat¬
ter of the body as distinguished from its life, is a product or ob¬
jectification of mind. It has to do only with the relation between
the life of the body and its mind; but whereas epiphenomenalism
maintains that both the occurrence at all of consciousness and
the particular states of it at particular times are products of the
living brain’s activity, biological hypophenomenalism on the con¬
trary maintains that the life of the body and of its brain is an
effect or manifestation of psychic activities and in particular of
conations— these being what “animate living organisms.

3. The life processes apparently purposive. The fact from
which hypophenomenalism starts is that not only the distinctively
human life activities and the life activities typical of animals, but
even the vegetative activities—where life is at its minimum—seem
to be definitely purposive. And hypophenomenalism, on the basis
of an analysis of the notion of purposiveness more careful than
the common ones, contends that the life activities, even at the
vegetative level, do not just seem to be purposive but really are so.

Most biologists, however, are averse to employment of the
notion of purpose on the ground that it is a subjective, phycho-
logical one, inadmissible in a biology that strives to be as wholly
objective as are physics and chemistry. They therefore speak in¬
stead of the “directiveness,” or of the “equifinality” of biological
processes or, as does Driesch in the formulation of his Vitalism,
of an “entelechy” which, however, is not psychic but only “psy-
choid.” But the question is whether, if these terms are not just
would-be-respectable-sounding aliases for purposiveness, what they
then designate is ultimately capable of accounting for the facts it
is invoked to explain. For the sake of concreteness, let us there¬
fore advert to some examples of those facts.

The peculiarities that differentiate living things from in¬
animate objects include not only the fairly obvious characteristics
—metabolism, growth, reproduction, adaptability to environment
—by which we ordinarily identify the things we term “living”;
but also various more recondite facts. An example would be that
“when. . .one of the first two cells of a tiny salamander embryo
is destroyed, the remaining one grows into a whole individual not

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

a half, as one might expect.” Again, that “two fertilized eggs in¬
duced to fuse by artificial means were found to produce one
animal instead of two.” The facts of regeneration similarly chal¬
lenge explanation: “The leg of a tadpole, snipped off, may be
restored, or the eye of a crustacean”; and so on. In sum, “if the
organism is prevented from reaching its norm of ‘goal’ in the ordi¬
nary way, it is resourceful and will attain it by a different
method.” 8

Facts such as these strongly suggest that the life processes are
purposive. But that a process or activity is “purposive” is com¬
monly taken to mean that it is incited and shaped by the presence
together of three factors in the agent: (a) the idea of an as yet
non-existent state of affairs; (b) a desire that that state of affairs
should eventually come to exist; and (c) knowledge of diverse
modes of action respectively adequate in different circumstances
to bring about the desiderated state of affairs. And, obviously,
such an explanation of the biological occurrences in view is open
to several prima facie serious objections. These, even when they
have been merely felt rather than explicitly formulated, have been
responsible for the reluctance of biologists and physicists to ac¬
cept a teleological explanation of the facts cited, notwithstanding
the difficulty, which they have also felt, of doing altogether with¬
out it. Let us now state and examine each of those objections.

4. Objections to a teleological explanation of life processes,
(a) The first objection is that it is scientifically illegitimate to
ascribe processes which, like those in view, are material, to the
operation of factors which, like thought, desire, and intelligence,
are mental.

The sufficient reply to this objection, however, is that, as
David Hume made clear long ago, only experience can tell us
what in fact is or is not capable of causing what. The Causality
relation presupposes nothing at all as to the ontological nature—
whether material, mental, or other—of the events that function as
its terms. That a material event can be caused only by an event
also itself material is not a known fact but merely a metaphysical
dogma. To look for a material explanation of every material

a E. W. Sinnott: Cell and Psyche, the Biology of Purpose, Univ. of North Caro¬
lina Press, 1950, pp. 6, 29, 33.

HYPOPHENOMENALISM: THE LIFE OF ORGANISMS 85

event is of course a legitimate research program and one which
has yielded many valuable fruits; but to assume that, even when
the search yields no material explanation of a given material
event, nevertheless the explanation of it cannot be other than a
material one is, illegitimately, to erect that legitimate research
program into a metaphysical creed—the creed, namely, of pious
ontological materialism.

(b) The second objection is that a teleological explanation
of biological processes is superfluous because all their peculiarities
can be adequately accounted for by ascribing them to the existence
and operation, in the organism we call ‘living,” of various servo¬
mechanisms; that is, of mechanisms whose attainment and main¬
tenance of certain results (to wit, growth of the organism to a
normal form, restoration of it when it gets damaged, preservation
of a normal equilibrium between its internal processes and the
changes in its environment, etc.) is due to guidance of the mecha¬
nism’s activity at each moment by elaborate feed-back channels
that are constituents of the mechanism itself.

The reply to this objection is that, although some servo¬
mechanisms are known to exist in the organism, and although
the existence and operation of additional servo-mechanisms would
indeed be theoretically capable of accounting for those results,
nevertheless servo-mechanisms that would be specifically such as
to insure all those particular results are not in fact independently
known to exist in organisms. Hence, unless and until their ex¬
istence is established by observation of them , or by observational
verification of predictions deduced from the supposition that they
exist and are of specifically such and such descriptions, invocation
of them to account for all biological processes is nothing but in¬
vocation of a deus ex machina.

This means that the possibility of a teleological explanation
of biological processes is as yet left entirely open; and in turn, this
underlines the general requirement that, for an explanation to be
acceptable, the cause it invokes must be of a kind not just post¬
ulated ad hoc, but independently known to exist; and further,
known to be capable in some cases of causing effects similar to
those which it is invoked to account for in the case of biological
processes.

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

Moreover, the fact that some servo mechanisms—though not
ones adequate to explain all the particular facts in view—are
known to exist in living organisms leaves the existence there of
these known servo-mechanisms themselves to be accounted for.
And, to explain their existence as being the end-product of the
operation of some “more fundamental” servo-mechanism is not
really to explain it at all unless the existence of the latter is not
just postulated but is independently known, and itself then some¬
how explained.

(c) The third objection to the ascribing of purposiveness to
biological processes is that presence of the three factors of pur¬
posiveness mentioned—an idea of an as yet non-existent form or
state of the organism, a desire for its existence, and knowledge of
what means would, under varying circumstances, bring it into
existence—is dependent on presence of a highly developed brain
and nervous system; which, however, is altogether absent at the
biological level of the processes here in view.

To this objection, the reply is that conjunction of those three
factors is characteristic not of all purposive activity, but only of
certain kinds and levels of it. More specifically, it is character¬
istic of purposive activity that is both consciously and skillfully
heterotelic, but not of purposive activity that is blind, as in the
case of the vegetative life activities.

5. The nature, kinds, and levels of purposive activity. But
the force and the implications of the above reply to the third of
the objections considered can become fully evident only in the
light of an analysis of purposive activity and of its various kinds
and levels. The branch of philosophy which occupies itself thus
with the theory of purposive activity has no current name but
might be called Prothesiology (from Gr. r P 60 e<nt = purpose,
resolve, design.) Kant’s discussion of the teleological judgment,
in Part II of his Critique of Judgment, would belong to it. In his
discussion, however, he considers chiefly man’s judgments of pur¬
posiveness in Nature rather than the nature, kinds, and levels of
purposive activity itself.

Moreover, the “mechanism” he contrasts with purposiveness
is mechanism conceived in terms only of motion of material ob¬
jects or particles, and thus leaves out of consideration such psy-

HYPOPHENOMENALISM: THE LIFE OF ORGANISMS 87

chological processes as are not purposive but mechanical, i.e.,
automatic. Also, he erroneously conceives teleology as a different
kind of causality instead of, properly, as causality in cases where
the cause-event (not the causality relation) is of a special kind.
Kant’s discussion of teleology therefore does not furnish us with
the analysis and conspectus we need at this point. We shall in¬
troduce it by considering first a concrete case of purposive activity
of the type in which the three factors mentioned above operate—
say, the case of our shaking an apple tree for the purpose of get¬
ting one of the apples it bears. In this activity, we discern the
following five elements:

1) The idea we have, of our as yet non-existent possession
of one of the apples.

2) Our desire that possession of one by us shall come to exist.

3) Our knowledge, gained from past experience, that shak¬
ing the tree would cause apples to fall into our possession.

4) Causation in us—by the joint presence to our mind of
that idea, that desire, and that knowledge—of the act of shaking
the tree.

5) Causation in turn, by this act, of the imagined and de¬
sired eventual fall of apples into our possession.

This analysis of the example is enough to make evident al¬
ready that, contrary to what is sometimes alleged, purposive ac¬
tivity involves no such paradox as would be constituted by causa¬
tion of a present action by a future state of affairs. For obviously
what causes the act of shaking the tree is not the as yet non-e\
istent possession by us of an apple; but is, together, our present
thought of our future possession of one, our present desire for
such future possession, and our present knowledge of how to cause
it to occur. By the very definition of Causality, the cause, here as
necessarily everywhere else, is prior in time to its effect.

6. Conation: “blind” vs. accompanied by awareness of its
conatum. Let us, however pursue the analysis of purposiveness
by considering next the various respects in which examples of
purposiveness may, without ceasing to be such, depart from the
type of the example analyzed above.

One possibility is that factor (1) in that analysis—to wit, an
idea of the state of affairs to be brought about—should be absent.

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

In such a case, factor (2) would properly be describable not as a
desire, but only as a blind conation or craving-blind as to what
sort of state of affairs would satisfy it. A new-born infant’s crav¬
ing for milk would be an example of this. “Desire,” then, is cona¬
tion conjoined with an idea of its conatum; whereas “blind cona¬
tion” is conation unaccompanied by any idea of its conatum.

The activity incited by blind conation is even then purposive,
but not consciously purposive; and it is: (a) relatively random
and therefore successful, i.e., satisfying, only by chance; or (b)
regulated automatically (within a certain range of conditions) by
some somatic of psychosomatic servo-mechanism and therefore
successful notwithstanding variations that do not go beyond that
range, as for example web building by spiders; or (c) stereotyped
irrespective of its appropriateness or inappropriateness to the
special circumstances that may be present in the particular case—
as when, for example, the hungry neonate cries, irrespective of
whether anybody is there to hear him or not.

7. Desire, and ignorance or knowledge of how to satisfy it.
When the inciting conation is a desire, i.e., is coupled with aware¬
ness of the nature of its conatum—then termed its desideratum-
knowledge of a form of action that would bring about occurrence
of the desideratum may either be lacking or be possessed. If it is
lacking, the purposive activity incited is then of the consciously
exploratory, “trial-and-error,” type. If on the contrary that knowl¬
edge is possessed, the activity it incites is then not only consciously
purposive but in addition skilled, or informed, according as the
knowledge shaping it is present in the form of “know-how,” or in
conceptualized form.

8. Autotelism and heterotelism. Purposive activity—whether
induced by a blind conation or by a conation conjoined with
awareness of the nature of its conatum—may be autotelic, instead
of heterotelic as in the example analyzed. That is, what satisfies
the conation may be the very performing of the activity, not some
ulterior effect caused by the performing of it. Examples of pur¬
posive activity that is thus autotelic would be sneezing, coughing,
yawning, stretching; and, at a more elaborate level, the various
play activities. In all such cases, what we crave is to do these very

HYPOPHENOMENAUSM: THE LIFE OF ORGANISMS 89

things. The doing of them of course has effects, but the activities
are not, like the heterotelic ones, performed for the sake of those
effects, but for their own sakes.

9. What ultimately differentiates purposiveness from mech¬
anism. The foregoing survey of a number of ways in which telic
activity may depart from the type illustrated by the example of
the shaking of the apple tree makes evident that the one factor
essential, i.e., necessary and sufficient, to purposiveness in an ac¬
tivity, is that what directly incites the activity should be either
wholly or in part a conation.

It then becomes evident that causation of an activity or of
any other event is on the contrary “mechanical” if and only if
the direct cause of it does not consist, either wholly or in part, of
a conation. Moreover, this analysis of the essence of “mechanical”
causation applies irrespective of whether the activity or event
caused be a physical or a psychical one. Much of what goes on in
our minds occurs not purposively but mechanically; for example,
occurrence of ideas that had become associated with others by
contiguity or by similarity; rote recollections; orderly mental ac¬
tivities so habitual as to have become automatic, etc. The me¬
chanical character of such psychological processes, and similarly
of some psychosomatic and of some somatic processes, holds if
what directly incites them is not a conation, and holds even if a
mechanism being directly caused to function at a given time by
something that is not a conation, came itself to exist as end-
product of a purposive activity that aimed to construct it. (One’s
knowledge of the multiplication table would be an example of a
psychological mechanism that was so instituted.)

10. Servo-mechanisms. A servo-mechanism is a mechanism
so provided with feed-backs that the functioning of its does, not¬
withstanding disturbances of certain kinds and magnitudes, auto¬
matically insure attainment or maintenance within certain limits
of a certain effect. A simple instance of a servo-mechanism is an
oil-burning furnace controlled by a thermostat which maintains
the house temperature within specific limits.

The point essential here to bear in mind in connection with
servo-mechanisms is that although, to an observer struck by the

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

similarity of their behavior to that of the behavior of a man ac¬
tuated by a purpose, their behavior seems purposive too, never¬
theless it is wholly mechanical . The purpose which the observer
infers from his observation of the servo-mechanism’s behavior is
not entertained by the servo-mechanism itself, but is the purpose
which the constructor of the mechanism intended that it should
be capable of serving, and which the user of the mechanism is
employing it to serve: the thermostat’s action, which turns the
furnace burner on or off, is not caused by a craving or desire in
the thermostat to maintain the room temperature within certain
limits. Although the existence of the thermostatically controlled
furnace is artificial, i.e., came about through somebody’s purposive
constructional activity, nevertheless once the mechanism has come
to exist, its operation is just as wholly mechanical as is operation
of the increase or decrease of the quantity of water pouring over
the natural spillway of a natural mountain lake, in maintaining
the level of the lake constant within certain limits.

But although the action of the thermostat in turning the
burner on or off is not itself purposive, it is nevertheless purpose¬
serving —the purpose served being of course the householder’s pur¬
pose of maintaining the house temperature approximately con¬
stant. On the other hand, as the case of the mountain lake shows,
an activity, in order to be capable of serving somebody’s purpose,
does not need either to be the activity of a purposive agent, or
to be the activity of a purposively constructed mechanism.

11. Creative vs. only activative conations. In the various
types of telism considered up to this point, the effect of the cona¬
tions involved was to activate some preexisting psychological or
psychosomatic mechanism; either, autotelically, for the sake of its
very activity; or, heterotelically, for the sake of an ulterior effect
which the mechanism’s activity automatically causes.

What we must notice next is that, instead of or in addition to
being thus activative, a conation may be both creative, and blind
as to the determinate nature of that whose creation would satisfy
the conation.

An example would be the imaginative creation of the poem,
drama, or musical or pictorial composition which issues out of the
composer’s “inspiration,” i.e., which is “breathed into” his con-

HYPOPHENOMENALISM: THE LIFE OF ORGANISMS

sciousness by the specific conation operating in him at the time.
The creative process is here usually a step-by-step one, in which
ideas of portions or features of the composition are spontaneously
generated by the conation; these ideas, when they turn out to be
such as to satisfy it, being then embodied by the composer in per¬
ceptible material—words, tones, colors, etc., as the case may be.

Other examples would be those constituted by discovery of
the solution of some intellectual problem; for instance the prob¬
lem of discovering a proof that no cube can be the sum of two
cubes. The correct solution, if it comes, is—like the incorrect ones
that come—generated spontaneously by the intense conation to
solve the problem; which conation, however, is satisfied only by
advent of the correct solution and awareness that it is correct

Another category is that of instances where what the conation
generates is a psychological or psychosomatic servo-mechanism
such that possession of it constitutes possession of a skill. Instances
of this are of special interest in the present connection because
part of what is then created is an elaborate set of connections
among neurons in the brain and the cerebellum; and the fact that
the conation to acquire a skill thus has a creative somatic effect
lends plausibility to the supposition that the somatic phenomena
of organic growth to a normal form, of regeneration, of adapta¬
tion, etc., are similarly manifestations of conations that are so¬
matically creative, but are autotelic and blind as to what will
satisfy them. This would mean that the tadpole’s new leg, re¬
stored after the original one had been snipped off—and indeed the
original one too—is, as Schopenhauer would have put it, an “ob¬
jectification” of, i.e., a spontaneous somatic construction by, the
blind conation for capacity to swim; and the crustacean’s restored
eye similarly a spontaneous construction by the conation for ca
pacity to see.

12. The question as to how conation organizes matter. It
might perhaps be objected, however, that anyway we do not un
derstand how a conation manages to organize or to shape matter.
If so, the pertinent reply would be that the puzzle is a wholly sup¬
posititious one. For wherever, as in this case and in many others,
what is in view is not remote but proximate causation, i.e., causa¬
tion of one event by another not through causation of intermedi-

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

ary other events but directly and immediately, then the question
as to the “how” of the causation is strictly absurd. It is absurd
because in any such case it loses the only meaning it ever has,
which is: “Through what intermediary causal steps does A cause
B?” and hence to ask this, i.e., to ask “how,” in cases of direct
causation, is to ask what the intermediary causal steps are in cases
where there are none!

13. Telism ultimately the only type of explanation in sight
for the life processes. The supposition formulated above—of or¬
ganization as direct effect of conation—has the merit that it in¬
vokes a kind of cause, to wit, conation, of which—by introspective
attention to our psychological experience—we know that some
cases exist; a kind of cause, moreover, which we know to be some¬
times creative; and indeed sometimes somatically creative.

On the other hand, our examination of the objections to
teleological explanation of the life processes showed that each of
the three objections is without force. Moreover, no explanation
of those processes, other than a teleological one, is in sight; for
to speak (as do E. S. Russell, R. S. Lillie, and others) of the “di¬
rectiveness” of the life processes; or (as does Driesch) of an “en-
telechy” that is not psychic but “psychoid”; or (as does von
Bertalanffy) of the “equifinality” of the life processes; and so on,
is either to bring in purposiveness itself, under an alias; or else it
is to invoke the operation of servo-mechanisms whose existence,
however, even if it were observed instead of only postulated,
would itself stand in need of explanation. That the explanation
could ultimately be only in terms of purposiveness follows from
two considerations.

One is that since what differentiates living material, even in
its most elementary forms, from non-living material is the prima
facie purposive character of its processes, this character of all liv¬
ing material cannot be accounted for by the hypothesis of chance
variations or mutations in living material, and of survival of those
fittest to survive.

The other consideration is that the adequacy of that hy¬
pothesis to account even for the differentiation of species within
already living material is to-day seriously questioned by a num¬
ber of biologists for several reasons. One is: (a) that mutations

HYPOPHENOMENALISM: THE LIFE OF ORGANISMS 93

are "rare, isolated, occurring in but one out of thousands or tens
of thousands of individuals, and hence have but infinitesimal
chances to propagate themselves and to persist, in such a popula¬
tion.” Moreover, (b) mutation "does not recur sequentially in
the same form, and hence cannot be cumulative” and thus can¬
not produce the continuous and harmonious change which the
hypothesis of progressive evolution depicts. Besides, (c) "by the
very laws, which govern crossings in sexual reproduction, mu¬
tants have but infinitesimal chances to survive and to propagate
their type.” Furthermore, (d) "mutation is almost always a de¬
precative, noxious, or pathological phenomenon.” Again, (e)
"mutation never affects any but relatively minute details, and
never traverses the limits of the species. ... In brief, mutation
is at the most a factor of variation within a species ... it certainly
cannot transform the existing species into novel ones.” 4

14. Conation in the vegetative, the animal, and the human
activities. The eminent author from whose chapter on ‘‘Evolu¬
tionism: An illusory science” the preceding observations are
quoted considers in another chapter entitled, “Do cells have a
soul?”, the neo-finalism of Ruyer, and criticizes it.

According to Ruyer, the apparent preordination of biological
processes to specific ends is owing to a dominating, essentially ac¬
tive and dynamic “primary organic consciousness,” whose sole
intent, or ideal, consists of the forms and capacities of the organs
it constructs. This primary organic consciousness would thus be
concerned basically with the vegetative processes of living things;
and the processes of animal and of typically human life would be
eventual derivatives from it.

Ruyer contends in addition, however, that a similar con¬
sciousness, though at more elementary levels, operates also in in
dividual molecules and atoms, since they are not mere aggregates
but are systems. His hypophenomenalism would thus be not bio-

4 Louis Bounoure: DHerminisme et Finaliti, Flammarion, Paris, 1957, Ch. II,
pp. 70-72. Note also Raymond Ruyer: Ndofinalisme, Presses IJniversitaires de
France, Paris, 1952; especially chs. IV, V, XVI, XVI1. Also, H. Graham Cannon:
The Evolution of Living Things, Thomas, Springfield, Ill. 1958, and Lamarck and
Modem Genetics, Manchester Univ. P*ess, 1958—See, however, E. Schroedinger:
Mind and Matter, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1959—Ch. 2.

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

logical only but cosmological. But-leaving aside that additional
contention of his-the “primary organic consciousness” he invokes
to account for the apparent purposiveness of biological processes
would seem to be much the same thing in essence if not perhaps
in its details, as the conations which we found to be the constitu¬
ent alone indispensable and therefore essential in the only actions
whose purposiveness is, not inferred, but directly and intimately
observable by us. These are, of course, our own purposive actions,
whose motivation we can scrutinize introspectively; whereas ex¬
ternal perception, as we pointed out earlier, has no way to dis¬
tinguish between action really purposive, and action automatically
regulated by servo-mechanisms.

Bounoure criticizes Ruyer’s hypothesis, by emphasizing that
the processes that go on in living organisms are triggered at every
stage by determining conditions—chemical stimuli, mitogenetic
causes, etc., of which he describes various interesting examples in
some detail.

This determinism, however, which is beyond question, does
not account for the organism’s inherent capacity to respond to
those determinants and to variations in them in a manner so
adaptable as to attain a fixed result. Possession of such capacity
is the characteristic of servo-mechanisms, but it does not account
for its own existence. Indeed, Bounoure himself points this out
when he writes that “finality is implicate in organisms, but impli¬
cation does not constitute explanation. What needs to be ac¬
counted for is not organization already existent, but the activity
that constructs and organizes life” (p. 216). Immediately after,
however, he dismisses as futile and anthropomorphic Ruyer’s
postulated immanent agent-consciousness.

What then does Bounoure himself ultimately offer us in¬
stead? Unfortunately, only a statement that, in the organism, “the
preordination of phenomena and. . .the vital value of their con¬
catenation” are “marvellous characteristics of life;” or a reference
to the “essential mystery of life;” or an “acknowledgment, in the
organism’s development of a veritable marvel.” In effect, nothing
but virtuously emphatic avowals that he has no explanation what¬
ever to offer!

As we shall see in the next chapter, however, some biologists

HYPOPHENOMENALISM: THE LIFE OF ORGANISMS 95

no less distinguished, among them H. S. Jennings, whose observa
tions on the behavior of paramecium Bounoure has occasion to
cite—have not shared Bounoure’s metaphysical prejudice against
the possibility of psycho-physical causation.

15. Hypophenomenalism vs. epiphenomenalism. How now
do the merits of the hypophenomenalism we have formulated com¬
pare with those of epiphenomenalism?

Epiphenomenalism as we saw, has two defects. One is that
although it acknowledges that states of consciousness are not ma¬
terial events, nevertheless it describes their relation to brain ac¬
tivity—which activity it alleges generates them—only in terms of
the in fact non-analogous relation between an activity of a ma¬
terial object and generation by it of another material object.

The biological hypophenomenalism we have described, on
the other hand, does not suffer from any corresponding defect, for
it docs not contend—as would a cosmological hypophenomenalism
—that purposive mental activity, i.e., conation, generates the mat¬
ter of which the body consists, but only that it “animates” or
“enlivens” this matter, i.e., organizes it purposefully.

Again, epiphenomenalism is, we pointed our. altogether ar¬
bitrary in its dogma that causation as between consciousness and
brain is always from brain states to states of consciousness, but
never causation of brain states by states of consciousness. In the
contentions of hypophenomenalism, on the contrary, there is noth¬
ing to preclude causation of particular changes in the stale of the
living brain by particular changes in the state of consciousness;
nor is there anything to preclude causation in the converse direc
tion. The biological hypophenomenalism we have described is
hospitable equally to both possibilities; for the causality relation
does not require that both its cause-term and its effect-term be
material events, nor indeed that either of them be so; and what
unprejudiced observation reveals is not only instances of physico-
physical causation, but also instances of psycho-physical, of phys-
ico-psychical, and of psycho-psychical causation. This, however,
brings up interactionism, which will be the subject of the next
chapter.

16. Hypophenomenalism and experimentation. Each per-

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

son whose body is functioning normally is in position to make
perceptual observations of it and of the bodies of others; to act
physically upon it and upon them; to observe introspectively in
his own case the psychological effects of physical stimuli on his
body, and, in the case of other human bodies, to infer the psycho¬
logical effects of such stimuli more or less well from the behavior
of those bodies. Also, situated as we are, each of us is in position
as occasion arises to observe human bodies unconscious as well as
conscious, dead as well as alive, and being born as well as dying.
It is because we have been in position to make these and related
observations of human bodies and of other physical objects and
events, that we have been able to gain such knowledge as we have
of physicophysical causation in general, and of physico-physical
causation upon, by, and within the human body. These last facts
of causation are what in particular has invited, and has been used
as an empirical and experimental springboard for, the speculative
leap of epiphenomenalism, which, as we saw, goes far beyond
those facts.

For the sake of healthy philosophical perspective, it is neces¬
sary now to point out the respects in which our situation would
need to be different from what it is during life, in order that it
should provide us with an analogous empirical and experimental
springboard for the hypophenomenalistic speculative leap.

In order to have such a springboard for this, we would need
to be discarnate minds, instead of as now minds possessed of and
confined to a physical body. We would need, as discarnate minds,
to be able to communicate with and act upon other discarnate
minds directly, i.e., without, as now, physical bodies as intermedi¬
aries; perhaps also, to some extent and exceptionally, to be able
to communicate with and act upon some incarnate minds likewise
directly. We would need to be able to observe the “spirit birth”
of a mind, i.e., its advent, at bodily death, into the world of dis¬
carnate minds; and conceivably also its “spirit death”, if bodily
birth should happen to consist of incarnation of an already exist¬
ing “spirit” or “germ of a mind.”

The situation of a discarnate mind as just depicted is of
course more or less what Spiritualists believe to be that of the
minds of persons whose bodies have died. They speak, however, of

HYPOPHENOMENALISM: THE LIFE OF ORGANISMS 97

“spirits” rather than of discarnate minds—apparently meaning by
a “spirit” a mind or “soul” which although discarnate is clothed
with a “spiritual,” more subtle kind of body. Spiritualists hold
that such discarnate minds can on exceptional occasions describe
to us, in terms of the observations and experiments which minds
are able to make when discarnate, a mind-body relation which,
although not labelled by them hypophenomenalistic, is yet essen¬
tially this; those occasions being the rare ones on which, pur¬
portedly, a discarnate spirit borrows for the moment the body or
part of the body of an entranced “medium,” and by its means
communicates with us whether vocally, or by automatic writing,
or typtologically. Such paranormal incursions by a discarnate
mind into the world of living bodies would be the analogues of
the paranormal incursions of incarnate minds into the world of
spirits, which Swedenborg and some other psychics have claimed
to have made.

It is interesting to note in this connection that if, at or after
death, a then discarnate spirit should lose the memories of the
incarnate life he left at death, he would then probably be just
as skeptical of reports as to the existence of an earth world and of
physical human bodies as now we, who have no memories of a
spirit world, are skeptical as to the existence of one and as to our
having had, or being eventually to have, a life in onel

These remarks are of course not intended to prejudge the
question of survival after death; but only to make clear why the
hypophenomenalistic speculative leap cannot, our minds being
situated as now they are in a physical body, be made from an em¬
pirical and experimental springboard analogous to that which,
situated as they now are, they can use in making the epiphenom
enalistic leap.

Attention to beliefs such as those of Spiritualism, which seem
to us queer or even paradoxical, can have the value of freeing to
some extent our imagination from the unconscious parochialism
of its outlook, which naively terms “unrealistic,” or “contrary to
commonsense,” or perhaps “unscientific,” anything that clashes
with our existing habits of thought.

Of course, readiness to consider paradoxical ideas must not
generate readiness to accept them without adequate evidence;

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

but readiness to consider them can well turn out to generate
awareness that some of the ideas currently orthodox whether in
science or elsewhere are being accepted without adequate
evidence.

Chapter XII

MIND AND BODY AS ACTING EACH
ON THE OTHER

The contention considered in the preceding chapter was
that the processes constituting the living body’s minimal, i.e.,
vegetative, life are autotelic objective expressions of blind crav
ings of mind or minds to organize matter. Such of these blind
cravings as are present in the human mind might be termed its
vegetative conations, as distinguished from its distinctively ani
mal and human ones.

The hypophenomenalistic contention was of interest to us
primarily because of the superiority, in the respects we noticed,
of the alternative it provides to the contention that the life of
living things is a purely physico-chemical process and that a mind
and its various conations and states are mere epiphenomena of
those processes in the living brain. We shall not, however, need
to occupy ourselves further with hypophenomenalism since the
question to which it is an answer is different from the question
central for us in these pages.

The latter question has to do with ihe nature of the rela
tion between two terms. One of them is a living human body-
no matter whether its being “alive” be a physico-chemical epiphe-
nomenon or be a hypophenomenon of some primitive conations.
The other term of the relation is constituted by existence and
exercise of the animal and especially of the typically human
capacities or “dispositions” in a person’s total mind conceived
in the manner set forth in Chapter VI. Man’s living material
body is of course a necessary, even if not a sufficient, factor in
the development of his mind from the rudimentary state in
which it is at the birth of his body. But our problem is whether
on the one hand a person’s living body, and on the other the

100

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

part of that person’s mind consisting of the distinctively human
capacities peculiar to him, are so related that, once those capaci¬
ties have been acquired by him, they, or some of them, can
continue to exist and to function after that body dies.

Interactionism, as conceived in these pages, answers that no
impossibility-either theoretical or empirical—is involved in so
supposing. Let us, however, first consider the classical account of
mind-body interaction.

1. Interaction as conceived by Descartes. The contention
that the human mind and the living human body can, and to some
extent do, act each on the other is associated chiefly with the name
of Descartes. His account of their interaction, however, is bur¬
dened with difficulties that are not inherent in interactionism but
arise only out of some of the peculiarities of his formulation of it.

The most troublesome of these is that mind and body are con¬
ceived by Descartes as each a “substance” in the sense that, aside
from the dependence of each on God, each is wholly self-sufficient.
This entails that changes in the state of either cannot without
inconsistency be supposed to cause changes in the state of the
other. Descartes, in one of his letters, acknowledges this. 1 Never¬
theless he asserts that such causation does occur: “That the spirit,
which is incorporeal, is able to move the body, no reasoning or
comparison from other things can teach this to us. Nevertheless,
we cannot doubt it, for experiments too certain and too evident
make us clearly aware of it every day; and one must well notice
that this is one of the things that are known of themselves [une
des choses qui sont connues par elles memes] and that we obscure
them every time we would explain them by others.” 2

Yet, as if to mitigate the illegitimacy which, on Descartes’
conception of substance, attaches to interaction, he insists that it
occurs only at one place. This is at the center of the brain, in
the pineal gland, which he holds is the principal “seat” of the
soul. The deflections of it by the “animal spirits,” Descartes says,
cause perceptions in the soul; and, conversely, the soul’s volitions

Tetter of June 28, 1645, to Elizabeth. Descartes' Correspondence, ed. Adam Sc
Milhaud, Vol. 5:324.

•Letter VI, Vol. 2:31.

MIND AND BODY AS ACTING EACH ON THE OTHER 1Q1

deflect the pineal gland and thereby the “animal spirits,” whose
course to the muscles causes the body’s voluntary movements.

But to pack into the meaning of the word “substance” the
provision that one substance cannot interact with another is—
here as in the historical precedents—quite arbitrary; for no theo¬
retical need exists to postulate any substance as so defined; nor is
the term, as so defined, applicable to anything actually known to
exist. As ordinarily used, the term denotes such things as water
and salt, steel and wood, nitric acid and copper, which can and on
occasion do interact. Indeed, all the dispositions (except internal
ones) in terms of which the nature of any substance analyzes con¬
sist of capacities of the substance concerned to affect or to be af
fected by some other substance.

Thus, the paradox Descartes finds in the interaction which
he anyway acknowledges occurs between body and mind ; arises
only out of his gratuitously degrading to the status of “modes’
the things ordinarily called “substances”—which do interact—and,
equally gratuitously, defining “substances” as incapable of in¬
teracting.

2. Interaction and the heterogeneity of mind and body.
What causes Descartes to find paradoxical the interaction of mind
and body and yet to find no difficulty in the interaction of sub¬
stances such as steel and wood, etc., is that, in the latter cases, the
two substances concerned, being both of them material, are onto-
logically homogeneous; whereas body and mind—being one of
them res extensa and the other res cogitans —are ontologically
heterogeneous.

But the supposed paradox of interaction between them evap¬
orates as soon as one realizes that the causality relation is wholly
indifferent to the ontological homogeneity or heterogeneity of
the events figuring in it as cause and as effect. This indifference or
neutrality holds no matter whether causality be defined, as later
by Hume, as consisting in de facto regularity of sequence; or more
defensibly, as in experimental procedure, in terms of a state of
affairs within which only two changes occur—one, called “cause.”
occurring at a given moment, and the other, occurring immedi¬
ately thereafter, called “effect.” All that the causality relation
presupposes as to the nature of its cause-term and its effect term

102

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

is that both be events, i.e., occurrences in time. Hence, as Hume
eventually pointed out and as we have insisted, an event, of no
matter what kind, can, without contradiction or incongruity, be
conceived to cause an event of no matter what other kind. Only
experience can tell us what in fact can or cannot cause what.
That, as experiment testifies, volition to raise one’s arm normally
causes it to rise, and burning the skin normally causes pain, is not
in the least paradoxical.

3. H. S. Jennings on interaction between mind and body.
The interactionist views of the eminent biologist, H. S. Jennings,
are free from the artificial difficulty present in those of Descartes,
and are far dearer and more critical than those of most of the
biologists who have expressed themselves on the subject of the
relation between body and mind.

In an address, Some Implications of Emergent Evolution,
which he delivered in 1926 as retiring chairman of the Zoological
Section of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science, and later in a book, The Universe and Life, 3 Jennings
sharply distinguishes two conceptions of determinism. He calls
them respectively “radically experimental determinism’’ and
“mechanistic determinism.’’ The latter is the one commonly
entertained by scientists, and is to the effect that whatever occurs
in the universe, whether novel or not, is theoretically explicable
in terms of the properties and relations of the elementary con¬
stituents of matter; and hence that even radical novelties such as
the advent of life in an until then lifeless world are the inherently
predictable necessary or probable effects of certain collocations—
that is, are predictable in principle even if not in fact by us at a
given time for lack of the required empirical data. This—except
for the substitution of probabilities for necessities at the sub¬
atomic level in consequence of the state of affairs recognized in
Heisenberg’s principle of indeterminacy—is essentially determin¬
ism as conceived in Laplace’s famous statement we have quoted
earlier, that “an intelligence knowing, at a given instant of time.

■Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, 1933. The address appeared in Science, Jan. 14,
1927, and was reprinted with corrections the same year by the Sociological Press,
Minneapolis.

MIND AND BODY AS ACTING EACH ON THE OTHER 103

all forces acting in nature, as well as the momentary positions of
all things of which the universe consists, would be able to com¬
prehend the motions of the largest bodies of the world and those
of the smallest atoms in one single formula, provided it [i.e., that
intelligence] were sufficiently powerful to subject all data to
analysis; to it, nothing would be uncertain, both future and past
would be present before its eyes.” 4

Obviously, however, such a physico-chemical determinism is
in fact only a metaphysical creed; for it vastly outruns what theo¬
retical physics and physical chemistry are actually able to predict.
What has occurred is that something which in reality was but a
program—namely to explain in physico-chemical terms whatever
turns out to be capable of explanation in such terms—has una¬
wares been transformed into the a priori creed that whatever does
occur is ultimately capable of being explained in such terms.
Doubtless, the enthusiasm resulting from the truly remarkable
discoveries which have been made under that program is what has
brought about the unconscious metamorphosing of the latter into
a creed, i.e., into a belief piously held without adequate warrant
both by scientists and by laymen awed by the vast achievements
of science.

On the other hand, the determinism Jennings terms “rad¬
ically experimental determinism” does not assume, as physico¬
chemical determinism gratuitously does, that only physical or
chemical events can really cause or explain anything. Rather,
it holds, as did David Hume, that only experience can reveal to
us what in fact can or cannot cause what; and holds further as
does the present writer, that, ultimately, the only sort of expe
rience that can reveal what can or cannot cause what is experience
of the outcome of an experiment: “The only test as to whether
one phenomenon affects another is experiment .... the test is:
remove severally each preceding condition, and observe whether
this alters the later phenomena. If it does, this is what we mean
by saying that one condition affects another; that one determines
another. Such experimental determinism is not concerned with
likenesses or differences in kind, as between mental and physical,

4 Thiorie Analytique des Probability, Paris, Sd. edition, 1820.

104

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

nor with the conceivability or inconceivability of causal relations
between them; it is purely a matter of experiment.” 5

Jennings goes on to point out that “if we rely solely upon
experiment, the production of mental diversities by preceding
diversities in physical conditions is the commonest experience of
mankind; a brick dropped on the foot yields other mental results
than from a feather so dropped.” But ‘‘experimental determinism
also holds for the production of physical diversities by preceding
mental diversities; for experimental determinism of the physical
by the mental. One result follows when a certain mental state
precedes; another when another mental state precedes .... No
ground based on experimental analysis can be alleged for the
assertion that the mental does not affect the physical; this is a
purely a priori notion. According therefore to radical experimen-

talism, consciousness does make a difference to what happens.

the mental determines what happens as does any other determiner
.... Among the determining factors for the happenings in nature
are those that we call mental. Thought, purpose, ideals, con¬
science, do alter what happens.” 6

4. What interactionism essentially contends. The interac-
tionism that seems to the present writer to constitute the true
account of the relation between the human mind and the living
human body contends, as does Jennings, that each of the two
acts at times on the other. Certain brain events, caused by en¬
vironmental stimuli upon the external sense organs or by internal
bodily conditions, cause certain mental events—notably, sensations
of the various familiar kinds. On the other hand, mental events
of various kinds (and no matter how themselves caused) cause
certain brain events—those, namely, which themselves in turn

B Some Implications of Emergent Evolution, p. 9 of the reprint. Cf. the present
writer’s own analysis of Causality in his Causation and the Types of Necessity
Univ. of Washington Press, Seattle, 1924, pp. 55-6, and in his later Nature, Mind,
and Death Open Court Pub. Co. La Salle, 1951, Ch. 8, Sec. 3, where he insists that
Causality is the relationship, which an experiment exhibits, between a state of
affairs, an only change in it at a time T, and an immediately sequent only other
change in it; and that causal laws are generalizations obtained by attention to the
similarities that turn out to exist between two or more experiments each of which,
in its own individual right, revealed a case of causation.

•Ibid. p. 10. Cf. The Universe and Life, pp. 33-48.

MIND AND BODY AS ACTING EACH ON THE OTHER 105

cause or inhibit contractions of muscles or secretions of glands.
But that mind and body thus interact does not entail that each
cannot, or does not at times, function by itself, i.e., without acting
on the other or being acted upon by it. Certainly, many of man's
bodily activities—at the least the vegetative activities—can and do
at times go on in the absence of conscious mental activity or with*
out being affected by such as may be going on at the time. On
the other hand, at times during which the mind is engaged in
reflection, meditation, or reminiscence, and is thus in a state of
what is properly called “abstraction” (from sensory stimulations
and from voluntary bodily actions,) the thoughts, desires, images,
and feelings that occur are directly determined by others of them¬
selves together with the acquired dispositions or habits of the
particular mind concerned.

5. Which human body is one’s own. In connection with the
interactionist thesis, it is of particular interest to raise a question
which at first sight seems silly, but the answer to which turns
out to be decisive in favor of interactionisin. That question is,
How do we know which one of the many human bodies we per¬
ceive is our own?

We might answer that it is the only human body whose nose
we always see if it is illuminated when we see anything else; or
that we call that human body our own, the back of whose head
we never can see directly, etc. But this answer would not be
ultimately adequate; for if a human body, the back of whose head
we do see directly, were such that when and only when it is
pricked with a pin or otherwise injured, we feel pain; such that
when and only when we decide to open the door, it walks to the
door and opens it; such that when and only when we feel shame,
it blushes; and so on, invariably; then that body would be the one
properly called our own! And the body, the back of whose head
we never see directly—but whose injuries cause us no pain, and
over whose movements our will has no direct control—would be
for us the body of someone else, notwithstanding the peculiarity
that we never manage to see the back of its head directly.

Thus when, in the question: What is the relation between
a mind and its body? we substitute for “its body” what we have

106

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

just found to be the meaning of that expression, then the question
turns out to have implicitly contained its own answer, for it then
reads: What is the relation between a mind and the only body
with which its relation is that of direct interaction? That is, that
the mind-body relation is the particular relation which inter-
actionism describes is analytically true.

Let us, however, now examine a consideration that has been
alleged to rule out the possibility of interaction between mind
and body.

6. Interaction and the conservation of energy. It has often
been contended that the principle of the conservation of energy
precludes causation of a mental event by a material one, or of a
material event by a mental one; for such causation would mean
that, on such occasions, a certain quantity of energy respectively
vanishes from, or is introduced into, the material world; and this
would constitute a violation of that conservation principle.

Prof. C. D. Broad, however, has pointed out that no violation
of the principle would be involved if, each time energy vanished
from the material world at one point, an equal quantity of it
automatically came into it at another point. Also that, even if
all physico-physical causation involves transfer of energy, no evi¬
dence exists that such transfer occurs also in physico-psychical or
psycho-physical causation. 7

To this it may be added that if by “energy” is meant some¬
thing experimentally measurable, and not just a theoretical con¬
struct, then the fact is not that causation is ascertainable only by
observing that energy has been transferred, but on the contrary
that “transfer of energy” is ultimately definable only in terms of
causation as experimentally ascertainable. That is, even if it
should happen to be true that energy is transferred whenever
causation occurs, nevertheless transfer of energy is not what we
notice and mean when we observe and assert that a certain event
C caused a certain other event E. For, obviously, correct judg¬
ments of causation have been made every day for thousands of
years by millions of persons who not only did not base them on

7 The Mind and its Place in Nature, Harcourt, Brace & Co. New York, 1929.
pp. 103, ff.

MIND AND BODY AS ACTING EACH ON THE OTHER 107

measurements of energy, but the immense majority of whom did
not have the least conception of what physicists mean by “energy.”
Everyone of the verbs of causation in the common language—to
kill, to cure, to break, to bend, to irritate, to remind, to crush,
to displace, etc.—acquired its meaning out of common perceptual
experiences, not out of laboratory measurements of energy. The
Toms, Dicks, and Harrys who have witnessed the impact of a
brick on a bottle and the immediately sequent collapse of the
bottle judged that the striking brick broke the bottle, i.e., caused
its collapse. And they so judged because the impact of the brick
was prima facie the only change that occurred in the immediate
environment of the bottle immediately before the latter’s collapse.

Anyway, as Prof. M. T. Keeton has pointed out, the proposi¬
tion that energy is conserved in the material world is not known,
either a priori or empirically, to be true without exception. The
“principle” of conservation of energy, or of mass-energy, is in fact
only a postulate —a condition which the material world must sat¬
isfy if it is to be a wholly closed, isolated system. And, when in¬
teraction between mind and body is asserted to be impossible on
the ground that it would violate the “principle” of the conserva¬
tion of energy, the very point at issue is of course whether the
material world is in fact a wholly closed, isolated system. 8

Thus, the ground just considered, on which the interactionist
conception has been attacked, quite fails to invalidate it. Nor
does the fact that, up to the time of the brain’s death the shaping
of the mind has been due in part to interaction between mind
and brain, entail that the conscious and subconscious mind—such
as it has become by the time the body dies—cannot after this con¬
tinue to exist and to carry on some at least of its processes.

Interactionism leaves the possibility of this open, but does
not in itself supply evidence that such survival is a fact. Lamont,
however, argues at length in the book cited earlier against any
dualistic conception of the nature of body and mind. Examina¬
tion in some detail of the considerations alleged by him to rule
out dualism must therefore be the subject of our next chapter.

"Some Ambiguities in the Theory of the Conservation of Energy, Philosophy of
Science, Vol. 8, No. 3, July 1941.

Chapter XIII

LAMONT’S ATTACK ON MIND-BODY
DUALISM

Most of the items, which in Chapter III were cited as together
constituting the essentials of the case against the possibility that
the mind survives the body’s death, are presented in considerable
detail by Lamont in his book, The Illusion of Immortality. 1 As he
proceeds, he points out various difficulties which he regards as
insuperably standing in the way of a dualistic conception of the
mind-body relation, and as dictating instead a monistic and nat¬
uralistic conception of it. Let us now consider some of the chief
of his remarks both concerning the dualism he attacks and con¬
cerning the monism which he contends constitutes “the verdict
of science.”

1. Dualism and supernaturalism. A few words are in order
to begin with concerning the relation assumed by Lamont to exist
between dualism and supernaturalism. Again and again in his
characterization of the other-than-bodily constituent of man,
which dualism envisages, we find Lamont referring to that con¬
stituent as a “supernatural soul” (e.g., p. 116.). He alludes to
“the notion that a supernatural soul enters the body from on
high, already endowed with a pure and beautiful conscience . . .”
(p. 95); also to the idea that “a transcendental self or a super¬
natural soul holds sway behind the empirical curtain;” again,
to the supposition that “some kind of supernatural soul or
spirit is doing our thinking for us . . .” (p. 117); to the notion
of “an agent soul or mind somehow attached to the body and
somehow doing man’s thinking for him” (p. 124); and to the idea
that “the personalities of human beings .... enter ready made
into this world” (p. 93). In the same vein, he speaks of dualism
as paying homage to the human faculty of reason “by elevating it

Philosophical Library New York, 1950.

108

LAMONT S ATTACK ON MIND BODY DUALISM

109

to a superhuman and supernatural plane” (p. 100); and by con¬
ceiving ideas as “existing independently in some separate realm”

(p. 100).

All that need be said concerning the use of such expressions
in characterizing dualism is that—whether or not they be faithful
to certain of the speculations which some theologians or theol¬
ogizing philosophers have put fonvard on the subject of the con¬
stitution of man—those expressions of Lamont’s are nothing but
smear words if alleged to apply to dualism as such. For they then
gratuitously load upon it vagaries that are as foreign to its essence
as they are to Lamont’s would-be monism.

They can, of course, be inserted into dualism, but they do
not constitute an intrinsic part of its conception of mind, any
more than, for instance, do atoms as conceived by Democritus
constitute an intrinsic part of materialism’s conception of matter.

Nor does the hypothesis of survival after death—whatever
merits it may otherwise have or lack—have to be formulated in
terms of Lamont’s “supernatural soul.” To attack dualism as
painted by him in the expressions quoted is to attack but the freak
offspring of an irresponsible affair between dualism and theology

2. Naturalism and materialism. Lamont’s belief that psycho¬
physical dualism is inherently supernaturalistic is only a corollaiy
of his wholly arbitrary equating of naturalism and materialistic
monism.

The fact is that a dualism can be just as naturalistic as a
monism unless by “naturalism” one tacitly means ontological ma¬
terialism (or, of course, ontological idealism;) for Nature is simply
the realm of events that are effects of other events and that in
turn cause further events; and a responsible dualism insists that
mental events and processes are nowise “supernatural” but exactly
as natural in the sense just stated as are the material events and
processes of the human body.

Lamont writes that “ideas .... are not apart from but are
a part of Nature” (p. 101); and the responsible dualist too, of
course, contends exactly this, but does not, like Lamont, base the
contention on the tacit and quite arbitrary equation of Nature
and the material world, and hence of Naturalism with ontological

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

materialism. The dualist bases it on the fact that the events de¬
nominated “mental” or “psychological” and more specifically “oc¬
currences of ideas” are not anarchistic any more than are those
denominated “material” and more specifically “physiological.”
Both alike are causally determined by some anterior events and
in turn causally determine posterior ones—which means that both
alike are wholly natural.

3. The senses in which ideas respectively are, and are not,
ultimately private. At this point, something must be said con¬
cerning Lamont’s comments on the connection between dualism
and the privacy of ideas, as contrasted with the public character
of material events. He writes that although “for the individual
who is thinking to himself ideas are private and to that extent
subjective . . . ideas are also objective in that human beings can
communicate them to one another . . .” And he goes on to say
that “the objectivity and non-materiality of ideas has been a strong
factor in impelling philosophers of a dualist bent to set up a
realm of ideas or mind apart from and above Nature” (p. 101).

As regards the last words of this statement, we have pointed
out in what precedes that ideas are not “apart from and above
Nature” unless one arbitrarily equates Nature with the material
world as Lamont tacitly does; and does inconsistently with the
fact that occurrence of an idea is an event, which has causes and
effects, and yet which according to Lamont’s own declaration is
not a material event. For he tells us that “ideas, which are non
material meanings expressing the relations between things and
events, occur in human thought” (p. 100).

Concerning, however, Lamont’s assertion that ideas can be
communicated and hence are not inherently private, it is obvious
that his assertion altogether ignores the differences between an
idea’s being published and its being public. The analysis of it we
supplied in Sec. 1 of Ch. V need not be repeated here. But it is
worth while to notice that Lamont’s failure to distinguish between
the sense in which “ideas” are, and that in which they are not,
inherently private arises out of the ambiguity of the blessed word,
“meanings,” in his definition of ideas as “non-material meanings
expressing [in a sense he does not specify] the relations between
things and events.”

LAMONT S ATTACK ON MIND-BODY DUALISM

111

The point is that the word “meanings” may designate occur¬
rences of the meaning activity, or may designate the objects meant.
This is the distinction between the idea itself and what the idea
is of; or, to put it in still other terms, the distinction is between
the psychological act of objective reference and the object referred
to by it. The former is the idea itself, is a psychological event,
and is inherently private. The object meant, on the other hand,
is the ideas referent, and can be anything whether material or
mental. Two persons may each have an idea of the same object,
but the idea of it one of them is having is not only existentially
distinct from the idea of it the other is having—which is the case
likewise with their bodily movements; but, unlike their move¬
ments, which are public, their ideas, being psychological events,
remain unalterably private; i.e., accessible only to the introspec¬
tion of each. What is communicated, when anything is, is what
object is meant, not the idea itself, which has it as objc t And
the communicating of what object is meant consists, the one
hand, in the communicator’s “coding” the object’s nature into
public symbols, usually words, i.e., in his “describing ’ it; and.
on the auditor’s part, in then “decoding” the symbols, i.e., under
standing” what object they designate. 2

4. Lamont’s position actually an ontological dualism. Let
us, however, return to the monism which Lamont tells us is the
verdict of science concerning the nature of the mind-body relation

On examination this monism turns out to be of a very queer
sort indeed; for Lamont expressly states, as we have seen, that
ideas “are non-material meanings,” and endorses the “non mate¬
riality of ideas” (pp. 100/1). In so doing he is, of course, auto¬
matically — although seemingly unawares — declaring himself an
ontological dualist, since those words of his expressly acknowledge,
in addition to the material world, a non-material realm of being
that comprises ideas at least, to say nothing of other mental stares
and processes.

Moreover the ontological dualism automatically embraced

■The privacy of mental events has been attacked also by Gilbert Ryle in his
book, The Concept of Mind. For a pointed criticism of his attack, see a paper by
Arthur Pap, Semantic Analysis and Psycho-physical Dualism, in Mind, Vo). LXI:
209-221, No. 242, April, 1952.

112

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

when one declares that not only material events but also non-
material ideas occur is not in the least done away with or im¬
paired by the particular manner in which mental activities on the
one hand, and on the other bodily or more specifically cortical
activities, may turn out to be related—for instance by the extent,
if any, to which the two may happen to be, or not to be, inde¬
pendent or separable. For the point here crucial is that, unless
the relation between them be strict identity , not just “connection”
or “conjunction” of some sort, what one then has is not an on¬
tological monism but an ontological dualism. Thus, Lamont’s
statement that “the experience of thinking or having ideas is dis¬
tinguishable from man's other actvities, but not existentially sep¬
arable” (p. 101) does not save the monism for which he is arguing.
That ideas may be so connected with certain bodily processes as to
be existentially inseparable from them is a possibility nowise in¬
consistent with ontological dualism. Only if the existential in¬
separability consisted not in connection but in strict identity
would dualism be excluded.

More generally, if two things, activities, or experiences are
distinct from each other in the sense that neither of them is a
constituent part of the other, (as on the contrary an angle is a
constituent part of a triangle or a motor a constituent part of an
automobile,) then the two are not only distinguishable but also
theoretically separable. That is, they are separable in the sense
that to suppose either to exist without the other implies no con¬
tradiction. Then the question arises as to whether, or how far,
they are in addition separable existentially, i.e., separable in fact
not only in theory. But this question cannot be settled, as in
Lamont’s quoted statement concerning thinking and bodily ac¬
tivities, by dogmatic negation; nor by declaring, as in the state¬
ments quoted from his chapter, that the connection between mind
and body is “so exceedingly intimate that it becomes inconceiv¬
able how one could function properly without the other,” or that
“man is a unified whole of mind-body or personality-body so
closely and completely integrated that dividing him up into two
separate and more or less independent parts becomes impermis¬
sible and unintelligible” (pp. 89, 113).

Rather, the only way to settle the question as to the existen-

LAMONT’S ATTACK ON MIND-BODY DUALISM

113

dal separability, in whole or in part, of body and inind is—aside
from the experimental way which would consist in shooting one
self in order to observe whether one’s mental activity survives that
drastic laboratory procedure—the only way, I repeat, is to consider,
as we have done in the preceding chapters of Part ITT, what vari¬
ous types of connection or union between the two are conceivable;
and what grounds there may be for concluding that the union of
body and mind is of a type that entails or permits, or of one that
precludes, their partial or perhaps total existential separability.

In the absence of such an inquiry as basis for the quoted as¬
sertions of inseparability, those assertions are merely pseudo¬
scientific dogmatism.

5. The mind as a “productive function” of the body. Hut,
as we shall now see, the strangeness of the monism Lamont pro¬
fesses in the name of science is not exhausted by the fact that it
describes the mind-body relation in dualistic terms.

Lamont contends that the mind is a “productive function”
of the body; declaring, for example, that “when ideas, which are
non-material meanings expressing the relations between things
and events, occur in human thought, they always do so as func¬
tions or accompaniments of action patterns in the cerebral cortex
of a thoroughly material brain” (pp. 100/101). Again, he tells
us that the findings of the sciences that deal with man “have
inexorably led to the proposition that mind or personality is a
function of the body; and that this function is . . . productive and
not merely transmissive” (p. 113).

To make clear that what he means by a “productive” function
is a function in whose case one of the variables stands to the other
as effect stands to cause, Lamont offers as example that “steam is
a productive function of the tea-kettle and light of the electric
circuit, because the kettle and the circuit actually create these
effects” (p. 102).

According to these explicit statements, therefore, when La¬
mont asserts unqualifiedly that the mental and emotional life of
man is always a productive function of “action patterns in the
cerebral cortex of a thoroughly material brain” (p. 101), what
he means is that the latter stand to the former as creative came
stands to created effect .

114

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

The facts Lamont refers to as basis for this contention are:

(a) That “the power and versatility of living things increase
concomitantly with the development and complexity of their
bodies in general and their nervous systems in particular.”

(b) That the genes or other factors from the germ cells of
the parents determine the individual’s inherent physical character¬
istic and inherent mental capacities.”

(c) That, during the course of life, “the mind and person
ality grow and change, always in conjunction with environmental
influences, as the body grows and changes.”

(d) “That specific alterations in the physical structure and
condition of the body, especially in the brain and cerebral cortex,
bring about specific alterations in the mental and emotional life
of a man.”

(e) And, “conversely that specific alterations in his mental
and emotional life result in specific alterations in his bodily con¬
dition” (p. 114).

Taken by themselves, the facts under the (a), (b), (c), and
(d) headings would support the unqualified contention that man’s
mental and emotional life is a productive function in the sense
stated above, of the activities of his body. But the facts which
come under the (e) heading, and on which Lamont dwells at some
length, clearly testify that, contrary to that unqualified contention,
the causal relationship in their case is in the opposite direction;
i.e., that, in their case, it is the bodily state which is a productive
function of the mental and emotional state!

Indeed, Lamont writes that his “citation of facts showing how
physical states affect the personality and its mental life does not
in the least imply that mental states do not affect physical” (p. 87).
As examples of the latter, he mentions that we are “constantly
altering our bodily motions according to the dictates of mental
decisions.” Also, he cites “the far-reaching results that optimism
or worry, happiness or sadness, good humor or anger, may have
on the condition of the body;” also the remarkable bodily effects
which can be caused by auto suggestion or by suggestion under
hypnosis; and, most striking, the fact that in the case of St. Francis
and of a number of other saints or mystics, long meditation by

LAMONT'S ATTACK ON MIND-BODY DUALISM

115

them on the wounds of the crucified Jesus causes corresponding
wounds to appear on their own bodies.

It is interesting to note in this connection that Lamont feels
called upon to add that “modem psychologists believe that the
phenomenon of the stigmata can be explained in entirely natu¬
ralistic terms and that it is due to as yet undiscovered mechanisms
of the subconscious or unconscious” (p. 89). But what does he
mean here by explanation in naturalistic terms? Does he mean
in terms of material causes? Or does he mean that stigmatization,
like every other event in Nature, is caused by some anterior event
—here by the mental event he himself has mentioned, namely,
“prolonged meditation upon the passion and crucifixion of Jesus”?

When Lamont considers the stigmata of St. Francis and the
other facts he mentions in the same connection, he apparently
realizes that they render indefensible the unqualified statement
that man’s mental and emotional life is a productive function,
i.e., a creation, of his bodily states. Accordingly, his then much
less radical contention is only that those facts point “to a connec¬
tion between the two so exceedingly intimate that n becomes
inconceivable how the one could function properly without the
other” (p. 89). Or again that “as between the body and person¬
ality, the body seems to be the prior and more constant entity”;
and hence that “it has been customary to regard the body as pri¬
mary and to call the personality its function rather than the
converse” (pp. 113/4). (Italics mine.)

But, as if to mitigate departure even to this extent from his
would-be monistic naturalism, Lamont—like the murderer who
sought to diminish the heinousness of his deed by observing that
the man he had killed was only a small one—Lamont observes
at one place that anyway “many of the mental states that exercise
an influence on the condition of the body are set up in the first
place by phenomena primarily physical” (p. 89).

This is true enough. But it is equally true, as shown by the
facts he himself cites, that many of the bodily states that exercise
an influence on the condition of the mind are set up in the first
place by phenomena primarily mental. For example, among other
facts now recognized by psychosomatic medicine, that the painful
physical phenomenon of stomach ulcers is in some cases set up in

116

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

the first place by such mental states as anxiety, tension, and worry.
Anyway, just how would Lamont propose to decide in any given
case which place constitutes “the first place ?

The upshot of the comments in the present section is that
when Lamont attends not only to the facts which come under the
(a) to (d) headings of his list, but also to those which come under
the (e) heading, the purported monistic psychology of science
turns out actually to be an interactionistic dualism! An inter -
actionistic dualism , it is true, that involves no “supernatural soul”
but only, besides processes in a material body, various non-mate¬
rial ideas and other mental occurrences. The “supernatural soul”
however, which functions as the Devil in Lamont’s would-be
monistic creed, may well be left to such employment; for a respon¬
sible interactionism has no need of it.

6. A supposititious puzzle. As we have just seen, Lamont is
definitely committed to psycho-physical interactionism by such
statements as that on the one hand “physical states affect the
personality and its mental life” (p. 87), and on the other that,
conversely, “specific alterations in [man’s] mental and emotional
life result in specific alterations in his bodily condition” (p. 114).
It is therefore surprising that, when considering “certain funda¬
mental difficulties that have always characterized the dualistic
psychology,” he should assert, as constituting one of them, that
“it is impossible to understand how an immaterial soul can act
upon and control a material body” (p. 102). To the same effect,
he speaks of “the insoluble riddle of how the immaterial can be
associated with and work together with the material . . (p. 104).

Two comments on this supposititious riddle immediately
suggest themselves. The first is that, as we pointed out in an
earlier chapter, the Causality relation is wholly neutral as regards
the ontological nature of the events that enter into it. Hence no
paradox is involved in the supposition that a mental, i.e., non
material, event causes a material event in the brain cortex; any
more than is involved (or apparently found by Lamont) in the
fact, which he asserts, that bodily events produce or affect mental
ones.

The second comment is that to understand “how” an event
C causes another event E never has any other meaning than to

LAMONT'S ATTACK ON MIND BODY DUALISM

117

know what the intermediary causal steps are , through which C
eventually causes E. Hence, where, as in the case of a mental and
of the corresponding cortical event, proximate not remote causa¬
tion is what one has in view, the question as to the “how” of
causation loses the only meaning it ever has. That is, the question
becomes literally nonsensical, and to ask it is absurd because of
this, not because mental and material events are ontologically
heterogeneous; for the absurdity of asking for the "how” of
proximate causation remains the same no matter whether the two
events in view be one of them mental and the other material, or
both of them mental, or both of them material. 8

7. "Verdict of Science?” or "Turning aversions into dis¬
proofs?” We have now examined in some detail Lamont’s attack
on psychophysical dualism, and have seen, (a) that he tacitly *r.d
gratuitously equates naturalism and materialistic monism, and
hence, (b) gratuitously assumes dualism to be inherently super-
naturalistic; (c) that he misconstrues the communicability of the
referents of ideas as entailing that ideas themselves are com
municable and hence not inherently private; (d) that, besides
material objects and events, he acknowledges also the occurrence
of ideas, which he explicitly declares to be non-material; (e) hence
that, notwithstanding the monism he proclaims, what he actually
sets forth is a dualism; (f) that, having declared without qualifica
tion that the mental life of man is a product of his bodily activi¬
ties, he nevertheless contends—citing facts in support- that not
only do bodily states affect mental, but mental states too affect

*Lamont is of course not alone in overlooking the absurdity just pointed our
Prof. Ryle too among others, docs so. He assumes that if mind and matter should
be two species of existents instead of merely ‘'existing’* in two different senses (as
the behaviorism he espouses requires him dogmatically to assert), then interaction
between mind and matter would be “completely mysterious;’’ for one would then
have to ask: “How can a mental process, such as willing, cause spatial movements
like the movements of the tongue? How can a physical change in the optic nerve
have among its effects a mind’s perception of a flash of light?” (The Concept of
Mind , pp. 23, 52, 19.) As we have just seen, however, the “how” of causation is
capable either of being mysterious or of being known only where remote not proxi
mate causation is concerned. Hence, to ask “how?” concerning the latter is to be
guilty of a “category mistake.” But there is no room here to consider the various
strange assertions concerning mind, dictated in that book by the caricaturing of
contentions attacked, which is employed there as a method.

118

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

physical; (g) that this entails that actually, what he contends for
under the misnomer of “monistic psychology” is an interaction-
istic dualism; (h) and this notwithstanding that the action of
mind on body, which he explicitly declares occurs, is with equal
explicitness declared by him to be an insoluble riddle, impossible
to understand, that rules out dualism!

What then is to be said concerning the chapter of Lamont’s
The Illusion of Immortality in which the above mass of incon¬
sistencies and non-sequitur is to be found? Suggestion for an
appropriate characterization of it may be found in the title which,
in a later chapter, he gives to a section where he cites pointed ex¬
amples of a procedure to which protagonists of immortality are
addicted. The title of that section is: “Turning wishes into
proofs.” I submit that, correspondingly, the appropriate title for
the chapter Lamont entitles “The verdict of science” would have
been: “Turning aversions into disproofs!”

PART IV

Discarnate Life After Death and the Ostensibly
Relevant Empirical Evidence For It

119

Chapter XIV

VARIOUS SENSES OF THE QUESTION
REGARDING SURVIVAL AFTER DEATH

Does the human personality survive bodily death? This
question, phrased thus in the terms F. W. H. Myers used in the
title of his famous work, 1 seems to most of the persons who asK
it simple and direct enough to admit of a “Yes" or "No” answer—
the only difficulty being to find out which of the two it should be.

As will become evident in what follows, however, the ques
tion is in fact highly ambiguous. Hence, in order to be in posi¬
tion to judge intelligently what bearing on it given items of prima
facie evidence of survival may really have, the first step must be
to distinguish clearly the several senses which the expression “sur¬
vival of the personality after death,” can have.

1. The bodily component of a personality. When we reflect
on what makes up a human personality, we find first a physical
or more specifically a biological component. It comprises the par¬
ticular facial features, the build and marks of the body, its weight,
gait, carriage, voice, and so on. The body’s dissolution following
death automatically destroys all this. That the physical part of
the personality does not survive is definitely known. A closely
similar body might conceivably some time miraculously arise
again, as the doctrine of the “resurrection of the flesh” contem¬
plates; and this would not require that it should be composed
of identically the same material particles which constituted the
body at death, for the materials of it anyway change from day to
day to some extent, and more or less completely over a period of
some years, without the body’s ceasing to be recognizably the
same. But, aside from the occasional reports—many of them

1 Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death , 190S.

121

122

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

dubious-of materializations for a few minutes of a replica of the
body of some deceased person, no evidence at all exists that a
person survives after death in the sense that his body gets reas¬
sembled and revived, and continues then to live a life somewhere,
in the sense in which his now decayed body lived a life on earth
between its birth and its death.

2. Survival—of just what parts of the psychological com¬
ponent. As pointed out already in Chapt. 1, what the question of
survival essentially concerns is not the physical but the psycho¬
logical component of the human personality. We saw in Chapt.
VI that it consists of various “dispositions, i.e., capacities or abili¬
ties—some of them psycho-psychical, some psycho-physical, and
some physico-psychical.

Now, some of these might survive and others not. For ex¬
ample, the capacity to remember past experiences might survive,
being then perhaps more extensive, or less so, than it was during
incarnate life; and yet the capacity for intellectual initiative, criti¬
cal judgment, or inventiveness might perish. Or again, what sur¬
vived might be only a person’s aptitudes; that is, the capacities he
has, to acquire under suitable circumstances various kinds of
more determinate capacities such as skills, habits, or knowledge
constitute.

But certain of the capacities of a person are organized in
particular groups relevant each to one of the chief roles which
life calls upon him to play. Each of these groups constitutes what
may be called a particular “role-self,” which has interests, pur¬
poses, beliefs, and impulses more or less different from those of
the others. Examples would be the “father” role, the “husband”
role, the vocational roles of, for instance, “physician,” or “teacher,”
or “policeman,” or “inventor,” or “bookkeeper,” or “business
executive.” Any of these roles is in turn different from that of
“religious devotee,” of “sex hunter,” of “bully,” of “predator,”
and so on. A man is thus a society of various “role-selves” all using
the same body, and getting along with one another harmoniously
or not in various degrees, much as do men in social groups. At
certain times, some one of these role-selves is in charge of the
body’s behavior. Sometimes, two or more of them compete for,
or cooperate in, command of it—the predator perhaps competing

SENSES REGARDING SURVIVAL AFTER DEATH

123

with the would-be saint; or the latter cooperating perhaps with
the father in repressing the would-be Casanova or the thief which
the circumstances of the moment would tempt out.

Normally, these various role-selves function together some¬
what as a committee, whose eventual action represents the balance
of the claims, weak or strong, of the various parties having in¬
terests affected by the committee’s decisions. But under abnormal
circumstances, some one of these role-selves may get strong enough
to get temporary dictatorial command uncensorable by the others.
This is what occurs in the cases of split personalities, of which
the Beauchamp case described by Dr. Morton Prince, the Doris
Fischer case described by Dr. W. F. Prince, and recently chat of
“The Three Faces of Eve,’’ described by Drs. C H. Thigpen and
H. M. Cleckley, are examples.

These cases bring up the interesting question as to which
ones of the role-selves, which together make up the total per
sonality of the living man, might or might not survive the death
of his body; and also the question as to the nature and the strength
or weakness of the connection that could remain between such
of them as did survive, once the bond constituted by their joint
association with the one body had been destroyed by the latter's
death. Survival of the “father” role-self, or as the case might be,
of the “mother,” or “daughter,” or “son,” or “friend,” etc., role
self would be what the relatives or personal friends of the deceased
would automatically look for; but evidences of survival of it would
be far from being evidence that the whole or a major part of the
psychological component of the personality of the deceased hadr
survived.

Aside from this, the kind of evidence one happens to have,
in support of the hypothesis that a particular part of the psycho¬
logical component of the personality of a deceased person sur¬
vives, could itself impose limits, minimal or maximal, on the
content of the hypothesis. If, for example, the evidence consisted
of identificatory facts communicated purportedly by the surviving
spirit of the deceased directly “possessing” temporarily the vocal
organs or the hand of an entranced medium and expressing itself
through them, then this would require survival of the psycho¬
physical capacity which the mind of the deceased had, to cause

124

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

speech or writing movements in a living body with which it was
suitably related. But this would not be a required part of the
hypothesis if the identifying facts were communicated not thus
through direct possession of the entranced medium’s organs of
expression, but indirectly, through telepathic “rapport” between
the medium’s subconscious mind and the surviving part of the
mind of the deceased. In this case, on the other hand, capacity
for such telepathic rapport would be part of the equipment
required to be possessed by the hypothetically surviving part of
the personality of the deceased.

3. Survival—for how long. Were survival to be for only an
hour, or a week, or even a year, then empirical evidence that such
survival is a fact would have relatively little interest for most per¬
sons. If on the other hand the evidence were that survival is nor¬
mally for a much longer period—at least for one similar in length
to that of a person’s normal life on earth—then it would be of con¬
siderable interest to most men, and the prospect of its eventual
ending at such a distant time would now probably not trouble
them much.

But anyway the question, “survival for how long?” necessarily
raises the prior one of how length of time after death is to be
measured if, as the survival hypothesis usually contemplates, the
surviving personality does not have a physical body—the body one
revolution of which around the axis of the earth defines “one
day”; and around the sun, “one year.”

The answer would have to be in terms of hypothetically pos¬
sible communication by us with that discarnate personality: If
(assuming availability of a medium) communication with that
personality remained possible during, say, one year, or n years,
of earth time after the death of that personality’s body, then
specifically this would be what it would mean to say that that
personality had survived one year, or n years, after death. Of
survival forever, which is what “eternal” life is usually taken to
mean, there could of course be no empirical test.

4. “Sameness” in what sense, of a mind at two times. The
personality of each of us changes gradually as the months and the
years pass; but, notwithstanding our acquisition of new capacities

SENSES REGARDING SURVIVAL AFTER DEATH

125

and loss of some we possessed earlier, each of us is to himself and
to others, in some sense admitting of more and less, the "same*'
person at different ages. The question now before us is, in what
sense or senses of “sameness” or “personal identity” this is true.

We noted earlier that the human personality includes various
bodily traits as well as psychological ones and that, since death
destroys the body, the psychological components are the ones di
rectly relevant to the possibility of survival. But the question as
to what it means, to say of something existing at a certain time
that it is, or is not, “the same” as something existing at another
time, will perhaps be easier to answer if we ask it first concerning
human bodies—say, one young in 1900, and one old in 1950.

One sense, which the assertion that they are "the same”
human body can have is that the relation of the first to the second
is the relation ” having become.” If this relation does obtain be
tween the 1900 body and the 1950 body, then they are “the same”
body even if no likeness, other than that each is a human body, is
discoverable between them—not even, let us suppose, likeness of
pattern of finger prints because the old man anyway happens to
have lost his hands.

If, on the other hand, it is not true that the body in view in
1900 has become the one we view in 1950, then they are not “the
same” human body even if the likeness between them is so exten¬
sive and evident as to make the first clearly recognizable in the
second; for it may be that the once young man who has become
the old man we now behold is not the young man we knew in 1900
but, perhaps, is his identical-twin brother.

Thus likeness, no matter how great, does not constitute proof
of identity unless the characteristic in respect of which it obtains
is, and is known to be, idiosyncratic , and hence identificatory. Yet
the more nearly idiosyncratic, i.e., the rarer , is the characteristic
(or the combination of characteristics) in respect of which the like¬
ness obtains, and the more minute is the likeness in respect of it,
the more probable it is empirically that the relation between the
human body in view in 1900 and that in view in 1950 is that of
"having become,” and hence that they are “the same” body.

These remarks concerning the meaning of “the same,” and

126

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

of “not the same,” when one or the other of these two relations
is asserted to hold between a body at a given time and a body at a
different time, apply also in all essentials where minds instead of
bodies are concerned: a mind at a given time is “the same mind”
as one at an earlier time if and only if the mind in view at the
earlier time has become the mind in view at the later time.

5. Conceivable forms of discarnate “life”. Regarding the
question, in what sense of “living” could such part of the per¬
sonality as persisted after death be said to continue living, the
following several senses suggest themselves.

(i) The particular set of dispositions one had specified as
those in the survival of which one is interested might continue to
“live” only in the sense in which a machine—here a psychological
robot—continues to exist without losing the capacities for its dis¬
tinctive functions, during periods when it is not called upon
to perform them but lies idle, inactive. Even in the case of the
body, it is still alive when in deep sleep or in a faint, but is more
alive, or alive in a somewhat different sense or in ways more typ¬
ically human, when it is awake and responding to visual, auditory,
and other stimuli from its environment, and acting upon it.

Similarly, in the case of the psychological part of the per¬
sonality, it might when discarnate be “alive” only in a minimal
sense analogous to that in which the comatose or anaesthetized
body is nevertheless alive. At any given time of a person’s life,
much the larger number of his capabilites exist only in such
dormant condition. Probably, at the time the reader was reading
the beginning of the present paragraph, the capability he does and
did have to remember, say, his own name, was wholly latent.
Even the enduring of a personality’s dispositions in a dormant
state, however, would constitute the basis of the possibility of
sporadic brief exercise of some of them if and when direct or
indirect contact happened to occur between that otherwise wholly
dormant personality and the organism of a medium. Temporary
exercise of the dispositions constituting the automatic, mechanical
constituents of a mind—to wit, associations of ideas, memories,
etc.—is the most which the majority of mediumistic communica¬
tions appear to testify to.

SENSES REGARDING SURVIVAL AFTER

(ii) A second possibility is that some of the
tal dispositions of the person concerned, i.e., sonu
psychical dispositions, should not only persist
exercised, though without critical control. T1
mental “life" in the sense in which dreaming or
species of mental life.

(iii) Or, thirdly, mental life of a more a(
consist in a reviewing of the incidents of one’s a
with an attempt as one does so to discern causa
tween one’s experiences, one’s reactions to them
experiences or activities. Especially if, as psychos
experiments with hypnosis appear to testify, mei
ordinarily able to revive are nevertheless preserve
accessible in one’s discarnate state; then much
latent in them, but which one had at the time 1
ately engrossed to harvest, might in that discari
tilled out of them by reflection.

(iv) Or again, one’s capacity for intelligent
posive direction of creative thought might be <
would then mean, for example, such creative {
tivity as a mathematician, or a musical compose
philosopher, etc., can, even in the present life, 1
times of bodily idleness and of abstraction fre

(v) Or, fifthly, “life" could mean also re:
pathic or clairvoyant—to stimuli from a then
vironment; and voluntary, “psychokinetic," r<
excarnate personalities, or the possibly imperson
that non-physical environment.

This would be discarnate post mortem “li
sense. It is the “life" to the reality of which, a?
so-called Cross-correspondences appear to testi
than do any of the other kinds of prima facie evi
As C. D. Broad has rightly remarked, “if the <
of a man’s personality should persist after his
reason why it should have the same fate in a
cases one, and in others another of the various
might be realized. It seems reasonable to thinl
development of the personality at the time c

128

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

circumstances under which death takes place, might be relevant
factors in determining which alternative would be realized.” 2

6. H. H. Price’s depiction of a post mortem life in a world
of images. One of the objections most commonly advanced by
educated and critical persons against the survival hypothesis is
that it is unintelligible —that no conception of discarnate life that
is not patently preposterous is imaginable. Our discussion of the
meaning of the hypothesis that the human personality survives
after the death of its body may therefore turn next to the descrip¬
tion Professor Price has given of a clearly imaginable and plausi¬
ble “Next World” and of what the content of life in it would
be—thus effectively disposing of that objection. His description
is contained in a lecture entitled “Survival and the Idea of ‘An¬
other World’.” 3

The “Next World” he depicts would be of the same kind
as the world we experience during our dreams. When we dream,
we perceive things, persons, and events more or less similar to
those which we perceive normally as a result of stimulations of
our sense organs by the physical world. In dreams, however, this
is not the cause of our perceptions of objects, for no physical ob¬
jects such as perceived are then stimulating our senses. Yet what
we perceive engages at the time our thoughts and emotions. The
behavior of the dream objects, of course, is often very different
from that of the physical objects they resemble, but the anomaly
is not realized until we wake up. So long as the dream lasts, we
are not aware that it is a dream but take it to be reality, just as
we do the objects and events we perceive while awake.

The “Next World,” then would, like our nightly dream
world, be a world of mental images. It would, as Price puts it, be
an " imagy ” world, not one which, like Utopia or Erewhon, is
imaginary in the sense of imaged but not believed to exist.

Personal Identity and Survival, The Thirteenth F. W. H. Myers Lecture,
1958. London, Soc. for Psychical Research, p. 31. This lecture provides an ad¬
mirably systematic, analytical discussion of the various aspects of its topic. The
reader is also referred to Ch. 21, “Some Theoretically Possible Forms of Survival”
of the present author’s Nature, Mind, and Death, Open Court Pub. Co. La Salle,
HI. 1951, pp. 484-502.

*Proc. Soc. for Psychical Research, Vol. LX: 1-25, January 1953.

SENSES REGARDING SURVIVAL AFTER DEATH

129

In the experience of a discarnate human personality in that
world, imaging would replace the perceiving normally caused by
stimulation of the sense organs. It would replace it “in the sense
that imaging would perform much the same function as sense-
perception performs now, by providing us with objects about
which we could have thoughts, emotions and wishes. There is no
reason why we should not be ‘as much alive,’ or at any rate feel
as much alive, in an image-world as we do now in this present
material world, which we perceive by means of our sense-organs
and nervous system. And so the use of the word ‘survival’ (‘life
after death’) would be perfectly justifiable” (p. 6).

Moreover that image-world would for us be just as real as
the physical world is for us now, or as the objects seen in our
dreams are real so long as we do not wake up. What one can
say of the dream objects is that, although they resemble physical
objects, they are not really physical; but one cannot say that they
are not real in the sense of not existing. The laws of their be¬
havior are different from those of the behavior of the physical
objects they resemble, and this is what makes the dream world
an “other” world. But its being other does not make it delusive
unless one believes it to be the same world—i.e,, unless one be
lieves that the laws of behavior of its objects are those of the
behavior of physical objects. And such belief is not a necessary
nor a usual part of the dream state.

Moreover, if telepathy should be part of the equipment of
the discarnate personality, then that personality’s image-world
would not be entirely subjective. It would, to some extent, “be
the joint product of a group of telepathically interacting minds
and public to all of them” (p. 16). Yet each mind would, to a
considerable extent, build his own dream world—his memories
providing the “material” for it; and his desires, whether con¬
scious or unconscious, determining the “forms” the memory ma¬
terial would be given (p. 17). Thus there would be not just one
Next World, but many—some, overlapping to some extent, and
others “impenetrable to one another, corresponding to the dif¬
ferent desires which different groups of personalities have” (p. 19).

This description of a Next World as a wish-fulfilment world
may seem wishfully rosy; but Price makes very clear that it would

130

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

be so only to the extent that one’s wishes happened to be them¬
selves beautiful ones rather than, some of them, disgraceful. And
most of us have some of each kind even if we repress and hide the
latter from other persons and largely from ourselves too.

7. The architect of a person’s heaven or hell. But the words
“desires,” “wishes,” and “aversions,” which Price uses to designate
the psychological generators of our dream images, are perhaps not
the best after all by which to describe the subjective architect of
a person's post mortem image world. For the architect we can
observe at work in ourselves even now, building up every day for
us imaginal and conceptual contents of belief, is rather attitude,
emotion and disposition. Suspiciousness, for example, paints as
devious the persons it meets. Jealousy paints its object as un¬
faithful; hatred, as hostile; contempt, as despicable. Trustfulness,
on the other hand, sees others as honest; magnanimity, as worthy;
love, as lovable; friendliness, as well-disposed; considerateness, as
respectable; and so on.

It is not so much the “wish,” then, that is “father to the
thought,” as it is the attitude or disposition one brings to one’s
contacts with others. It determines what one imagines and be¬
lieves them to be, as distinguished from what one strictly observes
and finds them to be. Moreover, what a person imagines and
believes another to be affects his own behavior; which in turn
tempts the other to play up, or down, to the role thus handed to
him! What kind of world each person noiu lives in therefore de¬
pends to some extent on what kind of psychological spectacles he
wears, through which he looks at the empirical, truly objective
facts. To that extent each of us, here and now, is living in a hell,
purgatory, or heaven he himself constructs. How much more,
then, is this fatally bound to be the case when he lives wholly in
a dream-world—whether an ante or a post mortem one: that is,
in a world from which the objective, stubborn facts perception
supplies are absent, and absent therefore also their sobering effect
on one’s subjective imaginings!

8. Life after death conceived as physical reembodiment.
There remains to mention, besides the possible forms of discar-
nate life considered in Sec. 5 above, also the conception of life

SENSES REGARDING SURVIVAL AFTER DEATH

131

after death according to which such life consists of reembodiment
of the “essential 1 ' part of the personality in a neonate human or
possibly animal body; and whether immediately at death, or after
an interval during which consciousness possibly persists in one or
another of those discarnate forms. This is the hypothesis of
metempsychosis, palingenesis, or reincarnation, which has com¬
mended itself to numerous eminent thinkers, Professor Broad
among them. Nothing more will be said about it in this chapter,
however, since Part V is to be devoted to a detailed discussion
of it.

What has been said in the present chapter will have made
evident that any answer based on empirical facts—no matter of
what kinds these might be—to the question whether the human
personality survives the death of its body, will automatically be
as ambiguous, or as unambiguous, as the question itself happens
to be as asked by a given inquirer. Whether the answer, when
unambiguous, turns out to be that survival—in whatever specific
sense is then in view—is certainly or probably a fact, or certainly
or probably not a fact, will of course depend on what the empirical
evidence on which it is based happens to be. But to have purged
of ambiguity the expression “survival after death” will at all
events entail that, when one asks whether “survival” is a fact,
one will then know just what it is that one wants to know.

Chapter XV

SURVIVAL AND PARANORMAL
OCCURRENCES

In chapter II, we examined the chief of the arguments alleged
to prove the reality of a life after death, and we found that, be¬
cause of one or another defect, each failed to prove it or even to
establish that it is probably a fact. On the other hand, we sur¬
veyed in Chapter III both the current empirical and the theo¬
retical arguments that purport to show that survival of conscious¬
ness after death is impossible; and, after clarifying in Part II the
key concepts employed in those arguments, we found in Part III
that the arguments quite fail to prove the alleged impossibility.
The positive upshot, then of Parts I, II, and III is that persistence
of consciousness in some form after death is both theoretically
and empirically possible: theoretically possible since analysis of
the supposition of such persistence finds no contradition implicit
in it; and empirically possible since that supposition is not incon¬
sistent with any definitely known empirical facts.

The task before us is now to inquire whether there are any
empirical facts at all that would establish the reality of survival or,
failing this, would show it to be more probable than not.

1. Where empirical evidence of survival might be found.
Obviously, neither any commonly known facts nor any of the
recondite facts of the natural sciences provide evidence of sur¬
vival; for otherwise survival would hardly be in doubt. Hence, if
any empirical evidence at all is to be found that consciousness
continues after death, that evidence must be sought among para¬
doxical occurrences of the kinds termed “supernatural” by naive
persons, but to-day designated simply as “paranormal” by persons
too critical to assume tacitly as do the former that Nature can
comprise only what is known and understood as of now.

132

SURVIVAL AND PARANORMAL OCCURRENCES

133

The term “paranormal’' has—in addition to its freedom from
the religious or superstitious connotations of “supernatural”—the
virtue of being free also from the special assumptions that are
packed into such terms as “parapsychological,” “paraphysical,” or
“parabiological.” For “paranormal” means only that the kinds of
of (.urrences so labelled are contrary to what is “normal,” i.e., con¬
trary to what “the common sense of the epoch” regards as possible.
As Dr. W. F. G. Swann has pointed out, each theory—whether of
the nature of the world or of man—that meets with enough success
in accounting for the facts it concerns to gain wide acceptance,
“grows around itself an aura of common sense, the common sense
of its epoch.” But knowledge and understanding increase as a
result of man’s taking novel or neglected facts into account, and
in time new or improved theories supersede the old. “And so
the center of gravity of common sense changes with the epoch,
and the nonsense of the past becomes the common sense of the
future.” 1

Since occurrences ostensibly paranormal thus necessarily
constitute the sort of evidence we shall have to examine in our
presentation of the case for the reality of survival, we need first
to sharpen our concept of paranormality by considering in more
detail the nature of the criterion we tacitly employ when we class
a given occurrence as paranormal. The most painstaking attempts
to formulate it the present writer knows are those of Prof. J. B.
Rhine and of Prof. C. D. Broad. Let us examine each in turn.

2. Critique of Rhine’s account of what marks an event as
paranormal. Paranormal occurrences have also been designated
“metapsychical,” “parapsychological,” or simply “psi” phenomena.
Prof. Rhine ordinarily employs one or the other of the last two
of these terms. According to him, what marks certain phenomena
as parapsychological is their non-physical character: they “defy
physical explanation and require a psychological one. They al¬
ways happen to people (or animals) or involve some associated
or at least suspected personal agency or experience; .... they

'Nature and the Mind of Man, Lecture, delivered at the Stated Meeting of the
Franklin Institute, Wednesday February 15, 1956. Pub. in Jl. of the Franklin Insti¬
tute, Vol. 261 No. 6. June, 1956. The passages quoted above are from p. 593.

134

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

definitely appear to challenge explanation by physical princi¬
ples/’ * 2 *

The required psychological explanation, however, is not sup¬
plied by Rhine, who does not even formally supply criteria of
what he means by "physical” or by "psychological.” Moreover,
the character of being incapable of explanation in physical terms,
or more exactly, in terms of the "the physics of today” 8 is not
peculiar to parapsychological phenomena for, as made clear in
our chapter VIII, this same inexplicability in purely physical
terms attaches also to normal states of consciousness, i.e., to the
contents of introspection: however dependent on physical proc
esses in the brain these may be, they are not identically those
physical processes themselves. Indeed, even the purposiveness
which seems to characterize all life processes down to those of
unicellular organisms is still to be accounted for adequately in
terms purely of physics, notwithstanding the attempts to do so
made by Schroedinger and others. 4 And of course, that there is
in the personality of man "a world of distinctively mental reality” 5
is no new discovery made for us by parapsychology. For, as
C. W. K. Mundle pointedly noted in his review of New World
of the Mind, "surely one’s best evidence for [the existence of a
"world of the mind”] is still the introspective awareness one has
of what goes on in one’s own mind.” 6 *

That telepathy and clairvoyance are non-physical phenomena
is shown, Rhine contends, by the fact that "they defy any appli¬
cation of the inverse square law of decline of effect with distance.”

The trouble with this contention, however, is that telepathy
and clairvoyance have not been shown to be independent of dis-

*New World of the Mind. Wm. Sloane Associates, N. Y. 1953, p. 150.

• Parapsychology, Frontier Science of the Mind, pub. Charles C Thomas, Spring

field, Ill. 1957, p. 7.

4 E. Schroedinger: What is Life? 1946. Concerning the purposive character of

biological processes, see for instance E. W. Sinnott: Cell and Psyche, the Biology of
Purpose, 1950; H. S. Jennings: Some Implications of Emergent Evolution, in Scienct
Jan. 14, 1927; E. Rignano: The Concept of Purpose in Biology, Mind, Vol. XL, no.
159 July 1931; and The Nature of Life, 1930.

®Rhine, New World of the Mind, p. IX.

®J/. of the Am. Soc. for Psychical Research, Vol. XLVIII:165, No. 4, Ocotbei.

1954.

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135

tance. What has been shown is only that distances of a few hun¬
dred or even a few thousand miles do not affect the excess of cor¬
rect guesses over chance expectation, which has characterized the
results of telepathy and clairvoyance experiments. For these ex¬
periments are not quantitative in the sense this term ordinarily
has in science, namely, that the cause and the effect are each
measured, and that a certain magnitude of the effect regularly
corresponds to a certain magnitude of the cause. The magnitude
of the “sender’s” telepathic action is not measured, nor is the
magnitude of the “receiver’s” impression. But it is the magnitude
of his impression—not the degree of correctness of the information
received—which, if the energy involved is physical, would be
expected to decrease according to the inverse square law when
the distance increases. That is, the receiver’s impression would
be of a telepathic “shout” when the distance is short, and of a
telepathic “whisper” when the distance is long. And the question
whether this is or is not actually the case is not decided at all by
the fact that the degree of correctness of the telepathic informa¬
tion was the same at great as at small distances: this fact is irrele¬
vant because the information conveyed in a whisper can be
exactly the same information as that conveyed in a shout.

Nor, again, have the “sending” and the “receiving” been
timed with the extreme precision which would be necessary to
vindicate the supposition that no more time is taken by telepathy
over relatively long distances than over short; for the speed of
telepathy might happen to be of the same order of magnitude as
the speed of light—which is a purely physical phenomenon—and,
in order to prove that the speed of light is finite, timings vastly
more precise than any ever made of telepathy were necessary.

What the “quantitative” experiments with telepathy and
clairvoyance have quantified is merely the probability that there is
a causal connection between the fact to be guessed and the guess
made of it. To have shown that the magnitude of this probability
was significantly higher than chance is, of course, an epoch-making
achievement; but it does not constitute quantification of the cause
or the effect, and hence does not show that telepathy and clair¬
voyance are independent of distance even over the few thousand
miles available on the surface of the earth for experimentation

136

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

The criticisms made in what precedes of Rhine’s attempt to
state what marks an event as parapsychological do not, of course,
in any way reflect on the value or the originality of his experi¬
mental work. The importance of that work and of the similar
work it has inspired others to do is outstanding, for it has defi¬
nitely shown, by methods similar to those used in certain of the
other fields of scientific research, that telepathy, clairvoyance, and
precognition really occur and do not depend on the use of the
known sense organs.

Nor, on the other hand, were those criticisms intended as an
argument that the processes at work in paranormal phenomena
are somehow ultimately physical; for what is important in those
phenomena is that their occurrence points to the existence of
forces and of facts which, whether or not themselves somehow
physical, are anyway novel to contemporary science and therefore
compel it to revise its conception of the limits of the really
possible.

Those criticisms were intended only to make evident on the
one hand that Rhine has not proved that the phenomena in view
are non-physical; and on the other that some positive criterion of
non-physicality would be required if the “parapsychological” char¬
acter of an occurrence were to be applicably defined as con¬
sisting in the “non-physicality” of the occurrence. For it is one
thing to say of certain occurrences that we do not know them to
be physical; and it is quite another thing to say that they are
non physical. The burden of proof squarely rests on the person
who, as Rhine does, asserts the latter. He does not, however,
supply the proof, but leaves us with only the fact that the phe¬
nomena in view are ones for which we have at present neither
a physical nor a psychological explanation. As we pointed out,
however, this is true also of some occurrences not termed para¬
normal, and therefore does not mark off the former from the
latter.

The importance Rhine attaches to the “non-physicality” he
claims for paranormal phenomena appears to derive from the
philosophical implications as regards freedom of the will, moral
responsibility, and the validity of human values, which he believes

SURVIVAL AND PARANORMAL OCCURRENCES

137

such non-physicality would have—but which in fact it would not
have at all. 7

3. Broad’s analytical account of the marks of paranormality.
The clearest, most adequate and most useful analysis of the notion
of paranormality to be found in the literature of the subject is
probably that formulated by C. D. Broad in an essay entitled
“The relevance of psychical research to philosophy.” 8 He writes
that “there are certain limiting principles which we unhesitatingly
take for granted as the framework within which all our practical
activities and our scientific theories are confined. Some of these
seem to be self evident. Others are so overwhelmingly supported
by all the empirical facts which fall within the range of ordinary
experience and the scientific elaborations of it . . . that it hardly
enters our heads to question them. Let us call these Basic Limit¬
ing Principles .” 9

A “paranormal” event would then be one whose occurrence
violates one or more of those principles and therefore proves that,
although they have very wide validity, nevertheless it is not as
commonly assumed strictly unlimited.

Broad formulates nine of those principles but makes no
claim that the list is exhaustive. They fall into four groups.
Those of the first group relate to Causation in general; those of
the second, to the action of mind on matter; those of the third
to the dependence of mind on brain; and those of the fourth to
the ways of acquiring knowledge. The following sketchy account
of them will be adequate for our present purpose of making clear
the distinction between normality, which they define, and para¬
normality, which consists of exceptions to one or another of them.

T See on this point, in Jl. of Philosophy Vol. LI, No. 25, December 9, 1954, an
article by Rhine on The Science of Nonphysical Nature, especially p. 809; and the
present writer’s comments upon it entitled The Philosophical Importance of
'Psychic Phenomena’, especially pp. 816-17. Rhine’s conception of “non-physicality'
is devastatingly criticized by the physicist, R. A. McConnell, in his review of Rhine
and Pratt’s recent book, Parapsychology, Frontier Science of the Mind, in Jl. of
the Amer. Soc. for Psychical Research, Vol. LII: 117-20, July, 1958, No. 3.

•It originally appeared in the Journal, Philosophy, and is reprinted in Prof.
Broad’s book. Religion, Philosophy and Psychical Research, Harcourt, Brace and
Co., New York 1953, pp. 7-26.

B Op. cit. p. 7.

138

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

(I) An event cannot have effects before it has itself occurred.
(Hence “precognition,” which would be causation, by an as yet
future event, of a present perception of it, would contravene
this principle and would therefore be paranormal.)

Then come two other principles regarding causation, which
in substance are that causation at a distance in space or in time
is impossible without some intermediary chain of causes and
effects.

(II) Next is the principle that it is impossible for an event
in a person’s mind to cause directly any material event other than
one in his own brain. (This would preclude psychokinesis or
telekinesis, e.g., the influencing of the fall of dice by mere voli¬
tion; and occurrence of it would therefore be paranormal.)

(III) Then comes the principle that some event in a person’s
living brain is a necessary condition of any event in his mind.
(Continuation of consciousness after the body’s death, which this
principle would preclude, would therefore be paranormal.)

(IV) Lastly, four principles concerning the acquisition of
knowledge: (a) that physical events or things can be perceived
only by means of sensations caused by them in a percipient’s mind.
(Clairvoyance, i.e., extrasensory perception of physical events or
things, would be ruled out by this principle; and occurrence of
it would therefore be paranormal.)

(b) That it is impossible for a person A to know what ex¬
periences another person B is having or has had, except by per¬
ceiving and interpreting sensory signs of them made by B then
or earlier. (Telepathy, which would be extrasensory cognition
of another person’s experiences, would conflict with this principle,
and would therefore be paranormal.)

(c) That it is impossible for a person to know the future,
except by inference from data and rules of inference relevant to
them, known to him personally or through testimony; or by non-
inferential expectations resulting from associations formed in the
past and presently stimulated. (Precognition, which would vio¬
late this principle, would then be paranormal.)

(d) That a person can know the past only from memory, or
from testimony as to memories, or from records of perceptions or
of memories, or by inference from present data and relevant rules

SURVIVAL AND PARANORMAL OCCURRENCES

139

of sequence. (A violation of this principle would constitute “ret-
recognition,” which would therefore be paranormal.)

4. The chief kinds of ostensibly paranormal occurrences.
Some kinds of paranormal occurrences have no obvious bearing
on the question of survival after death; yet almost any of them
can have, indirectly if not directly. Hence brief description of the
chief kinds of which cases have at times been reported is appro¬
priate at this point.

In many of them some person, referred to variously as a
"psychic,” “sensitive,” “automatist,” or “medium,” apparently
plays some role. The term “medium” was originally used to mean
that the person so described functioned as an intermediary
through whom communication takes place between the deceased
and the living. The term, however, and those other terms too,
will here be employed in the broader sense usual to-day, of a
person in whose presence paranormal phenomena occur at times,
and on whose presence their occurrence is somehow dependent.

Paranormal occurrences are commonly divided into two
classes—the physical and the mental; and within each, two sub¬
classes may be distinguished. As will appear, however, the four
resulting sub-classes are not as sharply separate as could be wished,
and the placing of a given paranormal occurrence in one rather
than in another of them is sometimes rather arbitrary. Also, some
phenomena have both physical and mental features. Nevertheless,
the following classification is convenient.

(1) The first of its four classes is that of occurrences that are
physical and in addition extrasomatic; that is, external to the
bodies of all the persons present. Examples would be paranormal
raps on tables, walls, or other objects; motions of objects without
their being touched, or moved by any other normal cause; para¬
normal sharp decreases of temperature in some part of a room;
materialization apparently out of nothing, or dematerialization,
of flowers, of hands or other parts of human bodies, or of other
objects. Apparitions of the dead or the living would come under
this heading if perception of them is due to a somehow physical
stimulus. Usually, however, they are more plausibly classed as
hallucinations and therefore as mental.

(2) The second category is that of physical phenomena that

140

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

are somatic in the sense of taking place in or occurring to the
body of the medium or of some other person present. Examples
would be the levitation of the body-that is, the rising of it in the
air and floating or moving there unsupported; or again, temporary
paranormal immunity of parts of the body to fire; or paranormally
sudden healing of wounds or diseases; or extrusion from the body
of the entranced medium of a mysterious substance which has
been termed ectoplasm, which varies in consistency, and which
is capable of taking on various shapes and of exerting or convey¬
ing force.

Paranormal occurrences classed as mental, on the other hand,
consist in a person’s acquisition of information somehow other¬
wise than, as normally, through the employment of his sense
organs. Here again, we may distinguish two sub-classes.

(3) One comprises paranormal mental experiences of the
kinds termed extrasensory perceptions, whether occurring spon¬
taneously or under laboratory conditions. Examples would be
Precognition, that is, not discursive inference but detailed and
correct virtual perception, perhaps in a dream or in a waking hal¬
lucination, of events that have not yet occurred; or the guessing,
correctly to an extent significantly above chance in a large number
of trials, of the order the cards will have in a pack after it will
have been shuffled. Also, Retrocognition, which is quasi percep¬
tion similarly detailed and correct of past events one has never
perceived or perhaps even known anything of. Again Telepathy,
that is, communication between minds independently of the chan¬
nels of sense and notwithstanding distance and intervening ma¬
terial obstacles; Clairvoyance, that is, virtual perception of ob¬
jective events or things that are not at the time accessible to the
organs of sense. A special case of this would be Object-reading
(sometimes inappropriately called Psychometry,) namely, correct
virtual perception of facts and events in the life of a person with
whom a given object has been closely associated, but who, or
whose identity, is unknown to the percipient.

Again, hallucinations, whether waking or oneiric, that are
veridical in the sense that their content includes, or their occur¬
rence correctly signifies, particular facts not otherwise known
to the percipient. Apparitions of the dead or of the living would

SURVIVAL AND PARANORMAL OCCURRENCES

141

often be instances of this; also what are termed heautoscopic
hallucinations (or “out-of-the-body,” or “projection,” experi¬
ences.) namely, experiences in which a person observes his own
body and its surroundings from a point in space external to it,
as we all do the bodies of other persons.

(4) Lastly, there are the communications that come through
the automatic speech or writing of a medium; or according to
some agreed code, through paranormal raps or paranormal mo¬
tions of an object in the presence of a medium; and that convey
information that turns out to be veridical but was not obtained
by the medium in any of the normal ways. The communications,
usually but not always, purport to emanate from the surviving
spirits of persons who have died, who claim to be temporarily
occupying or indirectly using the body of the medium, or to be
causing the raps or motions of objects that answer questions and
spell sentences according to a code.

Another classification of ostensibly paranormal occurrences—
which cuts across that just presented—divides them into the spon¬
taneous, the experimental, and the mediumistic ones. Evidently,
the class of mediumistic occurrences may overlap to some extent
the other two of these.

The existing evidence that phenomena occur that are para¬
normal in the sense defined is much stronger for some of the kinds
mentioned than for some of the others. It is strongest and prac¬
tically conclusive in the case of extrasensory perception—especially
of precognition, clairvoyance, and telepathy since, for the testing
of these, certain experimental methods, and statistical procedures
for the treatment of the results obtained by those methods, have
been devised and employed; and in this way demonstration of the
reality of these paranormal perceptions has to some extent been
made repeatable.

5. Questions relevant to reports of paranormal occurrences.
If one’s interest in reports of ostensibly paranormal occurrences or
in observations of them one may personally have made is, as in
these pages, the scientific and philosophical rather than the reli¬
gious or sentimental, then certain questions present themselves
which it is important to distinguish and to keep in mind.

They fall into four groups according as they concern (a) the

142

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

genuineness or spuriousness of a given ostensibly paranormal oc¬
currence; or (b) the testimony available for the occurrence of a
putative instance of a paranormal kind of phenomenon; or (c) the
observation made by the witness of the particular occurrence con¬
cerned; or (d) what the occurrence, if genuinely paranormal and
if correctly observed and reported, signifies.

Let us examine each of these more particularly.

(a) That a given apparently paranormal occurrence is gen¬
uinely so means that the manner of its production really consti¬
tutes an exception to some one of the “basic limiting principles”
stated by Broad. On the other hand, that it is spurious means
that the manner of its production is really normal, or perhaps
merely abnormal in the sense of unusual; but is not paranormal,
i.e., does not, but only seems to, violate one of those limiting
principles.

If it is spurious, it may be so because of deliberate fraud
on the part of the purported medium or of some other person;
or because of unconscious fraud by a medium or by someone else
present. Unconscious fraud in the case of a physical phenomenon
could mean for example, that the medium, in a trance state akin
to somnambulism, is using his hands or some other normal means
of moving objects without realizing that, for the purposes of the
occasion, this is illegitimate though it is quite natural from the
standpoint of the dreamed situation that constitutes the content
of his consciousness at the moment.

Deliberate fraud in the matter of communications allegedly
from spirits would mean that, in so far as the content of the
communication corresponds to true facts relating to the deceased
and peculiar enough to identify him, those facts had previously
been ascertained in some normal manner by the supposed medium.

(b) Concerning now the reports that are made of particular
supposedly paranormal occurrences, the questions to be answered
are those relevant to the validity and the value of testimony in
general. They are (1) whether the witness is truthful, i.e., not
deliberately mendacious; (2) whether he is objective, i.e., impar¬
tial not biased by wishful belief in the occurrence or non-occur¬
rence of phenomena of the kind he testifies he perceived or failed
to perceive; (3) whether the report is precise, detailed, and full,

SURVIVAL AND PARANORMAL OCCURRENCES

143

rather than vague, superficial, or inclusive only of the more strik¬
ing features of what occurred or of the conditions under which it
was observed; and (4) whether the report is, or is based on, a
record made at the time the occurrence was being witnessed; or
if not, made then how soon after; or on no record but only on
what is remembered at the time the report is written.

(c) As regards the observer as such, rather than as reporter,
the main question would be whether he has, and used, the pos¬
sibly special critical powers necessary for competence to perceive
correctly what occurred, under the conditions that existed at the
time. Such critical powers would include familiarity with the
psychology of hypnosis and of hallucinations; also, familiarity with
the devices or accessories employed in conjuring tricks; and, more
generally, with the psychology of illusions of perception. The
latter has to do with the practical difficulty under some circum¬
stances of distinguishing, in what one believes oneself to be per¬
ceiving, between what is strictly being observed and what is
automatically and unconsciously being added to it—i.e., supplied
by one’s past experience of what did occur in various past cases
to which the present one is similar in obvious but perhaps un¬
essential respects. The performances of illusionists make one
perceive things that are really not occurring; and thus bring
acutely home the extent of what, in perception, is supplied by
interpretation based on habit and on the expectations it generates,
as distinguished from what is strictly and literally observed. This
additive activity, however, occurs not only when one witnesses
conjuring tricks, but constantly. But, in most though not in
all ordinary instances of it, what it supplies is correct instead
erroneous.

It should be mentioned in this general connection that ex¬
perimenting parapsychologists, and the research officers or research
committees of the societies for psychical research, are in general
familiar with and fairly expert at guarding against the various
sources of possible error that were considered in what precedes.
The purported paranormal phenomena brought to their attention
are investigated usually with care and competence. Hence al
though the accounts of them published in the proceedings and
journals of those societies are not necessarily beyond question;

144

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

nevertheless they cannot as a rule be just shrugged off as probably
naive. To do so is what would be naive.

(d) Finally comes the question as to what a given occur¬
rence, if genuinely paranormal and correctly observed and re¬
ported, signifies; i.e.. what the true explanation of it is. For
example, in the case of precognition, what does it signify as to
the relation between causality and time. Or, in that of “out-of-
the body” experiences, do they signify that man’s mind is de¬
tachable from and capable of existing and of functioning inde¬
pendently of his body. Again, in the case of telekinesis, of levita¬
tion, or of so-called “poltergeist” phenomena, is the occurrence
due to paranormal psychokinetic action by excarnate “spirits”
whether human or other; or to such action by some dissociated
part of the medium’s personality. Or, in the case of communica¬
tions purportedly from spirits of the dead, is what they really
signify only that the medium has paranormal capacities of telep¬
athy, clairvoyance, or retrocognition which—rather than com¬
munication from the deceased—supply him with the recondite
correct information the communications contain. Or, on the
other hand, do these really emanate from some part of the per¬
sonality of the deceased that has survived the death of his body;
and if so what specific part, and in just what sense can it be said
to be still “living.”

Chapter XVI

PARANORMAL OCCURRENCES, SCIENCE,
AND SCIENTISTS

In the next two chapters, some well-attested concrete ex¬
amples of the kinds of paranormal occurrences that appear to
constitute empirical evidence of survival will be cited and dis¬
cussed. But the occurrences the reports describe are so shocking
to the scientific commonsense of the present epoch that some re¬
marks are called for at this point concerning the relation of para¬
normal occurrences to science, and concerning the attitude preva¬
lent among scientists towards reports of them.

1. Reports of paranormal occurrences commonly dismissed
offhand by scientists. During the last seventy-five years, many
facts which there is strong reason to regard as paranormal have
been recorded as a result of painstaking investigations made by
some highly capable individuals, by the societies for psychical re¬
search, and more recently by the parapsychology laboratories.
The majority of scientists, however, still do not bother to ac¬
quaint themselves with those facts, or at most only superficially;
and yet are in general ready to dismiss on a priori grounds any
reports of them, much as Faraday did reports of levitation when
he wrote: “Before we proceed to consider any question involving
physical principles, we should set out with clear ideas of the
naturally possible and impossible.” Premising then that creation
or destruction of force is impossible, Faraday went on to declare
that since levitation of an object “without effort” would con¬
stitute creation of force, it therefore “cannot be.” 1 As the late
Professor James H. Hyslop, founder of the American Society for
Psychical Research, wrote some forty years ago, “Science, content,
without thorough inquiry, to confine its investigations to the

1 Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, London 1859, pp. 478-9.

145

146

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

physical world in which it has achieved so much, will not open
its eyes to anomalies in the realm of mind and nature and so
degenerates into a dogmatism exactly like that of theology.’’ 2

The following recent statement by an eminent biologist may
be cited as a quaint example of such ingenuous dogmatism:
“Bordering all branches of science there is of course a ‘lunatic
fringe’ of wishful thinkers to be found defending some bogus
cancer cure, mysterious radiation effect, or species of dualism.
Among the latter should be classed postulates of cellular intelli¬
gence or memory, vital force, perfecting principle, cosmic pur¬
pose, extrasensory perception (“ESP”), telepathy, telekinesis,
clairvoyance.. .” s

These words, of course, automatically relegate offhand to
the “lunatic fringe” of science such naturalists and biologists as
Alfred Russel Wallace, Charles Richet, Hans Driesch, H. S. Jen¬
nings: such physicists as Sir William Crookes, Lord Rayleigh, Sir
Oliver Lodge: the astronomer Camille Flammarion; and phi¬
losophers like Henry Sidgwick, William James, and Henri Berg-
son-to mention only a few of the eminent men who have thought
that some of the things listed by Prof. Muller deserve serious
consideration. If because of this these men belong to the lunatic
fringe of science, then many of us would be proud to find our¬
selves included in it on the same grounds. 4

2. What accounts for the dogmatism of scientists on the
subject of paranormal events. Statements by scientists, such as
that of Prof. Muller quoted above, compel us to ask what ac¬
counts for the dogmatism they exemplify: for the truly scientific
attitude is not dogmatic but open-minded. It is free alike from
adverse and from favorable prejudice. It welcomes facts as such,
no matter whether they confirm or invalidate the assumptions or
theories on which they have bearing. Its first commandment is

»Contact with the other world. The Century Co. New York, 1919, p. 425.

“Science Fiction as an Escape, an article by Hermann J. Muller, Nobel prize in
biology, President of the American Humanist Association; in The Humanist, Vol
XVII:338. No. 6, Nov.-Dee. 1957.

‘The remarks in the remainder of this chapter were originally presented by
the writer as one of the addresses at the Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration of the
American Society for Psychical Research, held on March 2, 1956. The addresses
were published in the Journal of the Society, Vol. L, No. 4. October, 1956.

PARANORMAL OCCURRENCES, SCIENCE, AND SCIENTISTS 147

to investigate and observe. In short, disinterested curiosity—the
passion to know the truth—is the one scientific passion. It is a
stern censor, which rules out of scientific judgments factors such
as arrogance, dogmatism, hopes or fears, and wishful belief or
ilisbelief—factors which so often vitiate the judgments of ordinary
men. Such is the scientific attitude. It is altogether admirable,
and the command over the forces of nature, which adherence to
it and to the methods it dictates has put into the hands of man,
testifies to the fruitfulness of that attitude.

But the fact that, in so far as it has actually been the atti¬
tude of scientists, they have accomplished wonders; and that these
wonders have given magical prestige to the very words, Science,
and Scientist—this fact does not at all guarantee that when a
man who is by profession a scientist speaks, what he says always
represents one of the fruits of scientific investigation. For scien¬
tists are men and usually have their share of the typical human
frailties. They do park some of these outside the doors of their
laboratories, for inside, of course, they either live up to the de¬
mands of the scientific attitude as characterized above, or they
achieve little. But outside they are as prone as other men to
pride of profession and of position; and the prestige with which
the name, Scientist, has come to endow them in the public eye
easily provides for many of them an irresistible temptation to
pontificate concerning various questions which fall outside their
professional competence, but about which naive outsiders never¬
theless respectfully ask them to speak because they are known as
Scientists, and Scientists, by definition, are persons who know!
The oracular role which this flattering deference invites them
to play leads them almost fatally to assume on such occasions that
their utterances have authority; for the idea a person harbors of
himself is largely determined by the picture of him which others
hold out to him.

Now, that pleasing though mainly subconscious picture of
himself as an oracle is what is affronted when outsiders venture to
rail to the attention of a scientist certain facts, such as those
psychical research investigates, which seem to clash with certain
assumptions of the science of his time. It is on such occasions
iat the admirable scientific attitude described above easily de-

148

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

sens him and that, as the late Dr. W. F. Prince charged, proved,
and illustrated by quoting the words of some twenty scientists
from Faraday, Tyndall and Huxley to less eminent ones-it is
on such occasions that the outraged scientist is prone to become
unscientifically emotional, obscurantistic, inaccurate, illogical,
evasive, dogmatic, and even personally abusive. 5

3. Why the paranormal phenomena are regarded as im¬
possible. The remarks made up to this point about scientists
have concerned only the psychological or more specifically the
emotional factors that account for the abandonment of the scien¬
tific attitude by so many scientists when their attention is invited
to the existing evidence, experimental and other, that paranor¬
mal phenomena of various kinds really occur. But something
must now be said also as to the source of the quite dispassionate
firm conviction of many of them that, in the light of modern
scientific knowledge, those phenomena cannot possibly be real
and can only be semblances, delusions, or frauds.

Let us note first that, when a scientist declares that some¬
thing, which belongs to the field of his scientific competence, is
possible, there is no mystery as to the basis of his assertion. It
rests either on the fact that he or some other scientist has actually
done or observed the thing concerned; or else that it is anyway
not incompatible with anything which science has so far estab¬
lished.

Again, when a scientist declares something to be impossible
by certain means under certain conditions, then the basis of his
assertion is likewise not mysterious. It is that he or some other
scientist has actually tried to cause that thing in that manner
under those conditions, but that it did not in fact then occur.

On the other hand, when a scientist declares something to
be impossible, period; that is, impossible without qualification,
then it is a mystery indeed how he could possibly know this.
In such cases, the ground of his assertion is only that occurrence
of the thing concerned would clash with some principle which
the science of his time has somehow come to accept and which

“The Enchanted Boundary, Boston Soc. for Psychic Research, 1930; see espe
dally pp. 19-133.

PARANORMAL OCCURRENCES, SCIENCE, AND SCIENTISTS 149

is thus part of “the scientific commonsense of the epoch”, but
which has not in fact been established by science. Such a “prin-
ciple”—however plausible and however wide its utility as a work¬
ing assumption—becomes a sheer dogma if the scientist’s faith in
it is so boundless that it causes him to deny a priori or to ignore
facts actually observed, that constitute exceptions to it. Assertion
that they are impossible because they would clash with it then is
pure dogmatism, even if unawares.

The clash of the facts observed may be either with the over¬
all metaphysical creed of the science of the time or, more nar¬
rowly, with one or another of the specific articles of it. These
are certain of the ‘‘basic limiting principles” of the then current
scientific thought, to which reference was made in Sec. 3 of
Chapt. XIV, and which the scientist uncritically assumes to have
unlimited validity, whereas what scientific experience would
really warrant him in concluding would be only that it has
very wide validity.

4. Clash of a reported occurrence with the metaphysical
creed of the natural sciences. The reference made above to “the
over all metaphysical creed of the science of the time” calls for
some words of explanation; for a scientist is likely to deny em¬
phatically that science has any truck with that vain and vaporous
thing called Metaphysics, which he is more than glad to leave
to philosophers or other unscientific thinkers.

As Prof. Ch. Perelman has pointedly remarked somewhere,
however, a person’s repudiation and scorn of metaphysics is no
guarantee*that he does not himself harbor unawares some meta¬
physical creed—in which case he is the more helplessly captive
in that mental prison because he does not suspect its existence or
perceive its walls.

How this is possible becomes evident as soon as one realizes
what constitutes a metaphysical creed. It is something which, if
put into words, takes the form: “To be real is to have character¬
istic C.” The word “real,” as occurring in it, is essentially a
value term , which specifically means “supremely or alone exist¬
ent, important or significant.” Hence, to have a metaphysical
creed is to proceeed in all one’s activities and judgments, and
whether consciously or unawares, under the assumption that only

150

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

what has characteristic C exists, or at least is worth taking into
consideration. This is what “to be real” means in, for example,
the metaphysical creed that to be real is to be some material
event, process, or thing, (whether at the macroscopic, directly
perceivable level, or at the atomic or sub-atomic levels explored
by theoretical physics.) 6 And just this materialistic metaphysical
creed is, in fact, that of most of the practitioners of the natural
sciences—physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology, physiological and
behavioristic psychology, and the rest.

It is harbored by them, however, without recognition of the
fact that it simply consists of their personal inclination and com¬
mitment to dedicate their efforts to the investigation of only the
material part of the world, and hence to ignore or deny mental
events as such, or at least deny them any efficacy.

The material world, of course, is highly important to us, and
study of it by scientific methods has yielded a vast amount of valu¬
able knowledge. The scientists who have elected the material
world as their field of exploration can justly be proud of what
they have achieved; and one can readily understand that their
prolonged attention to it should have brought them to the point
of being psychologically unable to notice or even conceive of any
facts, events, or processes other than material ones; and hence
should have made them unable to suppose that any material
event should have a cause or an effect other than one itself
material.

This psychological incapacity, however, is only an occupa¬
tional disease, which does not at all guarantee that there are not
“really” such things as thoughts, feelings, mental images, voli¬
tions, and other psychological states. It only compels the scien¬
tists who are captives within the invisible walls of the material¬
istic metaphysical creed to assign at any cost a purely material
meaning to the words which denote those psychological states.
For if one proceeds from the start and all along on the arbitrary
metaphysical assumption that nothing is real unless it is some
process or part of the material world, i.e., of the perceptually

«For more detailed discussion of what “real” means as employed in the formu¬
lation of a metaphysical creed, see the writer’s Nature, Mind, and Death, chapt. 6.
and in particular Sec. 8 thereof.

PARANORMAL OCCURRENCES, SCIENCE, AND SCIENTISTS 151

public world, then necessarily thoughts, feelings, and the other
states accessible only to introspection are conceived either as
unreal, i.e., as inefficacious mere appearances; or else as them¬
selves somehow material events.

It is, of course, perfectly legitimate and proper to push as
far as it is successful the attempt to account in purely material
terms for all material events, including all the activities of human
bodies. But at the many points in, for example, human willed
acts, where no material event can be observed that would account
for those acts, there is no rational justification for insisting
wilfully that their causes must, somehow, anyhow, be material
events; so that when, for example, 1 wrote the present words, my
thoughts and my desire to formulate them in writing cannot
possibly have been what caused the writing of these words. What
accounts for but does not justify that insistence is only the quite
arbitrary metaphysical creed, harbored and uncritically cherished
by most natural scientists, that only what is material is real and
ian have efficacy; and therefore that not only the vast majority
of material events, but all—absolutely all without exception-
must have purely material causes.

Nothing but Prof. Muller’s pious adhesion to that particular
metaphysical creed dictated his naive relegation of dualism, of
extrasensory perception, and of any but material explanations,
to the “lunatic fringe” of science. For of course to ascribe some
material event to a mental cause is cheating at the game in which
he like other natural scientists are engaged, to wit, that of seek¬
ing material explanations for all material events; just as, while
playing chess, moving the king two steps at a time would be
cheating. Yet the fact that it would be cheating at chess is not
evidence at all that the king is inherently incapable of being
moved more than one step at a time! Similarly, that to ascribe
to a mental cause a material event not in fact otherwise explained
is cheating at the materialscience game, is no evidence at all
that causation of that material event by a mental event is in¬
herently impossible.

The substance of the following remarks may be put both
summarily and picturesquely in the apt words used by Professor
C. D. Broad in tbe preface to his Tamer Lectures at Cambridge

152

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

University in 1923. What he said there was that the scien
who regard the phenomena investigated by psychical researc
as impossible seem to him to confuse the Author of Nature i
the Editor of the scientific periodical, Nature; or at any rate s
to suppose that there can be no productions of the former
would not be accepted for publication by the latter!

Chapter XVII

INSTANCES OF OCCURRENCES PRIMA
FACIE INDICATIVE OF SURVIVAL

1. Apparitions and hauntings. Apparitions, some precogni¬
tions or retrocognitions, and also the so-called “projections” or
out-of-the-body” experiences, all putatively come under the tech¬
nical psychological category of hallucinations, that is, of “ab¬
normal misinterpretations of ideational experiences as perceptions

.in hallucination the error of perception goes so far as to

suppose facts present to a sense which is actually receiving no
relevant stimulation.” 1

More explicitly, a hallucination is essentially a mental image
—visual, auditory, tactual, or/and other—that has the vividness of
a sensation and that, as usual in the case of sensations, is auto¬
matically taken to be perception of a physical object or event,
although none such as perceived is actually stimulating the rele¬
vant sense organ (s). Ordinary dreams are the most common
hallucinations: in them, physical objects seem to be perceived
and, until one awakens, are not realized to have been physically
non-existent. Hallucinations thus are not inherently pathological
but only sometimes so (as, for example, in delirium tremens.)

To say that an experience is, or is only, a hallucination is,
of course, not at all to account for its content or for its occur¬
rence, but is merely to say, as made clear above, that the expe¬
rience is not due to stimulation of the relevant sense organ (s)
at the time by a physical object of the kind seemingly perceived.
Nor does an experience’s being a hallucination in the least dis¬
pose of the question whether the experience is veridical in the
sense of being a true sign of some fact it appears to signify, e.g.,
of some crisis being faced by the person whose apparition is
perceived: or of some future or past occurrence, as in precogni-

*H. C. Warren: Dictionary of Psychology. Houghton Mifflin Co. Boston, 1934.

153

154

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

tion or retrocognition; or, as in “out-of-the-body" experiences,
of actual observation of one’s own body and of other things—
extrasensorily but accurately-from a point distant in space from
the body.

This is important to remember when a particular hallucina¬
tion is more specifically characterized, perhaps, as oneiric, 01 as
hypnagogic, or hypnopompic; or (as in the case of out-of-the-
body” experiences) as heautoscopic, etc.; for these adjectives are
names only of sub-classes of hallucinations, not at all of causes
or of processes that would account for the particular content of
the hallucination, or dispose of the possibility of its being veridi¬
cal in the sense stated above.

With these words of caution in mind we may now consider
first some concrete instances of the putatively hallucinatory ex¬
periences commonly termed apparitions of the dead. I say “puta
tively” because the possibility must not be ruled out a priori
that apparitions are material even if only tenuously so as com¬
pared with the “materializations” we shall consider later.

In Chapter II we had occasion to cite an exceptionally well
attested case of the kind of paranormal occurrence generally
regarded by those who witness it as most evidential of survival
of the human personality, namely, ‘ ghosts, or apparitions of
the dead.”

The case was that of the numerous apparitions at the begin¬
ning of the 19th century of the form of the deceased Mrs. Butler
in a Maine village, to which the Rev. Abraham Cummings
(A. M. Brown University 1776) had proceeded in order to expose
what he had assumed must be a hoax. He, however, was then
himself met in a field by what he terms “the Spectre.” His state¬
ment of this meeting reads: “Sometime in July 1806, in the
evening I was informed by two persons that they had just seen
the Spectre in the field. About ten minutes after, I went out,
not to see a miracle, for I believed that they had been mistaken.
Looking toward an eminence, twelve rods distance from the
house, I saw there, as I supposed, one of the white rocks. This
confirmed my opinion of their spectre, and I paid no more atten¬
tion to it. Three minutes after, I accidentally looked in the same
direction, and the white rock was in the air, its form a complete

PRIMA FACIE INDICATIVE OF SURVIVAL

15 *)

Globe, white with a tincture of red, like the damask rose, and
its diameter about two feet. Fully satisfied that this was nothing
ordinary, I went toward it for more accurate examination. While
my eye was constantly upon it, I went on four or five steps, when
it came to me from the distance of eleven rods, as quick as light¬
ning, and instantly assumed a personal form with a female dress,
but did not appear taller than a girl seven years old. While I
looked upon her, I said in my mind, ‘you are not tall enough
lor the woman who has so frequently appeared among us!’ Im¬
mediately she grew up as large and as tall as I considered that
woman to be. Now she appeared glorious. On her head was the
representation of the sun diffusing the luminous, rectilinear rays
every way to the ground. Through the rays I saw the personal
form and the woman’s dress.” 2

In the pamphlet the Rev. Mr. Cummings reproduces some
thirty affidavits which he had obtained at the time from persons
who had seen or/and heard the Spectre; for the apparition spoke,
and delivered discourses sometimes over an hour long. Some of
the witnesses believed the apparition was from Satan, others from
God. It presented itself sometimes “to one alone .... sometimes
she appeared to two or three; then to five or six; then to ten
or twelve; again to twenty; and once to more than forty wit¬
nesses. She appeared in several apartments of Mr. Blaisdel’s
house, and several times in the open field . . . There, white as
the light, she moved like a cloud above the ground in personal
form and magnitude, and in the presence of more than forty
people. She tarried with them till after daylight, and vanished”
(p. 29). On one occasion, one of the men present, Capt. Butler,
'put his hand upon it and it passed down through the apparition
as through a body of light, in the view of six or seven witnesses’
(p. 30). Several of the witnesses report, as does the Rev. Mr.
Cummings, that the apparition begins as a formless small lumin¬
ous cloud, which then grows and in a moment takes the form of
the deceased Mrs. Butler. (This incidentally, was what occurred
when; over fifty years ago in New York, the present writer wit-

’Pp. 35-6 of the pamphlet, Immortality proved by the Testimony of Sense,
Bath. Me. IS26.

156

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

nessed in red light but not under test conditions a purported
gradual materialization of a man’s body.)

The prima facie evidence of survival provided by an appari¬
tion is greatest when it supplies information that was unknown
to the percipent. Among a number of well attested reports of
just this, two, which are so clear-cut that they have become classics
in this field, may be cited briefly.

One is of the case of a travelling salesman, whose sister had
died in 1867, and who in 1876 was in his hotel room at noon in
St. Joseph, Mo. smoking a cigar and writing up the orders he had
obtained: “I suddenly became conscious that some one was sit¬
ting on my left, with one arm resting on the table. Quick as a
flash I turned and distinctly saw the form of my dead sister,
and for a brief second or so looked her squarely in the face; and
so sure was I that it was she, that I sprang forward in delight
calling her by name, and, as 1 did so, the apparition instantly
vanished ... I was near enough to touch her . . . and noted her
features, expression, and details of dress, etc. She appeared as
alive.”

He was so moved by the experience that he cut his trip
short and returned to his home in St. Louis, where he related the
occurrence to his parents, mentioning among other details of the
apparition that on the right side of the girl’s nose he had noticed
a bright red scratch about three fourths of an inch long. “When
I mentioned this,” he states, “my mother rose trembling to her
feet and nearly fainted away, and .... with tears streaming down
her face, she exclaimed that I had indeed seen my sister, as no
living mortal but herself was aware of that scratch, which she
had accidentally made while doing some little act of kindness
after my sister’s death. She said she well remembered how pained
she was to think she should have, unintentionally, marred the
features of her dead daughter, and that unknown to all, she had
carefully obliterated all traces of the slight scratch with the aid
of powder, etc., and that she had never mentioned it to a human
being from that day to this.” 8

•A full account of the case appears in Vol. VI: 17-20, S.P.R. Proceedings, 1889-
90. It is reproduced in F. W. H. Myer’s Human Personality and its Survival of
Bodily Death, Vol. 11:27-30.

PRIMA FACIE INDICATIVE OF SURVIVAL

157

The other famous case—the Chaffin will case—concerns not a
similarly waking vision, but one occurring as either a vivid
dream, or in a state between waking and dreaming. The essential
facts are as follows. On November 16, 1905, James L. Chaffin,
a North Carolina farmer, made a will attested by two witnesses,
in which he left his farm to his son Marshall, the third of his four
sons; and nothing to the other three or to his wife. On January
16; 1919, however, he made a new will, not witnessed but legally
valid because wholly in his own handwriting. In it, he stated
first that it was being made after his reading of the 27th chapter
of Genesis; and then that he wanted his property divided equally
between his four children, and that they must take care of their
mother. He then placed this holograph will at the 27th chapter
of Genesis in a Bible that had belonged to his father, folding
over the pages to enclose the will.

He died on September 7, 1921, without, so far as ascertain¬
able, ever having mentioned to anybody the existence of the
second will. The first will was not contested and was probated
on the 24th of the same month by its beneficiary, Marshall
Chaffin.

Some four years later, in June, 1925, the second son, James
Pinkney Chaffin began to have very vivid dreams that his father
appeared to him at his bedside, without speaking. Later that
month, however, the father again appeared at the bedside, wear¬
ing a familiar black overcoat, and then spoke, saying “you will
find my will in my overcoat pocket.” In the morning, James
looked for the overcoat, but was told by his mother that it had
been given to his brother John, who lived twenty miles away.
Some days later, James went to his brother’s house, found the
coat, and examined it. The inside lining of the inside pocket
had been stitched together. On cutting the stitches, he found a
little roll of paper on which, in his father’s handwriting, were
written only the words: “Read the 27th chapter of Genesis in
my Daddie’s old Bible.” He then returned to his mother’s house,
accompanied by his daughter, by a neighbor, and by the neigh¬
bor’s daughter. They had some trouble finding the old Bible,
but when they finally did, and the neighbor opened it at the
27th chapter of Genesis, they found the second will. The tes-

158

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

tator’s wife and James P. Chaffin’s wife were also present at the
time. The second will was admitted to probate in December of
the same year. 4

Hauntings are apparitions that recur and that seem to be
connected with a place rather than intended for a particular
witness. A famous, well-attested case is that of the Morton ghost.
It is described by Miss R. C. Morton (pseudonym) in Vol. VIII,
1892, of the S.P.R. Proceedings, pp. 311/332, who at that time
was a medical student and apparently viewed the occurrences
without fear or nervousness but only with scientific curiosity.
The case dates back to 1882.

Miss Morton states that, having one evening gone up to her
room, she heard someone at the door, opened it, and saw in the
passage the figure of a tall lady, dressed in black, whose face was
hidden by a handkerchief held in her right hand. She descended
the stairs and Miss Morton followed; but the small piece of
candle she carried went out, and she returned to her room. The
figure was seen again half a dozen times during the next two
years by Miss Morton, once by her sister Mrs. K, once by the
housemaid, and once by Miss Morton’s brother and by a boy.
After the first apparition, Miss Morton made it a practice to fol¬
low the figure downstairs into the drawing room. She spoke to
the apparition but never got any reply; she cornered it several
times in order to touch it, but it then simply disappeared. Its
footsteps were audible and characteristic, and were heard by Miss
Morton s three sisters and by the cook. Miss Morton stretched
some threads across the stairs, but the figure passed right through
them without detaching them. The figure was seen in the orchard
by a neighbor as well as in the house by Miss Morton’s sisters
E. and M., by the cook, by the charwoman, and by a parlormaid,
and by the gardener. But Miss Morton’s father could not see it
even when he was shown where it stood. The apparition was
seen during the day as well as at night. In all about twenty peo¬
ple saw it, some of them many times; and some of them not hav¬
ing previously heard of the apparition or of the sounds. The
figure was described in the same way by all. The apparitions con-

*Proc. of S.P.R ., Vol. 36:517-24. 1927.

PRIMA FACIE INDICATIVE OF SURVIVAL

159

tinued to occur until 1889. The figure wore widow’s cuffs, and
< orresponded to the description of a former tenant of the house,
Mrs. S., whose life there had been unhappy.

The weight of apparitions as evidence of survival is decreased
by the fact that there are numerous cases on record of apparitions
of the living. Many of them are cited in Gurney, Myers, and
Podmore’s Phantasms of the Living . 5 Like apparitions in general,
they are most impressive when more than one of the percipient’s
senses is affected—for instance, touch and hearing, or touch and
sight. Several such cases are described on pp. 446 ff. of the book
just cited. One is that of a girl, reading at night in her room,
who suddenly “felt” (heard?) some one come into the room but,
looking, could see no one. Then, she writes, “I felt a kiss on my
forehead—a lingering, loving pressure. I looked up without the
least sensation of fear, and saw my lover standing behind my
chair, stooping as if to kiss me again. His face was very white and
inexpressibly sad. As I rose from my chair in great surprise, be¬
fore I could speak, he had gone, how I do not know; I only know
that, one moment I saw him, saw distinctly every feature of his
face, saw the tall figure and broad shoulders as clearly as I ever
saw them in my life, and the next moment there was no sign of
him” (p. 447). A few days later, she heard that her lover had
at the time been riding a vicious horse which, in order to unseat
him, reared perfectly straight and pressed its back against a wall,
with him between, making him lose consciousness — his last
thought having been that he was dying and that he wanted to
see his fiancee again before he died. It turned out, however,
that only his hand had been severely injured, so that, for some
days, he could not write to tell her what had occurred.

Such cases of apparitions of the living, veridical in the sense
stated earlier, are most plausibly accounted for as telepathically
caused hallucinations since they cannot really be apparitions of
the dead. If, however, they are considered together with the
cases of “out-of-the-body” experience — so-called "projection of
the double”—of which instances are cited in Sec. 2 of the present

"In two vols. 1886. Abridged edition prepared by Mrs. Henry Sidgwick One
vol. 1918, Kegan Paul. Trench. Trubner and Co. London: E. P. Dutton and Co.,
New York.

160

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

chapter, then what suggests itself is that what is seen in cases
of apparitions — whether of the living or of the dead — is the
“projected,” i.e., externalized, “double” assumed to be possessed
by man but to be normally collocated with the body. It is con¬
jectured that at death the dislocation of it from the body is com¬
plete and permanent, whereas in apparitions of the living, the
dislocation is temporary and incomplete in that a connection—
the reported “silver thread”—remains between the externalized
“double” and the body. If this should actually be the state of
affairs, then apparitions would not really be visual hallucinations,
but rather sights, fleeting but genuine, of something very tenu¬
ous though objectively present at the place where it is perceived.

In the way of this supposition, however, stands a fact to
which we shall have occasion to return; namely that, since appari¬
tions are seldom if ever naked, then their clothes too would
have to be supposed to have an externalizable “double.”

But even when telepathy is admitted to be a fact and is
invoked, apparitions veridical in the sense stated remain very
difficult to explain plausibly. How difficult will be appreciated
by readers who may be interested to look up the seemingly far¬
fetched explanations to which able thinkers have found them¬
selves forced to have recourse when they have insisted on taking
scrupulously into consideration all the facts on record. 6

2. “Out-of-the-body” experiences. Let us turn next to the
“out-of-the-body,” experiences alluded to in the latter part of
the preceding section, of which many cases have been reported.
Those who have undergone the experience generally consider it
impressive evidence that the human consciousness is separable in
space from the human body and, it would therefore seem, can
exist independently of the latter. That experience has variously

* Apparitions, by G. N. M. Tyrrell, with a preface by H. H. Price; Gerald Duck¬
worth and Co. Ltd., revised edition, 1953; A Theory of apparitions, by W. F. Bar¬
rett. E. Gurney, and F. Podmore, Proc. S.P.R. Vol. 11:109-36; 1884. Six theories about
appartions, by Homell Hart, Proc. S.P.R ., 1955-56 pp. 153-239. For additional
references on the subject of apparitions, see G. Zorab’s Bibliography of Parapsy¬
chology, Parapsychology Found’n. Inc. New York 1957, pp. 27-8. Concerning Haunt¬
ing, see H. H. Price’s presidential address to the S.P.R.; Proc. Sf.R. Vol. XLV:307-
343. 1938-39.

PRIMA FACIE INDICATIVE OF SURVIVAL

161

been termed projection of “the double,” “ESP projection,” projec¬
tion of the astral body,” “out-of-the-body” experience, and “bi¬
location.” In the most striking form of it, the person concerned,
having gone to sleep or being under anaesthesia, wakens to see
his body inert on the bed and is able to observe it from the same
variety of angles as he could the body of another. He is also able
to observe the various objects in the room, and in some cases
he perceives and is later able to describe persons who came into
the room and went out before his body awoke. The thus tem¬
porarily excarnate observer may or may not find himself able to
travel away from the vicinity of his sleeping body. In some of
the cases when he does so and visits a distant place, he is reported
to have been seen at that place at the time. These are the cases
of “bilocation.” A famous one is that of Alfonso de Liguori
who in 1774 was at Arezzo, in prison, fasting. On awakening
one morning, he stated that he had been at the bedside of the
then dying Pope, Clement XIV; where, it turned out, he had
been seen by those present.

For the sake of concreteness, a few of the many reports of
out-of-the-body experience will now be cited.

Dr. E. Osty, in the May-June issue of the Revue Meta-
psychique for 1930, quotes a letter addressed by a gentleman
named L. L. Hymans to Charles Richet, dated June 7, 1928, in
which the former relates two such experiences: “The first time
it was while in a dentist’s chair. Under anaesthesia, I had the
sensation of awaking and of finding myself floating in the upper
part of the room, from where, with great astonishment, I watched
the dentist working on my body, and the anaesthetist at his side.
I saw my inanimate body as distinctly as any other object in the
room . . . The second time I was in a hotel in London. I awoke
in the morning feeling unwell (I have a weak heart) and shortly
thereafter I fainted. Greatly to my astonishment, I found myself
in the upper part of the room, from where, with fear, I beheld
my body inanimate in the bed with its eyes closed. I tried without
success to reenter my body and concluded that I had died . . .
Certainly I had not lost either memory or self-consciousness. I
could see my inanimate body like a separate object: I was able
to look at my face. I was, however, unable to leave the room: I

162

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

felt myself as it were chained, immobilized in the corner where
I was. After an hour or two I heard a knock on the locked door
several times, without being able to answer. Soon after, the
hotel porter appeared on the fire escape. 1 saw him get into the
room, look anxiously at my face, and open the door. The hotel
manager and others then entered. A physician came in. I saw
him shake his head after listening to my heart, and then insert a
spoon between my lips. I then lost consciousness and awoke in
the bed." In the same article, Dr. Osty cites the similar experi¬
ences of two other persons.

Dr. Ernesto Bozzano cites the case of a friend of his, the
engineer Giuseppe Costa who, while asleep, so disturbed the
kerosene lamp on his bedside table that it filled the room with
dense, choking smoke. Signor Costa writes: "I had the clear and
precise sensation of finding myself with only my thinking per¬
sonality, in the middle of the room, completely separated from my
body , which continued to lie on the bed ... I was seized with an
inexpressible anguish from which I felt intuitively that I could
only free myself by freeing my material body from that oppressive
situation. I wanted therefore to pick up the lamp and open the
window, but it was a material act that I could not accomplish . . .
Then I thought of my mother, who was sleeping in the next
room ... It seemed to me that no effort of any kind was needed
to cause her to approach my body. I saw her get hurriedly out
of bed, run to her window and open it . . . then leave her room,
walk along the corridor, enter my room and approach my body
gropingly and with staring eyes.” He then awoke. He writes
further: “My mother, questioned by me soon after the event,
confirmed the fact that she had first opened her window as if
she felt herself suffocating, before coming to my aid. Now the
fact of my having seen this act of hers through the xvall, while
lying inanimate on the bed, entirely excludes the hypothesis of
hallucination and nightmare ... I thus had the most evident
proof that my soul had detached itself from my body during its
material existence. I had, in fact, received proof of the existence
of the soul and also of its immortality, since it was true that it had
freed itself . . from the material envelope of the body, acting

PRIMA FACIE INDICATIVE OF SURVIVAL

163

and thinking outside it.” 7 In order to explain this case, however,
telepathy plus clairvoyance would be enough.

In some persons, out-of-the-body experience becomes volun¬
tary. The best known account of the process involved is that of
the late Sylvan Muldoon, 8 whose description of his own expe¬
riences brought him numerous communications from strangers
who had themselves had out-of-the-body experiences. Many of
these are quoted by him in a later book, 9 including one which,
some years before that book appeared, was related to the present
writer by the person concerned, Miss Mary Ellen Frallic. Her
projection” experience occurred not during sleep or under an¬
aesthesia, but while walking on the street. She gradually became
conscious of rising higher and higher, up to the height of the
second floor of the surrounding buildings, and then felt an urge
to look back; whereupon she saw her body walking about one
block behind. That body was apparently able to see “her” for
she noticed the look of bewilderment on its face. Her con¬
sciousness of location then shifted a few times from that of the
“double” to that of the body, and back, each being able to
perceive the other. She then felt afraid, and immediately reen¬
tered her body. 10

Besides Muldoon’s account of voluntary “projections,” one
of the most interesting is by a Frenchman who, under the pseu¬
donym, Yram, wrote in 1926 a book entitled “The Physician of
the Soul,” which has since been translated under the title Prac¬
tical Astral Projection . In it he describes twelve years of his own
experimentation in conscious out-of-the-body experience. An¬
other writer, Oliver Fox, in a book entitled Astral Projection,
related his own experiences. 11

7 Quoted in Bozzano’s Discarnate Influence in Human Life, pp. 112-15. from
Giuseppe Costa’s Di la della Vita, p. 18.

8 The Projection of the Astral Body, David McKay Co. Philadelphia, 1929.

9 The Phenomena of Astral Projection, by Sylvan Muldoon and Hereward Car
rington, Rider and Co., London, 1951.

10 Cf. op. cit. pp. 189-90.

u Ridcr and Co. London (no date) A number of interesting cases are quoted
in some detail on pp. 220-29 of Dr. Raynor C. Johnson’s The Imprisoned Splendour,
Harper and Bros. New York, 1953. A bibliography of the subject is furnished on
pp. 221-22 of Muldoon and Carrington’s The Phenomena of Astral Projection.

164

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

In a number of cases, the projected “double” is reported to
remain connected with the sleeping body by a ‘‘silver cord” which
is extensible in various degrees. Persons who have had the out-
of-the-body experience have usually assumed, as did the engineer
Giuseppe Costa quoted above, that the spatial separation in it of
the observing and thinking consciousness from the body on the
bed means that the former is capable of existing and of function¬
ing independently of the latter not only thus temporarily during
"projection,” but enduringly at death, which is then simply per¬
manent, definitive projection when the ‘‘silver cord” snaps.

This conclusion, however, does not necessarily follow, for
it tacitly assumes that the conscious ‘‘double” is what animates
the body—normally in being collocated with it, but also, when
dislocated from it, through connection with it by the “silver
cord.” The fact, however, could equally be that the animation
is in the converse direction, i.e., that death of the body entails
death of the conscious “double” whether the latter be at the time
dislocated from or collocated with the former.

Hence, out-of-the-body experience, however impressive to
those who have it, and however it may tempt them to conclude
that they then know that consciousness is not dependent on the
living material body, does not really warrant this conclusion; but
only the more modest one, which, of course, is arresting enough,
that correct visual perception of physical events and objects,
including perception of one’s own body from a point distant in
space from it, can occur, exceptionally, at times when the eyes
are shut and the body asleep—this fact, of course, not being at
all explained by labelling the occurrences of it “heautoscopic
hallucinations” since, as pointed out earlier, what is paranormal,
instead of merely abnormal, in certain hallucinations is that they
are veridical in the same sense in which perceptions are so, even
if not through the same mechanism.

3. Materializations and other paranormal physical phe¬
nomena. Among paranormal phenomena, certain physical ones
—especially materializations and the so-called “direct voice”—are
easily accepted by persons who witness them as evidence of sur¬
vival. There are numerous reports, some of them circumstantial
and made by careful and experienced observers, of the material-

PRIMA FACIE INDICATIVE OF SURVIVAL

165

ization of portions of human bodies—of hands, for example,
which move and grasp and carry things; or of faces or even of
entire bodies which act, speak, and breathe like ordinary living
human bodies; and after a while dematerialize, suddenly or

slowly.

Sir William Crookes, for instance, in an article he published
in the Quarterly Journal of Science 12 writes: “A beautifully
formed small hand rose up from an opening in a dining table
and gave me a flower; it appeared and then disappeared three
times at intervals, affording me ample opportunity of satisfying
myself that it was as real in appearance as my own. This occurred
in the light in my own room, whilst I was holding the medium’s
hands and feet. On another occasion a small hand and arm,
like a baby’s, appeared playing about a lady who was sitting next
to me. It then passed to me and patted my arm and pulled my
coat several times. At another time a finger and thumb were
seen to pick the petals from a flower in Mr. Home’s button-hole
and lay them in front of several persons who were sitting near
him ... I have more than once seen, first an object move, then
a luminous cloud appear to form about it, and lastly, the cloud
condense into shape and become a perfectly-formed hand . . .
At the wrist, or arm, it becomes hazy, and fades off into a lumi¬
nous cloud. To the touch the hand sometimes appears icy cold
and dead, at other times warm and life-like, grasping my own
with the firm pressure of an old friend. I have retained one of
these hands in my own, firmly resolved not to let it escape. There
was no struggle or effort made to get loose, but it gradually
seemed to resolve itself into vapour and faded in that manner
from my grasp.”

Among the materializations of entire bodies that have been
reported, those of “Katie King,” repeatedly observed by Sir
William Crookes under his own conditions as well as by others,
and measured, auscultated, tested and photographed by him—

“Notes of an Enquiry into the Phenomena called Spiritual during the years
1870-73. Reprinted with other articles by Crookes under the title Researches in
the Phenomena of Spiritualism, Two Worlds Pub’g. Co. 1926. The quotation is
from pp. 102-3.

166

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

Florence Cook being the medium—are probably the most famous
and most carefully described. 13

The apparent materialization, in whole or in part, of human
bodies and of their clothing and accoutrements, is supposed to
depend on and to consist at least in part of a mysterious sub¬
stance that emanates from the medium’s body, and to which the
name of “ectoplasm” has therefore been given. It seems able to
exert or to conduct force. It is said to have various consistencies
—sometimes vaporous, sometimes filmy like a veil, sometimes
gelatinous, sometimes pasty like thick dough.

The latter was its consistency on the one occasion when in
the house of a friend of mine I personally had an opportunity
to see in good red light, to touch, and take ten flash light photo¬
graphs of a substance emanating from the mouth of an entranced
non-professional medium; which substance, whether or not it was
“ectoplasm,” did not behave, feel, or look as any other substance
known to me could, I think, have done under the conditions that
existed. It was coldish, about like steel. This made it seem
moist, but it was dry and slightly rough like dough the surface
of which had dried. Its consistency and weight were also dough-
like. It was a string, of about pencil thickness, varying in length
from some six to twelve feet. On other photographs, not taken
by me, of the same medium, it has veil-like and rope-like forms.

Professor Charles Richet, who had many occasions to observe
what appeared to be materializations, discusses at one point in
his Thirty Years of Psychical Research 14 the possibilities of fraud
in purported materializations and the precautions necessary to
preclude it; and he concludes that, in the case of the best of the
available reports of the phenomenon—a number of which he men¬
tions—neither fraud nor illusion is a possible explanation: “When
I recall the precautions that all of us have taken, not once, but
twenty, a hundred, or even a thousand times, it is inconceivable
that we should have been deceived on all these occasions.”

Concerning occurrences he personally observed under espe¬
cially favorable conditions, he writes: “Sometimes these ecto-

w Loc. cit. pp. 115-28.

“Collins and Sons, London, 1923. p. 460. English translation by Stanley De
Brath, p. 467.

PRIMA FACIE INDICATIVE OF SURVIVAL

167

plasms can be seen in process of organization; I have seen an
almost rectilinear prolongation emerge from Eusapia’s body, its
termination acting like a living hand .... I have . . . been able
to see the first lineaments of materializations as they were formed.
A kind of liquid or pasty jelly emerges from the mouth or the
breast of Marthe which organizes itself by degrees, acquiring the
shape of a face or a limb. Under very good conditions of visi¬
bility, I have seen this paste spread on my knee, and slowly take
form so as to show the rudiment of the radius, the cubitus, or
metacarpal bone whose increasing pressure I could feel on my
knee.” 1R

The prima facie most impressive evidence there could be of
the survival of a deceased friend or relative would be to see and
touch his materialized, recognizable bodily form, which then
speaks in his or her characteristic manner. This is what appeared
to occur in my presence on an occasion three or four years ago
when, during some two hours and in very good red light through
out, some eighteen fully material forms—some male, some female,
some tall and some short, and sometimes two together—came out
of and returned to the curtained cabinet I had inspected before
hand, in which a medium sat, and to which I had found no
avenue of surreptitious access.

These material forms were apparently recognized as those
of a deceased father, mother, or other relative by one or another
of the fourteen or fifteen persons present; and some touching
scenes occurred, in which the form of the deceased spoke with
and caressed the living.

One of those forms called my name and. when I went up
to her and asked who she was, she answered “Mother.” She did
not, however, speak, act, or in the least resemble mv mother
This was no disappointment to me since I had gone there for
purposes not of consolation but of observation. I would have felt
fully rewarded if the conditions of observation had been such
that T could have been quite sure that the material form T saw,
that spoke to me and patted me on the head, was genuinely a
materialization, no matter of whom or of what. Indeed, mate-

w Thirty Years of Psychical Research, Collins and Sons. London, 1925. p. 469

168

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

rialization of half a human body would, for my purpose, have
been even more significant than materialization of an entire one.

I should add, however, that the friend who had taken me to
that circle, who is a careful and critical observer, and who had
been there a number of times before, told me that on the occa¬
sions when a material form that purported to be a materializa¬
tion of his mother had come out of the cabinet and spoken to
him, the form was sometimes recognizably like her, and some
times not.

Apparitions and genuine materializations (if any) are alike
in being visible, and usually in reproducing the appearance of a
human body or of parts of one; and, in cases where at least the
face is reproduced, sometimes in being recognizably like that of
one particular person known to someone present. On the other
hand, materializations are tangible whereas apparitions are not so.

The question then arises whether apparitions are incom¬
plete materializations (a mist or haze is visible but not tangible,
and yet is material,) or whether materializations are “complete”
hallucinations, i.e., hallucinations not only of sight and of sound
of voice or of footsteps, but also of the sense of touch and the
others. As regards the second alternative, I can say only that if
the form I saw which said it was my mother and which patted me
on the head, was a hallucination—a hallucination “complete” in
the sense just stated—then no difference remains between a com¬
plete hallucination on the one hand and, on the other, ordinary
veridical perception of a physical object; for every further test
of the physicality of the form seen and touched could then be
alleged to be itself hallucinatory and the allegation of complete
hallucination then automatically becomes completely vacuous.

On the other hand, cases are on record of apparitions of the
living but, so far as I know, no good cases have been reported
of materializations of the living in the sense that a living person
was not merely seen and perhaps heard, but also tangibly present
at a place distant from that of his body. In such cases of “biloca¬
tion” as that of Alphonse of Liguori, who, while in prison at
Arezzo, was seen among the persons in attendance at the bedside
of the then dying Pope Clement XIV in Rome, the testimony

PRIMA FACIE INDICATIVE OF SURVIVAL

169

does not, I believe, include any statement that he was touched ,
while there, as well as seen.

But no matter whether we say that apparitions are incom¬
plete materializations, or that materializations are complete hal
lucinations, a fact remains concerning both, that has bearing
on the question whether they constitute evidence of survival
after death. It is that both apparitions and materializations wear
clothing of some sort; so that, as someone has put the point, “if
ghosts have clothes, then clothes have ghosts.” That is, if one
says that the apparition or materialization is the deceased's sur¬
viving “spirit,” temporarily become perceptible, then does not
consistency require one to say that the familiar dress or coat or
other accoutrement it wears had a spirit too, that has also sur¬
vived? On the other hand, if one assumes that the clothing the
apparition or materialization wears is materialization only of a
memory image of the deceased’s clothing, then would not con¬
sistency dictate the conclusion that the now temporarily per¬
ceptible parts of the deceased’s body are materializations like¬
wise only of a memory image of his appearance and behavior?

If one is fortunate enough to witness an apparition, or even
better, a materialization where the materialized form duplicates
the appearance of a deceased friend or relative, speaks and be¬
haves as the latter did, and mentions facts of an intimate nature
which few if any but the deceased and oneself knew, then the
temptation may well be psychologically irresistible to believe that
the deceased himself is with us again in temporarily materialized
form, and therefore that he does indeed survive the death of the
body that was his. The remarks made above, however, show that
this interpretation of the experience, no matter how hard psy¬
chologically it then is to resist, is not the only one of which the
experience admits, and is not necessarily the one most probably
true.

On this point, some words of Richet—who as we have seen
became certain that materializations do really occur—are worth
quoting. Comparing the evidence for survival from mediumistic
communications with that which materializations are thought to
furnish, he writes: “The case of George Pelham [one of Mrs.
Piper’s best communicators], though there was no materializa

170

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

tion, is vastly more evidential for survival than all the materializa¬
tions yet known . . . materializations, however perfect, cannot
prove survival; the evidence that they sometimes seem to give is
much less striking than that given by subjective metapsychics,”
i.e., chiefly, by mediumistic communications (p. 490). It is worth
bearing in mind in this connection that in the star case of “Katie
King,” who claimed to have in life been Annie Owen Morgan,
daughter of the buccaneer Sir Henry Owen Morgan, no evidence
exists that such a woman did actually live. But unless she actu¬
ally did, and died, the question whether “her” spirit survived
death, and materialized as Katie King, becomes vacuous.

As regards the evidence for survival supposedly constituted
by physical paranormal phenomena such as “poltergeist” occur¬
rences, telekinesis, raps, levitation, “direct” voice, etc., H. F. Salt-
marsh writes that “in order that events of this kind should have
any value as evidence of survival they must possess some charac¬
teristic which will connect them with some deceased person. The
bare fact that a material object is moved in a way we cannot
account for by normal means does not afford any clue to the
identity of the agent. All we could say in the most favourable
circumstances would be that some unknown agency is involved
and that that agency exhibits intelligence; we could not argue
that it was, or even had been, human, still less that it was con¬
nected with some one particular person. Thus when any special
characteristics which might connect them with a deceased person
are absent, we can rule out physical phenomena as completely
unevidential of survival. Where, however, the phenomena show
some special characteristics which connect with some definite
deceased person, any evidential value for survival rests entirely
on those characteristics.” 10

4. “Possessions.” Another sort of paranormal occurrence,
some cases of which invite interpretation as evidence of survival,
is that popularly known as “possession,” i.e., prima facie possession
of a person’s body by a personality—whether devilish, divine, or
merely human—radically different from his or her own. The most
probably correct interpretation of the great majority of such cases

lfl “Is Proof of Survival Possible?” Proc. S.P.R. Vol. XL: 106-7, Jan. 1932.

PRIMA FACIE INDICATIVE OF SURVIVAL

171

is that the “possessing” personality is only a dissociated, normally
repressed portion or aspect of the total personality of the in¬
dividual concerned.

The case of the Rev. Ansel Bourne, of Greene, R.I., 17 the
still more famous cases of the alternating personalities of Miss
Beauchamp, reported by Dr. Morton Prince, and the Doris
Fischer case described by Dr. Walter F. Prince, 18 would be ex¬
amples of such temporary “possession.” The survival interpreta
tion has little or no plausibility as regards most such cases, but
is less easy to dismiss in a few others, different from these in that
the intruding personality gives more or less clear and abundant
evidence of being that of one particular individual who had died
some time before.

About as impressive a case of this as any on record is that
of the so-called Watseka Wonder. An account of it was first pub¬
lished in 1879 in the Religio-Philosophical Journal, and, in
1887, republished as a pamphlet, The Watseka Wonder, by the
Religio-Philosophical Publishing House, Chicago. The sub-title
is “A narrative of startling phenomena occurring in the case of
Mary Lurancy Vennum.” The author of the narrative was a med¬
ical man, Dr. E. Winchester Stevens (1822-1885), who had been
consulted at the time in the case.

Two girls were concerned. One, Mary Roff, had died on
July 5, 1865 at the age of 18. From an early age, she had had
frequent “fits” becoming more violent with the years; she had
complained of a “lump of pain in the head” (p. 10), to relieve
which she had repeatedly bled herself; and she is stated to have
been able, while “heavily blindfolded by critical intelligent, in¬
vestigating gentlemen” to read readily books even when closed
and letters even in envelopes, and to do other tasks normally
requiring the use of the eyes (p. 11).

The other girl, Lurancy Vennum, was born on April 16,

ll Proc., Soc. for Psychical Research, Vol. VII, 1891-2: A Case of Double Con¬
sciousness, by Richard Hodgson, M. D. Pp. 221-57. It is commented upon by
William James in Ch. X of his Principles of Psychology, 1905, pp. 390*3, who also
cites a number of others.

19 Morton Prince: The Dissociation of a Personality, London, Longmans Green,
1906; W. F. Prince: The Doris Case of Multiple Personality, Proc A.S.PR Vols.
IX and X, 1915, 1916; and in Vol. XI. discussed by J. H. Hyslop.

172

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

1864 and was therefore a little over one year old at the time Mary
Roff died. At the age of 13 in July 1877, Lurancy, who until
then “had never been sick, save a light run of measles” (p. 3),
complained of feeling queer, went into a fit including a cataleptic
state lasting five hours. On subsequent similar occasions, while
in trance, she conversed and described “angels” or “spirits” of
persons who had died. She was believed insane and was examined
by two local physicians. On January 31, 1878, Mr. Roff, who
had heard of Lurancy’s case and become interested in it, was
allowed by her father to bring Dr. E. W. Stevens to observe her.
On that occasion, she became apparently “possessed” by two
alien personalities in turn—one a sullen, crabbed old hag, and
the second a young man who said he had run away from home,
got into trouble, and lost his life (pp. 5,6). Dr. Stevens then
“magnetized” her and “was soon in full and free communication
with the sane and happy mind of Lurancy Vennum herself”
(p. 7). She described the “angels” about her and said that one of
them wanted to come to her instead of the evil spirits men¬
tioned above.” On being asked if she knew who it was, she said:
“Her name is Mary Roff” (p. 7). The next day, “Mr. Vennum
called at the office of Mr. Roff and informed him that the girl
claimed to be Mary Roff and wanted to go home .... ‘She seems
like a child real homesick, wanting to see her pa and ma and
her brothers’ ” (p. 9).

Some days later, she was allowed to go and live with the
Roffs. There, she “seemed perfectly happy and content, knowing
every person and everything that Mary knew in her original
body, twelve to twenty-five years ago, recognizing and calling by
name those who were friends and neighbors of the family from
1852 to 1865, [i.e., during the 12 years preceding Lurancy’s
birth,] calling attention to scores, yes, hundreds of incidents that
transpired during [Mary’s] natural life” (p. 14). She recognized
a head dress Mary used to wear; pointed to a collar, saying she
had tatted it; remembered details of the journey of the family to
Texas in 1857 [i.e., 7 years before Lurancy’s birth]. On the other
hand, she did not recognize any of the Vennum family nor their
friends and neighbors, nor knew anything that had until then
been known by Lurancy.

PRIMA FACIE INDICATIVE OF SURVIVAL

173

Lurancy’s new life as Mary Roff lasted 3 months and 10
days. Then Lurancy’s own personality returned to her body,
and she went back to the Vennums, who reported her well in
mind and body from then on. She eventually married and had
children. Occasionally then, when Lurancy was visiting the Roffs,
the Mary personality would come back for some little time.

What distinguishes this case from the more common ones of
alternating personalities is, of course, that the personality that
displaced Lurancy’s was, by every test that could be applied, not
a dissociated part of her own, but the personality and all the
memories that had belonged to a particular 18 year old girl who
had died at a time when Lurancy was but 14 months old; and
that no way, consistent with Dr. Stevens’ record of the facts, has
been suggested in which Lurancy, during the 13 years of her life
before her sojourn with the Roffs, could have obtained the ex¬
tensive and detailed knowledge Mary had possessed, which Lur¬
ancy manifested during the sojourn. For the Vennums were away
from Wateska for the first 7 years of Lurancy’s life; and when
they returned to Watseka, their acquaintance with the Roffs con¬
sisted only of one brief call of a few minutes by Mrs. Roff on
Mrs. Vennum, and of a formal speaking acquaintance between
the two men, until the time when Mr. Roff brought Dr. Stevens
to the Vennums on account of Lurancy’s insane behavior.

In commenting on various cases of seeming "possession” of
a person’s organism by a personality altogether different, William
James notes that "many persons have found evidence conclusive
to their minds that in some cases the control is really the de¬
parted spirit whom it pretends to be,” but that "the phenomena
shade off so gradually into cases where this is obviously absurd,
that the presumption (quite apart from a priori ‘scientific’ preju¬
dice) is great against its being true.” 19 He then turns to the
Watseka case just described, introducing it by the statement that
it is "perhaps as extreme a case of ‘possession’ of the modern sort
as one can find,” but he makes no attempt to explain it.

The only way that suggests itself, to avoid the conclusion
that the Mary Roff personality which for fourteen weeks "pos

10 Principles of Psychology, New York, Henry Holt and Co., 1905, p. 396.

174

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

sessed” Lurancy’s organism was “really the departed spirit whom
it pretended to be,” is to have recourse to the method of ortho¬
doxy, whose maxim is: “When you cannot explain all the facts
according to accepted principles, then explain those you can and
ignore the rest; or else deny them, distort them, or invent some
that would help.”

This procrustean method, of course, has a measure of va¬
lidity, since errors of observation or of reporting do occur. Yet
some facts turn out to be too stubborn to be disposed of plausibly
by that method; and the present one would appear to be one of
them, especially if the conclusion reached in Part III is accepted,
that no impossibility either theoretical or empirical attaches to
the supposition of survival of a human personality after death.

5. Memories, seemingly of earlier lives. Brief mention may
be made at this point of another kind of occurrence, of which
only a few cases at all impressive have been reported, but which,
like those of the other kinds considered in the preceding sections,
constitute prima facie evidence of survival. I refer to the cases
where a person has definite apparent memories relating to a life
he lived on earth before his present one, and where the facts and
events he believes he remembers turn out to be capable of veri¬
fication. If these should indeed be memories in the same literal
sense as that in which each of us has memories of places he visited
years before, of persons he met there, of incidents of his school
days, and so on, then this would constitute proof not strictly
that he will survive the death of his body but that he has survived
that of the different body he remembers having had in an earlier
life.

In Part V, we shall consider in some detail the particular
form of possible life after death consisting of rebirth of the indi¬
vidual on earth. A number of the most circumstantial accounts
of putative memories of an earlier life will be cited and the al¬
ternative interpretations to which they appear open will be
examined.

Chapter XVIII

ADDITIONAL OCCURRENCES RELEVANT
TO THE QUESTION OF SURVIVAL

Except, perhaps, for a very few cases of “possession” that may
be as clear-cut as appeared to be that of the “Watseka Wonder”
described in the preceding chapter, the most impressive sort of
empirical evidence of survival is that provided by certain of the
communications which are received through mediums or au
tomatists, and which purport to emanate from particular deceased
persons. Such communications, and the alternative interpreta¬
tion or interpretations to which they may be open, are what
we shall consider in the present chapter.

1. Communications, purportedly from the deceased,
through automatists. The externally observable facts in the case
of communications, purportedly from the surviving spirits of
the deceased, are that a person, either in a state of trance or in
the waking state, gives out various statements automatically, that
is, not consciously and intentionally as in ordinary expression.
Such persons are therefore perhaps best referred to as autom¬
atists, but actually more often as mediums .

The statements may be spelled out letter by letter—a pointer,
on which the hand of the automatist rests, moving to the appro¬
priate letters printed on a board (the "ouija” board) without
conscious guidance by the automatist, who may the while be
looking elsewhere and carrying on a conversation with the per¬
sons present. Or the letters may be indicated in some other way,
as by paranormal raps or by movements of a table on which the
hands rest, when the alphabet is recited and the proper letter
reached. Or again, the communications may be written auto¬
matically by the hand of the automatist while his or her atten¬
tion is otherwise engaged; or the statements may be spoken either

175

176

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

by the vocal organs of the entranced medium, or at times, in
some mysterious way by a voice that seems not to employ the
medium’s vocal organs and is then termed the “independent
voice’’. But whichever one of these various means is used, the
appearances are that the automatist’s own intelligence and will
do not participate in the framing of the statements made, and
that a quite different personality originates them. The hand¬
writing or the voice, and the locutions, the tricks of speech, and
the stock of information manifested, are notably different in the
best cases from those of the automatist in her normal state. In¬
deed, they are often typical of, and usually purport to emanate
from, some particular deceased friend or relative of the “sitter,’’
i.e., of the person who is sitting with the medium at the time.

The process of communication sometimes appears to be
direct, and sometimes indirect. In the latter case, the intelligence
directly in command of the automatist’s organs of expression pur¬
ports to be that of some discarnate person more expert than
others at the difficult task of using them. This intelligence,
which generally remains the same at many sittings, is known
as the medium’s “control.’’ Sometimes it utters through the me¬
dium’s organs statements which it purportedly hears being made
by the sitter’s deceased friend. On the other hand, when the
latter appears to be directly in command of the medium’s organs,
the “control” appears to function as a helper and supervisor of
the communicator’s attempt to express himself through those
organs; for example, by preventing other discarnate spirits that
also desire to use the medium from interfering with the com¬
munication going on.

That it is sometimes by no means easy to account for the
content, the language, and the mannerisms of the communica¬
tions otherwise than by the supposition that they really emanate
from the surviving spirits of the deceased will now be made evi¬
dent by citation, even if only in summary form, of communica¬
tions received by the late Professor J. H. Hyslop, purportedly
from his deceased father, through the famous Boston medium,
Mrs. Leonore Piper, who was studied by men of science probably
for more years, and more systematically and minutely, than any
other mental medium.

OCCURRENCES RELEVANT TO SURVIVAL

177

The first of them to study her was Professor William James.
He published a first report about her in 1886. In 1887, Dr. Rich¬
ard Hodgson, who was secretary of the American Society for
Psychical Research and was an experienced and highly critical in
vestigator, undertook and carried on for eighteen years an in¬
tensive study of her mediumship. In the course of time, Mrs
Piper made three trips to England, where she was studied by
Sir Oliver Lodge, F. W. H. Myers, Henry Sidgwick, and other
distinguished investigators.

Professor Hyslop was one of the many persons who had sit¬
tings with Mrs. Piper during the years in which Dr. Hodgson
was supervising the exercise of her mediumship. In 1901, Hyslop
published a long and lucid, circumspect, and detailed report of
his sittings with her. 1 For lack of space here, reference will be
made only to the communications he received that purported to
establish the identity and survival of his father, who, it should be
mentioned, had been in no way a public character but had lived
a very ordinary and retired life on his farm.

A word must be said first as to the physical manner in which
the communications were being delivered by Mrs. Piper at that
period of her mediumship. She sat in a chair before a table on
which were two pillows. After a few minutes, she would go into
a trance and lean forward. Her left hand, palm upward, was
then placed on the pillow, her right cheek resting on the palm,
so that she was facing left. Her right arm was then placed on
another table to the right, on which there was a writing pad.
A pencil was then put in her hand, which then began to write.

The communications so received purported to come from
several of Professor Hyslop’s dead relatives, and in particular
from his father. Their content included a statement of Pro¬
fessor Hyslop’s name, James; of his father’s name, and of the
names of three others of his father’s children. Also, references to
a number of particular conversations the father had had with
Professor Hyslop, to many special incidents and facts, and to
family matters. Examples would be that the father had trouble
with his left eye, that he had a mark near his left ear, that he
used to wear a thin coat or dressing gown mornings and that at

1 Proc . S. P. R., Vol. XVI :1 649, 1901.

178

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

one time he wore a black skull cap at night; that he used to have
one round and one square bottle on his desk and carried a
brown-handled penknife with which he used to pare his nails;
that he had a horse called Tom; that he used to write with quill
pens which he trimmed himself; and so on. A number of these
facts were unknown to Professor Hyslop, but were found to be
true after inquiry. The communications also contained favorite
pieces of advice, which the father had been in the habit of utter¬
ing, and these worded in ways characteristic of his modes of
speech.

The communications that purported to come from other
dead relatives, and indeed those given by Mrs. Piper to scores
and scores of other sitters over the years, were similarly of facts
or incidents too trivial to have become matters of public knowl¬
edge, or indeed to have been ascertainable by a stranger without
elaborate inquiries, if at all. Facts of this kind are therefore all
the more significant as prima facie evidences of identity. It is
interesting to note in this connection that if one had a brother
in another city, with whom one was able to communicate only
through a third party—and this a person in a rather dopy state—
and if the brother doubted the identity of the sender of the
messages, then trivial and intimate facts such as those cited—some
of them preferably known only to one’s brother and oneself—
would be the very kind one would naturally mention to establish
one’s identity.

The question now arises, however, whether the imparting
of such facts by a medium is explicable on some other hypothesis
than that of communication with the deceased. Two other ex¬
planations—one normal and the other paranormal—suggest them¬
selves. The first is, of course, that the medium obtained ante¬
cedently in some perfectly normal manner the information com¬
municated. One of the reasons why I chose Mrs. Piper’s me-
diumship as example is that in her case this explanation is com¬
pletely ruled out by the rigorous and elaborate precautions which
were taken to exclude that possibility. For one thing, Dr. Hodg¬
son had both Mrs. Piper and her husband watched for weeks by
detectives, to find out whether they went about making inquiries
concerning the relatives and family history of persons they might

OCCURRENCES RELEVANT TO SURVIVAL

179

have expected to come for sittings. Nothing in the slightest de¬
gree suspicious was ever found. Moreover, sitters were always
introduced by Dr. Hodgson under assumed names. Sometimes,
they did not come into the room until after Mrs. Piper was in
trance, and then remained behind her where she could not have
seen them even if her eyes had been open. On her trips to
England, Mrs. Piper stayed in Myer’s house or in that of Sir
Oliver Lodge, and the few letters she received were examined
and most of them read, with her permission, by Myers, Lodge,
or Sidgwick. Many of the facts she gave out could not have been
learned even by a skilled detective; and to learn such others as
could have been so learned would have required a vast expend-
ture of time and money, which Mrs. Piper did not have. William
James summed up the case against the fraud explanation in the
statement that “not only has there not been one single suspicious
circumstance remarked” during the many years in which she and
her mode of life were under close observation, “but not one sug¬
gestion has ever been made from any quarter which might tend
to explain how the medium, living the apparent life she leads,
could possibly collect information about so many sitters by
natural means. 2 Thus, because we do not merely believe but
positively know that the information she gave was not obtained
by her in any of the normal manners, there is in her case no
escape from the fact that it had some paranormal source.

The paranormal explanation alternative to the spiritistic hy¬
pothesis is that, in the trance condition, Mrs. Piper, or her dissoci¬
ated, secondary personalities, possess telepathic powers so ex¬
tensive as to enable her to obtain the information she gives out
from the minds of living persons who happen to have it; and this
even if at the time it is buried in their subconsciousness, and no
matter whether such persons be at the time with Mrs. Piper or
anywhere else on earth. Or else that, in trance, Mrs. Piper has
powers of retrocognitive clairvoyance so extensive as to enable
her to observe the past life on earth of a deceased person.

*Cf. the conclusions of Frank Podmore to the same effect on pp. 71-78 of his
“Discussion of the Trance-phenomena of Mrs. Piper,” Proc. Soc. for Psychical Re¬
search, Vol. XIV:50-78, 1898-9, in which he contrasts the rigor of the precautions
against possibility of fraud taken in Mrs. Piper's case with the possibilities of it
that existed in certain famous cases of purported clairvoyance.

180

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

But even this supposition is not enough, for besides the
recondite true items with which the communications abound,
there remains to be explained the dramatic form—the spontane¬
ous give-and-take—of the communications. For this, it is neces¬
sary to ascribe to Mrs. Piper’s trance personality the extraordinary
histrionic ability which would be needed to translate instantly
the suitable items of telepathically or clairvoyantly acquired in¬
formation into the form which expression of a memory, or of an
association of ideas, or of response to an allusion, etc., would take
in animated conversation between two persons who had shared
various experiences—many of them trivial in themselves, but be¬
cause of this all the more evidential of identity. How staggering
a task this would be can be appreciated only in extensive perusal
of the verbatim records of the conversations between sitter and
communicator, and often between two communicators.

Professor Hyslop takes cognizance of the capacity which a
hypnotized subject does have for dramatic imitation of a person he
is made to imagine himself to be and about whom he knows
something; and Hyslop stresses the great difference, evident in the
concrete, between this and the dramatic interplay between dif¬
ferent personalities , of which numerous instances occur in the
Piper sittings. And he points out also that nothing really par¬
allel to the latter is to be found in the relations to one another
of the several dissociated personalities in cases such as that of
Morton Prince’s Miss Beauchamp. 8 Hyslop had stressed earlier
(p. 90) that if normal explanations fail to account for the phe¬
nomena he has recorded, then the only alternative to the sup¬
position that he has actually been communicating with the inde¬
pendent intelligence of his father is ‘‘that we have a most extra¬
ordinary impersonation of him, involving a combination of tele¬
pathic powers and secondary personality with its dramatic play
that should as much try our scepticism as the belief in spirits.”

He concludes: ‘‘When I look over the whole field of the
phenomena and consider the suppositions that must be made to
escape spiritism, which not only one aspect of the case but every
incidental feature of it strengthens, such as the dramatic interplay
of different personalities, the personal traits of the communicator,

• Proc. SJPA., Vol. XVL269 ff. 1901.

OCCURRENCES RELEVANT TO SURVIVAL

181

the emotional tone that was natural to the same, the proper ap¬
preciation of a situation or a question, and the unity of con¬
sciousness displayed throughout, I see no reason except the sus¬
picions of my neighbours for withholding assent” (p. 293).

Another of Mrs. Piper’s communicators, who during a period
of her mediumship was also her chief “control,” was “George
Pelham.” Early in 1892, a young lawyer, George Pelham, [pseu¬
donym for Pellew] died in New York as a result of an accident.
He was an associate of the American Society for Psychical Re¬
search and a friend of Dr. Hodgson’s, to whom he had said that,
if he died first “and found himself ‘still existing/ he would 'make
things lively’ in the effort to reveal the fact of his continued
existence.” 4

Some four or five weeks after his death, a communicator
purporting to be George Pelham manifested himself at a sitting
Mrs. Piper was giving to an old friend of his, John Hart, in
the subsequent sittings in which G. P. figured, he was specially
requested to identify such friends of his as might be among the
sitters; and, out of at least one hundred and fifty persons who
then had sittings with Mrs. Piper, G. P. truly recognized thirty
former friends; there was no case of false recognition; and he
failed in only one case to recognize a person he had known.
(This was a young woman whom he had known only when she
was a child eight or nine years before.) In each case, “the recog¬
nition was clear and full, and accompanied by an appreciation
of the relations which subsisted between G. P. living and the
sitters.” Dr. Hodgson adds: “The continual manifestation of
this personality,—so different from Phinuit or other communi¬
cators,—with its own reservoir of memories, with its swift appre¬
ciation of any reference to friends of G. P., with its ‘give-and-
take’ in little incidental conversations with myself, has helped
largely in producing a conviction of the actual presence of the
G. P. personality which it would be quite impossible to impart
by any mere enumeration of verifiable statements.” 5

In bringing to a close Section 6 of his report, Hodgson states
that, although further experiment may lead him to change his

*Proc. S. P. R. Vol. XIIL295, 1897-8.
®Op. cit. p. 328.

182

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

view, yet “at the present time I cannot profess to have any
doubt but that the chief ‘communicators/ to whom I have re¬
ferred in the foregoing pages, are veritably the personalities that
they claim to be, that they have survived the change we call
death, and that they have directly communicated with us whom
we call living, through Mrs. Piper’s entranced organism.’’ 6

The dramatic spontaneity of some of the communications,
and their impressive faithfulness to the manner, thought, and
character of the deceased persons from whom they purport to
emanate, is testified to similarly in the comments of the Rev.
M. A. Bayfield on a communication which purported to come
from Dr. A. W. Verrall after his death in 1912. Referring to
Verrall’s intellectual impatience, Mr. Bayfield writes: “The thing
I mean does not readily lend itself to definition, but it was em¬
inently characteristic/' and, after quoting certain passages typ¬
ical of it in the scripts, he goes on: “All this is Verrall’s manner
to the life in animated conversation. . . . When I first read the
words quoted above I received a series of little shocks, for the
turns of speech are Verrall’s, the high-pitched emphasis is his,
and I could hear the very tones in which he would have spoken
each sentence.” In commenting on the question whether “these
life-like touches of character” are inserted perhaps “ by an in¬
genious forger (the unprincipled subliminal of some living per¬
son) with a purpose, in order to lend convincing vraisemhlance
to a fictitious impersonation,” Mr. Bayfield writes that “nowhere
is there any slip which would justify the suspicion that in reality
we have to do with a cunningly masquerading ‘sub/ Neither the
impatience, nor the emphatic utterance, nor the playfulness has
anywhere the appearance of being ‘put on,’—of being separable
from the matter of the scripts ... to me at least it is incredible
that even the cleverest could achieve such an unexampled tri¬
umph in deceptive impersonation as this would be if the actor
is not Verrall himself.” 7

2. Communications through automatists from fictitious and
from still living persons. Whatever may be the correct explana¬
tion of such correct and dramatically verisimilar mediumistic

•Op. cit. p. 406.

1 Proc. SJ>.R. Vol. XXVII:246-49, 1914-15.

OCCURRENCES RELEVANT TO SURVIVAL

183

communications as those we have just described, the explanation
must in one way or another leave room for the fact that in some
instances “communications” have been received from characters
out of fiction, such as Adam Bede; that, on one occasion, Prof. G.
Stanley Hall had, through Mrs. Piper, communications from a
girl, Bessie Beals, who was a purely fictitious niece of his in¬
vented by him for the purpose of the experiment; that, in 1853,
Victor Hugo in exile in Jersey received “communications” from
“The Lion of Androcles” and “The Ass of Balaam;” that Dr.
S. G. Soal received, through Mrs. Blanche Cooper, communica¬
tions from, on the one hand, a John Ferguson, who turned out
to be a wholly fictitious person, and on the other from a Gordon
Davis, whom he had known slightly when both were boys at
the same school. Soal had since then talked with him only once,
for about half an hour about service matters when both were
cadets in the army and met by chance on a railroad platform
Soal later believed him to have been killed in the war; but he
was in fact living at the time communications of a number of
facts about his life history, past and future, were received by
Soal through Mrs. Cooper. “Some of these facts,” Soal writes,
“were given in the form of verbal statements describing incidents
which had happened or which were to happen; other facts such
as his vocal characteristics were expressed in a purely physical
way,” for in this case the personality of the (still living) Gordon
Davis appeared to “control” or “possess” the medium; was dram¬
atized and spoke in the first person with the fastidious accent and
clear articulation peculiar to Gordon Davis; and apparently be¬
lieved itself to be a deceased person. 8

Some five earlier cases of communications purporting to em¬
anate from persons who asserted they had died or who were
believed to have died, but who were actually living, are cited
by Prof. Th. Flournoy in the third chapter of his Spiritism and
Psychology . e The words “ ‘Deceiving Spirits/ ” which, in quota¬
tion marks, he uses as title of that chapter, refer to the fact that
Spiritualists are wont to ascribe such spurious communications to

*Proc. S.P.R. Vol. XXXV:471-594, 1926. A Report of Some Communication!
Received through Mrs. Blanche Cooper.

•Transl. by H. Carrington, pub. Harper & Bros. New York, 1911, pp. 72-90.

184

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

mischievous, deceitful spirits. But obviously this explanation
would be legitimate only if it had first been independently
established that any discarnate spirits at all exist.

3. Mrs. Sidgwick’s interpretation of the Piper communica¬
tions. In an article entitled “Discussion of the Trance Phe¬
nomena of Mrs. Piper,” 10 Mrs. Sidgwick, who was one of the
keenest minded women of her time in England, takes into con¬
sideration what is known both of the pathological dissociations
of personality, and of the capacity of subjects in deep hypnotic
trance to impersonate anyone whom they have been induced to
believe themselves to be. In the light of all this she argues, not
specifically against the contention that Mrs. Piper’s communica¬
tions provide some evidence of survival after death, but against
the “possession” interpretation of her trance communications;
that is, against the supposition that on those occasions the dis-
camate spirits of George Pelham, of Prof. Hyslop’s father, etc.,
“turn out Mrs. Piper’s spirit and themselves take its place in
her organism,” (p. 35) i.e., possess it for the time being and em¬
ploy her organs of expression in the same direct manner as that
in which each of us normally employs his own vocal organs in
oral expression or his own hand in writing.

Mrs. Sidgwick contends that the interpretation most plausi¬
ble in the light of all the peculiarities of the communications is
that the communicating mind is in all cases Mrs. Piper’s own
(entranced) mind; that in the trance condition, her mind has
“an unusually developed telepathic faculty” (p. 34); that the
recondite information her trance mind gives out is obtained by
it telepathically from the minds of living persons having it, or
possibly from the dead; and that the dramatic form which the
presentation of it takes in conversations with the sitter is ac¬
counted for most economically, but adequately, if one supposes
that the entranced, dreaming Mrs. Piper believes herself at the
time to be the deceased person whose memories and personality
traits then occupy her mind.

As tending to support this hypothesis against that of direct
possession of Mrs. Piper’s organism by the discarnate spirit of

“Froc. Soc. for Psych. Res’ch. Vol. XV: 16-38, 1900-01.

OCCURRENCES RELEVANT TO SURVIVAL

185

G. P. or of some other deceased person, Mrs. Sidgwick points
out that some sitters are uniformly more successful than others
in getting communications whose content is attributable only
Lo some paranormal source—whether this be telepathy from the
siiter, or from other living persons, or from the deceased.

This, Mrs. Sidgwick argues, would indicate that the sitter’s
state of mind, or his particular type of mind, is somehow a factor
in the “communication” process; for if the process depended only
on the medium and on temporary possession of her entranced
organism by a discarnate spirit, there would be no reason why
the communications from a given spirit—say, G. P.’s—should, as
in fact is the case, be steadily less evidential of some paranormal
origin when made to one particular sitter than when made to a
particular other.

This conclusion, however, hardly seems to follow: foi the
supposition that the sitter contributes something—congeniality,
readiness to believe, interest in paranormal phenomena, perhaps;
or the opposites—is quite compatible with the communicator's
being really who he claims to be. It is a matter of common
experience that different persons with whom one converses affect
one differently and bring out of him different things—one, trivi
alities; another, exercise perhaps of such unusual powers, or
manifestation of such special interests, as he may have.

Anyway, the question we are at present centrally concerned
with is whether proof of survival, or at least evidence definitely
establishing it as probable, is provided by the paranormal occur¬
rences cited, and more particularly at this point by mediumistic
communications, such as Mrs. Piper’s, that contain remote details
of some particular person’s past life and reproduce with high
verisimilitude his tone, mannerisms, and distinctive associations
of ideas. Hence, if these do prove or establish a positive prob
ability of survival, then the question whether a surviving de¬
ceased person communicates with us directly, by taking possession
of the entranced Mrs. Piper’s organism, or only indirectly by
telepathy in the manner suggested by Mrs. Sidgwick, is of but
secondary interest, as having to do merely with the technique
of the process of communication.

But the facts cited in Section 2 would by themselves be

186

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

enough to show that the content and form of mediumistic com¬
munications, even when as impressive as some of those of Mrs.
Piper or of Mrs. Blanche Cooper, do not necessarily proceed from
discarnate spirits. The question thus forces itself upon us whether
some other explanation is available, that would account at once
for the communications from fictitious persons; for the correct
and dramatically verisimilar communications purportedly from
deceased persons who, however, are in fact still living; and also
for the similarly impressive communications that likewise pur¬
port to emanate from deceased persons, but where those persons
had in fact died.

About the only hypothesis in sight that might do all this
and that would be other than that of communications from ex-
camate spirits deceitful or truthful, is the hypothesis of telepathy
from the subconscious minds of living persons who have or have
had the information manifested in the communications; or/and
the hypothesis of clairvoyance by the medium, giving her access
to existing facts or records containing the information. For of
course the correctness, or not, of the information communicated
can be testified to, if at all, only by some still living person’s
memory or by some still existing facts or documents.

Before inquiring into the adequacy of this hypothesis, how¬
ever, we shall have to consider the cases of so-called “Cross-corre¬
spondences;” for they are the ones most difficult to account for
in terms of only that hypothesis. At the same time, they are the
ones that provide the strongest evidence of “true” survival.

4. Cross-correspondences. It is unfortunately not possible
to give an intelligible concrete presentation of any of the cases
of cross-correspondence in the space available here, nor without
presupposing special knowledge of Greek and Latin classics by
the reader; for the scripts of the automatists involved in the cross¬
correspondences, and the analyses of them, run to hundreds of
pages; their significance turns on references or allusions to recon¬
dite points in those classics; and their evidential force can be
fully appreciated only after long and careful study of the scripts
and of the circumstances under which each individually was
produced.

The best that can be done here is therefore only to state in

OCCURRENCES RELEVANT TO SURVIVAL

187

general terms what is meant by the term 1 ‘cross-correspondences,’*
how the experiment they constitute originated, and who were
respectively the automatists, the investigators, and the purported
communicators concerned in it.

Cross-correspondences are correspondences between the
scripts of different automatists isolated from one another at least
to the extent of being kept in ignorance of the contents of one an¬
other’s scripts. Sometimes, one of the automatists is ignorant of
the other’s existence. For example, Mrs. Verrall, on Oct. 25. 1901.
was asked by Mr. Piddington to try to obtain in her scripts a word
to be reproduced in the script of another automatist, Mrs. Arch¬
dale, of whom Mrs. Verrall had never heard before. She was told
that the supposed “control” of Mrs. Archdale was the latter's
deceased son, Stewart. Then Mrs. Verrall remembered that, in a
script of hers of Sept. 18, 1901, i.e., over a month before she had
come to know of Mrs. Archdale’s existence, the name Stewart,
had occurred together with two other names. These turned out
to be ones closely connected with the deceased boy. Similarly
definite correspondences were found between some of Mrs. Ver-
rall’s scripts in England in the summer of 1905 and those of an¬
other automatist, at the time in India, Mrs. Holland, of whose
name Mrs. Verrall was then ignorant, and whose acquaintance she
did not make until November 1905. 11 Other automatists besides
Mrs. Verrall (lecturer in Classics at Newnham College and wife
of Dr. A. W. Verall, Cambridge University classicist) and Mrs.
Holland (pseudonym of a sister of Rudyard Kipling,) were Miss
Helen Verrall, Mrs. Thompson, Mrs. Forbes (pseudonym). Mrs.
Willett (pseudonym), and Mrs. Piper.

The investigators in the series of cross-correspondences were
Mr. J. G. Piddington, the Hon. Gerald Wm. Balfour (who later
became Lord Balfour), Sir Oliver Lodge, Mr. Frank Podmore,
Mrs. Sidgwick, and Miss Alice Johnson, Secretary of the Society
for Psychical Research. Dr. Richard Hodgson, in charge of Mrs.
Piper’s sittings in Boston up to the time of his death in 1905, also
participated. And, to some extent, Mrs. Verrall functioned not
only as automatist but also as investigator.

u Proc. S. P. R. Vol. XX:205-6, 1906.

188

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

The deceased persons from whom purported to come the
communications characterized by cross-correspondences were
chiefly F. W. H. Myers, author of the classic Human Personality
and Its Survival of Bodily Death, who had died in 1901; Edmund
Gurney (d. 1888), author, with Myers and Podmore’s collabora¬
tion, of Phantasms of the Living; Henry Sidgwick (d. 1900), the
distinguished Cambridge philosopher and first president of the
S. P. R.; and Dr. Richard Hodgson (d. 1905), Secretary of the
A. S. P. R. After Dr. Verrall’s death in 1912, communications
typical of him and of Prof. Butcher were also received.

The correspondences between the scripts had to do in most
cases with rather recondite details of the Greek and Latin classics.
To identify them or to understand the allusions to them made
in the scripts therefore required considerable knowledge of the
classics by the investigators. One of these, Mr. J. G. Piddington,
who had the requisite scholarly equipment and ingenuity, and
who was much interested in the scripts, found that certain of
them, besides having a topic in common, complemented one
another in a manner analogous to that in which the individually
insignificant pieces of a jigsaw puzzle—or to use his own com¬
parison, the cubes of a mosaic—make a meaningful whole when
correctly combined. This complementariness is the distinctive
feature of the most evidential of the cross-correspondences.

An additional point of the greatest interest is that the scripts
contain numerous statements more or less explicitly to the effect
that the discamate Myers, Gurney, and Sidgwick were the de¬
visers of the scheme of giving out, through automatists isolated
from one another, communications that would be separately un¬
intelligible but that made sense when put together or, in some of
the cases, when a clue to the sense was supplied in the script of
yet another automatist. In this way, the possibility of explaining
simply as due to telepathy or clairvoyance the similarities of topic
between the scripts of two automatists would be ruled out or
greatly strained; and in addition proof would automatically be
supplied that the communicators, in their discarnate state, were
not mere automata and sets of memories, but retained intellectual
initiative and ingenuity; that is, that they were still fully living.

An excellent summary of some of the most evidential cases

OCCURRENCES RELEVANT TO SURVIVAL

189

of cross-correspondence, with some extracts from the scripts, is
presented in a fair and discerning manner by H. F. Saltmarsh in
his little book, Evidence of Personal Survival from Cross Corre
spondences. 12 Briefer accounts of the subject—though more ample
than the present one—may be found in G. N. M. Tyrrell's The
Personality of Man, chs. 17 and 18, and in his Science and
Psychical Phenomena, ch. XVII. 13 It is worth mentioning that
Lord Balfour, in his fine “Study of the Psychological Aspects of
Mrs. Willett’s Mediumship and of the Statements of the Com¬
municators Concerning Process’’ 14 states that “the bulk of Mrs.
Willett’s automatic output is too private for publication;” hence
that, in his paper, “there must still remain withheld from pub¬
licity a good many passages which [he] would willingly have
quoted by way of illustration;” and that “it would be impossible
to do justice to the argument in favour of spirit communication
on the basis of the Willett phenomena without violating confi¬
dences which [he is] bound to respect” (pp. 43, 45V

In 1932, Mrs. Sidgwick wrote an account of the history and
work of the Society for Psychical Research during its first fifty
years of existence. She being at the time President of Honor of
the Society, her paper was presented by her brother, Lord Bal
four, at the Jubilee meeting of the Society, July 1, 1932. After
he had done so, he added that some of the persons present “may
have felt that the note of caution and reserve has possibly been
over-emphasized in Mrs. Sidgwick’s paper.” Then he went on-
“Conclusive proof of survival is notoriously difficult to obtain.
But the evidence may be such as to produce belief, even though
it fall short of conclusive proof” Lord Balfour then concluded
with the words: “I have Mrs. Sidgwick’s assurance—an assurance
which I am permitted to convey to the meeting—that, upon the
evidence before her, she herself is a firm believer both in survival

“G. Bell & Sons, London 1938, pp. viii and 159. At the end is a full list of the
discussions of the scripts in the Proceedings of the S. P. R.

“Respectively, Penguin Books, New York, 1946, No. A165; and Harper & Bros.,
New York and London, 1938.

u Proc. S. P. R. Vol. XLIIL41-318, 1935.

190

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

and in the reality of communication between the living and the
dead.” 15 This belief, he had himself come to share.

Certainly, few persons have been both as thoroughly ac¬
quainted with the evidence from cross-correspondences for sur¬
vival and for communication with the deceased, and at the same
time as objective and keenly critical, as were Mrs. Sidgwick and
Lord Balfour.

u Proc. S. P. R. Vol. XLI:16, 1932-3.

Chapter XIX

HOW STANDS THE CASE FOR THE
REALITY OF SURVIVAL

In Chapts. XVII and XVIII, we considered and to some ex¬
tent commented upon the chief kinds of paranormal occurrences
that appear to constitute empirical evidence of survival. The
point has now been reached where we must attempt to say, in
the light of the evidence and of the criticisms to which it may be
open, how stands today the question whether the human per¬
sonality survives the death of its body.

1. What, if not survival, the facts might signify )nly two
hypotheses have yet been advanced that seem at all capable of
accounting for the prima facie evidences of personal survival re
view r ed. One is that the identifying items do indeed proceed
from the surviving spirits of the deceased persons concerned The
other is that the medium obtains by extrasensory perception tne
facts she communicates; that is, more specifically, obtains them,
(a) telepathically from the minds of living persons who know
them or have known them; or (b) by retrocognitive clairvoyant
observation of the past facts themselves; or (c) by clairvoyant ob¬
servation of existing records, or of existing circumstantial evi¬
dence, of the past facts.

To the second of these two hypotheses would have to be
added in some cases the hypothesis that the medium’s subcon¬
scious mind has and exercises a remarkable capacity for veri¬
similar impersonation of a deceased individual whom the medium
has never known but concerning whom she is getting informa¬
tion at the time in the telepathic or/and clairvoyant manner
just referred to.

In cases where the information is communicated by para¬
normal raps or by other paranormal physical phenomena, the

101

192

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

hypothesis that the capacity to produce such physical phenomena
is being exercised by the medium’s unconscious but still incarnate
mind would be more economical than ascription of that capacity
to discarnate minds; for these—unlike the medium and her mind
—are not independently known to exist.

It must be emphasized that no responsible person who is
fully acquainted with the evidence for the occurrences to be
explained and with their circumstances has yet offered any ex¬
planatory hypothesis distinct from the two stated above. As of
today, the choice therefore lies between them. The hypothesis
of fraud, which would by-pass them, is wholly untenable in at
least some of the cases; notably, for the reasons mentioned earlier,
in the case of the communications received through Mrs. Piper.
And, in the case of the cross-correspondences, the hypothesis that
the whole series was but an elaborate hoax collusively perpetrated
out of sheer mischief for over ten years by the more than half-
dozen automatists concerned—and this without its ever being
detected by the alert investigators who were in constant contact
with the automatists—is preposterous even if the high personal
character of the ladies through whom the scripts came is left
out of account.

Still more so, of course, would be the suggestion that the
investigators too participated in the hoax. In this connection the
following words of Prof. Sidgwick are worth remembering. They
occur in his presidential address at the first general meeting of
the Society for Psychical Research in London, July 17, 1882:

“The highest degree of demonstrative force that we can
obtain out of any single record of investigation is, of course,
limited by the trustworthiness of the investigator. We have done
all that we can when the critic has nothing left to allege except
that the investigator is in the trick. But when he has nothing

else left to allege he will allege that.We must drive the

objector into the position of being forced either to admit the
phenomena as inexplicable, at least by him, or to accuse the
investigators either of lying or cheating or of a blindness or
forgetfulness incompatible with any intellectual condition except
absolute idiocy.” 1

l Proc. S.P.R. Vol. 1:12, 1882-3. Cf. in this connection an article, Science and the

CASE FOR REALITY OF SURVIVAL

193

2. The allegation that survival is antecedently improbable.
The attempt to decide rationally between the two hypotheses
mentioned above must in any case take into consideration at the
very 7 start the allegation that survival is antecedently known to be
improbable or even impossible; or on the contrary is known to be
necessary. In a paper to which we shall be referring in the next
two sections, 2 Prof. E. R. Dodds first considers the grounds that
have been advanced from various quarters for such improbability
impossibility, or necessity. In view, however, of our own more
extensive discussion of those grounds in Parts I and III of the
present work, we need say nothing here concerning Prof. Dodds’
brief remarks on the subject. Nothing in them seems to call tor
any revision of the conclusion to which we came that there is not
really any antecedent improbability of survival (nor any an
tecedent probability of it.) For when the denotation of the terms
“material” and “mental” is made fully explicit instead of, as
commonly, assumed to be known well enough; and when the
nature of the existents or occurrents respectively termed “mate
rial” and “mental” is correctly analyzed; then no internal incon¬
sistency, nor any inconsistency with any definitely known em
pirical fact, is found in the supposition that a mind, such as it
had become up to the time of death, continues to exist after
death and to exercise some of its capacities. Nor is there any
antecedent reason to assume that, if a mind does so continue to
exist, manifestations of this fact to persons still living would be
common rather than, as actually seems to be the case, exceptional.

3. What telepathy or clairvoyance would suffice to account
for. Prof. Dodds considers and attempts to dispose of ten objec
tions which have been advanced against the adequacy of the
telepathy-clairvoyance explanation of the facts. The objections
in the case of which his attempt seems definitely successful are
the following.

(a) The first is that telepathy does not account for the claim

Supernatural, by G. R. Price, Research Associate in the Dept, of Medicine, Univ. of
Minnesota. Science, Vol. 122, No. 3165, Aug. 26, 1955 and the comments on it by
S. G. Soal, J. B. Rhine, P. E. Meehl, M. Scriven, P. W. Bridgman Vol. 123 No
3184 Jan. 6/56.

■Why I do not believe in Survival, Proc. SJ*.R. Vol. XLII: 147-72, 1934.

194

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

made in the mediumistic communications, that they emanate
from the spirits of deceased persons.

Prof. Dodds replies that some of the communications have in
fact claimed a different origin; and that anyway the claim is
explicable as due to the fact that communication with the de¬
ceased is usually what is desired from mediums, and that the me¬
dium’s own desire to satisfy the sitter’s desire for such communi¬
cations operates on the medium’s subconscious—from which they
directly proceed—as desire commonly operates in the production
of dreams and in the determination of their content.

(b) A second objection is that no independent evidence
exists that mediums belong to the very small group of persons
who have detectable telepathic powers.

In reply, Prof. Dodds points to the fact that Dr. Soal had
in his own mind formed a number of hypotheses about the life
and circumstances of the—as it eventually turned out—wholly
fictitious John Ferguson (mentioned in Sec. 2 of Chapt. XVIII,)
and that in the communications those very hypotheses then
cropped up as assertions of fact. Prof. Dodds mentions various
other instances where things actually false, but believed true by
the sitter, have similarly been asserted in the medium’s com¬
munications and thus have provided additional evidence that
she possessed and was exercising telepathic powers.

To this we may add that there is some evidence that the
trance condition—at least the hypnotic trance—is favorable to
the exercise of ordinarily latent capacities for extrasensory per¬
ception. 3

(c) Another objection is that telepathy does not account for
“object reading” where the object is a relic of a person unknown
both to the sitter and to the medium, but where the medium
nevertheless gives correct detailed information about the object’s
former or present owner.

Prof. Dodd’s reply is in substance that these occurrences are
no less puzzling on the spiritistic than on the telepathic hypothe¬
sis. Since much of the information obtained in such cases con-

8 See for instance ESP card tests of college students with and without hypnosis,
by J. Fahler and R. J. Cadoret, Jl. of Parapsychology, Vol. 22:125-36, No. 2, June
1958.

CASE FOR REALITY OF SURVIVAL

195

cerns occurrences in which the object itself had no part, the
object can hardly be itself a record of it; rather, it must be a
means of establishing telepathic rapport between the mind of
the sensitive and that of the person who has the information.

And of course the correctness of the information could not
be verified unless some person has it, or unless the facts testified
to are objective and thus accessible to clairvoyant observation by
the sensitive.

(d) To the objection that no correlation is found between
the success or failure of a sitting and the conditions respectively
favorable or unfavorable to telepathy, Prof. Dodds replies that,
actually, we know almost nothing as to what these are.

(e) Another objection which has been advanced against the
telepathy explanation of the communications is that the quantity
and quality of the communications varies with changes of pur¬
ported communicator, but not of sitter as one would expect if
telepathy were what provides the information communicated.

The reply here is, for one thing, that, as wc have seen in Sec
3 of Ch. XVIII, the allegation is not invariably true, but that
anyway changes of purported communicator imply corresponding
changes as to the minds that are possible telepathic sources of the
information communicated.

(f) Again, it is often asserted that the telepathy explanation
of the facts is very complicated, whereas the spiritistic explana¬
tion is simple. Prof. Dodds’ reply here is that the sense in which
greater simplicity entails greater probability is that in which
being “simpler” means “making fewer and narrower unsupported
assumptions;” and that the telepathy hypothesis, not the spirit¬
istic, is the one simpler in this alone evidentially relevant sense.
For the spiritistic hypothesis postulates telepathy and clairvoyance
anyway, but ascribes these to “spirits”, which are not independ¬
ently known to exist; whereas the telepathy hypothesis ascribes
them to the medium, who is known to exist and for whose occa¬
sional exercise of telepathy or clairvoyance some independent
evidence exists.

4. The facts which strain the telepathy-clairvoyance ex¬
planation. In the case of the other objections to the telepathy
explanation commented upon by Prof. Dodds, his replies are

196

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

much less convincing than those we have just presented. Indeed,
they bring to mind a remark made shortly before by W. H.
Salter concerning certain features of the cross-correspondences
communications: “It is possible to frame a theory which will
explain each of them, more or less, by telepathy, but is it not
necessary in doing so to invent ad hoc a species of telepathy for
which there is otherwise practically no evidence?” 4

The essence of these more stubborn objections is the virtu¬
ally unlimited range of the telepathy with which the automatist’s
or medium’s subconscious mind has to be gifted. It must be such
as to have access to the minds of any persons who possess the
recondite items of information communicated, no matter where
those persons happen to be at the time. Furthermore, the telep¬
athy postulated must be assumed somehow capable of selecting,
out of all the minds to which its immense range gives it access,
the particular one or ones that contain the specific bits of infor¬
mation brought into the communications. But this is not all.
The immediate understanding of, and apposite response to, allu¬
sive remarks in the course of the communicator’s conversation
with the sitter (or sometimes with another communicator) re¬
quires that the above selecting of the person or persons having
the information, and the establishing and relinquishing of tele¬
pathic rapport with the mind of the appropriate one, be virtually
instantaneous. And then, of course, the information thus tele-
pathically obtained must, instantly again, be put into the form
of a dramatic, highly verisimilar impersonation of the deceased
purported communicator as he would have acted in animated
conversational give-and-take. This particular feature of some of
the communications, as we saw, was that on which—as the most
convincing—both Hyslop and Hodgson laid great stress, as do
Mr. Drayton Thomas and also Mr. Salter.

Let us now see how Prof. Dodds proposes to meet these diffi¬
culties, which strain the telepathy hypothesis, but of which the
spiritistic hypothesis would be free.

For one thing, he points to some of Dr. Osty’s cases, where
“sensitives who do not profess to be assisted by ‘spirits’ ” never-

4 Journal, SJ*.R. Vol. 27:331, 1932. The remark occurs towards the end of a
review of C. S. Bechofer Roberts’ The Truth about Spiritualism.

CASE FOR REALITY OF SURVIVAL

197

theless give out information about absent persons as detailed as
that given by the supposed spirits.

Obviously, however, there is no more reason to accept as
authoritative what a sensitive “professes” or believes as to the
paranormal source of her information when she denies that it is
spirits than when she asserts it. Mrs. Eileen Garrett, who in addi
tion to being one of the best known contemporary mediums, is
scientifically interested in her own mediumship, freely acknowl¬
edges that she does not know, any more than do other persons,
whether her controls, Abdul Latif and Uvani, are discarnate
spirits, dissociated parts of her own personality, or something else

Again, Prof. Dodds argues that recognition of the personality
of a deceased friend by the sitter has but slight evidential value
since there is no way of checking how far the will-to-be I leve may
be responsible for it; but that even if the reproduction is perfect,
it is anyway no evidence that the personality concerned has sur
vived after death; for Gordon Davis was still living and yet Mr-
Blanche Cooper, who did not know him, did reproduce the tone
of his voice and his peculiar articulation well enough for Dr. Seal
to recognize them.

Prof. Dodd’s reply is predicated on the assumption that, a!
though Dr. Soal was neither expecting nor longing for comm uni
cation with Gordon Davis, nevertheless the recognition was posi¬
tive and definite. This should therefore be similarly granted in
cases where the person who recognizes the voice or manner of
a deceased friend is, similarly, an investigator moved by scientific
interest, not a grieving person moved to believe by his longing
for reunion with his loved one.

Aside from this, however, the Gordon Davis case shows only
that, since he was still living, the process by which the tone of his
voice and his peculiar articulation were reproduced by Mrs.
Cooper was not “possession” of her organism by his discarnate
spirit. Telepathy from Dr. Soal, who believed Davis had died,
is enough to account for the vocal peculiarities of the communi¬
cation, for the memories of boyhood and of the later meeting on
the railroad platform, and for the purported communicator’s as
sumption that he had died. But this mere reproduction of voice
peculiarities and of two memories, in the single brief conver

198

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

sation of Dr. Soal directly with the purported Gordon Davis, is
a radically different thing from the lively conversational inter¬
course Hyslop and Hodgson refer to, with its immediate and
apposite adaptation of mental or emotional attitude to changes in
that of the interlocutor, and the making and understanding of
apt allusions to intimate matters, back and forth between com¬
municator and sitter. The Gordon Davis communication is not
a case of this at all; and of course the precognitive features of
the communication by Nada (Mrs. Blanche Cooper’s control) at
the second sitting, which referred to the house Gordon Davis
eventually occupied, are irrelevant equally to the telepathy and
to the spiritualist hypotheses.

Prof. Dodds would account for the appositeness of the facts
the medium selects, which the particular deceased person con
cerned would remember and which identify him, by saying that,
once the medium’s subconscious mind is en rapport with that
of the telepathic agent, the selection of items of information ap¬
propriate at a given moment to the demands of the conversation
with the sitter can be supposed to take place in the same auto¬
matic manner as that in which such selection occurs in a person
when the conversation requires it.

The adequacy of this reply is decreased, however, by the
assumption it makes that the information given out by the me¬
dium is derived from one telepathic source, or at least one at a
time; whereas in the case of Hyslop’s communications purport¬
edly from his father, the items of information supplied were
apparently not all contained in any one person’s memory, but
scattered among several. Hence, if the medium’s subconscious
mind was en rapport at the the same time with those of different
persons, the task of selecting instantly which one of them to draw
from would remain, and would be very different from the normal
automatic selection within one mind, of items relevant at a given
moment in a conversation.

But anyway the degree of telepathic rapport which Prof.
Dodds’ reply postulates vastly exceeds any that is independently
known to occur; for it would involve the medium’s having for
the time being all the memories and associations of ideas of the
person who is the telepathic source; and this would amount to

CASE FOR REALITY OF SURVIVAL

199

the medium’s virtually borrowing that person’s mind for the dura¬
tion of the conversation; and notwithstanding this, responding in
the conversation not as that person himself would respond, but
ns the ostensible communicator—constructed by the medium out
of that person’s memories of him—would respond.

Concerning the cross-correspondences, Prof. Dodds admits
that they manifest pattern, but he is not satisfied that they are the
result of design. Even if they were designed, however, he agrees
with the suggestion others had made that Mrs. Verrall's sub¬
conscious mind, which had all the knowledge of the Greek and
Latin classics required, could well be supposed to have designed
the scheme, rather than the deceased Myers and his associates;
for, he asserts, “more difficult intellectual feats than the construc¬
tion of these puzzles have before now been performed subcon¬
sciously” (p. 169). H. F. Saltmarsh, however, suggests “that it
may be unreasonable to attribute to the same level of conscious¬
ness intellectual powers of a very high order and a rather stupid
spirit of trickery and deception.” 5

But in any case, more than the construction of the puzzles
would be involved; namely, in addition, telepathic virtual dicta -
tion of the appropriate script to the other automatist—whose very
existence was, in the case of Mrs. Holland in India, quite un¬
known at the time to Mrs. Verrall in England. To ascribe the
script to “telepathic leakage” will hardly do, for, as Lord Balfour
remarked concerning such a proposal made by Miss F. M. Stawell
in the Ear of Dionysius case, “it is not at all clear how ’telepathic
leakage’ could be so thoughtful as to arrange all the topics in such
an ingenious way. It seems a little like ‘explaining’ the working
of a motor car by saying that it goes because petrol leaks out of a
tank into its front end!” 6

5. What would prove, or make positively probable, that
survival is a fact. The difficult task of deciding where the various
kinds of facts now before us, the rival interpretations of them,
and the criticisms of the interpretations, finally leave the case for
the reality of survival requires that we first attempt to specify

“Op. cit. p. 138.

• Proc. SJ>Jl . Vol. XXIX:270.

200

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

what evidence, if we should have it, we would accept as definitely
proving survival or, short of this, as definitely establishing a
positive probability that survival is a fact.

To this end, let us suppose that a friend of ours, John Doe,
was a passenger on the transatlantic plane which some months
ago the newspapers reported crashed shortly after leaving Shan¬
non without having radioed that it was in trouble. Since no
survivors were reported to have been found, we would naturally
assume that John Doe had died with the rest.

Let us now, however, consider in turn each of three further
suppositions.

(I) The first is that some time later we meet on the street
a man we recognize as John Doe, who recognizes us too, and who
has John Doe’s voice and mannerisms. Also, that allusions to
personal matters that were familiar to both of us, made now in
our conversation with him, are readily understood and suitably
responded to by each. Then, even before he tells us how he
chanced to survive the crash, we would of course know that,
somehow, he has survived it.

(II) But now let us suppose instead that we do not thus
meet him, but that one day our telephone rings, and over the
line comes a voice which we clearly recognize as John Doe’s; and
that we also recognize certain turns of phrase that were peculiar
to him. He tells us that he survived the disaster, and we then
talk with ready mutual understanding about personal and other
matters that had been familiar to the two of us. We wish, of
course, that we could see him as well as thus talk with him; yet
we would feel practically certain that he had survived the crash
of the plane and is now living.

(III) Let us, however, now consider instead a third sup¬
position, namely, that one day, when our telephone rings, a voice
not John Doe’s tells us that he did survive the accident and that
he wants us to know it, but that for some reason he cannot come
to the phone. He is, however, in need of money and wants us to
deposit some to his account in the bank.

Then of course—especially since the person who transmits the
request over the telephone sounds at times a bit incoherent—
we would want to make very sure that the person from whom

CASE FOR REALITY OF SURVIVAL

201

the request ultimately emanates is really John Doe. To this end,
we ask him through the intermediary to name some mutual
friends; and he names several, giving some particular facts about
each. We refer, allusively, to various personal matters he would
be familiar with; and it turns out that he understands the allu¬
sions and responds to them appropriately. Also, the intermediary
quotes him as uttering various statements, in which we recognize
peculiarities of his thought and phraseology; and the peculiar
nasal tone of his voice is imitated by the intermediary well enough
for us to recognize it.

Would all this convince us that the request for money really
emanates from John Doe and therefore that he did survive the
accident and is still living? If we should react rationally rather
than impulsively, our getting convinced or remaining uncon
vinced would depend on the following considerations

First, is it possible at all that our friend somehow did sur¬
vive the crash? If, for example, his dead body had been subse¬
quently found and identified beyond question, then obviously
the person whose request for money is being transmitted to us
could not possibly be John Doe not yet deceased; and hence the
identifying evidence conveyed to us over the phone would neces¬
sarily be worthless, no matter how strongly it would otherwise
testify to his being still alive.

But if we have no such antecedent conclusive proof that lie
did perish, then the degree of our confidence that the telephoned
request ultimately does emanate from him, and hence that he is
still living, will depend for us on the following three factors.

(a) One will be the abundance, or scantiness, of such evi
dence of his identity as comes to us over the phone.

(b) A second factor will be the quality of the evidence.
That is, does it correspond minutely and in peculiar details to
what we know of the facts or incidents to which it refers; or on
the contrary does it correspond to them merely in that it gives,
correctly indeed, the broad features of the events concerned, but
does not include much detail?

(c) The third factor will be that of diversity of the kinds of
evidence the telephone messages supply. Does all the evidence,
for example, consist only of correct memories of personal matters

202

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

and of matters typical of John Doe’s range of information? Or
does the evidence include also dramatic faithfulness of the com¬
munications to the manner, the attitudes, the tacit assumptions,
and the idiosyncracies of John Doe as we remember him? And
again, do the communications manifest in addition something
which H. F. Saltmarsh has held to be “as clear an indication of
psychical individuality as finger prints are of physical,” 7 namely
associations of ideas that were peculiar to John Doe as of the age
he had reached at the time of the crash?

If these same associations are still manifest, then persistence
of them will signify one thing if the communication in which
they appear is made not too long after the accident, but a dif¬
ferent thing if instead it is made, say, twenty-five years after.
For a person’s associations of ideas alter more or less as a result
of new experiences, of changes of environment, of acquisition of
new ranges of information, and of development of new interests.
Hence, if the associations of ideas are the same a few months or
a year or two after the crash as they were before, this would
testify to John Doe’s identity. But if they are the same a quarter
of a century later, then this would testify rather that although
some of the capacities he had have apparently persisted, yet he
has in the meantime not continued really to live; for to live in
the full sense of the word entails becoming gradually different—
indeed, markedly different in many ways over such a long term
of years.

Now, the point of our introducing the hypothetical case of
John Doe, and of the three suppositions we made in succession as
to occurrences that convinced us, of that inclined us in various
degrees to believe, that he had not after all died in the plane
accident is that the second and especially the third of those sup¬
positions duplicate in all essentials the evidences of survival of
the human mind which the best of the mediumistic communi¬
cations supply. For the medium or automatist is the analogue
of the telephone and, in cases of apparent possession of the me¬
dium's organism by the purported communicator, the latter is
the analogue of John Doe when himself telephoning. The me-

7 Evidence of Personal Survival from Cross Correspondences, G. Bell & Sons,
London 1938, p. 34.

CASE FOR REALITY OF SURVIVAL

203

dium’s “control,” on the other hand, is the analogue of the in¬
termediary who at other times transmits John Doe’s statements
over the telephone. And the fact recalled in Sec. 2 of this chapter
—that survival has not been proved to be either empirically or
logically impossible—is the analogue of the supposition that John
Doe’s body was never found and hence that his having survived
the crash is not known to be impossible.

This parallelism between the two situations entails that if
reason rather than either religious or materialistic faith is to
decide, then our answer to the question whether the evidence we
have does or does not establish survival (or at least a positive
probability of it) must, in the matter of survival after death, be
based on the very same considerations as in the matter of sur¬
vival after the crash of the plane. That is, our answer will have
to be based similarly on the quantity of evidence we get over
the mediumistic “telephone;” on the quality of that evidence;
and on the diversity of kinds of it we get.

6. The conclusion about survival which at present appears
warranted. To what conclusion, then, do these three considera¬
tions point when brought to bear on the evidence referred to in
Chapters XVII and XVIII?

The conclusion they dictate is, I believe, the same as that
which at the end of Chapter XVIII we cited as finally reached by
Mrs. Sidgwick and by Lord Balfour—a conclusion which also
was reached in time by Sir Oliver Lodge, by Prof. Hyslop, by
Dr. Hodgson, and by a number of other persons who like them
were thoroughly familiar with the evidence on record; who were
gifted with keenly critical minds; who had originally been skep¬
tical of the reality or even possibility of survival; and who were
also fully acquainted with the evidence for the reality of telepathy
and of clairvoyance, and with the claims that had been made for
the telepathy-clairvoyance interpretation of the evidence, as
against the survival interpretation of it.

Their conclusion was essentially that the balance of the evi¬
dence so far obtained is on the side of the reality of survival and,
in the best cases, of survival not merely of memories of the life
on earth, but of survival also of the most significant capacities of
the human mind, and of continuing exercise of these.

PART V

Life After Death Conceived As Reincarnation

206

Chapter XX

THE DOCTRINE OF REINCARNATION IN
THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT

In Sections 5 to 8 of Chapter XIV, various forms were de¬
scribed which a discarnate life after death, if there is such, might
conceivably take. Another possible form of survival, namely
life, incarnate again, of the “essential” part of a personality
through rebirth in a new human or possibly animal body, was
also mentioned but was not discussed there since Part IV was
concerned only with the question of discarnate life after death.
In the present and the subsequent chapters of Part V, we return
to that very interesting conception of survival, and examine it
in some detail.

The content of the belief that the individual “soul” lives in
a body on earth not once only but several times has been desig¬
nated by various names. Metempsychosis, Transmigration, Rein¬
carnation, and Rebirth are the most familiar, but Reembodiment,
Metensomatosis, and Palingenesis have also been used. The doc¬
trine has taken a variety of specific forms, some of which will be
considered farther on; but there is little warrant either in etymol¬
ogy or in any firmly established usage for regarding one or an¬
other of those names as denoting only some particular form of
the doctrine that the individual “soul” lives on earth not once
only but several times. 1

The conception of survival as metempsychosis seems fantastic
and unplausible to the great majority of people today in Europe
and America, notwithstanding that the believers in survival

'"Rebirth," "Reembodiment," "Reincarnation," and "Transmigration," are
self-explanatory. "Metempsychosis" is from the Greek meta = after, succes¬
sive, -f empsychoo = to animate, from en — in -f psyche = spirit, soul; "Palin¬
genesis," from palin = again, anew, -f genesis = birth, gignomai — to be bom;
"Metensomatosis," from meta — after, successive, -f- en = in, 4 . soma = body..

207

208

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

among them conceive life after death in terms either more fan¬
tastic or merely nebulous. And implausibility — distinguished
from grounded improbability—means little else than that the doc¬
trine a person characterizes as implausible is one he has not been
accustomed to see treated seriously.

The idea of metempsychosis has appealed to vast numbers
of persons in Asia and, even in the West, has commended itself
to a number of its most distinguished thinkers from ancient times
to the present. In this chapter, we shall cite briefly what some of
them have said on the subject. It has in most cases been phrased
by them in terms of the words “soul” or “spirit,” which we shall
retain in presenting their views, instead of using “mind” or “per¬
sonality” as in our preceding chapters.

Then, in subsequent chapters, we shall examine the objec¬
tions to which the hypothesis of reincarnation appears open, and
the ways, if any, in which they might be met. Finally, we shall
consider the facts, such as they are, which have been alleged to
constitute evidence of the reality of survival conceived as rein¬
carnation.

1. W. R. Alger, on the importance of the doctrine of me¬
tempsychosis. The importance of the doctrine of Metempsychosis
in the history of mankind may be gathered from the statement
with which the Rev. W. R. Alger, a learned Unitarian clergyman
of the last century, opens the discussion of the subject in his
monumental work, A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future
Life . “No other doctrine,” he declares, “has exerted so extensive,
controlling, and permanent an influence upon mankind as that
of the metempsychosis,—the notion that when the soul leaves the
body it is born anew in another body, its rank, character, circum¬
stances and experience in each successive existence depending on
its qualities, deeds, and attainments in its preceding lives.” 2

Alger cites authority for the fact that at the time of his writ¬
ing, the adherents of the transmigration doctrine in one or an¬
other of the more specific forms under which it has been con¬
ceived numbered some six hundred and fifty million; and, in
order to account for what he terms “the extent and the tenacious

% Op. Cit., p. 475, Tenth Edition, Boston 1880; preface dated 1878.

THE DOCTRINE OF REINCARNATION

209

grasp of this antique and stupendous belief” (p. 475), he men¬
tions, among other less potent reasons, the fact that “the theory
of the transmigration of souls is marvellously adapted to explain
the seeming chaos of moral inequality, injustice, and manifold
evil presented in the world of human life .... Once admit the
theory to be true, and all difficulties in regard to moral justice
vanish” (p. 481). Moreover, he writes, “the motive furnished
by the doctrine to self-denial and toil has a peerless sublimity”
(p. 487).

Alger’s book was published in 1860 and ran through ten
editions in the course of the succeeding twenty years. In the early
editions, notwithstanding the high merits he granted to the rein¬
carnation theory, he apparently rejected it, on the ground that,
“destitute of any substantial evidence, it is unable to face the
severity of science” (p. 484). But in the fifth of six new chapters
which in 1878 he adds in the tenth edition, he considers again
the merits of the theory and offers it—though, he emphasizes, in
no dogmatic spirit (p. 739)—as probably “the true meaning of
the dogma of the resurrection” (p. 735); “the true meaning of
the doctrine of the general resurrection and judgment and eternal
life, as a natural evolution of history from within” (Preface, p.
iv); pointing out (p. 735) that “resurrection and transmigration
agree in the central point of a restoration of the disembodied soul
to a new bodily existence, only the former represents this as a
single collective miracle wrought by an arbitrary stroke of God
at the close of the earthly drama, (whereas) the latter depicts it
as constantly taking place in the regular fulfillment of the divine
plan in the creation.” The difference, he goes on, “is certainly, to

a scientific and philosophical thinker.strongly in favor of

the Oriental theory” (p. 735). For, he somewhat rhapsodically
declares, “the thoughts embodied in it are so wonderful, the
method of it so rational, the region of contemplation into which
it lifts the mind is so grand, the prospects it opens are of such
universal reach and import, that the study of it brings us into full
sympathy with the sublime scope of the idea of immortality and
of a cosmopolitan vindication of providence uncovered to every¬
one” (p. 739).

One virtue of the reincarnation hypothesis which Alger does

210

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

not actually mention concerns the “origin” of the individual
human soul if the latter is conceived, as generally by the religious,
in spiritual not materialistic terms. For reincarnation provides
an alternative to the shocking supposition common among Chris¬
tians that, at the mating of any human pair, be it in wedlock
or in wanton debauch, an all-wise, almighty, and infinitely loving
God creates outright from nothing, or extracts from his own
eternal being, an immortal human soul endowed arbitrarily with
a particular one out of many possible sets of latent capacities and
incapacities. In contrast with this the reincarnation theory says
nothing about absolute origins, for it finds no more difficulty in
thinking of the “soul” as unoriginated than in thinking of it as
unending; that is, in conceiving it as evolving from more primi¬
tive to more advanced stages, and as extending thus from an
infinite past into an infinite future. For if it is conceivable that
anything at all should have no absolute beginning, then it is
conceivable of a human spirit as easily as of a divine one.

2. Metempsychosis in Brahmanism and Buddhism. The
transmigration theory, then, presents to us the idea of a long
succession of lives on earth for the individual, each of them as
it were a day in the school of experience, teaching him new les¬
sons through which he develops the capacities latent in human
nature, grows in wisdom, and eventually reaches spiritual ma¬
turity.

This idea has for many centuries been widely accepted in
Asia. In Brahmanism, the belief is held that the individual ego
or spirit, the Atma, has lived in a body on earth many times
before the birth of its present body, and will do so again and
again after the death of that body; the bodies in which it in¬
carnates being human, or animal, or even vegetable ones accord¬
ing to its Karma, that is, according to the destiny it generates for
itself by its acts, its thoughts, and its attitudes and aspirations;
this evolutionary process continuing until the individual Atma,
at last fully developed, attains direct insight into its identity with
Brahman, the World Spirit, and thereby wins salvation from the
necessity of further rebirth.

In Buddhism, which, like Protestantism in Christianity, was
a reform movement, the belief in reincarnation and Karma car-

THE DOCTRINE OF REINCARNATION

211

ried over but with a difference which at first seems paradoxical.
For one of the chief teachings of the Buddha is the Anatta doc¬
trine—the doctrine namely, that man has no permanent Atma
or ego, but that the constituents of his nature are always in
process of change, more or less rapidly; and that his present being
is related to the past beings he calls his, only in being continuous
with them as effect is continuous with cause. In Buddhism, the
culmination of the long chain of lives, each generating the next,
is therefore not described as realization of the identity of Atma
and Brahma, but as extinction of the three “fires”—that is, of
craving, ill-will, and ignorance—which, as long as they persist,
bring about re-birth. Their extinction is the extinction which
the word Nirvana signifies.

3. Pythagoras and Empedocles. But the idea of preexist¬
ence, and of repeated incarnations through which the individual
progresses has commended itself not only to the minds of men in
Asia, but also to numerous eminent thinkers in the West, both
ancient and modern.

One of the earliest was Pythagoras, who flourished about 455
B.C. and is believed to have travelled extensively in the East,
perhaps as far as India. Little is known with certainty concern¬
ing his views, but Ueberweg, in the first volume of his History
of Philosophy, states that “all that can be traced with certainty
to Pythagoras himself is the doctrine of metempsychosis and the
institution of certain religious and ethical regulations.” The
exact nature of his conception of metempsychosis is not known,
but an anecdote reported by Diogenes Laertius—according to
which Pythagoras allegedly recognized the soul of a deceased
friend of his in the body of a dog that was being beaten—suggests
that Pythagoras believed that the human soul was reborn at least
sometimes in the bodies of animals. Another Greek philosopher
of about the same period, namely, Empedocles, also held to some
form of the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. 8

4. Plato. But the greatest of the Greek philosophers who
taught the doctrine of periodical reincarnation of souls is of

•Ueberweg, op. cit. English Trans. 1, pp. 42-63. Scribner’s, N.Y., 1898.

212

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

course Plato. In the Phaedrus, he writes that the human soul,
according to the degree of vision of truth to which it has attained,
is reborn in a correspondingly suitable body: “The soul which
has seen most of truth shall come to the birth as a philosopher
or artist, or musician or lover; that which has seen truth in the
second degree shall be a righteous king or warrior or lord; the
soul which is of the third class shall be a politician or economist
or trader; the fourth shall be a lover of gymnastic toils or a physi
cian . . . and so on, down to the ninth degree, to which birth
as a tyrant is appropriate—Plato adding that “all these are states
of probation, in which he who lives righteously improves, and he
who lives unrighteously deteriorates his lot.” In another passage
Plato says that the soul of a man “may pass into the life of a
beast, or from the beast again into the man,” but that a soul
which has never beheld true being will not pass into the human
form, since that vision “was the condition of her passing into the
human form.” 4 In the tenth book of another of the dialogues, The
Republic, Plato, sets forth similar ideas. He tells of a mythical
warrior, called Er, who had been left for dead on the field of
battle but who returned to life ten days afterwards and related
that he had seen the souls of men awaiting rebirth, beholding a
great variety of available lives open to them, and drawing lots
as to who would choose first, who next, and so on. Some chose,
according to such folly or wisdom as they had, one or another
sort of human life; but here too Plato holds to the possibility of
rebirth of a man in animal form, saying that Er saw the soul
of Orpheus choose the life of a swan, that of Ajax the life of a
lion, that of Agamemnon that of an eagle, and so on. 5

5. Plotinus. The next of the great thinkers whose views on
reincarnation may be mentioned is the Neo-Platonist, Plotinus,
(204-269 A.D.) who was educated in Alexandria under Ammonius
Saccas and taught at Rome for some twenty-five years during
the middle of the third century, A.D.; and whose philosophical
ideas influenced many of the early shapers of Christian theology.
In his treatise on The Descent of the Soul, he sets forth a view

4 Phaedrus , Jowett’s translation, pp. 248-249, Scribner’s, N.Y., 1908.

*The Republic, Jowett’s translation, pp. 614, 617-20.

THE DOCTRINE OF REINCARNATION

213

of the education of the soul through repeated births in a material
body. The soul, he writes, “confers something of itself on a
sensible nature, from which likewise it receives something in
return . . . By a “sensible” nature, Plotinus means here a
nature perceptible to the senses, that is, a body. He goes on to
say that the soul, . through an abundance of sensible desire
. . . . becomes profoundly merged into matter and no longer
totally abides in the universal soul. Yet our souls are able alter¬
nately to rise from hence carrying back with them an experience
of what they have known and suffered in their fallen state; from
whence they will learn how blessed it is to abide in the intel¬
ligible world,” that is, in the world of abstract forms, which can¬
not be perceived by the senses but only apprehended by the in¬
tellect, and which are the objects of what Plato called the vision
of truth, or of true being. Plotinus goes on to say that the soul,
“by a comparison, as it were of contraries, will more plainly per¬
ceive the excellence of a superior state. For the experience of evil
produces a clearer knowledge of good, especially where the power
of judgment is so imbecil, that it cannot without such experience
obtain the science of that which is best.” 6

6. Origen. Among Christian thinkers of approximately the
same period as Plotinus, who like him believed in repeated earth
lives for the soul, was Origen (c. 185-c. 254, A.D.) one of the
Fathers of the Church most influential in the early developments
of Christian theology. He held not only, like some of the other
theologians of that period, that the human soul preexisted and
in some sense lived prior to its entrance into the body, but also
that after death it eventually reentered a new body, and this
repeatedly until, fully purified, it was fit to enter heaven. This
doctrine was later condemned by the second Council of Con¬
stantinople, but the following passage, from the Latin translation
by Rufinus of Origen's Greek text, of which only a fragment of
the original passage remains, leaves no doubt that Origen pro¬
fessed it: “Everyone, therefore, of those who descend to the earth
is, according to his deserts or to the position that he had there,
ordained to be born in this world either in a different place, or

•Five Books of Plotinus, translated by Thos. Taylor, London, 1794, pp. 279-80.

214

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

in a different nation, or in a different occupation, or with differ¬
ent infirmities, or to be descended from religious or at least less
pious parents; so as sometimes to bring about that an Israelite
descends among the Scythians, and a poor Egyptian is brought
down to Judaea." 7

7. The Jews, Egyptians, Celts, and Teutons. Having al¬
luded in what precedes to the influence of Neo-Platonism and
in particular of Plotinus on the early Christian theologians, it
may not be amiss to mention briefly two or three statements in
the new Testament, which have often been cited as indicating
that belief in preexistence and rebirth was not uncommon among
the persons to whom Jesus spoke, and indeed as suggesting that
perhaps he himself accepted it or at least regarded it as plausible.

In the ninth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John,
we have the story of the man bom blind, whom Jesus saw as he
passed by. "His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this
man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answered, "It
was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works
of God might be made manifest in him.” The point is that the
answer of Jesus does not deny that the man could have sinned
before birth, but denies only that this actually was the cause of
his blindness. More explicit and positive is the assertion by Jesus,
twice reported in the Gospel according to St. Matthew, that John
the Baptist was Elijah: "And if you are willing to accept it, he
is Elijah who is to come. He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
And farther on: "But I tell you that Elijah has already come,
and they did not know him, but did to him whatever they pleased

7 Origen: De Principiis IV Cap. 3, 10, 26, 23. The Latin of Rufinus* translation
is given as follows on p. 338 of Vol. 5 of Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller
der Ersten Drei Jahrhunderte: Unusquisque ergo descendentium in terrara pro
mentis vel loco suo, quem ibi habucrat, dispensatur in hoc mundo in diversis vel
locis vel gentibus vel conversationibus vel infirmitatibus nasci vel a religiosis aut
certe minus piis parentibus generari, ita ut inveniat aliquando Israheliten in
Scythas descendere et Aegyptium pauperem deduci ad Iudaeam.

The fragment, which is all we have of Origen’s own Greek of the passage, reads:
kai para toisde 2 toisde tois patrasin os dynasthai pote Israeliten pasein eis Schythas
kai Aigypton eis tin Ioudaian katelthein

THE DOCTRINE OF REINCARNATION

215

.Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to

them of John the Baptist” (XVII, 12, 13.).

At all events, the doctrine of the transmigration of souls was
a part of the Jewish esoteric mystical philosophy known as the
Kabbala, the origin of which is very ancient, apparently antedat
ing even the Christian era. The doctrine is mentioned in the
later Zoharistic works, but “is never found systematically de
veloped” there; rather, wherever it occurs, it is tacitly assumed
as well known, and no explanation is given in detail. 8 The fol¬
lowing passage is quoted from the Zohar (ii, 99b) by C. D. Gins-
burg: “All souls are subject to transmigration, and men do not
know the ways of the Holy One, blessed be he; they do not know
that they are brought before the tribunal, both before they enter
into this world and after they quit it, they are ignorant of the
many transmigrations and secret probations which they have to

undergo.But the time is at hand when these mysteries

will be disclosed.”® The same author, in a footnote (p 125)
writes: “According to Josephus, the doctrine of the transmigra¬
tion of souls into other bodies.was also held by the Pharisees

.restricting, however, the metempsychosis to the righteous.

And though the Midrashin and the Talmud are silent about it,

yet from Saadia’s vituperation against it.there is no doubt

that this doctrine was held among some Jews in the ninth century
of the present era. At all events it is perfectly certain that the
Karaite Jews firmly believed in it ever since the seventh century

.St. Jerome assures us that it was also propounded among

the early Christians as an esoteric and traditional doctrine which

was entrusted to the select few;.and Origen was con

vinced that it was only by means of this doctrine that certain
Scriptural narratives, such as the struggle of Jacob with Esau
before their birth, the reference to Jeremiah when still in his
mother’s womb, and many others, can possibly be explained.”

•M. Caster: Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Art. Transmigri
tion, p. 439. Cf. G. Scholem: Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. Schoken Pub.
House, Jerusalem, 1947 pp. 281 ff.

•The Essenes, The Kabbalah, Routledge and Regan Paul, London, 1955, pp
124-5.

216

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

In the ancient world, the belief in reincarnation was anyway
widespread. Herodotus, Plato, and other Greek writers report it
of the Egyptians of their time; Herodotus, for example, writing
(Bk. II, Sec. 123): “. . . the Egyptians were the first to teach that
the human soul is immortal, and at the death of the body enters
into some other living thing then coming to birth; and after
passing through all creatures, of land, sea, and air (which cycle
it completes in three thousand years) it enters once more into a
human body at birth. Some of the Greeks, early and late, have
used this doctrine as if it were their own . . .” 10

Both Caesar and Valerius Maximus definitely state that the
Druids of ancient Gaul held the belief in reincarnation; and
there is evidence also that it was present among the early Teu¬
tonic peoples.

8. Hume. Let us, however, now turn to more recent times
and see what some eminent modern philosophers have had to say
concerning metempsychosis. The first I shall mention is one of
the greatest in the history of modern thought—the skeptical phi¬
losopher, David Hume. In one of his essays, he emphasizes on
the one hand the weakness of the metaphysical and of the moral
arguments for the immortality of the soul, and on the other, the
strength of the physical arguments for its mortality; and he then
concludes the passage with the statement that “the Metempsy¬
chosis is therefore the only system of this kind [that is, the only
conception of immortality] that philosophy can hearken to.” 11

9. Kant. Another and no less famous philosopher, who also

gave some thought to the idea of preexistence and of rebirth, was
Immanuel Kant. In a passage of his celebrated Critique of Pure
Reason, he notes that “generation in the human race.de¬
pends on ... . many accidents, on occasion.on the views and

whims of government, nay, even on vice;” and he remarks that
“it is difficult to believe in the eternal existence of a being whose
life has first begun under circumstances so trivial, and so entirely
dependent on our own choice.” Kant then points out that the

w Bk. III. Sec. 123. Tr. by. A. D. Godley, Putnam’s N. Y. 1921.
n Essays and Treatises on Various Subjects, Boston, 1881. Second of the two,
Essays on Suicide, p. 228.

THE DOCTRINE OF REINCARNATION

217

strangeness, which attaches to the supposition that so important
an effect arises from such insignificant causes, would disappear
if we should accept the hypothesis that the life of the human
spirit is “not subject to the changes of time . . . neither beginning
in birth, nor ending in death,” and that the life of the body,
which so begins and so ends, “is phenomenal only;” that is to
say, if we should accept the hypothesis that “if we could see our¬
selves and other objects as they really are, we should see nur-
selves in a world of spiritual natures, our community with which
did neither begin at our birth nor will end with the death of
the body.” 12 Indeed, a more recent philosopher, James Ward,
who in his Gifford Lectures calls attention to this passage, states
in a note that Kant, in his lectures on metaphysics shortly before
the publication of the Critique, dogmatically taught both the pre
existence and the immortality of the soul. 13

10. Fichte. Another German philosopher, Fichte, contrasts
the spiritual part of himself, which he conceives as the will to
obey the laws of reason, with the sensuous other part, and conjec¬
tures that the latter may have the form of a succession of in¬
carnate lives. He writes: “These two orders,—the purely spiritual
and the sensuous, the latter consisting possibly of an innumerable
series of particular lives,—have existed in me from the first mo
ment of the development of my active reason .... My sensuous
existence may, in future, assume other forms, but these are just
as little the true life, as its present form.” 14

11. Schopenhauer. Another German philosopher, Schopen¬
hauer, had some acquaintance with the thought of India, and a
good deal of sympathy with certain of its features—in particular
with its doctrine of repeated births. In the third volume of his
great work, The World as Will and Idea, he has a chapter on
“Death and its relation to the indestructibility of our true na¬
ture.” This true nature he conceives to be not the intellect,
which is mortal, but “the character, i.e., the will” which is “the

”Critique of Pure Reason, M. Mueller’s Transl. MacMillan’s 2nd ed. pp. 625-6.
“James Ward, The Realm of Ends, p. 404.

u The Vocation of Man, Bk. Ill, Transl. by Wm. Smith, Pub. London 1848,
p. 162.

218

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

eternal part” of us and comes again and again to new births. This
doctrine, he goes on, is “more correctly denoted by the word
palingenesis [that is, new births] than by metempsychosis” since
the latter term suggests that what is reborn is the whole psyche,
whereas not the intellectual part of it, but only the will, is born
again. 16

12. Renouvier. One of the most distinguished French phi¬
losophers of recent times, Charles Renouvier, also endorses the
doctrine of reincarnation. In the course of the exposition of his
elaborate theory of monads, of indestructible germs, and of the
origin and destiny of personality, he writes: “But it is not once
only that each person must live again on earth owing to the actu¬
alization of one of those seminal potencies; it is a certain number
of times, we do not know how many . . . And again, speaking
of the several individuals which are the several lives of one person,
he writes: “These individuals, whom memory does not tie to¬
gether, and who have to one another no earthly genealogical
relationships, also have no memory of the person whom each of
them comes to continue on earth. Such forgetting is a condition
of any theory of preexistence .... the person, reintegrated in the
world of ends, recovers there the memory of its state in the world
of origins, and of the diverse lives which it has gone through, in
the course of which it has received the lessons and undergone
the trials of the life of pain.” 16

13. McTaggart. To be mentioned next in our partial list
of recent and contemporary eminent thinkers who have regarded
with favor the theory of metempsychosis are three distinguished
British philosophers. The first is John McTaggart, who in 1906
published a book entitled Some Dogmas of Religion. The whole
of its fourth chapter is devoted to a discussion of the idea of
human preexistence. He states that this “renders the doctrine of
a plurality of lives more probable.” This doctrine “would, in¬
deed, be in any case the most probable form of the doctrine of
immortality” (p xiii). Farther on, McTaggart points out that

“Vol. 111:300, Haldane and Kemp’s translation. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner
Co. London, 1906.

“Le Personnalisme, pp. 125-126. Felix Alcan, Paris 1903.

THE DOCTRINE OF REINCARNATION

219

if both preexistence and immortality are true, then “each man
would have at least three lives, his present life, one before it,
and one after it. It seems more probable, however, that this
would not be all, and that his existence before and after his
present life would in each case be divided into many lives, each
hounded by birth and death.” And he adds that there is much
to be said for the view that [such] a plurality of lives would be
the most probable alternative, even on a theory of immortality
which did not include preexistence (p. 116). 17

14. Ward. James Ward, cited above as having called atten¬
tion to what Kant had to say on the subject of the human spirit's
existence before the birth and after the death of its body, himself
considers various theories of a future life in the 18th of his
Gifford lectures. One of these theories is that of metempsychosis
He examines some of the chief objections to it which have been
advanced, and he suggests more or less plausible ways n which
they may be met. He concludes that “we must at leasi insist ....
that if such life [to wit, a future life] is to have any worth or
meaning, a certain personal continuity of development is essen
tial. From this point of view, death becomes indeed a longer
sleep dividing life from life as sleep divides day from day; and
as there is progress from day to day so too there may be from life
to life.” 18

15. Broad. Lastly, the distinguished Cambridge philoso¬
pher, C. D. Broad, at the end of his discussion of the empirical
arguments which may be advanced in support of the idea of sur¬
vival after death, points out that the hypothesis as to what spe¬
cifically may survive, which he has himself offered, “has certain
advantages for those who favor the theory of metempsychosis, as
Dr. McTaggart does.” 19 And, in a later work where at one point
he discusses what McTaggart says on the subject, Broad states
that, to himself, the theory of preexistence and plurality of lives
seems to be one “which ought to be taken very seriously, both on

I7 Op. Cit. London, Edw. Arnold, 1906.

w The Realm of Ends, Cambridge Univ. Press N.Y. 1911, p. 407.

1B The Mind and its Place in Nature. Harcourt Brace 8c Co. New York, 1929,
p. 551.

220

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

philosophical grounds and as furnishing a reasonable motive for
right action .... We shall behave all the better if we act on the
assumption that we may survive; that actions which tend to
strengthen and enrich our characters in this life will probably
have a favorable influence on the dispositions with which we begin
our next lives; and that actions which tend to disintegrate our
characters in this life will probably cause us to enter on our next
life “halt and maimed.” If we suppose that our future lives will
be of the same general nature as our present lives, this postulate,
which is in itself intelligible and not unreasonable, gains enor¬
mously in concreteness and therefore in practical effect on our
conduct. 20

The preceding citations from authors who have expressed
opinions favorable in various degrees to the idea of reincarnation
have been limited to philosophers, and even so have not included
all those who could be listed. But numerous poets also have
viewed the doctrine sympathetically. Persons interested to know
what these have had to say, or in citations from various other
quarters of opinions commendatory of the doctrine of rebirth,
will find quotations in several fairly accessible books, among
which may be mentioned E. D. Walker’s Reincarnation, A Study
of Forgotten Truth, G. de Purucker’s The Esoteric Tradition,
and Paul Siwek’s La Reincarnation des Esprits. 21

16. Various forms of the doctrine of reincarnation. Some
of the statements which have been quoted in what precedes will
have indicated that believers in reincarnation do not all conceive
the doctrine in exactly the same manner. Many of them, for
example, believe that a man may be reborn as an animal, and
hence that some of the animals are animated by souls which have
been and probably again will some time be lodged in human
bodies. Others believe that once a soul has reached the human
level, it will not thereafter be reborn as an animal. Again, dif¬
ferences of opinion exist as to the interval of time between in-

K Examination of McTaggart’s Philosophy. Cambridge, University Press 1938,
p. 639

^Respectively, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1888; Theosophical University Press,
Point Loma, Calif., 1935, Vol. II, Chs. XIX, XX, pp. 620-47; Desctee de Brouwer,
Rio de Janeiro, 1942, Introduction and Part I.

THE DOCTRINE OF REINCARNATION

221

carnations. For example, L. A. Waddell, who accompanied the
expedition of Sir Francis Younghusband to Tibet at the begin¬
ning of the present century, and who has written extensively on
the religion of the Tibetan Lamas, mentions that when the
Dalai Lama dies, the selection of his successor is based on the
belief that his spirit is immediately reincarnated as a new bom
infant. 22 Search is then made for a child born at that time, to
whom certain additional tests are then applied.

Other believers in reincarnation hold that a long interval
normally elapses between two incarnations—centuries, or indeed
sometimes a thousand years or more—and offer accounts of the
manner in which they think the discarnate soul employs these
lengthy periods.

Another interesting form of the belief in reincarnation is
that held, according to Delafosse, by one of the West African
tribes, the Mandingos. They do not think of reincarnation as
universal. They believe that the spirit of a dead man, which they
call his niama “can reside where it likes—in the corpse, in the
hut, in a sacred object, or in the body of a living being whose
niama it absorbs.” The spirit of a man for whom the due rites
have not been performed may reincarnate itself in a solitary ani¬
mal, or in a human being, who goes mad.” 23 This particular
version of the idea of reincarnation is interesting as being virtu¬
ally identical with the familiar ideas of “obsession” or “posses¬
sion”; although, in these as traditionally conceived, what in¬
carnates temporarily in the “possessed” person, is not, as in the
Mandingo belief, a discarnate human spirit, but a devil. Some
West African tribes more easterly than the Mandingos apparently
do not conceive reincarnation in this manner, but in its ordinary
sense, according to which the body the discarnate human spirit
enters is that of a child about to be born, not an adult body with
a spirit of its own that has to be displaced or is made insane by
the invasion of another spirit. A conception of reincarnation
similar to that of the Mandingos appears in some of the com¬
munications of automatists emanating purportedly from discar-

n Lhasa and its Mysteries, Dutton and Co., N. Y. 1905, p. 28.

“Delafosse, Haut-S6n£gal-Niger, III, 165 quoted in Hastings’ Encyclopedia of
Religion and Ethics, Art. Transmigration.

222

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

nate spirits. For example, in Ch. XV of a book entitled Thirty
Years Among the Dead, 2 * the author, Dr. C. A. Wickland, tran¬
scribes communications, uttered by his wife while entranced,
from purported spirits who said that during life they had had
some acquaintance with the teachings of modern Theosophy and
[apparently misconceiving these] that they endeavored to rein¬
carnate by invading the bodies of several of Dr. Wickland’s pa¬
tients. These, as in the Mandingos’ belief, had gone mad, i.e.,
seemingly obsessed or possessed by some personality other than
their own.

“Spiritualist Press, London, no date.

Chapter XXI

DIFFICULTIES IN THE REINCARNATION
HYPOTHESIS

The mere fact that the reincarnation hypothesis, in one form
or another, has been treated with respect by some thinkers of
high eminence, and even has been accepted by some of them, does
not prove that reincarnation is a fact. Moreover, critics of the
doctrine have advanced various objections to it, purporting to
show that it can not possibly be true. We must now consider
them and decide whether they do or do not establish the impos
sibility. And, if we find that they do not really do so, we shall
then have to ask whether any empirical evidence at all exists
that shows or tends to show that reincarnation occurs.

1. The materialistic objection to any form of life after
death. The first objection likely to suggest itself to the contem¬
porary Western educated mind would be that a mind cannot exist
without a living body, nor therefore pass from a dying body
to a living one born later. This objection, if sound, would rule
out not only metempsychosis, but also the possibility of any form
of survival. But it need not detain us here since, as we saw in
Part III, the basis of it consists not of established facts, but only
of one or another of the materialistic interpretations of the facts.
And, as we took pains to make clear, these interpretations are in
no way authoritative but amount only to this: that in them, a
legitimate program—that of searching for material causes—is ille¬
gitimately erected unawares into the metaphysical dogma that
none but material causes can exist at all. Moreover in Part IV,
various facts were cited which lend some empirical support to the
hypothesis that the mind survives the body’s death.

The question before us in the present chapter is therefore
only whether, if survival is indeed a fact, any good reasons exist

223

224

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

for believing that it cannot take the form which the reincarnation
hypothesis describes; namely, in its most plausible version, that,
following the body’s death, there is first a period of discarnate
existence whether short or long; and then rebirth, in an infant
body, of such of the capacities of the mind of the deceased per¬
son as had constituted the basis for acquisition by it of the other
capacities it did acquire—and indeed also for acquisition of vari¬
ous others which it did not in fact acquire because external cir¬
cumstances presented no need for them, or no opoprtunity to ac¬
quire them.

2. The objection that we have no memory of having lived
before. A prima facie plausible objection to the reincarnation
hypothesis is that we have no memory whatever of having lived
before our birth. But if this objection has any force at all, then
it has far too much; for, since we have also no memory of the
first few years of our present life, it would then follow equally
that we did not then exist. Indeed, the case is really worse than
this, for we have also no memories at all of the great majority
of the days of our life. My own belief, for example that I was
alive and conscious on say, the third of December, 1930 is not
based on my memory of that day, for I recall nothing whatever
in connection with it; and probably nobody else recalls having
observed me on that particular day. That belief of mine is in
fact only an inference, based on the vacuous premise that human
consciousness is continuous—except for periods of unconscious¬
ness in dreamless sleep, in anesthesia, in coma, or otherwise!

It may be said, of course, that although we have no conscious
memories of our days of early childhood, or of most of our days
since then, yet memories of them persist subconsciously and can
be made manifest by automatic writing as induced in her patients
by, for example, the late Dr. Anita Miihl, or by the techniques of
psychoanalysis; or by suggestions of age-regression, given under
hypnosis. But then we naturally find ourselves led to ask how
far back such revival of memories can be made to go. Memories
of the intra-uterine experiences of the foetus have apparently
been obtained; and in some cases, purported memories pertain¬
ing to past incarnations. If the latter are dismissed as mere in-

THE REINCARNATION HYPOTHESIS

225

ventions of the mythopoeic faculty, induced by the suggestions
of age-regression, then, on the very same ground, it will be neces¬
sary to dismiss also alleged memories of intra-uterine experiences,
and indeed, also abnormally obtained memories of the years of
infancy and even of subsequent years, except where the reality
of the events purportedly remembered happens to be in some way
independently verifiable. But then, what shall we say about the
few reported cases where it is claimed that verification was made
also of facts purportedly remembered from an earlier incarna¬
tion? We shall return to this claim farther on, when we come
to ask whether any positive empirical evidence exists in support
of the reincarnation hypothesis. At this point, however, we are
concerned only with the allegations that absence of memory of
earlier lives is empirical evidence that we had no such lives; and
the outcome of the preceding remarks is that absence of memory
of an event, and especially of a long past event, never pro es that
one did not experience the event. Positive m< mories can be evi¬
dence concerning one’s past, but absence of memories of it proves
nothing at all about it.

3. The objection that memory is indispensable to identity
of person. Another objection to the transmigration hypothesis is
that personal identity is wholly dependent on memory; and hence
that, without memories of earlier lives, there is no difference at
all between rebirth of “one” person, and death of one person fol¬
lowed by birth of a different person. 1 This objection, however,
would be easily disposed of by the supposition that, although
memory of earlier lives is absent during any one life, such memory
is periodically regained at some point during the interval be
tween consecutive lives; or, possibly, is regained at the end of
the series of earthly incarnations if the series does have an end.
The supposition that, at some time, memory of earlier lives is
recovered suffices to make rebirth of one person mean something
different from death of one person followed by birth of another
person. Absence now of such memory entails only that we can¬
not tell now which of those two possibilities is the fact.

'Leibniz; Philosophische Schriften, ed. Gerhardt, IV. 300.

226

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

4. The objection that, without memory of one’s acts, nothing
is learned from their consequences. An objection which has been
made to the transmigration hypothesis—or at least to the assump¬
tion usually coupled with it that wisdom is gained and moral
lessons learned gradually from the consequences brought about
by right and wrong acts—is that, without memory of the act, or
thought or feeling or attitude, which brought about a given con¬
sequence, the relation of cause and effect between them is not
perceived; and hence that no moral lesson is learned or any wis¬
dom gained from such features of our lot in the present life as
are consequences of right or wrong conduct in preceding lives.

A sufficient answer to this objection is that perception of the
consequences of our conduct is one way, but not the only way,
in which growth in wisdom, virtue, or ability, can be brought
about by those consequences. An act of which we retain no mem¬
ory may nevertheless have the remote effect of placing us eventu¬
ally in a situation conducive to the acquiring of the wisdom,
virtue, or ability, lack of which made us act as we did in the for¬
gotten past. If, as the Karma doctrine of the Hindus asserts, our
conduct in one incarnation automatically tends to have this very
sort of consequence in one or another of our later lives, then lack
of memory of those past lives does not prevent our growing
morally and spiritually, in this indirect manner, owing to the
nature of our conduct in unremembered earlier lives. Moreover
if, as already suggested may be the case, memory of preceding
lives is regained in the discarnate interval between incarnations,
this would make growth in wisdom possible not only in the man¬
ner just described, but also by discernment of some of the con¬
sequences of certain of one’s acts in earlier lives.

5. The objection that wisdom, virtue, knowledge, and skills
are not innate, but are gradually acquired after birth. It may
be objected, however, that whatever such growth we achieve in a
given incarnation, whether in the indirect manner described, or
directly out of perception of the consequences of acts done in the
present or in a previous incarnation, that growth anyway does
not carry over from past lives to the present one. For children
are not born with knowledge that fire burns, but have to learn

THE REINCARNATION HYPOTHESIS

227

it again in this life no matter how many times in past lives they
may have touched fire and got burnt. Similarly, children have
to be taught not to lie and not to take the property of others;
they are not born with ready-made mathematical or musical or
other skills, any more than with a ready-made moral conscience,
but acquire all these by processes open to observation. No mat¬
ter what they may have learned in past lives, their education-
moral, intellectual, aesthetic, and of other sons—certainly seems
to have to start from scratch in the present life.

Reflection, however, makes evident that what has just been
said is not quite the whole story. Skills, habits, knowledge, and
other varieties of what psychologists call “conditionings'' indeed
have to be painstakingly acquired during the years of life. But
what we come equipped with at birth is not these things; it is
only certain instincts and certain aptitudes—an aptitude being a
capacity to acquire, when subjected to the relevant stimuli, cer¬
tain more determinate capacities of the kinds mentioned above
In these native aptitudes, human beings differ considerably one
from another. One person will learn quickly and easily what
another, even with great effort, is able to learn but slowly and
imperfectly.

In this connection, it is useful to dwell on the fact that if
any one of us, had been taken away in early childhood from the
family where in fact he grew up, and had been placed instead
among the Pygmies of Africa, or among the Eskimos, or among
the Chinese; or indeed, in his native country, in a family mark¬
edly different in economic, cultural and social respects from that
in which he was born; then he would, on the basis of his very
same stock of native aptitudes, certainly have developed a per¬
sonality vastly different from his present one. Reflection on this
indubitable fact is likely to make the personality he now calls his
Self appear to him analogous rather to some particular one of the
various roles which a given actor is capable of playing. And this
reflection is then likely to lead a person to identify his true Self
with his native set of basic aptitudes, rather than with the acci
dental particular personality—i.e., the particular memories, skills,
habits, and so on—generated through the interaction between

228

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

those aptitudes and the particular environment in which his body
happens to have lived.

It is true that, when discussing reincarnation, Professor
James H. Hyslop writes: “It is personality that we want, if sur¬
vival is to be in any way interesting to us, and not only per¬
sonality, but we want a personal consciousness of this personal
identity." 2 But in the light of the remarks just made this demand,
though natural enough, appears rather naively wilful.

The supposition just considered, that if reincarnation is a
fact then what a man brings to a new birth is not a developed
mind or personality but only certain aptitudes, has commended
itself also to some other writers who, however, have worded it
somewhat differently. Professor Broad, for example, suggests that
what transmigrates, if anything does, might not be a mind but
only something which he calls a “psychogenic factor," the nature
of which, however, he does not describe beyond saying that, from
combination of it with a brain, a mind emerges—somewhat as
common salt emerges out of the combination of sodium and
chlorine, neither of which by itself has the properties of salt. 3
Again, Professor Francis Bowen, in an article in the Princeton
Review for May, 1881, quoted at considerable length by E. D.
Walker, 4 offered a similar hypothesis, wording it, however, in
terms of Kant’s distinction between man’s Intelligible Character,
which is noumenal, and his Empirical Character, which is phe¬
nomenal—a distinction only alluded to in the particular passage
of Kant’s Critique we cited earlier, but which Kant formulates
explicitly elsewhere in a different connection.

But if transmigration is to be conceived as a process of
growth, it is necessary to assume that the activities and experi¬
ences of each incarnation result not only in the acquisition of
particular skills, tastes, habits, knowledge, etc., on the basis of the
aptitudes (or “psychogenic factor," or “Intelligible Character")
brought from past lives; but in addition result in some alteration

*Borderland of Psychial Research, Turner & Co. Boston, 1906, p. 368.

% The Mind and its Place in Nature, Harcourt Brace & Co. New York, 1929, p.
535.

‘Reincarnation, A Study of Forgotten Truth, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1888,
pp. 102 ff.

THE REINCARNATION HYPOTHESIS

229

of that stock of aptitudes itself—enhancement of some of them,
deterioration of others, perhaps acquisition of new ones, and
possibly loss altogether of certain others. .And Broad indeed postu¬
lates for the psychogenic factor capacity to be modified to some
extent by the experiences and activities of the mind which has
resulted from the combination of the psychogenic and the bodily
factors.

6. Native aptitudes, heredity, and growth of the self. It
may be contended, however, that a person’s native aptitudes or
anyway some of them are a matter of heredity; and that if they
are derived thus from his ancestors then they are not derived
from strivings or experiences of his own past lives. But McTag-
gart, whose favorable opinion of the transmigration hypothesis
was cited earlier, argues that the facts of heredity are at least not
incompatible with transmigration. “There is no impossibility,”
he writes, “in supposing that the characteristics in which we re¬
semble the ancestors of our bodies may be to some degree char¬
acteristics due to our previous lives.” He points out that “hats
in general fit their wearers with far greater accuracy than they
would if each man’s hat were assigned to him by lot. And yet
there is very seldom any causal connection between the shape of
the head and the shape of the hat. A man’s head is never made
to fit his hat, and, in the great majority of cases, his hat is not
made to fit his head. The adaptation comes about by each man
selecting, from hats made without any special reference to his
particular head, the hat which will suit his particular head best.”
And McTaggart goes on to say: “This may help us to see that it
would be possible to hold that a man whose nature had certain
characteristics when he was about to be reborn, would be reborn
in a body descended from ancestors of a similar character. His
character when reborn would, in this case, be decided, as far as
the points in question went, by his character in his previous life,
and not by the character of the ancestors of his new body. But

.the character of the ancestors of the new body, and its

similarity to his character,” would be what “determined the fact
that he was reborn in that body rather than another.” 6 And in

*Some Dogmas of Religion, Edward Arnold, London, 1906, p. 125.

230

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

answer to the question as to how each person finds the body most
appropriate to him, McTaggart refers to the analogy of chemical
affinities.

McTaggart, it must be emphasized, is not contending that
some of the characteristics—or let us say more specifically, apti-
itudes—which a person possesses were gained in an earlier life
and brought over to the present one at birth. He is contending
only that this supposition is not incompatible with the inher¬
itance of aptitudes from one’s ancestors.

But the compatibility of the two, or not, turns on whether
heredity accounts for every aptitude a person is born with. If it
does, then the supposition that any aptitudes at all are brought
from a past incarnation becomes wholly idle. Indeed, no room
at all is left for it, since if something did have a certain origin,
then it did not have a different one!

The assumption, however, that heredity does account for all
of a person’s native aptitudes is a good deal more sweeping than
present-day knowledge of heredity warrants. Hence, if a given
aptitude a man has does not happen to be traceable to his parents
or known ancestors, his having brought it over from an earlier
life remains conceivable.

But just what, in McTaggart’s simile, the “hat” and the
“head” may respectively consist in literally, can become clear only
in the light of analysis of the notions of an “aptitude” and of the
corresponding “skill.”

An aptitude, it will be recalled, is the capacity to acquire a
specific capacity under given circumstances; and the specific ca¬
pacity concerned is a skill in so far as it is voluntary. Moreover,
that a given person did possess aptitude for acquisition of a given
skill is shown by his having in fact acquired it. But the factors on
which his having acquired it depended are several.

One was possession by him of such bodily organs of sensa¬
tion or of action as may be necessary for exercise of the skill con¬
cerned. For example, no matter how musically gifted otherwise
a man may be, he cannot acquire high skill as a violinist if his
fingers are short, thick, and stiff.

A second factor consists in possession of psychological apti-

THE REINCARNATION HYPOTHESIS

231

tude for acquisition of the skill concerned, in addition to such
bodily aptitude as the skill may require.

The third factor consists of the external opportunities or/and
stimuli which the person in view has had for acquisition of that
skill. A man’s capacity to acquire ability to swim, for instance,
would have no opportunity to realize itself if he were to spend
his whole life in the desert.

And a fourth factor is interest in acquisition of the skill con¬
cerned. Aptitude and opportunity for acquisition of the skill
might exist, yet interest in acquiring it might be lacking. Or the
interest might exist but remain latent in the absence of external
circumstances that would arouse it. Or the interest might exist
and be patent, but the person might have no aptitude for acquisi¬
tion of the particular skill. The interest is therefore a factor addi
tional to the other three.

Which of the four factors, we may now ask, would constitute
the “hat” in McTaggart’s simile, and which of them the “head”?

The first factor—bodily aptitude—is plausibly a matter of
biological heredity and would therefore be part of the “hat.”
Whether or how far the second factor—psychological aptitude—
is also purely a matter of biological heredity is dubious. So when,
as often is the case, a given aptitude is not traceable to the par¬
ents or the known ancestors, the supposition that it has been
brought over from an earlier life remains possible. The aptitude
concerned would then be part of the “head.”

The third factor — the external circumstances which per
mitted acquisition of the skill for which aptitude existed—would
evidently be another part of the “hat.” And the fourth factor-
existence of latent interest in acquisition of the skill concerned-
can, like the aptitude for that skill, be supposed to be a carry¬
over from an earlier life and thus to be part of the “head.” In¬
deed, that interest, which amounts to a craving to acquire that
skill, can be supposed to operate as the quasi “chemical affinity”
McTaggart invokes, by which the aptitude to acquire that skill
is brought to incarnation in a family that provides not only the
appropriate bodily heredity, but also eventually the kind of ex¬
ternal circumstances necessary for development of the particular
skill concerned.

Chapter XXII

INCOMPETENT KINDS OF EVIDENCE
FOR AND AGAINST REINCARNATION

In Chapter XXI, we examined a number of difficulties in
the way of the reincarnation hypothesis, and found them far
from sufficient to show that it cannot be true, or even (hat it is
more probably false than true. We now come to the question
whether any empirical evidence is available that would tend to
support the hypothesis. In the present chapter, certain facts will
be considered which have sometimes been offered as evidence of
reincarnation but which, as we shall see, admit of some different
and more plausible explanation. And since, in Part IV, we came
to the conclusion that some positive evidence exists for survival-
survival discarnate for the time being anyway—of some compo¬
nents of the personality of deceased persons, the facts on which
we shall comment in the present chapter will include the testi¬
mony on the subject of reincarnation contained in certain com¬
munications which purported to emanate from surviving spirits
of the deceased.

1. “D£ja vu” experiences. An experience sometimes thought
by the persons who have it to be evidence that they have lived
before their present life is the experience psychologists have
labelled “d£jd vu,” i.e., “already seen,” “seen before.” It is what
occurs when a person “recognizes” some situation which in fact he
never experienced before—for example some street or house in a
town he is now visiting for the first time, and of which he has
never seen a picture or description. In such cases, the person
concerned sometimes interprets the fact that what he is seeing for
the first time in his life nevertheless feels familiar to him, as being
evidence that he must have seen it in an earlier life.

The true explanation, however, is usually that the new sit¬
uation is similar in prominent respects to some situation he has

232

FOR AND AGAINST REINCARNATION

233

experienced before in his present life but which he does not at
the moment recall; and that, although the two situations also have
dissimilarities, nevertheless the points of likeness between them
are sufficient to generate the feeling of familiarity which, nor¬
mally, is a sign that the object or situation arousing it was ex¬
perienced before. A striking example of such spurious recogni¬
tion occurs when we “recognize” a person whom we have in fact
never met before, but who happens to be the twin of an ac¬
quaintance we then mistakenly believe ourselves to be facing at
the moment.

Another explanation, however, perhaps fits better some in¬
stances of “d£jd vu”—those where the person concerned feels that
he so remembers the conversation he is now hearing, or the house
he is now entering for the first time, that he can tell what the
person who speaks next is going to say, or what a given door in
the house leads into.

In such cases, what he now feels he already knows may be
something which he is now paranormally precognizing. Or it
may be something which he paranormally precognized a short
time before, but only subconsciously, or perhaps the night before
in a dream he does not remember—the later parts of the past
precognition being now brought to consciousness by the present
perceptual fulfillment of the earlier parts.

Whether or not this explanation happens to be the correct
one in a given case, the fact that precognition has been experi¬
mentally proved to occur sometimes 1 means that explanation of
a “d£jd vu” experience in terms of paranormal precognition must
not be ruled out a priori, and that the normal type of explanation
must not be made a Procrustean bed, which every fact of this
kind, no matter how recalcitrant, shall be stretched or tiimmed to
fit into.

2. Illusions of Memory. Mnemonic illusions are another
type of experience capable of causing a person to believe that he
has lived other lives than his present one. The late Prof. J H.

'See for instance “Experiments in Precognitive Telepathy” by S. G. Soal and
K. M. Goldney, Proc. S.P.R. Vol. 47:21-150; 1943; and summary in Modem Experi¬
ments in Telepathy, by S. G. Soal and F. Bateman, Yale Univ. Press 1954, pp. 123-31.

234

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

Hyslop mentions an example of such an illusion, which, although
the experient did not interpret it as memory of an earlier life,
nevertheless strikingly illustrates the possibility of mnemonic
illusion. 2 The person concerned was a friend of Dr. Hyslop’s,
and, in conversation with another, mentioned that he remem¬
bered the Harrison presidential campaign and described in con¬
siderable detail many of the incidents in it. He, however, had
been born in 1847, whereas the Harrison campaign had taken
place in 1840. The explanation of his “memories” of the cam¬
paign turned out to be that what he really remembered were
the vivid images of the campaign which he had formed in child¬
hood as a result of the elaborate descriptions of it which uncles
of his who had taken part in it and with whom he went to live at
the age of eight, delighted to rehearse, in his hearing, for their
friends and neighbors. He had remembered the images, but not
how his mind had come to be furnished with them.

3. Paranormal retrocognitions. But a person's belief that
he had an earlier life may be a conclusion he bases on a dream or
vision which subsequent historical research shows to have cor¬
responded in recondite details to some historical event antedating
his birth—which details he certainly never learned in a normal
manner. A tempting interpretation of such an experience is that
he actually witnessed the event in an earlier life, and that the
vision or dream is a memory image of it, carried over from that
earlier life to the present one.

An example of a vision which would lend itself to such an
interpretation, although in fact it was not so interpreted by the
two ladies who had the vision, is that of Miss Moberly and Miss
Jourdain at Versailles, related in their much discussed book en¬
titled An Adventure . 3 A more plausible interpretation of the
facts as reported—which is the interpretation they themselves
adopted—is that their vision was a case of retrocognitive clair¬
voyance.

4. Testimony, purportedly from discarnate spirits. Another

* Borderland, of Psychical Research, Turner & Co., Boston, 1906, pp. 371-2.

•London, Faber & Faber, 1911. By 1947 the book had had four editions and
many printings.

FOR AND AGAINST REINCARNATION

235

kind of empirical evidence alleged by some to substantiate, or
to invalidate, the belief in reincarnation consists of the declara
tions on the subject contained in the mediumistic communica
tions from purported discarnate spirits.

In 1856, Hypolite Denizard Rivail, better known by his pen
name of Allan Kardec, published Le Livre des Esprits, consisting
mainly of communications, dictated through unnamed diverse
mediums” by various purported discarnate spirits in answer to
questions asked by Kardec—these questions and answers being
then published by him in the book at the behest of those spirits.
One of the central doctrines proclaimed by them is that of i< in¬
carnation. The following, which is a translation of Sec 166 of
the 1947 amplified edition, is a typical passage (from Chapter
IV pp. 147/8): *

Q. How can the soul, which has not reached perfection dur¬
ing corporeal life, complete its purification?

A . By undergoing the trials of a new life.

Q. How does the soul accomplish this new life? Is it by its
transformation into Spirit?

A. The soul, by purification, undoubtedly undergoes a trans
formation, but for this it needs the trials of a new life.

Q. The soul then has several corporeal lives?

A. Yes, we all have several lives. Those who assert the con¬
trary wish to keep you in the ignorance in which they
themselves are; it is their desire.

Q. It seems to follow from this principle that the soul, after
having left one body, takes on another; in other words,
that it reincarnates in a new body. Is this what we are to
understand?

A. Evidently.

Interesting additional information concerning Le Livre des
Esprits is provided by Alexander Aksakof, one of the early in¬
vestigators of psychic phenomena, in an article entitled “Re¬
searches on the Historical Origin of the Reincarnation Specula-

•Ed. Griffon d’Or, Paris, 1947.

236

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

tions of French Spiritualists.” 4 He states that, in 1873 in Paris,
he heard that a somnambulist, Celina Japhet (real name, Bequet)
had contributed largely to the work. He called on her, and she
told him among other things, that she was ‘‘a natural somnam¬
bulist from her earliest years;” that, in 1845 she went to Paris,
made the acquaintance of a magnetizer, M. Roustan, and be¬
came a professional somnambulist under his control, giving “med¬
ical advice under the spiritual direction of her grandfather, who
had been a doctor;” and that “in this manner in 1846 the doc¬
trine of Reincarnation was given to her by the spirits of her
grandfather, of St. Theresa, and others.” Aksakof states at this
point that “as the somnambulic powers of Madame Japhet were
developed under the mesmeric influence of M. Roustan, it may
be well to remark in this place that M. Roustan himself believed
in the plurality of terrestrial existences.” Aksakof’s account of
what Madame Japhet told him goes on to relate that from 1849
until 1870, she was a member of a spirit circle in Paris which met
once or twice a week, and of which Victorien Sardou was a mem¬
ber; that, after a while, she became a writing medium and that
the greater part of her communications were obtained in this
manner; and that “in 1856 she met M. Denizard Rivail, intro¬
duced by M. Victorien Sardou. He [Rivail] correlated the ma¬
terials by a number of questions; himself arranged the whole
in systematic order, and published The Spirits’ Book without
ever mentioning the name of Madame C. Japhet, although three
quarters of this book had been given through her mediumship.
The rest was obtained from communications through Madame

Bodin, who belonged to another spirit circle.After the

publication of The Book of Spirits .he quitted the circle

[Mme. Japhet’s] and arranged another in his own house, M.
Roze being the medium.” Aksakof’s article ends with the words:
“All that I have herein stated does not affect the question of Re¬
incarnation, considered upon its own merits, but only concerns
the causes of its origin and of its propagation as Spiritism.”

Another Frenchman, Alphonse Cahagnet, published in 1848
a book, Arcanes de la Vie Future Devoiles, translated under the

4 The Spiritualist, Aug. 13, 1875, pp. 74-5.

FOR AND AGAINST REINCARNATION

237

title of The Celestial Telegraph, and containing, like Kardec’s,
communications purporting to emanate from discarnate human
spirits, who on the contrary deny that reincarnation occurs. For
example:

(>. You are convinced that we never more appear on earth,
to be again materialized?

A. We are born, and die but once; when we are in heaven,
it is for eternity. 5

In England, the famous medium, D. D. Home, denied and
ridiculed the doctrine; and communications through mediums in
English speaking countries, when touching at all on reincarna¬
tion, have in most cases denied it. For example, Dr. C. A. Wick-
land, in his book, Thirty Years Among the Dead, already men¬
tioned, reports many communications received through his own
wife as medium, including some purporting to come from de¬
ceased persons who while on earth had accepted and taught re¬
incarnation, but who in those communications repudiate the
doctrine. Prominent among these are the purported spirits of
Ella Wheeler Wilcox (pp. 411-5) and of Mme. Blavatsky (pp
420-7).

Their testimony, however, is hardly more impressive than
that of Allan Kardec’s spirits on the opposite side of the ques¬
tion. For instance, what the supposed spirit of Ella Wheeler Wil¬
cox says is that she “would not care to come back.would

not like to come back to this earth plane again to be a little
baby;” that she does “not see why” she should come back! But
obviously, if our likes and dislikes as regards our own future fate,
settled the question of what it actually will be, then few of us
would die, or become bald or wrinkled, or ever catch cold; for
few persons indeed like these prospects.

The utterances of the purported Blavatsky spirit are much
more categorical: “Reincarnation is not true,” the spirit says, “I
have tried and tried to come back to be somebody else, but I
could not. We cannot reincarnate. We progress, we do not come
back.” 6 But although more downright, these statements are no

6 Sec. 83, p. Ill of the 1851 First American Edition.
*Op. cit. Chapt. XV, p. 421.

238

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

more impressive than those of the Wilcox spirit; for it would be
strange indeed that, as those statements would have it, not only
the other alleged spirits of former Theosophists quoted in the
same chapter, but the spirit of the very foundress of the modern
Theosophical movement, should expect and try to reincarnate
just a few years after death, notwithstanding her own explicit
teaching that the interval between incarnations averages from
1000 to 1500 years; notwithstanding her own definite condem¬
nation of the belief of "the Allan Kardec school.in an

arbitrary and immediate reincarnation;" 7 and notwithstanding
her own teaching that reincarnation takes place not by trying for
it, but automatically at the end of many centuries spent in the
blissful "devachan" dream world. And it would be equally strange
that reincarnation should now be denied—on the ground of the
gratuitous assumption that "progressing" and "coming back" are
mutually exclusive—by the very same Mme. Blavatsky who had
affirmed reincarnation on the ground that we progress by coming
back, as does the schoolboy progress by coming back to the same
school after vacations and learning each time new lessons, which
the school well can teach him but which he cannot all learn in
a single term.

Thus, if the utterances of the purported Blavatsky spirit
should be considered evidence at all for anything, it would then
rather be for truth of the Blavatsky teaching that the purported
spirits who speak or write through a medium are instead only
what is left of a personality when, some time after death, what
she calls "the second death" has taken place; that is, when the
higher active, thinking and judging mind has withdrawn from
and left behind the lower, passive part, consisting of the habits,
passions, memory images, and desires. This unthinking shell of
the personality, she taught, borrows from the medium’s living
mind and is in this way temporarily able to act the part of a true
spirit.

It would seem, then, that the misconceptions of Mme. Blavat-
sky's teachings evident in the statements of her alleged spirit
through Mrs. Wickland, and uniformly also in the statements

7 The Key to Theosophy, 3rd. cd. 1893, pp. 90, 98, 129.

FOR AND AGAINST REINCARNATION

239

of the alleged spirits of former disciples of hers, are in fact simply
the misconceptions of those teachings present in Mrs. Wicklands
own mind.

As regards the modes of thought and the style of the com¬
munications attributed in Dr. Wickland’s book to the spirit of
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, the present writer is not in position to
judge whether they are typical of the thought and style of the
prototype. But in the case of those attributed to Mme. Blavat-
sky’s spirit, the intellectual content of most of the utterances in
the eight pages of its communications is of the feeble quality
which is rather usual in “spirit” messages; and which, if the
messages really emanated from the particular spirits claimed to
be their authors, would cause one to weep for the then degenera¬
tion patently undergone after death by the minds of such of
them as, like Mme. Blavatsky’s, were anywav vigorous

In this connection, it is interesting to note that the pur¬
ported Blavatsky spirit says at one point: “Some may say this is
not Madam Blavatsky. . . .They may say, she would not say so
and so, she would not talk so and so,—but it is Madam Blavat
sky” (p. 424.). This would indicate that the would-be-Blavatsky
“spirit” was conscious of the incongruity of its own utterances
to the mind and personality of its claimed prototype.

Anyway, assuming for the purposes of the argument that the
communications by mediums do come from discamate human
spirits, and even that these spirits are the particular ones they say
they are, the really important point with regard to their denials
of the reincarnation doctrine is that their lack of memory of lives
earlier than their recent one on earth proves exactly nothing;
just as the fact pointed out earlier that we now have no memory
of the first few years after our birth or of the vast majority of our
days since then, is no proof at all that we were not alive and
conscious at those times. And the spirits’ denial, or equally their
assertion, that they will eventually reincarnate, is not based by
them on any claim of paranormal capacity to precognize their
own far remote future; nor is there any evidence that they have
such capacity. Indeed, A. Campbell Holms, a writer who does
not himself believe in reincarnation, but who is familiar with
the records of spirit communications and apparently accepts them

240

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

at their face value, writes: “Spirits long passed over, who appear
to discuss matters with moderation and caution, if asked about
reincarnation, will usually say that, although it may be true, they
have no knowledge of it .” 8

Such “spirits” thus evince greater intellectual responsibility
than do either those Spiritualists or Spiritists who naively assume
that the mere fact of a person’s having died constitutes an answer
to the question how his surviving spirit knows, or whether it
knows, that reincarnation is not, or is, a fact. All that a surviving
discarnate spirit could competently testify to would be (a) that it
has survived its body’s death; (b) that, as yet, it has not rein¬
carnated; and (c) that it does not, or as the case may be does,
“remember” anterior lives on earth.

*Thc Facts of Psychic Science and Philosophy, London, Kcgan Paul, 1925, p. 36.

Chapter XX///

VERIFICATIONS OF OSTENSIBLE
MEMORIES OF EARLIER LIVES

The best evidenced and most evidential case of “reincarna¬
tion” known to the present writer is that described in Chapter
XVII, Section 4, which was reported by Dr. E. W. Stevens under
the title of “The Watseka Wonder.” But what it would illustrate
is reincarnation only as conceived by the African Mandingos and
by Dr. Wickland; that is, as invasion by a discarnate spirir of he
body of a grown person whose own personality is thereby more or
less completely displaced. Cases of this kind, when they are not
explicable as simply dissociations of the personality whose body is
concerned, would ordinarily be described as cases of “possession”
or “obsession,” rather than of reincarnation. For the term “rein¬
carnation” is commonly intended to mean rebirth, in a neonate
baby body, of a “spirit” or “soul” which has had earlier lives
on earth.

Such claim as can be made that the cases which will now be
cited constitute empirical evidence of reincarnation as conceived
in the latter way rests not simply on the purported memories of
the earlier life or lives, but on the allegation that some of the facts
seemingly remembered have been subsequently verified but could
not possibly have been learned in a normal manner by the per¬
son who has “memories” of them.

1. The rebirth of Katsugoro. This case is cited by Lafcadio
Hearn in Chapter X of his Gleanings in Buddha Fields. 1 He
states at the outset that what he is presenting “is only the trans¬
lation of an old Japanese document—or rather series of docu-

'Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1897.

242

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

ments—very much signed and sealed, and dating back to the early
part of the present [i.e., the 19th] century/' The documents were
in the library of Count Sasaki in Tokyo. A copy of them was
made for Hearn, who made the translation. Reduced to essen¬
tials, the facts related in the documents are as follows:

Katsugoro was a Japanese boy, born on the 10th day of the
10th month of 1815, son of Genzo, a farmer living in the village
of Nakano Mura, and his wife Sei. One day, at about the age of
seven, Katsugoro, while playing with his elder sister Fusa, asked
her where she came from before her present birth. She thought
the question foolish and asked him whether he could remember
things that happened before he was born. He answered that he
could; that he used to be the son of a man called Kyubei and his
wife Shidzu, who lived in Hodokubo; and that his name was then
Tozo. When later questioned by his grandmother, he said that
until he was four years old he could remember everything, but
had since forgotten a good deal; but he added that when he had
been five years old Kyubei had died, and that a man named
Hanshiro had then taken Kyubei’s place in the household; that
he himself had died of smallpox at the age of six, when his body
was put in a jar and buried on a hill; that some old man then
took him away and after a time brought him to Genzo’s house,
saying “Now you must be reborn, for it is three years since you
died. You are to be reborn in this house." After entering the
house, he stayed for three days in the kitchen; and he concluded:

“Then I entered mother's honorable womb.I remember

that I was born without any pain at all."

After relating all this, Katsugoro asked to be taken to Hodo-
kudo to visit the tomb of his former father, Kyubei. His grand¬
mother Tsuya took him there and when they reached Hodokubo,
he hurried ahead and, when he reached a certain dwelling, cried
“This is the house" and ran in. His grandmother followed and,
on inquiry, was told that the owner of the house was called
Hanshiro; his wife, Shidzu; that she had had a son, Tozo, who
had died thirteen years before at the age of six, his father having
been Kyubei. Katsugoro, who was looking about during the con¬
versation, pointed to a tobacco shop across the road, and to a tree,
saying that they used not to be there. This was true, and con-

OSTENSIBLE MEMORIES OF EARLIER LIVES

243

vinced Hanshiro and his wife that Katsugoro had bem Tozo, who
had been bom in 1805, and had died in 1810. (The year of birth
of a Japanese child, Hearn states in a footnote, is counted as one
year of his age.)

Evidently, Katsugoro’s experience, as testified to in the af¬
fidavits translated by Hearn and summarized above, is radically
different from that of Lurancy Vennum in the Watseka Wonder
case. Nothing of the nature of obsession or possession appears
in his case. His Katsugoro personality is at no time displaced or
interfered with by that of Tozo, any more than is the personality
of an adult “possessed” by the very different personality that was
his in childhood, but which he remembers. The account presents
Katsugoro as a normal boy, whose memories simply reached
farther back than the time of his birth. Assuming the objective
facts to have been as related in the affidavits translated b> Hearn,
the only explanation of them to suggest itself as alternative to
reincarnation is that of paranormal retrocognition, by Katsugoro,
of the various events and surroundings of the short life Tozo lived
in another village some years before Katsugoro’s birth, plus un¬
conscious imaginative self-identification by Katsugoro with the
retrocognized Tozo personality. This kind of explanation would
require us to postulate in Katsugoro a capacity for retrocognitive
clairvoyance far exceeding in scope any for the reality of which
experimental evidence exists. And such postulation, if made at
all, would undermine the empirical evidence not only for rein¬
carnation, but equally of course for discarnate survival of the
personality after death.

2. The rebirth of Alexandrina Samona. The next case is
the well-attested one of the rebirth of Alexandrina Samona, which
is peculiar in that, according to the accounts of the affair, it in¬
volved not only like that of Katsugoro memories of an earlier
incarnation, but also and prominently the announcement by the
girl’s discarnate spirit that she was about to be reborn.

The facts were recorded at the time in the Italian periodical
Filosofia della Scienza, and discussed subsequently there and in
the French Journal du Magnetisme. The articles—the Italian
ones, translated into French—and the attestations of the several

244

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

persons who had first-hand knowledge of the facts, are reproduced
in extenso together with photographs of the two girls, and dis¬
cussed, in Dr. Charles Lancelin’s book, La Vie Posthume 2

Alexandrina, aged five years, died in Palermo, Sicily, on
March 15, 1910. She was the daughter of Dr. Carmelo Samona
and his wife Adela. He recorded the facts and communicated
them to the editor of the Italian Journal mentioned above. Three
days after Alexandria's death, her mother dreamed that the
child appeared to her and said: “Mother, do not cry any more.
I have not left you; I have only gone a little away. Look: I
shall become little, like this”—showing her the likeness of a com¬
plete little embryo. Then she added: “You are therefore going
to have to begin to suffer again on account of me.” Three days
later, the same dream occurred again.

A friend suggested to Mme. Samona that this meant Alex¬
andrina would reincarnate in a baby she would have. The
mother, however, disbelieved this—the more so because she had
had an operation which it was thought would make it impossible
for her to have any more children.

Some days later, at a moment when Mme. Samona was ex¬
pressing bitterest grief to her husband over the loss of Alexan¬
drina, three inexplicable sharp knocks were heard. The two of
them then decided to hold family seances in the hope of obtain¬
ing typtological communications from discarnate spirits. From
the very first seance, two purported such spirits manifested them¬
selves: one, that of Alexandrina, and the other, that of an aunt
of hers who had died years before. In this manner, Alexan¬
dria's spirit testified that it was she herself who had appeared to
her mother in the dream and who had later caused the three loud
knocks; and she added that she would be reborn to her mother
before Christmas, and that she would come with a twin sister.
In the subsequent seances, she insisted again and again that this
prediction be communicated to various relatives and friends of
the family.

2 Pub. Henri Durville, Paris, no date (about 1920) pp. 309-363. See also the
briefer accounts of the case in Ralph Shirley’s The Problem of Rebirth, Occult
Book Society London, no date. Ch. V; and A. de Rochas’ Les Vies Successives,
Chacomac, Paris 1911, pp. 338-45.

OSTENSIBLE MEMORIES OF EARLIER LIVES

245

On November 22, 1910, Mme. Samona gave birth to twin
daughters. One of them closely resembled Alexandria, and was
so named. The other was of a markedly different physical type
and eventually proved to have a very different disposition—alert,
active, restless and gregarious—whereas Alexandrina II, like Alex¬
andria I, was calm, neat, and content to play by herself. She
had, like her namesake, hyperaemia of the left eye, seborrhea of
the right ear, and noticeable facial asymmetry’; and, also like her.
was left-handed and enjoyed playing endlessly at folding, tidying,
and arranging such clothing or linen as were at hand. She in¬
sisted, like Alexandrina I, that her hands should be always clean,
and she shared the first Alexandria's invincible repugnance to
cheese.

When, at the age of ten, the twins were told of a projected
excursion to Monreale where they had never been, Alexandrina
asserted that her mother, in the company of ‘a lady who had
horns,” had taken her to Monreale before. She described ’he
large statue on the roof of the church there and said they had met
with some little red priests in the town. Then Mme. Samona
recalled that, some months before the death of the first Alexan¬
drina, she had gone to Monreale with the child and with a lady
who had disfiguring wens (“horns”) on her forehead, and that
they had seen a group of young Greek priests with blue robes
ornamented with red.

Attestations were obtained by Dr. Samona from several ot
the persons who were personally acquainted with the facts—in
particular, from his own sister; from his wife’s uncle; from an
Evangelical Pastor to whom Dr. Samona had related the predic¬
tion of the rebirth before it was fulfilled; and from a lady to
whom, in March 1910, Mme. Samona had described the dream,
and, in June, the seances announcing twins.

The comments relevant to this case are essentially the same
as those made on the preceding one, and therefore need not be
repeated.

3. The case of Shanti Devi. In 1936, a pamphlet was
printed by the Baluja Press in Delhi, India, setting forth the re¬
sults of an inquiry into the case of Shanti Devi by Lala Desh-

246

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

bandhu Gupta (Managing Director of the Daily Tej,) Pandit
Neki Ram Sharma (a leader in the Nationalist movement,) and
Mr. Tara Chand Mathur (an Advocate.) The chief facts re¬
corded in their statements are as follows.

They concern a girl, Kumari Shanti Devi, born October 12,
1926 in Delhi, daughter of B. Rang Bahadur Mathur. From the
age of about four, she began to speak of a former life of hers in
Muttra—a town about 100 miles from Delhi—saying that she was
then a Choban by caste, that her husband was a cloth merchant,
that her house was yellow, etc. Later, she told a grand-uncle of
hers, Mr. Bishan Chand, that her husband’s name in her previous
life had been Pt. Kedar Nath Chaubey. The uncle mentioned
this to Mr. Lala Kishan Chand, M.A., a retired Principal, who
asked to meet the girl. She then gave him the address of “Kedar
Nath,’’ to whom he wrote. To his surprise, it turned out that
Kedar Nath Chaubey actually existed; and, in his reply to the
letter, he confirmed various of the details Shanti Devi had given
and suggested that a relative of his in Delhi, Pt. Kanji Mai, in¬
terview the girl. When he came to see her, she recognized him as
a cousin of her former husband and gave convincing replies to
questions of his concerning intimate details.

Pt. Kedar Nath Chaubey then, on November 13, 1935, came
to Delhi with his present wife and his ten year old son by his
former wife. Shanti Devi recognized Kedar Nath and was greatly
moved, answering convincingly various questions asked by him
about private matters of her former life as his wife, and mention¬
ing that she had buried Rs. 150. in a certain room of her house in
Muttra. After they left, she kept asking to be taken to Muttra,
describing various features of the town. On November 24, 1935,
she and her parents, and the three inquirers who author the
pamphlet, went to Muttra. On the railway platform an elderly
man in the group of people there paused for a moment in front
of her, and she recognized him, saying that he was her “Jeth,”
i.e., the elder brother of her former husband.

The party then took a carriage, whose driver was instructed
to follow whatever route the girl told him. She mentioned that
the road to the station had not been asphalted when she lived
in Muttra, and she pointed out various buildings which had not

OSTENSIBLE MEMORIES OF EARLIER LIVES

247

existed then. She led the party to the lane in which was a house
she had formerly occupied. In the lane, she met and recognized
an old Brahmin, whom she correctly identified as her father-in-
law. She identified the old house, now rented to strangers. Two
gentlemen of Muttra, who then joined the party, asked her where
the ' Jai-Zarur” of the house was—a local expression which the
party from Delhi did not understand. She, however, understood
it and pointed out the privy which, in Muttra, that term is used
to designate.

After leaving the old house, and as she led the way to the
newer one still occupied by Chaubey Kedar Nath, she recogni/ d
her former brother now twenty-five years old, and her uncle in¬
law. At the house, she was asked to point out the well she had
mentioned in Delhi. There is now no well in the courtyard there,
but she pointed out the place where it had been. Kedar Nath
then lifted the stone with which it had since been covered She
then led the way to the room she said she had formerly occupied,
where she had buried the money. She pointed to the spot, which
was then dug up, and, about a foot down, a receptacle for keep¬
ing valuables was found, but no money was in it. Kedar Nath
Chaubey later disclosed that he had removed it after the death
of his first wife, Lugdi, at the age of 23, on October 4, 1925
following the birth of her son on September 25 Later, Shanti
Devi recognized her former father and mother in a crowd of over
fifty persons.

The pamphlet reproduces also the confirmatory testimony
of Kedar Nath’s cousin in Delhi, Choubey Kenji Mai, including a
statement of the questions he asked Shanti Devi when he inter¬
viewed her, and of her replies.

A number of Indian cases, similar in essentials to those of
Shanti Devi and of Katsugoro, are described and the relevant at¬
testations of witnesses quoted, in a booklet, Reincarnation , Veri¬
fied Cases of Rebirth after Death , by Kr. Kekai Nandan Sahay,
B.A., LL.B., Vakil High Court, Bareilly, India, no date (about
1927). 3

•For a photostatic copy of this now rare booklet, the present writer is indebted
to the kindness of Dr. Ian Stevenson, of the University of Virginia Medical School.

248

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

4. The “Rosemary” case. Another case, and one worth cit¬
ing here at some length, is the “Rosemary” case. It is of interest
for various reasons, but in this chapter in particular because the
incarnation to which the purported memories would refer is not,
as in the three described above, one which would have terminated
only a few years before the beginning of the present life of the
person concerned, but instead would date back some 5300 years.
The case is reported by Dr. Frederic H. Wood in several books,
the essential facts being as follows. 4

Shortly after the death of his brother in 1912, Dr. Wood’s in¬
vestigations of psychic phenomena convinced him that survival of
the human personality after death is a fact. Eventually, as a
result of a common interest in music, he became acquainted with
the girl referred to in his books by the pseudonym, “Rosemary.”
Late in 1927, she spontaneously began to write automatically. She
viewed this development with repugnance and distrust and, know¬
ing as she did of Dr. Wood’s interest—which she had not shared
—in psychic phenomena, she turned to him for light on the mat¬
ter (ATC 19, 20).

Her automatic scripts purported to emanate from the sur¬
viving spirit of a Quaker girl of Liverpool, who gave her name
as Muriel. At a sitting in Oct. 1928, Muriel brought a new
“spirit guide” to take her place, whom she introduced as “the
Lady Nona” and described as “an Egyptian lady of long ago.”
Nona, in the course of the many sittings which followed, stated
that she had been a Babylonian princess who had come to Egypt
as consort of the Pharaoh Amenhotep III ( ca . 1410-1375BC.);
that is, some 3300 years ago.

Dr. Wood mentions that, on June 28, 1930, he had, remain¬
ing incognito, a seance with a London medium, Mrs. Mason,
whose spirit guide, Maisie, described to him both Rosemary and
Nona, saying that the latter gave the name of “Ona, Mona, or
Nona.” The description of her which Maisie gave agreed with
that previously given by a “spirit guide” other than Nona, which

4 After Thirty Centuries, Rider & Co. London, 1935; Ancient Egypt Speaks, (in
collaboration with A. J. Howard Hulme) Rider, London, 1937; This Egyptian
Miracle, McKay Co. Philadelphia, 1940; 2nd. ed. revised, J. M. Watkins, London,
1955 (Titles abbreviated respectively ATC, AES, TEM.)

OSTENSIBLE MEMORIES OF EARLIER LIVES

249

occasionally manifested through Rosemary. Maisie also stated
that Rosemary had been with Nona in Egypt, and that Nona s
name there had been Telika.

On July 3, 1930, Nona confirmed both of these assertions
through Rosemary’s automatic writing. On December 5, 1931,
Nona introduced the word “Ventiu,” and later (June 6, 1935)
explained that her name had been Telika-Ventiu, which means
“The wise woman of an Asiatic race;” “Telika’ having been her
Babylonian name, and “Ventiu” a name given by the Egyptians
to the Asiatic races generally. Dr. Wood surmises that she had
first given the pseudonym “Nona” because at that time she wished
to be “nameless”; and this because in those early days of her
communications she could not be sure that her real name would
come through correctly (TEM p. 46).

Dr. Wood mentions that a clay tablet found at Tell el-
Amarna in 1887 is generally accepted as evidence that Amenhotep
III had married a Babylonian princess. 5 Her name, however, ap¬
pears nowhere; so that, should a papyrus eventually be found
giving it as Telika Ventiu, this would be strongly confirmatory
evidence. Nona, when she added the “Ventiu” insisted that it
was or would be important as evidence (TEM 19-51 AES 37).

Nona states that she expresses herself by impressing her
thoughts on Rosemary’s mind, which then spontaneously formu¬
lates them in English either orally or in writing. But Nona, in
the course of the many years’ sittings, has given out orally some
5000 phrases and short sentences in old Egyptian language. In
the case of these, Rosemary states that she “hears” the Egyptian
words clairaudientlv and repeats them aloud—this having first
occurred on August 18, 1931 (TEM 171). As she utters them, Dr.
Wood records them phonetically as well as he can in terms of the
English alphabet. It is unfortunate that he was not then familiar
with, and therefore did not use, the more adequate alphabet of
the International Phonetic Association; but his recording was any¬
way good enough to enable an Egyptologist, Mr. Hulme, to iden¬
tify with but a correction here and there, and to translate the

B Dr. Wood states in a letter that his authority for this was the late Alan
Shorter Assistant Keeper of the Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum

250

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

first eight hundred of these thousands of Egyptian utterances,
which constitute coherent communications manifesting purpose,
intelligence, and responsiveness to the conversational situation
of the moment. Dr. Wood, in order to qualify himself to meet
certain criticisms by Prof. Battiscombe Gunn of Oxford Univer¬
sity, then (1937) took up the study of scholastic Egyptian and
eventually became able to translate himself the word sounds,
which previously he could only record without understanding
them.

In the course of the many years of sittings with Dr. Wood,
Rosemary has developed ostensible memories, extensive and de¬
tailed, of a life of hers in Egypt as “Vola,” a Syrian girl brought
captive to Egypt, whom Nona befriended (AES Chs. VIII, IX.).

So much being now clear about the ostensible situation and
process of communication in the Rosemary case, attention must
next be directed to the fact in it which is of central interest in
connection with the topic of the present chapter. That fact is
Nona’s assertion that Rosemary was with her in Egypt, her name
then having been Vola; so that Rosemary would be a reincarna¬
tion of Vola. Nona states further—although this is not essential
to the point—that Vola was the daughter of a Syrian king killed
in battle with the Egyptians; that she was brought to Egypt as a
captive and given to Nona who liked and adopted her, and had
her appointed a temple maiden in the temple of Amen Ra; and
that the enemies of Amenhotep III, who were plotting to wrest
the power from him and were afraid of Nona’s influence on him,
contrived an accident in which she and Vola drowned together.

In this complex affair the most arresting fact, which has to be
somehow explained, is the utterance by Rosemary’s lips of those
thousands of phrases in a language of which she normally knows
nothing, but concerning which Mr. Hulme, an Egyptologist,
states that, in the eight hundred of them he had examined, the
grammar and the consonants substantially and consistently con¬
formed to what Egyptologists know today of the ancient Egyptian
language.

The phrases as uttered supply vowel sounds, which are other¬
wise still unknown since the hieroglyphs represent only the con-

OSTENSIBLE MEMORIES OF EARLIER LIVES

251

sonants. 0 There is today no way of either proving or disproving
that these vowel sounds are really those of the ancient speech,
although a presumption in favor of it arises from the consistency
of their use throughout those thousands of phrases, and from the
substantial correctness of the xenoglossy as regards grammar and
consonants. But in any case, the Rosemary affair remains the
most puzzling and yet the best attested instance of xenoglossy on
record.

The present chapter, however, is concerned not with xeno¬
glossy as such, but with verifications of ostensible memories of
earlier lives. The questions relevant to this in the Rosemary case
are therefore two. The first is whether Rosemary’s ostensible
memories of an earlier life in Egypt as Vola have been verified
and are truly memories. And the second is whether the xeno
glossy is explicable only, or most plausibly, on the supposition
that Rosemary is a reincarnation of a girl, Vola. wfn supposedly
lived in Egypt 3300 years ago.

The first question subdivides into: (a) whether the osten
sible memories have been found to correspond to objective facts
—as were the ostensible memories of Katsugoro, ot Alexandnna,
and of Shanti Devi; and if so, (b) whether there are sufficient
reasons to believe that Rosemary cannot have come to know or
guess those objective facts in some normal manner but have for¬
gotten having done so.

As regards (a), a great deal of the detail supplied is not
claimed to have been verified or to be verifiable, and hence, al¬
though dramatically impressive, is not evidence at all. This
would apply for example, to a large part of the ostensible memory
of sights seen on the market place at Thebes (AES 128); for in¬
stance, that of “a man with some dear little black and white
baby goats to sell.** Indeed, another of the putatively remem¬
bered sights there—that of camels with tents on their backs in
which people travelled—constitutes a difficulty in the way of the
memory hypothesis rather than a support of it. For, on the one
hand, if scholars are right in maintaining that domesticated cam¬
els (as distinguished from camels as food animals) were not used

•Two exceptions to this are claimed by Dr. Wood; see TEM iat. ed. p. 93.
2nd. p. 95.

252

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

in Egypt prior to the Persian conquest in 525 B.C., 7 then that sight
of domesticated camels in the market place at Thebes during the
reign of Amenhotep III would be anachronistic by some 900
years. And if, on the other hand, another statement by Rosemary,
in rebuttal of the opinion of the scholars on this point, is ac¬
cepted as correct, then her memory of camels being used as con¬
veyances for persons in Thebes at that time must be incorrect,
since her rebutting statement is that although there were camels
in Egypt, “the Egyptians. . . .would not use them in their cities"
because of their unpleasant habits and smells, but used them in
the desert (TEM 177, italics mine).

Another ostensible memory—recorded on Oct. 7, 1932—con¬
tains descriptions of buildings, of steps, of a river in the distance,
of boats, and of a temple with carved figures in front. Dr. Wood
takes this to refer to Karnak, and—relevantly to sub-question (b)
—states that, at the time that memory was recorded, “the normal
Rosemary had taken no special interest either in Thebes or Kar¬
nak. She had always refused to discuss or read about them” (AES
129). On an earlier page of AES, however, he described Rose¬
mary as “a well-educated girl” (p. 25); and, as such, it is un¬
likely that she had never seen any of the numerous pictures or
photographs of Egypt in history books and magazines.

Relevantly to sub-question (a), Dr. Wood further states that
neither he nor Rosemary have visited Egypt, but intimates that
the content of her memories is consistent with what he subse¬
quently found in guide books and in a certain book of photo¬
graphs. This, of course, is much less of a verification than was
obtained in the three cases described in the earlier sections of this
chapter. And, concerning the memories relating to Vola as a
maiden serving in the Temple, which have to do with music and
ritual and are of course very interesting in themselves, no ob¬
jective verifications are offered.

It would seem, then, that much the larger part or perhaps
all of the ostensible memories either lack clear-cut objective veri-

Their opinion apparently being based on the fact that camels are not men¬
tioned in the hieroglyphic records until Persian times.

OSTENSIBLE MEMORIES OF EARLIER LIVES

253

fication, or are susceptible of explanation otherwise than as genu
ine memories of an earlier life in Egypt.

Let us turn next to the second main quesrion and ask what
various explanations of the xenoglossy, of its vast extent, and of
its substantial correctness of grammar and consonants, are con¬
ceivable; how plausible or the reverse each of them is; and what,
if anything, the most plausible imply as to whether Rosemary
is a reincarnation of Vola.

(1) What may be called the standard explanation of xeno¬
glossy is that the person manifesting the phenomenon did at one
time associate with someone who was in the habit of reciting
aloud words and sentences in the foreign tongue concerned; that
these sounds, although not understood by the hearer, registered
on her subconscious mind as they would on the tape of a recorder;
and that later, under the circumstances of the sitting, she repro¬
duces some of them automatically. This explanation, mutatis
mutandis, would apply to the xenography of the Argentine me¬
dium, Sra. Adela Alberteili, as reported b\ Sr. Jose Martin to the
present writer in correspondence, and through articles in the
periodical, La Conciencia.

Such an explanation, however, does not apply to the case of
Rosemary, both because she never associated with or knew any
scholar addicted to such recitations, and because the Egyptian
phrases uttered by Rosemary—whether as being Nona’s or Vola’s—
are not random ones but are shaped by the purpose of conveying
specific information, and in many cases directly relate to ques¬
tions or incidents occurring at the moment (TEM Chs. IX, X,
XI. Summary, p. 179).

(2) Concerning the hypothesis that ail such correct facts
about Egypt as Rosemary—whether as Nona or as Vola-rclates,
are obtained by her through present exercise of retrccognitive
clairvoyance, all that need be said is that, even if this should be
regarded as plausible so far as knowledge of those facts goes, it
would anyway altogether fail to account for the conversational
appositeness and responsiveness of the xenoglossy.

(3) A third possible explanation is that which Spiritualists
would regard as the obvious one; namely, that Nona is indeed
the surviving spirit of Telika, which uses Rosemary as medium.

254

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

This, however, would not entail that Rosemary is a rein¬
carnation of Vola, but would leave the matter open. For the
mere fact that something is asserted by a discarnate spirit does
not automatically guarantee that it is a fact not a mere opinion.
That is, the question how Nona knows that Rosemary is a rein¬
carnation of a girl whom she knew in Egypt 3300 years ago is just
as legitimate but unanswered as would be the question how 1
know, if I were to assert that the eighteen year old daughter of a
friend of mine is a reincarnation of a woman I knew in New York
55 years ago, who died shortly thereafter. That Nona is dis¬
carnate at the time she makes the assertion, whereas I would be
incarnate at the time I made mine, is irrelevant unless one as¬
sumes—gratuitously in the absence of independent evidence—that
an ad hoc cognitive capacity is automatically conferred on a per¬
son’s spirit by the mere fact of his body’s dying.

Anyway, the hypothesis that Nona is the surviving spirit of
Telika leaves with us the problem of accounting for such of Rose¬
mary’s ostensible memories of herself as Vola as perhaps corre¬
spond to objective facts known. That she is a reincarnation of
Vola would be a possible explanation of this; but another, which
Spiritualists generally would probably regard as more plausible,
would be that the alleged memories are dramatic imaginations
subconsciously constructed by Rosemary partly out of her years of
acquaintance with the contents of her automatic speech and writ¬
ing, partly out of what any well-educated person knows about
Egypt, and partly out of telepathic borrowing from Nona’s mind
of appropriate items of information or of Egyptian words which
the conversational situation at particular times calls for.

(4) Still another possibility would be that Nona is a disso¬
ciated part of Rosemary’s personality. The fact Dr. Wood stresses
(AES 103-5), that the Nona personality is of a type radically dif¬
ferent from that of Rosemary, does not invalidate this hypothesis;
for such marked difference is almost a normal feature of cases
of dissociated personality. In the Beauchamp case reported by
Dr. Morton Prince, for example, the contrast was sharp between
the “Sally” personality and that of Miss Beauchamp; and so was
that between the Eve Black and Eve White personalities in the

OSTENSIBLE MEMORIES OF EARLIER LIVES

255

recent case of The Three Faces of Eve, described by Drs. Thigpen
and Cleckley. 8

But if Nona is a dissociated part of the personality of Rose¬
mary, the xenoglossy remains to be accounted for; and the only
supposition in sight which would seem capable of doing so is that
of Rosemary’s being a reincarnation of some person who lived in
Egypt in ancient times, and of whom Nona, or Vela, or both were
perhaps even then dissociations.

(5) Finally, of course, there is the possibility that the facts
of the case really are just what they purport to be: That Nona
is the spirit of Telika surviving discarnate; that Rosemarv is a
reincarnation of Vola; and that her ostensible Vola memories are
—like the ordinary memories of all of us—in the main veridical
though occasionally erroneous. This explanation is bound to ap¬
pear the most likely to Dr. Wood and to Rosemary for the same
reason which, when in the theater we watch a well-acted, vividly
dramatic presentation of a scene in a play, makes us forget for
the time being that it is a play. Dramatic verisimilitude tends
to generate belief, and can make fiction more credible than truth.
Yet the strange things which this pisteogenic power of dramatic
verisimilitude may make credible are not therefore necessarily
fiction. Even at the play, the fact may turn out to be that the
villain’s sword, by a fluke, really does pierce the hero’s chest, that
the latter is really dying, and that the play is after all not alto¬
gether a play!

What now, in the light of the whole preceding discussion,
can we conclude as to the evidentiality of the Rosemary case for
reincarnation? The answer would seem to be that, granting sub¬
stantial accuracy to the identification and translation of anyway
most of the thousands of Egyptian phrases of the Nona and the
Vola personalities, then the fact that those phrases were uttered
by Rosemary’s vocal organs is explicable at all only on the as¬
sumption either that Nona is the surviving spirit of an Egyptian
of an ancient period who now uses Rosemary as medium for ex¬
pression, or that Rosemary is the reincarnation of the spirit of

•Pub. Seeker & Warburg. London, 1957. And, the Beauchamp case, The Dis¬
sociation of a Personality, New York, Longmans Green, 1906.

256

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

such a person, or both. But, in the absence of clear-cut verifica¬
tions of the ostensible Vola memories by objective facts that Rose¬
mary certainly could not have at some time learned or inferred
in a normal manner, the account we have of the case does not
provide strong evidence that Rosemary is a reincarnation of Vola,
but only suggests and permits the supposition of it. The xeno-
glossy, however, does provide strong evidence that the capacity
once possessed by some person to converse extensively, purpose¬
fully, intelligently, and intelligibly in the Egyptian language of
three thousand years ago, or anyway in a language closely re¬
lated to it, has survived by many centuries the death of that per¬
son’s body. 9

•A considerable number of other cases of purported memories of anterior in¬
carnations are cited and critically examined by Dr. Ian Stevenson in a paper
which, at the date of the present writing, has not yet been published, but is sched¬
uled to appear in two parts in the April and the June 1960 issues of the Journal
of the American Society for Psychical Research.

Chapter XXIV

REGRESSIONS TO THE P\ST
THROUGH HYPNOSIS

A few of the available cases of spontaneous apparent memory
of an earlier life were cited in the preceding chapter. But various
attempts also have been made to regress by appropriate com
mands the consciousness of a hypnotized subject to a time earlier
than the birth or conception of his body. We shall now consider
some of them.

1. An experiment in New York in 1906. In February 19U6,
in New York, the writer was present at two experiments in re
gression to the past through hypnosis. The subjec t was a young
woman whose name he does not now remember, and he long
ago has lost touch with the young physician, Dr Morris Stark,
who conducted the experiments. But the writer recorded in shoi t
hand at the time the whole of both experiments and still has
the typescript of his notes. The girl was familiar with the idea
of reincarnation and understood that the experiment was to be
an attempt to regress her consciousness to a time anterior to that
of the birth or conception of her body. Besides the two sessions
the writer recorded, there had been another at which he had not
been present, but the seeming success of which had suggested the
desirability of a shorthand record. The name, "Zoe,” mentioned
in the session of Feb. 25, had been obtained at that earlier ses¬
sion. The difference between the tone and the manner of the
Zoe personality and those of either the Roman or the Egyptian
personality was most impressive.

In the record of the two sessions there are hardly any items
that would lend themselves to verification by objective facts and
that yet could not plausibly be supposed to have been learned
by the subject in a normal manner at some time and subse-

267

258

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

quently forgotten. Hence such correspondence as may obtain
between the statements of the entranced subject and historical
facts is hardly evidence of reincarnation or even of paranormal
cognition. And the dramatic form and the contents of the sub¬
ject’s statements can most economically be credited to the myth-
opoeic faculty—stimulated on that occasion by the commands
given under hypnosis—which at other times normally gives birth
to novels and other works of fiction. The most economical inter¬
pretation, of course, is not necessarily the correct one; but, when
no item of evidence rules it out, it is methodologically the safest.
Accordingly, the record of those two sessions—which antedates
not only the recent “Bridey Murphy” experiment but also the
publication (in 1911) of De Rochas’ Les Vies Successives in which
he relates his own experiments in regression through hypnosis—
is presented here essentially as an interesting concrete sample of
the sort of material sometimes obtainable under deep hypnosis
when the subject is instructed to go back in time to a life anterior
to his present one.

The notes of those two sessions are as follows:

Q. Tell us what you see; where are you now?

A. It is very warm. I am walking out somewhere, the sun
is hot, I don’t know where I am. It is all growing dark.

Q. The picture will clear up in a minute.

A. The sky is very blue and the sun is very warm, it shines
through my sleep. I am walking along the water. The water is
very blue and the ships are in the water. I don’t know what I
am doing here.

Q. What is your name?

A. My name, I don’t know. It is very beautiful, not a cloud
in the air, there are beautiful trees and plants and a great many
people.

Q. How are they dressed?

A. They wear loose, beautiful gowns, not like others I have
seen. Their arms are bare, they are talking.

Q. What language?.

A. Who are you?

Q. I am a friend of yours.

THE PAST THROUGH HYPNOSIS

259

A. The city is on hills, it hurts my eyes. I live over there.
It is getting so warm. Had I not better go home? It is by the
water.

Q. What is the name of the water?

A . It is some bay, 1 don't know the name. The city is in the
distance. It might be a river, but I think it is too large for a river.
There is a large building here, all open. There are a great many
flowers and inside the floors are marble in blocks, some of them
are of different colors.

Q. What year?

A. I don’t know, I shall have to go and ask some one. There
are little statues around. There are wings to the building, people
sitting there are looking over the water. Steps lead from the
wings to the ground. Back of the building there is some more
water. There is a little bridge and you pass over the bridge to
go home. It is an arch. I think there must he something very
beautiful here; so many of the people have flowers in their hair
It is some feast. They are playing games. One side there is a
sandy court. Men are running and jumping over a barrier. The
others are looking and cheering. No women out there. I don’t
find any one I know.

Q. How are you dressed?

A. Just like the others. I have a white robe of some kind,
it is clasped on the arm by a gold clasp, a bracelet. My hair is
tied up some way. Why did you not speak to me about that be
fore? My hair is all puffed up some way behind. My arms are
bare.

Q. What sort of material is your dress made of?

A. It is soft wool of some kind. It looks a little bit coarse,

but is very soft.It is not a feast, just a place where people

come for pleasure. The men are doing something else now, jump¬
ing and running; they take off their robe when they run.

Q. Who is the emperor, what is his name?

A . I don’t believe I know.

Q. Ask some one.

A. I shall see if I can find some one in the building. Is it
not curious I don’t know?

Q. What is your father’s name?

260

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

A. He is dead.

Q. What was his name when he lived?

A. It sounds like a silly name, I only know one of his names,
Prato, that was the name we called him in the house.

Q. How long has he been dead?

A . About 7 years.

Q. How old are you now?

A. Why, I think I am about 29, I must be because I live
in the house over there, and it is my own house.

Q. Are you married?

A. Yes.

Q. What is your husband’s name?

A. I will think of it in a minute. They are waiting for me
over the bridge. There is a man in the house; he is one of the
slaves, I should not speak to him.

Q. What sort of a looking man is he?

A. An ordinary looking man from the mountains, they
bring a great many. My husband brings several home every year.

Q. Is he black or white?

A. Oh, white.

Q. What is the name of the country from which he comes?

A. I don’t know. It is east somewhere from here. He does
not come from the west. Of course he is darker than we are. The
east, that is where the war is. My husband is a general, he is
away from home.

Q. Do you know your husband’s name now?

A. I can’t think of his name.

Q. What is the reason you don’t remember things?

A .You stay with me won’t you? Some time you

seem to go away from me and then all grows dark.

Q. Who am I.

A. I don’t know, just a voice. They are waiting for me, my
litter is over the bridge. Don’t you think it is beautiful on the
bridge? It seems to be a road, a beautiful highway. Oh, I know
the reason I could not tell you the emperor’s name, we don't
have one, we have ten.

Q. What are they called? Consuls?

A. They do not call them by that name. The people are

THE PAST THROUGH HYPNOSIS

261

very dissatisfied. Of course that is a secret, you must not tell
that, you are just a voice. They are talking of a war against die
Government. There is one of the most wicked ones, his name
is Appius, there is a great deal of talk about his crimes, he does
as he pleases. He overrides die authority of the generals over
the army.

Q. Do you know who Christ was?

A. No, who was he?

Q. What is your religion?

A. We have many Gods.

Q. Have you temples or churches?

A. Each God has a temple, shrines in the houses. We have
household Gods. The road is paved up, then we go into the city;
there are four slaves. I like black slaves. We go through the
streets. You are coming with me are you not? I know all the
streets, there are shops and temples and houses. We go through
the principal part of the city and come to some beautiful houses.
Many of my friends live there. I have one of these houses. Will
you come in? The house is very beautiful. You cannot go with
me now, because I am going up to my rooms, and you will have
to stay here.

Q. Where do you get the black slaves from?

A. From across the sea to the south, we pay more for them
than for the others.

Q. How much do you pay?

A. I never buy the slaves. I think my husband said he paid
for those who carry my litter 1000.

Q. 1000 what? What is the name of the money?

A. Sesterces. I am tired. I am going to have my hair dressed
My husband is away to the war, I have not thought of his name
yet.

Q. What day of the week is this?

A. About the 5th day.

Q. What is the name of that day?

A. I don’t know. I can’t tell, I have forgotten so many
things. That poet is coming in, Marcus, with his silly flowers in
his hair. He is coming to bore me now. I want to talk to you. He

262

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

comes afternoons and reads odes to me. He is harmless. I think
he is very lazy. I don’t care for his poetry.

Q. Getting suspicious of you, knowing the name of the
poet and not that of your husband.

A. He is away so much ... I am going to have my hair
dressed. Wait for me. (She shakes and moves her head) . . .
Here I am; I had to wait, I have so much hair; it is blue black, it
comes almost to my knees. The girls dress it.

Q. White girls?

A. Yes, I would not have those Nubians dress my hair. My
hair dresser is a very pretty girl. My husband bought her for me.
I like her very much.

Q. What is her name?

A. I think it is Ena. I have four girls; one has the care of my
jewels, another has my robes and Ena dresses my hair. She is the
only one that does not pull it. She puts the filets (?) in it. I think
four is a nice number. You can get on with four very comfortably.
Now that I am dressed, we will go out where the flowers are. We
will sit out there, there is a fountain. Everything is very pretty
I take so much pleasure sitting here, except when Marcus comes.
The sun is very warm, let us sit a little out of the sun. I have
never been ill.

Q. How long have you been married?

A. About five years. (A pillow is put behind her.) Why did
you not let one of the girls do that? It does not seem as though I
was married very much. I have no children. I have a very good
time in every way. Life is a very beautiful thing.

Q. Do you remember your husband’s name now?

A. I don’t seem to be very much interested in my husband.
I don’t want to ask any one my husband’s name.

Q. Ask Marcus whether he has ever written any ode to your
husband.

A. He says that he does not write odes to Flavius.

Q. Do you ever hear from him, do you get letters?

A. One of the soldiers comes, from Sextilius; that is my name
that is his name too. What do you care about names? . . . Just
look at him, look at him, look at his lovelorn facel Who takes
Marcus seriously?

THE PAST THROUGH HYPNOSIS

263

Q. What does your diet consist of? What do you have when
you arise in the morning?

A. We have fruit, pomegranates and honey and cakes of
barley. We eat fish. We have different meats. A great deal of
some kinds of fowls.

Q. What is the name of those fowls?

A. I don’t believe I know. At the feast we have, oh, sn many
things. Flavius never gives a feast; he does not like to attend. He
only goes because he must go. I love to go; there is music, flowers,
wine, fragrant wine, very sweet. They have grapes in this country
and the wines are sweet and very good. We have fowls of different
kinds. They serve them with all the plumage on. They put them
inside the skin after they are cooked. The table looks beautiful.
Flavius is much older than I am.

Q. What are these birds served on?

A. Gold and silver dishes of differeri workmanship .
One of the ten is Appius Claudius. The Government was not al¬
ways with these ten, formerly we had one ruler; now there are ten.

Q. How do the ten dress?

A. In purple.

Q. What do they carry?

A . They have a sign of their office, it is a short . . . with a
.... tip. Appius rides through the streets in his litter. He con¬
trols the others. You must not tell any one what I say, my
husband would be very angry.

Q. What is the name of your country? Italy?

A. They don’t call it that way, the name is something else
... I had better send Marcus home, he can go and sing odes to
some one else. Put the pillows around me. I will go to sleep; you
will not mind if I go to sleep? I am so tired. I don’t know why.
There are clouds; where are you . . . You have taken me some¬
where else. You are taking me across the water, we are going
south (she laughs) I did not know I could come so quickly. (She
looks sideways and laughs.)

Q. What is the matter?

A. I am not dressed well, that is why I laugh. You should
not be here.

Q. What is your name?

264

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

A . IamUla.

Q. Ula what?

A . I forget what name . . . Ula Desthenes. You should not
be in here. I should not talk to you, where are you?

Q. I am simply a voice.

A. No one is allowed there but we of the temple.

Q. What is the name of the temple?

A. I don’t know.

Q. What does it look like?

A. It is not white, it is a different color, red and blue and
different colors, and the main color is a sort of a yellowish. It is
higher than the other parts of the city. We never go outside. You
should not be here.

Q. How old are you?

A. Eighteen.

Q. What is your religion?

A. We worship our mother. She is the mother of everything,
everything in the world, the Great Mother. We attend to the
temple.

Q. Tell me your duties.

A. We must deck the altars with flowers, we serve at the
ceremonies.

Q. Describe the ceremonies.

A. There are priests who officiate at those ceremonies, but
we never see them at other times. They wear beautiful robes, in-
crusted with jewels. On the back is the sun in jewels. We all wear
a gold circlet on the head. My robe is white. The priests wear
circlets, but not like ours, more like the sun. I don’t know every¬
thing. The priests come here at the ceremonies and we help them,
and we have flowers and something that we burn. It must be
some kind of incense. There is chanting and the people are out¬
side, they cannot come where we are. They look on from the dis¬
tance at the ceremonies. While I have been here a long time, I
have not tended the temple long. My father and mother are dead.
I have always been here . . . We must never ask questions, we
are told.

Q. Who teaches?

A. One of the older ones, an old priestess.

THE PAST THROUGH HYPNOSIS

265

Q. What name is given to you, what are you called?

A. I don’t know, the other ones are called priestesses, but
we are not, we are just maidens, we serve.

Q. Are you married?

A. Oh no, never. How can you speak of such a thing. I am
afraid to speak of such a thing in the temple. They tell us that
we would incur the wrath of our Mother, we might die.

Q. What becomes of you when you die?

A. We go to the underworld, and we go through so many
places in the underworld! There seem to be dangers; it is not
pleasant, but we have to go there, everybody Then we are told
that we go somewhere else after the underworld.

Q. How long do you stay in the underworld?

A. There are two places, we don’t stay very long in the first
underworld, only so long that we are not [raid any more. There
seem to be seven grades of dangers that we must pass; it is more
like trials, something you must pass through. You go down to the
underworld, and then you are taken by some God who leads you.
If you pass through them all with brave courage in your heart
. . . You have something to take with you to help you, something
you are given, either a word you can repeat, or something, and if
you remember that, you can pass. When you reach the seventh
gate, according to the way you passed, you are very happy and you
dream in happiness, or else you are very miserable, it depends
upon the seven gates and how you passed.

Q. What do they give you when you die?

A . I know what it is, something to hang around your neck,
some sort of a charm and they make it in the temple, a word or
some words in a case, written in a little piece of parchment and
hung around the neck of the dead, and no one dies without that,
so that they may pass the gates of the underworld. There is a
name for the first underworld, it is Amenta.

Q. After you pass through the underworld and the other
place, what becomes of you?

A. You may come back. They tell me that one must be very
good or one comes back as a very evil person.

Q. Do you come back in the forms of animals?

A . I think they tell me one does if one is wicked.

266

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

Q. What animals are there?

A. There are cats. Some are painted in the temple. They
do not mean cats, it is some God. There are tall birds with long
red bills. They stand motionless all day in the reeds. I am not
so tired here.

Q. What do the buildings look like?

A. Flat, with soft colors. There are a great many people in
the streets. I can see them all from the windows here. I can see
the river.

Q. What is the name of the river? Is it Nile?

A. That sounds like it. It is a sacred river, a beautiful river.

Q. How long ago is this, what year?

A. I don’t know how to say what year.

Q. What day of the month?

A. I don’t know what you mean.

Q. How do you designate time?

A. Why, there are men who count time from the stars, but
I don’t understand about it; from the stars and the moon. It is
very warm.

Q. Have you change of seasons?

A. Summer all the year round. Are you not afraid they will
find you?

Q. They cannot see me. Is it not strange to you to hear a
voice?

A. Strange things happen in the temple, the gods speak, we
are forbidden to tell. They can make the dead speak.

Q. By what means?

A. They have a good deal of magic. I never see those things,
there are some secret ceremonies where the priests are and there is
that by which the dead can be made to speak, or they say so, I
don’t know.

Q. Do you believe it?

A. Yes, I have seen some very wonderful things. They bring
the dead to the temple, a dead king or some great person. There
is a place, not where our Mother is. This is a great place di¬
vided into a separate temple. The temple of our Mother is con
nected with the other by an underground passage. They bring
the dead man there and lay him so that he is very near the gods

THE PAST THROUGH HYPNOSIS

267

in the inner shrine. They lay him there by the gods, and in the
night they come, the priests, and they walk around in a circle and
sing something, a chant that it is forbidden to hear. One of the
older priestesses told me this, that is strange, something that no
man may hear. They draw a circle with a sacred wand; the temple
is very dark, there are no lights in it. They go inside the circle so
that those outside may not hurt them, the dead, or something
that might hurt them. Then they chant. I am told that upon the
dead man comes a flame, a tongue of flame, from the gods, and
then they may ask the dead man if he has a burden on his mind
to prevent him from passing on. This is only when people die
suddenly, when the people are not old but die suddenly in battle
before they have had time to say parting words. After this flame
comes, the dead man speaks, they say he does, and they remember
what he says, and after they have recorded it so tiiat they can give
his message, they say “be gone” and he goes They must remain
a long time in the circle, because those outside will hurt them.
The next day the dead man may be embalmed. Before that, he
cannot go, he would remain chained. That is why they have this
ceremony. This is never told outside the temple, those in the
street don’t know. It is a secret. Something dreadful would hap¬
pen; I don’t know of any secret ceremony, one of the priestesses
told me.There are big flat boats when the kings go out.

Q. What is the name of your King?

A . Why, we call him Ra. They are building his temple in
the desert over there, the slaves work there all the time. I am ver/
tired.

Q. How do the people travel?

A. They almost always walk; they wear different colored
robes, drapery. They don’t wear very much. They have carts in
the streets with bullocks. The soldiers ride horses.

Q. Do they have any locomotives?

A. They don’t have any locomotives (shakes her head)
what are those things? You seem to be always behind me ... .
Ra is the sun. Potas is a God of the underworld.

Q. How are you dressed?

A. I have a white robe, very rich. We have different robes,

268

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

jewels on our arms, anklets. We have something on our feet and
sometimes walk barefooted.

Q. Is your King’s name Rameses?

A. Yes, that is why I said Ra.

Q. Has he any other name?

A. There was a Rameses before this one, he has a great many
names, ceremonial names, I cannot remember now.

Q. Do you ever see the Mother?

A . (She motions yes)

Q. What is her name?

A. Isis . . . I am very tired . . . (She awakes)

FEBRUARY 25, 1906.

Q. Zoe, Zoe, how do you do? Good morning, how are you?

A. I can’t see, who called me by that name? It is long since
any one called me that, it was Zoe. Where do you come from?
You speak a dead tongue, . . . something ... it is confused.
Those were happy days in the streets. I have been called nothing
for so long.

Q. What country is this?

A. A warm country. Zoe, it is good to hear the name again.
The wife of Dedro.

Q. How old are you now?

A. That I forget. I am too old to be alive. Everything is
gone, nothing remains but sorrow and hunger; I have had a hard
life. Do you remember Metha, years ago, she used to tell me tales.
She was a good old crone. Did you know me when I was young?
Do you see my wrinkles? Oh, what a change (she shakes her
head). I was not bad to look at, was I? My eyes were bright, and
I laughed in the street. I was often hungry.

Q. How old were you when you were married?

A. I was very young. Dedro is dead, my children are all
gone; I had twelve children, all gone. An old woman sits alone
in the sun and thinks, thinks. It is very little profit.

Q. What religion do you follow?

A. Oh, there is a religion, but I know very little about it.
The lords govern this realm, the highest one represents the God

THE PAST THROUGH HYPNOSIS

269

. . . . You gave me something, you gave me a gold coin, the only
one I ever had.

Q. Was I alone?

A . No, you rode in some sort of a cart, and there were
horses, you drove through the streets. I kept it, I never spent it,
though many a day I went hungry, and then Dcdro came, and he
had something, some little saved, he had some business. I had
better take Dedro, so they said, so I married Dedro.

Q. Do you remember the marriage ceremony?

A. We have none, what do they care about us? He comes,
he takes us and that is all. He often beat me, yes. There is noth¬
ing to tell, just a hard, bitter life. ... It is very warm, the build¬
ings have flat roofs. Mountains way off. You can see the snow
in the distance. The plain stretches in sand for miles.

Q. What is the name of the city you live in?

A. It begins with S. I think I can tel) you in a few minutes.
It is like Saraban, but that is not it. Som great man built the
city, I don’t know his name.

Q. What is the color of the skin of the people?

A. Pale, no color, rather yellow, but clear. Their eyes are
set like mine, slantwise. Our hair is dark. My curls, that was
something unusual.

Q. Have you heard of Shinto? What is your god?

A. The god is the sun. We have a temple built up high in
the city, the city is built tier after tier. In the temple dwells rhc
Lord, and in the higher temple dwell the priests of the sun. There
are many other gods, but the sun is the Lord of all.

Q. What is his name?

A . The Sun God. We know nothing of the temple, they
rule the country with a rule of iron, they are oppressors.

Q. What becomes of you when you die?

A. We go to an underworld, we meet our ancestors. If we
have revered them, if we have fulfilled our duties, we are passed
through happily, if we have not, some fate overtakes us, some
punishment. If we fulfill our duties we go to some happy place
after the underworld, where we meet them again. I know nothing
more.

Q. Do you ever come back to this earth?

270

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

A. No, not that I know.

Q. What animals do you use?

A. The camels carry things. There are also little shaggy
horses. They don’t look like any horses . . . Who are you? Why
do you ask me this question?

Q. What is your age, 70, 80?

A. As old as that, 86 I think.

Q. Can you tell the names of some of your children?

A. There were eight girls and four boys. Two boys died.
Sina is the youngest, a girl; how hard it is to remember. And
Boro, he was my eldest.

Q. Go to sleep; clouds, back, back, back, back. The clouds
are going up, what do you see?

A. I don’t know where I am. It is dark. The sun is shining

now.

Q. What are you, a man or a woman?

(She looks herself over several times.)

A. Why of course, I am a woman.

Q. What do you see?

A. A room I am sitting in, on the floor.

Q. Are there any chairs around? Do you know what chairs

are?

A. Whatever they are, there are not any here. I am sitting
on a rug. There are cushions.

Q. How are you dressed?

(She looks herself over)

A. Why, I am not very much dressed. (She looks inside her
hand, at her arm, etc.) How did I come to be brown? My hand
is brown. My arm is bare and covered with bands of some de¬
scription and a sort of a gauzy shirt and anklets, and that is all.
Q. What is your name?

A. My name is Rella.

Q. Is it a Turkish rug you are sitting on?

A . I don’t know what a Turkish rug is. It is very warm. My
features are oval, dark eyes, dark brown hair. I dance, there are
some others here.

Q. How old are you?

A . Iam very young, 16, Rella the dancer.

THE PAST THROUGH HYPNOSIS

271

Q. Are you married?

A. No. I live at a court. There is some monarch, hut riot
a very great monarch, there are others as great as he, and 1 live
here at the Court of Naobas.

Q. Ever heard of Turkey, Persia, China, Japan, Hindustan,
Arabia, India?

A. No, India is more like it. We live in the North of our
country.

Q. What is your religion?

A. We have a God, the Lord Ganga; he is in the other world.

Q. What becomes of you when you die?

A. We go on to other worlds, there are many .... There
is a palace and a great pleasure garden, the pleasure garden slopes
down to the river.

She awakes.

2. De Rochas* hypnotic attempts to bring back conscious¬
ness of earlier lives. In a book, Les Vies Successives, (Paris, 1911,)
Colonel Albert de Rochas (1837-1914) describes experiments, most
of them made by himself, with some nineteen persons in whom
what he calls “magnetic’' sleep was induced, and whose con¬
sciousness was then apparently regressed to various ages down
to the time of birth, then to intra-uterine life, then purportedly
to life as discarnate spirit, and then, still farther back, to one or
more earlier lives. Also, prima facie progressions of consciousness
to ages future to the hypnotized subject’s age, and even to future
incarnations.

In these experiments, age regressions were induced by means
of longitudinal passes, and age progressions by means of trans¬
verse passes. But an incident in one of the experiments led De
Rochas to remark that, “apparently the mode of magnetization,
that is, the direction of the passes, has no great importance” (p.
80, note). He does, however, hold to the idea of a magnetic fluid
and of the efficacy upon it of the passes; also to the existence on
the subject's body of areas, e. g., the wrists, on which pressure has
conjugate hypnogenic and hypnopompic effects; and of a point
(the forehead at the root of the nose,) the pressing upon which
has mnemonic effects. He seems to overlook or underestimate (he

272

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

fact that such pressings and passes constitute modes of suggestion,
and appears to assume that only verbal suggestion is suggestion
at all.

In the sixth experiment with the first of the subjects on his
list, Laurent, in 1893, De Rochas hit accidentally upon the possi¬
bility of regressing the subject’s personality to earlier life (p. 57);
but it was not until eleven years later (1904) that, having re¬
gressed an 18 year old girl, Josephine, to the time of her birth, the
idea occurred to him to continue the longitudinal passes (p. 67).
This brought forth purported consciousness of the intra-uterine
period and of a discarnate period preceding conception. De
Rochas says that further deepening of the trance then resulted in
manifestation of a personality whose nature at first puzzled him—
that of a man who “would not say who he was, nor where he was.
He replied in gruff tones, with a man’s voice” (p. 68). Eventually,
however, this personality declared himself to be Jean-Claude
Bourdon, born in 1812 in the village of Champvent, district of
Polliat, where he died at 70. He gave various details of his life,
but subsequent inquiry turned up no evidence that such a man
had lived in Polliat at the time stated.

This experiment was what led De Rochas to subsequent at¬
tempts to regress the consciousness of his subjects to earlier lives.
Deepening Josephine’s trance while the Bourdon personality was
manifest brought out the personality of a wicked old woman,
who said that she was bom Philomene Charpigny in 1702, that
she had married a man named Carteron in 1732 at Chevroux;
and that her grandfather, Pierre Machon, lived at Ozan. De
Rochas states in a footnote that families by the names of Char¬
pigny and Carteron did exist at Ozan and at Chevroux, but that
he found no positive trace of Philomene herself (p. 74 n.). Ad¬
ditional deepening of the trance brought out that, in anterior
lives, she had been a girl who had died in infancy; before that a
bandit who robbed and killed. Then came the shamefaced avowal
that, in a life anterior to that bandit incarnation, she had been a
big apel

The attempts to progress Josephine to later ages in her pres¬
ent life brought out various episodes. Those relating to dates near
enough to admit of verification—for example, foreseen employ-

THE PAST THROUGH HYPNOSIS

273

ment as a salesgirl in the Galeries Modernes at Grenoble—did not
come to pass. When progressed to the age of 32, i.e., to 1918, she
sees herself back at Manziat where her mother lives. There she
is seduced by a young farmer, and has a child who eventually
dies. De Rochas then progresses her to the age of nearly seventy
when she dies; purportedly then reincarnating first as a girl, Elise,
who dies when three years old; and then as Marie, daughter of a
man by the name of Edmond Baudin, who runs a shoe store at
Saint-Germain-du-Mont-d’ Or, and whose wife s name is Rosalie.
When progressed to the age of sixteen in that life she says the
year is 1970. This means that her birth as Marie would have
occurred in 1954.

It would of course be interesting to inquire now at that
place whether such a child was in fact born there in or about
1954 to parents of that name and occupation; also, of course
whether in her life as Josephine she was indeed seduced in 1918
at Manziat and had a child there. De Rochas gives the seducer’s
name only as Eugene F., stating in a footnote (p. 78) that he had
made inquiries which revealed that a man of that name, born in
1885, son of well-to-do farmers who were neighbors of Josephine’s
mother, was actually living there in 1911, and that he and Jose¬
phine, being of the same age had made their first communion
together.

The non-fulfillment of the “Galeries Modernes” episode,
however, makes all the more improbable that the later ones of
the Josephine life, and of the reincarnation as Marie, have turned
out to be veridical. But if hypnotic progression in 1904 to rebirth
as Marie Baudin in 1954 should turn out to be corroborated by
existence now of such a girl at the place named, this, so far as it
went, would lend some weight to the hypothesis that the pur¬
ported regressions to earlier lives are really this.

De Rochas declares that, by means of passes, one certainly
can regress the subject to earlier ages of his present life: “It is
not memories that one awakens; what one evokes are the successive
stages of the personality” (p. 497). He also declares certain “that
in continuing these magnetic operations beyond birth and with¬
out need of recourse to suggestions, one makes the subject go
through analogous stages corresponding to preceding incarnations

274

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

and to intervals between them” (p. 497). He adds, however, that
“these revelations, when it has been possible to test their veridi-
cality, have not in general corresponded to the facts” (p. 498).
In case No. 8, where ten earlier lives are described by the en¬
tranced subject, numerous anachronisms occur. And in cases nos.
10, 11, 13, where details susceptible to verification were men¬
tioned, the attempt subsequently made to corroborate them failed
to do so. Thus, although the idea of reincarnation evidently ap¬
peals to De Rochas—and certain peculiar features of some of his
experiments, to which he points, suggest it—he is on the whole
far from fully convinced that the regressions under hypnosis which
he relates really are regressions to earlier lives of the persons
concerned.

In the absence of definite verification of the details they re¬
late, the most plausible explanation of the facts appears to be that
they are effects of suggestion and/or of stimulation of the myth-
opoeic imagination in the trance state. One feature of De Rochas’
cases, which also points to this explanation, is that in almost all
of them the purported earlier lives of those French subjects are
likewise lives as French men or women; which, of course, es¬
pecially for persons of simple minds, and who had never read
much or travelled abroad, would be the psychologically easiest and
most natural kinds of earlier lives to imagine.

3. The “life readings” of Edgar Cayce. A few words may
be added concerning the accounts, purportedly of earlier incarna¬
tions of many persons, given by the late Edgar Cayce while in a
state of trance. Cayce, who died in 1945, was a farm boy, born
in Kentucky in 1877, who had only a grade school education and
was a persistent Bible reader. He did not care for farm work
and eventually became a photographer’s apprentice. It was ac¬
cidentally discovered that, while in hypnotic trance, he had the
capacity to diagnose, and to prescribe often successful treatment
for, the illnesses of persons who desired him to do this; and to do
it even when the person was far away, provided the latter’s name
and the place where he was at the moment were given to Cayce.
In the course of time Cayce, who had become able to put himself
into the state of trance, gave many thousands of such “health”
readings. After some years, however, it was found, again acci-

THE PAST THROUGH HYPNOSIS

275

dentally, that while in the trance he could also give what came to
be know as “life readings." These purported to report one or
more earlier lives on earth of the person concerned, the name he
or she had borne then, and the actions or experiences in those
past lives which had as remote consequences in the present life
certain features of body, mind, or character, and certain special
abilities. Although in these readings the persons concerned were
generally entire strangers to Cayce and far away at the time, his
delineations of their present personality and vocational capacities
was often surprisingly accurate. Dr. Gina Cerminara, a psycholo¬
gist who made a study of the records of these readings, states that
obscure historical details mentioned in the accounts of earlier lives
of some of the persons who had "life readings”—including “the

names of obscure former personalities.in the locality”—

have been verified by looking up historical records. 1 But, in
the absence of citation of specific cases where details of an earlier
life were given—as in the cases of KatsugoTo, of Alexandrina
Samona, and of Shanti Devi—and where careful verification of
those details was made and is on record, the mere statement that
such verification has been made does not constitute for us em¬
pirical evidence that the Cayce “life readings” really describe past
incarnations of the persons concerned. And, although correct
delineation of the present character and abilities of strangers at
a distance would require clairvoyance of a high order, such de¬
lineation in itself has no relevance to the matter of rebirth

Under these circumstances, the chief importance of the Cayce
“life readings” in connection with the question as to the reality
of reincarnation is the suggestion it affords that the hypnotic
trance may be a means of bringing back in certain persons memo
ries of presently verifiable details of earlier lives of their own;
and possibly a means of arousing in exceptional individuals retro-
cognition of the lives of deceased persons, such as Cayce’s “life
readings” purportedly constituted, but with presently verifiable
details. 2

1 Many Mansions, New York, Wm. Sloane Associates, 1950, p 301.

a In 1943, the present writer had a “life reading” of himself done by Cayce.
According to it, in his preceding incarnation, his name had been Jean de I.arquen,
and he had come to America from France as an intelligence officer associated with
Lafayette. Such inquiries as he has been able to make have brought no evidence
either in the United States or in France that any one ever bore that name.

Chapter XXV

THE CASE OF ‘THE SEARCH FOR
BRIDEY MURPHY”

The widely discussed recent book, The Search for Bridey
Murphy, 1 sets forth the six attempts made by its author, Mr.
Morey Bernstein, between November 29, 1952 and August 29,
1953, to regress the consciousness of a deeply hypnotized subject,
“Ruth Mills Simmons” (pseudonym for Virginia Burns Tighe)
to a life earlier than her present one; and to obtain from her
concerning that life details that would be verifiable but that could
not have become known to her in any normal manner.

The experiment appeared to be notably successful, and veri¬
fication was obtained of a number of the obscure details about
Ireland which the entranced subject furnished. This, and the
conversational form—reproduced verbatim in the book—in which
those intrinsically drab details were supplied by her gave to the
idea of reincarnation a concreteness which made it more plausible
to many of the readers of the book than had such references to it
as they had met with before. And this in turn opened their eyes
to the fact that reincarnation, if true, could furnish a rational
explanation for the great disparities—otherwise so shocking to the
human sense of justice—which obtain from birth between the en
dowments and the fortunes of different individuals.

In consequence, the book became a best seller almost imme¬
diately after publication. The idea of reincarnation, however,
runs counter both to the religious beliefs prevalent today in the
West, and to certain assumptions which, although really gratui¬
tous, are at present commonly made in Western scientific circles.

’Doubleday & Co. Garden City, N.Y. January 1956; Pocket Books, Inc. edition,
with a new chapter by Wm. J. Barker, New York, June 1956.

276

THE SEARCH FOR BRIDEY MURPHY’

277

Hence the sudden emergence of the reincarnation hypothesis into
public attention quickly moved the protagonists both of religious
and of scientific orthodoxy to impassioned attacks on the book.

These sociological aspects of the Bridey Murphy case give it
exceptional interest even aside from such evidence for reincarna¬
tion as it may be thought to provide. They furnish eloquent foot¬
notes to what was said in earlier chapters concerning the psy¬
chology of belief and of disbelief both in scientists who approach
the “enchanted boundary’' of the paranormal, and in custodians
of institutionally vested religious dogmas. For these reasons, and
because the case is still fresh in the minds of many today, it will
be worth while to devote the whole of the present chapter to a
review and discussion of the Bridey Murphy affair.

1. The hypnotist and author, and his subject. The author
of the book, Morey Bernstein, is a Colorado businessman who re¬
ceived his bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
His studies there apparently did not include a course in abnormal
psychology, for it was not until later that—after unexpectedly wit¬
nessing a private demonstration of hypnotism—his prior disbelief
in the reality of hypnosis gave way. He then proceeded to study
the literature of the subject and to experiment with hypnotism.
At the time of the first of the “Bridey Murphy” sessions in 1952,
he had had some ten years of experience with hypnotism, had
hypnotized hundreds of persons and, in many of these experiments
had regressed his subjects to various ages of their childhood. Thus,
although the later attacks on the book have insistently termed
Bernstein an “amateur” hypnotist, he is so in the sense that he has
made no charges for services he has rendered as a hypnotist; not
in the sense of lacking practical experience or of being but casu¬
ally acquainted with the standard literature of the field. For as
regards these two desiderata, he is doubtless better equipped than
were a number of the dentists and physicians in the seminars he
attended, who because of their professional degrees, received at
the end a certificate of competence to use hypnotism in their
practice.

An acquaintance of Bernstein’s, familiar with the idea of
reincarnation, eventually brought it to his attention; and he then

278

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

learned that attempts, prima facie successful, had been made by
some hypnotists to regress their entranced subjects to times earlier
than their birth or conception. This led him to undertake a simi¬
lar experiment on one of his subjects, Virginia Tighe—the “Ruth
Simmons” of his eventual book.

Virginia is a young married woman, born April 27, 1925,
daughter of Mr. and Mrs. George Burns, who lived in Madison,
Wis. Their marriage did not endure and, shortly after Virginia’s
third birthday, her father’s sister, Mrs. Myrtle Grung, took her to
Chicago to live with her and her Norwegian husband. There
Virginia grew up a normal girl, went through grade and high
schools, and eventually attended Northwestern University for a
year and a half. At the age of 20, she married a young Army Air
Corps man who died in the war a year later. Some time after, in
Denver, she married her present husband, businessman Hugh
Brian Tighe. They have three children. In Pueblo, Colorado,
where they have lived for some years, she and her husband be¬
came casually acquainted with Mr. and Mrs. Bernstein.

When Bernstein decided to attempt regressing the conscious¬
ness of a hypnotized subject to an earlier life, it occurred to him
that the chances of success would be greatest in a subject capable
of the state of deep, somnambulistic hypnosis. He then remem¬
bered that, some time before he had had any idea that regression
to an earlier life might be possible, he had hypnotized Mrs. Tighe
twice and that she had readily attained that deep hypnotic state.
This, and the fact that she knew nothing of his then recent inter¬
est in reincarnation, led him to wish to have her as subject for the
regression experiments. Although such leisure as she and her
husband had was much occupied with other interests, they eventu¬
ally consented. The six sessions which are the basis of the book
were then held at intervals during the course of the next few
months, and were tape-recorded.

2. Emergence of “Bridey Murphy” during Virginia’s trance.
Although neither Virginia nor Bernstein had ever visited Ireland,
as soon as she had in deep hypnosis been regressed first to the years
of her childhood, and then instructed to go farther back to times
anterior to her present life, and to report what scenes she per-

“THE SEARCH FOR BRIDEY MURPHY*’ 279

ceived, she began to describe episodes of a life in which she was
Bridey (Bridget) Kathleen Murphy, an Irish girl born in Cork
in 1798, daughter of a Protestant Cork barrister, Duncan Murphy,
and his wife Kathleen. She said she had attended a school run by
a Mrs. Strayne and had a brother named Duncan Blaine Murphy,
who eventually married Mrs. Strayne’s daughter Aimee. She had
had another brother who had died while still a baby. At the age
of 20, Bridey was married in a Protestant ceremony to a Catholic,
Brian Joseph McCarthy, son of a Cork barrister. Brian and
Bridey moved to Belfast where he had attended school and where,
Bridey said, he eventually taught law at the Queen s University.
A second marriage ceremony was performed in Belfast by a Catho¬
lic priest, Father John Joseph Gorman, of St. Theresa’s church.
They had no children. She lived to the age oi sixty-six and was—
to use her own expression—“ditched", i.e., buried, in Belfast in
1864. Many of her other statements referred to things which it
seemed highly improbable that Virginia could have come to know
in any normal manner, but which might possibly be verified or
disproved. And the “search" for Bridey Murphy is the search that
was made for facts or records that would do one or the other.

3. The chief documents of the Bridey Murphy controversy.
No attempt will be made in what follows to review all the special
points on which debate has focused in the Bridey Murphy contro¬
versy. But the chief of the documents which together constitute
the history of the case, and on which are based the conclusions
that will be offered, must be listed. For convenience of reference,
a symbol will be assigned to each, made up from initials in the
title of the corresponding document.

SSBM. The first published account of the Bridey Murphy
regression experiments appeared Sept. 12, 19, and 26, 1954 in
Empire— the Sunday magazine section of the Denver Post— in three
articles entitled “The Strange Search for Bridey Murphy’ written
by Wm. J. Barker, of the Denver Post staff.

MAB. This was followed by “More About Bridey," in Em¬
pire for Dec. 5, 1954.

TSBM. The next document is the book itself, The Search for
Bridey Murphy, by Bernstein, published in January 1956 by

280

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

Doubleday & Co. The last chapter of it gives an account of the
results up to that time of the search which the book’s editor had
instituted through an Irish law firm and various librarians and
investigators. Then the Chicago Daily News, which was publish¬
ing a syndicated version of the book, instructed its London man,
Ernie Hill, to go to Ireland for three days and look for additional
verifications from Cork to Belfast. In view, however, of the ex¬
tent of territory to be covered and of the brief time allowed, this
assignment could hardly turn out other than, as it actually did,
virtually fruitless.

TABM. Next, the editor of the Denver Post sent Wm. J.
Barker to Ireland for three weeks on a similar assignment. What
he found and failed to find was objectively reported in a twelve
page supplement to the Denver Post for March 11, 1956, entitled
“The Truth about Bridey Murphy.”

FABL Then Life for March 19, 1956, published an article
in two parts, one of which was entitled “Here are facts about
Bridey that reporters found in Ireland.” This part was stated to
have been compiled from the reports of W. J. Barker, Ernie Hill,
and Life's own correspondent Ruth Lynam.

OSAB. The second part of the Life article was entitled “Here
are opinions of scientists about Bridey’s ‘reincarnation.’ ” It gave
an account of views of two psychiatrists, Drs. J. Schneck and L.
Wolberg, concerning the case.

SAC A. The next document consists of a series of articles pub¬
lished in May and June 1956 by the Chicago American and re¬
produced in other Hearst papers (the San Francisco Examiner ,
the New York Journal American) purporting to show that Vir¬
ginia’s supposed memories of a life as Bridey Murphy in Ireland
really were subconsciously preserved memories of her childhood
in Madison, Wis. and in Chicago, and of stories about Ireland with
which, one of the articles claimed, she had been “regaled” by an
aunt of hers who was “Irish as the lakes of Killarney.” Another of
the Chicago American articles had it that the real Bridey Murphy
had been found and was a Mrs. Bridie Murphy Corkell, whose
house in Chicago was across the street from one of those in which
Virginia had lived.

CNCU. Then the Denver Post, on June 17, 1956, published

“THE SEARCH FOR BRIDEY MURPHY”

281

an article by a member of its staff, Robert Byers, capticned “Chi¬
cago Newspaper Charges Unproved,*’ and commenting critically
on the allegations of the Chicago American series of articles.

BSE. Next, on June 25. 1956, Life published a short article,
“Bridie Search Ends at Last,” summarizing the Chicago Amen
can's contentions and printing a photograph of Mrs. Corkell with
her grandchildren.

CFBI. Also in June 1956, Pocket Books, Inc. published the
paper back edition of The Search for Bridey Murphy , in which
a new chapter, “The Case for Bridey in Ireland,” by Wm. J.
Barker, was added. In it, he gives an effective presentation of the
chief conclusions which, notwithstanding various allegations, ap
pear valid in the light of the results of the investigations made
by himself and others; and he adds that “Bridey’s ‘autobiography’
stands up fantastically well in the light of such hard-to-obtain facts
as I did accumulate” (p. 271).

SRSBM. In the spring of 1956 a book, A Scientific Report
on (< The Search for Bridey Murphy” edited by Dr. M. V. Kline
and containing a chapter each by him and by Drs. Bowers, Mar¬
cuse, Raginsky, and Shapiro, and an Introduction by Dr. Rosen,
was published in New York by the Julian Press.

HBCL. In October 1956, the Denver Post published in six
instalments an interview of Virginia in Pueblo by W. J. Barker,
entitled “How Bridey Changed my Life,” in which she comments
on various of the allegations about her that had been published.

In addition to the articles cited above, numerous others con¬
cerning the case, by psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, and other mem¬
bers of the professions appeared in a number of periodicals.

TM. For example, the summer 1956 issue of Tomorrow mag¬
azine contained several.

A W. The case furnished occasion also for a series of articles
in the March to December 1956 issues of the monthly theosophical
periodical, Ancient Wisdom— some dealing with reincarnation it¬
self, and others pointing out the weak spots in the Chicago
American series.

RIS. In a review of SRSBM in the January 1957 issue of the
Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, Dr. Ian
Stevenson, Head of the Department of Neurology and Psychiatry,

282

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

University of Virginia School of Medicine, expresses disappoint¬
ment with the book and states a number of reasons for this.

4. The Bridey statements that have not so far been verified.
No verification has yet been obtained that a barrister named Dun¬
can Murphy and his wife Kathleen lived in Cork in 1798 and in
that year had a daughter, Bridget Kathleen; nor that a Bridget
Kathleen Murphy married in Cork a Catholic called Sean Brian
McCarthy; nor that she died in 1864 in Belfast; nor that there was
in Belfast in her days a St. Theresa’s church; nor that it had a
priest named John Joseph Gorman who, as Bridey states, per¬
formed a second marriage ceremony there.

That no traces of her birth, marriage, or death have been
found, however, is not surprising since, aside from some church
records, vital statistics in Ireland do not go back beyond 1864.
Indeed, that any traces of her or of her people should be found
would be the more surprising if an impression is correct, which
Bernstein gained early and which the reader may test for himself
from the recorded conversations between Bridey and Bernstein—
the impression, namely, that her references to her father and to
her husband as “barristers” were partly attempts to upgrade her
family socially, and partly stemmed from the fact that she had
only a vague idea of what their occupations actually were outside
the home, or of what a Barrister really was. She states at one
place that her father was a “cropper,” i.e., a farmer; and she names
correctly what crops were raised there at the time. He may well
have had also a part-time clerical job, perhaps in a law office. And
as regards her husband, Barker, at the end of his chapter in the
paper back edition of the book, declares his conviction that Sean
(John) Brian M’Carthy was not a barrister but a bookkeeper, who
kept books for several of the business houses in Belfast and per¬
haps also for Queens’ College. This would be supported by the
fact that, in the 1858-9 Belfast Directory, one John M’Carthy,
clerk, is listed; and that, in the 1861-2 Directory, he is listed as a
bookkeeper. (CFBI p. 287-8)

5. Examples of the Bridey statements that have been veri¬
fied. The statements of the Bridey personality, on the other hand,
that have been verified notwithstanding (in the case of some of

“THE SEARCH FOR BRIDEY MURPHY”

283

them) expert opinion that they could not be correct, are effectively
presented with references to the verificatory findings in the chap¬
ter Wm. Barker contributed to the paper-back edition of the book
They constitute, as the title of his chapter indicates, The Case for
Bridey in Ireland. In order to invalidate it, what would be neces¬
sary would be to show that Virginia learned those recondite facts
about Ireland of a century ago in a normal manner in the United
States. The attempts of the Chicago American to show this have
patently failed. The most they could be held to have shown would
be that some of Virginia’s statements, not those which constitute
the case for Bridey in Ireland, are perhaps traceable to experiences
of Virginia’s childhood in Chicago.

In order to outline all the essential facts, the allegations that
they have been explained in an orthodox manner, and the refuta¬
tions of those allegations, far more space would be required than
is available here. But a few samples will make evident the lack
of real basis for the belief—now widespread as a result of the wish¬
ful attacks of orthodoxy on Bernstein s book—that every puzzling
feature of the case for Bridey Murphy in Ireland has now been
explained away in a satisfying orthodox manner.

Bridey mentions the names of two Belfast grocers from whom
she bought foodstuffs—Farr’s and John Carrigan. After consider¬
able search by the Belfast Chief Librarian, John Bebbington. and
his staff, these two grocers were found listed in a Belfast city di¬
rectory for 1865-66 which had been in preparation at the time
Bridey died in 1864. Moreover, Barker reports, they were “the
only individuals of those names engaged in the ‘foodstuffs’ busi¬
ness,” there at the time. Bridey stated also that in her days a big
rope company and a tobacco house were in operation in Belfast;
and this has been found to be correct. ( CFBI, 271, 284) She also
mentioned a house that sold “ladies things,” Cadenns, of which
no trace has been found. Directories, however, listed individuals
rather than business houses, and the proprietor of Cadenn’s house
might not have been himself named Cadenn.

Even more impressive than the verification of Farr’s and of
John Carrigan, however, is the fact that a number of Bridey s
statements which according to experts on Ireland were irrecon-

284

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

cilable with known facts were shown by further investigation not
to be really so. One example would be the following.

The very first of the utterances ascribed to Bridey on the
tape of the first session is that (as of age four, i.e., 1802) she had
scratched the paint off all her bed, that “it was a metal bed,”
and that she got an awful spanking. Life (in FABI) states that
“iron bedsteads were not introduced into Ireland until at least
1850.” Dr. E. J. Dingwall, however, states that “they were being
advertised by the Hive Iron Works in Cork in January 1830
.Mallett’s portable iron bedsteads were often used in Ire¬
land at about that date, although it is somewhat doubtful whether
they were at all common about 1802“ (TAf, p. 11). And the En¬
cyclopedia Britannica (1950 edition), states that “iron beds appear
in the 18th century.” So Bridey could, in 1802, have had an iron
bed in Cork.

But however this may be, attention must now be called to the
fact that in the published transcript of the tape recording ( TSBM
p. 112) Bridey does not speak of an iron bed at all but of a
metal bed; and to the recently noticed fact that a careful rehear¬
ing of the tape seems to show that the word (which like many
others uttered by Virginia in trance is not clearly articulated)
was not “metal” but “little,” i.e., “little bed.”

This is made the more probable by the fact that hardly
anybody—least of all a child of four—would ordinarily speak of a
metal bed, but rather—as all commentators on the episode have
indeed done spontaneously—of an iron bed; or as the case might
be, of a brass bed.

One of the Chicago American's articles claims that the aunt
who brought up Virginia in Chicago remembered such a bed-
scratching and spanking incident in Chicago when Virginia was
six or seven; and that Virginia remembered it and laughed about
it with her aunt when, a dozen years later, she was given a bed¬
room suite as a birthday present.

Virginia, on the other hand, told Robert Byers (CNCU) that
she recalls no such incident, and most especially that she never re¬
called it to a relative when, at the age of eighteen, she was pre¬
sented with a new bedroom set. Worth bearing in mind in con¬
nection with statements alleged to have been made by relatives

THE SEARCH FOR BRIDEY MURPHY"

285

of hers (unnamed by the newspaper) is Virginias statement to
Barker ( HBCL, part I) that “both Hugh’s and my relatives in
Chicago are very much opposed to the whole Bridcy phenomenon
on religious grounds.’’ This would easily open the door to wish¬
ful thinking unawares on their part.

Aside from this, however, it should be noticed that the state¬
ment about the bed-scratching and spanking episode is the very
first which Virginia, supposedly as Bridcy, makes; and that it
comes immediately after those which Virginia, is regressed to her
own childhood, had made. It is therefore possible that the
memory of the incident did belong to her own childhood, rather
than to that of the girl who, when asked for her name immediately
afterwards, gave it as Bridey.

But in any case, it has not been shown that there were no
metal beds in Cork in 1802, but at most that they were probably
not common there at that time. Hence,-even if Bridey said
“metal,’’ not “little”—it has not been shown that she cannot really
be remembering a metal bed in Cork in 1802.

Let us turn next to the fact, of which much has been made,
that in view of the scarcity of wood in Ireland, Bridey’s house in
Cork could hardly have been a wooden house.

According to the published transcript of the first session,
Bridey, when asked what kind of house she lives in, answers: “it’s
a nice house. . . . it’s a wood house. . . .white. . . . has two floors.”
But here again, a careful rehearing of the tape appears to show
that the word Bridey uttered was not “wood,” but “good”: “. . .
a nice house. ... a good house. .and this is the more probable
because one would not ordinarily speak of a “wood” house, but
—as Life spontaneously does in its comment—of a wooden house
or, today, of a frame house.

Again, immediately after quoting the passage quoted above,
the Life article adds: “and was called ‘The Meadows.’ ” But
reference to the passage where “the Meadows” are first mentioned
(in the second tape) shows that Bridey did not say the house was
called “The Meadows.” The question asked her is “What was

the address in Cork?” and her answer is: “That was.the

Meadows.just the Meadows” (TSBM 140; Pocket Books

ed. 159). Also, in the third tape, she is asked: “What were the

286

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

Meadows in Cork?” and she answers: “There’s. . . .where I lived”
(TSBM 160; Pocket Books ed. 183). Moreover, the Denver Post
article (TABM) reproduces on its p. 9 a section of an 1801 map of
Cork showing an area named Mardike Meadows, where some half-
dozen houses are indicated.

So Bridey’s statements about her house in Cork have not been
shown to clash with known facts. On the contrary, her statements
turned out to be compatible with what research in Ireland showed
the facts in Cork really to have been.

We now pass to Bridey’s statement that her husband taught
law at the Queen’s University in Belfast some time after 1847.
Life attacks it, not on the ground suggested by Barker that Brian
McCarthy was probably not a lawyer after all, but on the ground
that there was no law school there at the time, no Queen’s College
until 1849, and no Queen’s University until 1908.

This, however, is an error; for the facts are that on December
19, 1845, Queen Victoria ordained that “there shall and may be

erected.one College for students in Arts, Law, Physic. . . .

which shall be called Queen’s College, Belfast” (CFBI 278). At
the same time, she founded colleges at Cork and Galway. Then,
on August 15, 1850, she founded “the Queen’s University in Ire¬
land,” directing “that the said Queen’s Colleges shall be, and
. . . .are hereby constituted Colleges of our said University”

(CFBI 279). So here again Bridey’s statement is consistent with
the facts, and the allegation that it is not rests on an error concern¬
ing the facts.

Again, Bridey spoke of “. . . .tiny little sacks of rice. . .”
which were snapped on an elastic band on the leg: “It is a sign
of purity” (TSBM, 199; Pocket Books ed. 231). Life's “Folklore
Expert” Richard Hayward is quoted as saying: “Nonsense! Rice
has never been a part of the folk tradition in Ireland. Corn, oats
or potatoes, yes, for centuries. But rice, never!”

Rice, however, was imported into Ireland about 1750. Doubt¬
less, it took some years for it to become widely known there. And
it takes some more years for a “tradition” to develop out of ideas
that happen to arise spontaneously in a number of individuals.
Rice, being white, would naturally suggest purity to some of its
early users. How it eventually came to symbolize fertility is less

“THE SEARCH FOR BRIDEY MURPHY'

287

obvious. But anyway, what is relevant to the question whether
Bridey’s statement can represent a genuine memory of an earlier
life in Ireland is not whether rice has ever been a part of the folk
tradition in Ireland; but only whether the whiteness of that until
then unknown grain is likely to have struck some of its early
consumers and to have caused them to think of it as symbolizing
purity—as white orange blossoms are today used to signify a bride's
purity, i.e., virginity. To this question, it is highly probable that
the answer is Yes. Indeed, rice, as a symbol of purity, may well
have been imagined to aid a girl in preserving purity if worn by
her in little bags on the leg, as today medals symbolizing holy
beings are given children to wear as an aid to them in conducting
themselves as their religion expects them to do.

Again, the word Bridey uses to refer to interment of the
bodies of the dead is not “burying” but “ditching” Life is of
course right when it states that “ditch” does not correctly mean
“bury.” Yet Life itself mentions Lhat ‘ ditching” was used to desig¬
nate the mass burials of the many who died during the potato
famine of 1845-47. So there can be little doubt that, as Professor
Seamus Kavanaugh of University College, Cork, has suggested, a
good many persons came to use 1 ditch” colloquially to mean
“bury.” Similarly, “croak” does not correctly mean “die;” yet
today “to croak” is sometimes slangily used among us to mean
“to die.”

Again, Bridey said that “tup” meant a rounder; and she used
“a linen” to mean a handkerchief. Life states that “Scholar Hay
ward. . . .laughed at tup, linen .as being any sort of Gae¬

lic.” But where Hayward got the idea that Bridey, or Bernstein,
claimed that “linen” is a Gaelic word is a complete mystery.
Bridey mentions “a linen” at all only when, having sneezed dur¬
ing the fourth session, she said “Could I have a linen?. . . I need
a linen.” And Professor Kavanaugh endorsed this use of the word
as, in Bridey’s days, referring to a handkerchief.

As regards “tup,” it is quite true as a matter of linguistics
that the word is not Gaelic. It is a Middle English word of un¬
known origin, which properly means a male sheep but also has
slang meanings. Bridey mentions “tup” when asked by Bernstein
for some Gaelic words. But Bridey is no linguistician, and refer

288

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

ence to p. 156 of TSBM makes evident that, for her, “Gaelic”
means essentially the language the peasants use . Associating as
these did with persons who spoke English, some words of this
language, such as “tup,” doubtless got into the peasants’ vocabu¬
lary; and Barker states that Professor Kavanaugh indeed found
the word in one of his dictionaries in the sense Bridey gave for
it (CFBI, p. 281).

Again, Bridey used the word “lough” to designate livers as
well as lakes (TSBM, pp. 136-7). And Life— apparently on Expert
Hayward’s authority—states that “Lough simply does not mean
‘river’ but ‘lake.’ ” Yet Murray's English Dictionary— which pre¬
sumably is at least as authoritative as Mr. Hayward—gives “low” as
an obsolete variant of “lough” and meaning “a lake, loch, river,
water” (Vol. VI, p. 271).

Again, Barker states (CFBI p. 280) that, notwithstanding
Hayward’s statement that “no Irishman would refer to another
as an Orange but always as Orangeman or Orangewoman,” he
(Barker) “can recall no one in Ireland questioning the slang term
Orange as a synonym for ‘Orangewoman.’ ”

Of Bridey’s mention that she read, or that her mother read
to her from, a book on the sorrows of Deirdre, Life's would-be
invalidation consists of a statement that according to The English
Catalogue— said to be “a complete list of books published between
1800 and the present”—the first appearance of Deirdre’s name in
a title is in Synge’s play The Sorrows of Deirdre published in
1905. But Barker cites to the contrary “a cheap paper-back pub¬
lished in 1808 by Bolton, entitled The Song of Deirdre and the
Death of the Sons of Usnach” (CFBI p. 278.). So here again
Bridey’s statement turns out to be consistent with the facts not¬
withstanding that Virginia Tighe had no normal way of knowing
that such a paper-back had existed nor any interest in the ques¬
tion; whereas Life, which had such an interest, and whose possible
sources of information were surely as ample as Barker’s, over¬
looked that 1808 paper-back.

An additional statement made by Bridey is that in her days
one of the coins in use was a tuppence. This is correct; but very
few persons know that such a coin was in use in Ireland only be¬
tween the years 1797 and 1850.

THE SEARCH FOR BRIDEY MURPHY"

289

Barker’s chapter mentions a number of additional obscure
facts testified to in Bridey’s tape-recorded statements, which some
persons presumably expert in matters of Irish history disputed,
but which subsequent investigation turned out likewise to cor¬
roborate. Those cited above, however, will suffice to make evident
not only that reputed experts are not omniscient, but also that the
allegations of critics of disturbing ideas need to be scrutinized
with quite as much care as must the assertions of proponents of
those ideas. For, as repeatedly has been pointed out in earlier
chapters, the temptations to wishful thinking and to emotionally
biassed conclusions are even greater on the side of the entrenched
religious orthodoxy of the time and place concerned, or on the
side of the vested “scientific commonsense of the epoch,” than on
the side of the protagonists of prima facie paradoxical views.

At all events, the items Barker’s investigation brought out,
about which Bridey was right and the experts were wrong, con¬
stitute the central feature of the Bridey Murphy affair so far as
concerns the question in view in Parts IV and V of the present
work—the question, namely, whether any empirical evidence is
available that the human mind survives after death, whether in
some discarnate state or in the form of reincarnation. For the
evidence, so far as it goes, which the Bridey Murphy case furnishes
for survival consists essentially of the fact that those obscure items
were correctly supplied by the lips of Virginia in trance, and of
the fact that it is hard even to imagine how she could have come
to know in a normal manner about the Ireland of over a century
ago details so numerous and so uninteresting in themselves—de¬
tails, moreover, the confirmation of which by researchers in Ire
land was so laborious that the wonder is not that some of them
have so far eluded verification, but much rather that it has been
possible to verify so many of them.

6. The allegation that the true Bridey statements are trace¬
able to forgotten events of Virginia’s childhood. We may now
consider briefly the allegation that the Chicago American's ar¬
ticles brought out facts which explain away Virginia’s utterances
in the character of Bridey Murphy as being simply revivals and
dramatizations under hypnosis of buried memories of her own
childhood and youth in Madison and Chicago.

290

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

Barker’s “The Truth about Bridey Murphy” was an objec¬
tive report both of the verifications he obtained and of those he
did not succeed in getting during his three weeks in Ireland. In
that report, he did not conclude either for or against the supposi¬
tion that Bridey and Virginia are two different incarnations of
one same individual, but let the reader draw his own conclusions,
if any. Unlike Barker’s, however, many of the other articles on
the case in newspapers and periodicals are patently attempts to
exorcise the demon which, in the shape of Bernstein’s book, was
then tempting the hundreds of thousands of its readers to belief
in reincarnation—a doctrine unorthodox both in contemporary
Christian theology and in contemporary psychology. Indeed, the
Denver Post's staff writer points out in the article “Chicago News¬
paper Charges Unproved” that the Rev. Wally White, whose name
appears at the head of a number of the Chicago American articles,
“stated clearly [that] his purpose was to debunk reincarnation
because of its assault upon established religious doctrines.”

The American's articles hardly mention most of the facts sum¬
marized by Barker in CFBI, on which the case, such as it is—
for Bridey as an earlier “edition” of Virginia really rests. Rather,
the American dismisses them wholesale with the allegation that
Virginia was “regaled” with Irish stories by an aunt of hers who
was “as Irish as the lakes of Killarney.”

Virginia, however, states that the aunt so alluded to, Mrs.
Marie Burns, was born in New York, was of Scotch-Irish descent,
and spent most of her life in Chicago. Virginia adds ( HBCL ,
part IV): “I didn’t become really well acquainted with her until
she came to live with us when I was 18. You’d think I would recall
her having ‘regaled’ me with Irish tales if she had, at that tender
age, wouldn’t you?” Virginia further states that she does not re¬
member anybody telling her anything about Ireland any time, and
knows about Ireland only the few things everybody has heard.

But the article appears to regard the mere fact that Aunt
Marie was living with Virginia at about the time the latter left
Chicago as warranting the assertion that “it seems likely that some

of the Irish references used by Bridey.stem from the tales

of Aunt Marie” (San Francisco Examiner, June 5). The Ameri¬
can's articles, thus virtually ignoring the real evidence for Bridey’s

“THE SEARCH FOR BRIDEY MURPHY"

291

existence, concentrate their attention instead on “parallels ’—of
which some samples will presently be cited—between in< idents
in Virginia’s childhood and in Bridey’s life; incidents, however,
which, even if truly derived from Virginia’s childhood, would
leave wholly untouched the real case, based as we have seen on
verifications of obscure Irish facts, for the contention that the
Bridey statements represent genuine memories of Ireland.

As a sample of the American's “success” in tracing back to
Virginia's childhood various items in Bridey’s statements about
Ireland, may be mentioned its “discoveries” in Madison relevant
to the name of Father John Joseph Gorman who married Bridey,
and to Bridey’s address in Cork, “the Meadows.” What the Amer
lean's reporter discovered in Madison is that, less than 100 feet
from the house on Blair St. where Virginia lived in Madison until
age 3, Blair St. is crossed by Gorham St.; that a block and a halt
from the house is St. John's Lutheran Church; and that the pasmr
of the church attended by the parents of that three year old
child was called John N. Walstedl But the reporter need not
have gone so far to find persons called John. It is safe to my that
on the very block of her house, or indeed on virtually an bl xir •
any city in the United States, half-a-dozen Johns could be found

As regards “the Meadows,” the Amen
“less than two blocks from Ruth’s house [ i.e., Virginia’s, in Madi¬
son] is a lake front park—a ‘meadow’ where she must have played
many times.”

But the American's prize discovery in Madison was that like

Bridey, “Ruth [i.e., Virginia].did have a little brother

who died,” October 29, 1927, still-born. The fact, however, is that
Virginia never had a brother , still-born or other. Indeed refer
ence to this mythical brother appeared only in the original Jure
14, 1956 article in Chicago; and was left out of the syndicated
version of the article.

Another typical example of the “parallels” which the An^ r ^
can's investigations brought to light refers to the fact that, in the
fourth hypnotic session, Virginia suddenly sneezed hard. A friend
of hers, referred to in the article merely a' “Ann,” is quoted as
saying; “if anyone could sneeze hard, it was Ruth.”

One may well ask, So what? for Bridey was not reporting at

292

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

the time some hard sneezing she might have done in Ireland. It
was Virginia’s nose that sneezed; just as it was Virginia’s larynx
and lips that were uttering Bridey’s memories.

Bridey’s then calling for “a linen” is accounted for in the ar¬
ticle by the fact that the same “Ann” always called her white linen
handkerchiefs “white linen handkerchiefs”!! Comment on these
various “parallels” would be superfluous.

The Hearst San Francisco Examiner, which reproduces the
May 28 article of the Hearst Chicago American by the Rev. Wally
White, pastor of the Chicago Gospel Tabernacle, states that the
American's investigation “was launched after it was learned that
Mrs. Simmons [i.e., Virginia TigheJ had attended Sunday School
as a girl in Rev. White’s church.”

The reader would naturally infer from this that the Rev.
White had known Virginia as a girl in Chicago. It is therefore
interesting to refer to what Virginia has to say when questioned
by Barker on the subject. She states (HBCL, part V): I went to
Sunday School at the Chicago Gospel Tabernacle from the time I
was about four till I was thirteen or so.” The Rev. Wally White
“was not there when I was. The first time I met him was this
summer [1956] when he suddenly appeared at our door here in
Pueblo.he said he wanted to pray for me.”

It would seem, then, that the featuring of this clergyman’s
name at the head of several of the American's articles was just
psychological window-dressing for the benefit of pious but naive
readers. For such readers, seeing articles under the by-line of a
clergyman, and having been told that he is the pastor of the
church Virginia attended in Chicago, would naturally assume that
he has first hand knowledge of her childhood and youth; that his
articles are based on that special knowledge; and therefore that,
since clergymen are truthful, the articles bearing the Rev. White’s
by-line must be authoritative. But although the reader is likely
to infer all this from the articles, they carefully refrain from
actually asserting any of it.

The incident of the bed-scratching and the ensuing spanking,
of which the American makes much, may indeed as we stated in
our account of it belong to the life of Virginia in Chicago rather

“THE SEARCH FOR BRIDEY MURPHY

293

than to that of Bridey in Cork. But this is less likely in the case
of Bridey’s “uncle Plazz.”

The American claims that he really is “a sixty-one year old
retired city employe,” to find whom its reporters “combed Chi¬
cago,” and whose first name is Plezz. But the paper withholds his
last name and address “in order to protect his privacy/’ It de¬
scribes him and his wife, however, as old friends of the aunt who
brought up Virginia in Chicago; stating that he and his wife
would visit Virginia and her aunt and uncle two or three times
a week and that the visits would be returned; and that he and
two of his daughters would play with Virginia. He is said to re
member her “very well from the time she was about three or four
until she was in the eighth grade,” which would be until she was
thirteen or fourteen. This would mean a close association for
some ten years.

But let the reader now ask himself how credible is such an
“uncle Plezz” in Chicago, in the face of the fact that Virginia, at
age 33, has “no conscious memory of any such person” nor even
of the name, as she emphatically declares when questioned about
it by Barker. ( HBCL , part IV).

Again, the May 29, 1956 Chicago article states that Virginia
“took her early lessons in forensics from a Mrs. H.S.M.” Heft
otherwise unidentified.) Immediately after this, it prints long pas
sages from stage-Irish dialect pieces, and states that Ruth [i.e.,
Virginia] memorized them.

This immediate juxtaposition would lead a hasty reader to
assume that that teacher is the authority for the identification of
the particular pieces of which passages are quoted, and for the
statement that Virginia memorized them. Attentive reading, how
ever, reveals that the article carefully refrains from so asserting.
It only asserts, nakedly, that Virginia memorized those particular
pieces.

What the lady teacher apparently alluded to actually taught
was elocution, not forensics which has to do with argumentation
or debate. And what Virginia herself has to say on the subject of
that lady’s lessons is this: “I took elocution lessons back in 1935

or 36. . . .there was a well-to-do woman.who offered that

kind of training for small groups of youngsters. . . .When I was

294

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

12 or 13 I went to her after school on certain days. I’m afraid
I wasn't much good—I can’t remember anything specifically that
she taught us” ( HBCL, part VI).

Robert Byers, of the Denver Post's staff, located that teacher.
She is Mrs. Harry G. Saulnier. She remembered that “Virginia
was a pupil for a short time, but she must have been rather
average or I would remember her better.” Mrs. Saulnier said
that “she had no recollection specifically of the pieces Mrs. Tighe
memorized,” and that she has anyway never heard of any en¬
titled “Mr. Dooley on Archey Road,” which the American as¬
serted Virginia had learned (CNCU).

So far as concerns the “Irish jigs,” which the paper asserts
Virginia learned to dance, Virginia identifies them as having been
The Black Bottom, and the Charleston!

The climax, however, of the Chicago American series of ar¬
ticles was the discovery of a Mrs. Bridie Murphy Corkell in Chi¬
cago, who lived across the street from one of the places where
Virginia and her foster parents had resided; whom Virginia knew;
and on whose son John, Virginia is asserted to have had “a mad
crush.”

Virginia remembers John as “Buddy Corkell;” but as regards
the alleged “mad crush,” she says: “Heavens, he was 7 or 8 years
older than I was. He was married by the time I was old enough
to have any romantic interest in boys.” She also remembers Mrs.
Corkell, but although the article states that she “was in the Corkell
home many times,” Virginia never spoke with Mrs. Corkell—nor
does the article assert that she ever did.

Further, Virginia never knew that Mrs. Corkell’s first name
was Bridie, and still less that her maiden name was Murphy, if
indeed it was. For when the Denver Post tried to verify this, Mrs.
Corkell was not taking telephone calls. And when its reporter
Bob Byers inquired from her parish priest in Chicago, he con¬
firmed her first name as Bridie, but was unable to verify her
maiden name as Murphy (HBCL, p. VI); nor could the Rev.
Wally White do so.

But the reader will hardly guess who this Mrs. Corkell, whom
the American “discovered” turns out to be. By one more of the

“THE SEARCH FOR BR1DEY MURPHY"

295

strange coincidences in the case, Mrs. Bridie (Murphy?) Corkeli
happens to be the mother of the editor of the Sunday edition of
the Chicago American at the time the articles were publishedi

7. The comments of psychiatrists on the Bridey Murphy
case. Life's first article (OSAB) states that “the psychiatrists who
have considered the case have no doubt that if Ruth Simmons
could completely reveal her life to them, preferably under hyp¬
nosis, they could end the search for Bridey Murphy abruptly.”

What this opinion actually represents, however, is only their
adhesion to the methodological principle that a phenomenon
whose cause is not actually observed is to be presumed to arise
from causes similar to those from which past phenomena more
or less similar to it were observed to have arisen. This is ^ood
scientific procedure, of course; but only in so far as, in order to be
able to follow it, one is not forced to ignore some patent dis¬
similarities between the new phenomenon and the old; or forced
to postulate ad hoc similarities which are not in fact observe d oi
forced to stretch beyond the breaking point some of those which
are observed. For were it not for these limits of applicability of
that methodological principle, no as yet unknown laws of nature
would ever be discovered; every new fact would be trimmed,
bent, or stretched to fit into the Procrustean bed of the already
discovered modes of explanation.

One would be guilty of doing just this if, for example, one
were to claim that, in the “Rosemary” xenoglossy case, her ability
while in trance to converse in ancient Egyptian language is scien¬
tifically explicable in a manner similar to that in which is scien¬
tifically explained the case of xenoglossy mentioned by Dr Rosen
in his introduction to the book, A Scientific Report on ‘'The
Search for Bridey Murphy ” In the latter case, a hypnotized pa
tient’s ability to recite some ten words in the ancient language,
Oscan, was scientifically explained by the discovery that once in
the library while day-dreaming his eyes had rested on a book near
him which happened to be open at a page where those words in
Oscan were printed. The “Rosemary” case is similar to this only
in that both are cases of xenoglossy. For, patently, nothing like
what accounted for the ability of the patient to recite a certain ten

296

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

words of an ancient language unknown to him would account for
“Rosemary’s” ability to converse in responsive phrases in an an¬
cient language she had never studied.

Similarly, the emergence—whether spontaneously or under
hypnosis—of personalities seemingly distinct from that of the in¬
dividual concerned, but which actually are dissociated portions
of his own total personality, is today a well known phenomenon.
But as we saw in an earlier chapter, some cases of emergent new
personalities stubbornly resist assimilation to cases of mere dis¬
sociation, either because, as in that of the “Watseka Wonder”, the
new personality is unmistakably identified as that of a particular
other individual who has died; or because the new personality
demonstrates knowledge which the individual through whose
body it expresses itself certainly never had or which it is exceed¬
ingly improbable it could ever have had.

In such a case, to postulate as a number of psychiatrists have
done in the Bridey Murphy case, that Virginia must some time
have somehow learned in an ordinary manner the recondite
Irish facts Bridey mentioned, is not scientific procedure, but is
just piously conservative wishful thinking. The kind of state¬
ments it brings forth from some of the experts are what Dr. Jule
Eisenbud, a keen and open minded Denver psychiatrist, was al¬
luding to when he wrote in commenting on the Bridey Murphy
case that “psychology and psychiatry experts. . . .were lured into
talking more gibberish than Bridey at her worst” ( Tomorrow,
Vol. 4, No. 4, p. 48). And another psychiatrist, likewise gifted
with a keen and open mind, Dr. Ian Stevenson, in his review
mentioned earlier (RIS) justly charges the authors of A Scientific
Report on “The Search for Bridey Murphy” with gratuitously
assuming ab initio that memories of a past incarnation could not
possibly be a valid explanation of Virginia’s verified statements;
with evident ignorance of some of the facts turned up by Barker
in Ireland; and with resorting to the old trick of explaining away
the data by “analyzing” Bernstein’s motives.

Indeed, insistence on turning every puzzling ad rem ques¬
tion into a question ad hominem is the occupational disease to
which psychiatrists are most susceptible! In psychiatrists whom
it affects, it has a way of generating fantasies even more fantastic

‘THE SEARCH FOR BRIDEY MURPHY”

297

than those of their patients. Whether or not that self-styled “Scien¬
tific Report” reveals hidden motivations in Bernstein and in Vir¬
ginia, it affords in any case an edifying exhibit of the emotional
thinking which Bernstein’s book let loose in the psyches of the
supposedly coldly scientific experts who authored that report.

It is important in this general connection to bear in mind
that psychiatrists are concerned with hypnotism essentially as an
instrument of therapy; and that, even if the notions to which they
have come as to what is a “true” hypnotic state or as to the “true”
nature of the interrelation between subject and hypnotist are
valid for therapeutic purposes, these notions are on the conuary
myopic or parochial if supposed to apply automatically to hypno¬
tism in general. For the status of those notions then becomes that
of dogmas of a creed, which function somewhat as do side-blinder^
on a horse: they confine the attention and the hypotheses of the
“wearers” of those dogmas to but one particular segment of the
total range of the possible capacities of hypnotism, or of the j-os
sible meanings of some of the things which occur in hypnosis.

For instance Dr. Raginsky, in the paper on “Medical Hyp
nosis” which he contributes to that “Scientific Report’ comments
at one place on the fact that in the sixth of Bernstein’s session^
Bridey talks back to Bernstein and even asks him questions. This,
Dr. Raginsky writes, is “hardly a true hypnotic state;” for she
ceases to be “the passive receptive typical hypnotic subject” (p.
15).

Thus, because Dr. Raginsky s horizon is specifically that of
medical hypnosis, and by a “true” hypnotic state he therefore
automatically means a hypnotic state suitable for medical pur¬
poses, it never occurs to him that the subject’s behavior on that
occasion perhaps was evidence that hypnosis can sometimes be
effective for certain purposes foreign to psychiatry—possibly in
particular for that of awakening latent paranormal capacities in
the subject, such as would be capacity to remember a life that
really had preceded birth and conception; or the capacities for
telepathy or clairvoyance which the early hypnotists did at times
successfully awaken in their subjects. The success in this, of those
“mesmerists” or “magnetizers,” as compared with usual failure
of hypnotists to achieve the same today, may indicate that the pro

298

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

cedure of the former was shaped by dogmas which, even if like the
present ones somewhat fanciful, were anyway different, and, as it
happened, effective ones for the purpose of awakening latent
paranormal capacities.

The field of hypnotism is peculiar in that, in it, any particular
belief held by the hypnotists as to the relation of a hypnotized
subject to his hypnotist—for instance belief that the relation is
one in which the subject is passive and receptive and the hypnotist
active and directive—is likely to generate automatically empirical
proofs of its own correctness! For the hypnotist’s belief as to the
nature of the relation between subject and hypnotist automatically
shapes the hypnotist’s own attitude, the tone of his voice, his man¬
ner, and his particular procedure in the induction of hypnosis;
and these characteristics of his behavior constitute powerful sug¬
gestions—additional to any which he may explicitly give to his
subject— as to the particular role the subject is to enact. And the
subject’s faithful enactment of the role thus automatically handed
to him, which the hypnotist believes is the subject’s role in the
“true” relationship between the two, is then taken by the hypno¬
tist as evidence confirming the correctness of his conception of
that relationship!

Medicine is not a science but a practical art; which, however,
like other branches of engineering, draws so far as it can on the
knowledge the sciences have so far won. In the case of medicine,
the relevant sciences are chiefly physics, chemistry, and biology.
Psychology, which in its behavioristic and physiological branches
has recently though barely been admitted to the company of those
adult sciences, has so far contributed but little to medicine. And
psychiatry, which is as yet but an infant branch of medicine, has
still less claim than have most of its older branches to the status
of a science. The title of the book, A Scientific Report on “The
Search for Bridey Murphy ,” is therefore naively pretentious. The
fact is that the more really scientific a psychiatrist is, the less is
he likely to pontificate in the name of Science, as do at many
places the authors of that book.

8. What conclusions are and are not warranted about the
case. The outcome of our review and discussion of the Bridey

“THE SEARCH FOR BRIDEY MURPHY”

299

Murphy case may now be summarily stated. It is, on the one hand,
that neither the articles in magazines and newspapers which we
have mentioned and commented upon, nor the comments of the
authors of the so-called “Scientific Report” and of other psychia¬
trists hostile to the reincarnation hypothesis, have succeeded in
disproving, or even in establishing a strong case against, the pos
sibility that many of the statements of the Bridey personality are
genuinely memories of an earlier life of Virginia Tighe over a
century ago in Ireland.

On the other hand, for reasons other than those which were
advanced by those various hostile critics, and which will be set
forth in the next chapter, the verifications summarized by Barker
of obscure points in Ireland mentioned in Bridey’s six recorded
conversations with Bernstein, do not prove that Virginia is ? re¬
incarnation of Bridey, nor do they establish a particularly strong
case for it. They do, on the other hand, constitute fairly strong
evidence that, in the hypnotic trances, paranormal knowledge of
one or another of several possible kinds concerning those recondite
facts of nineteenth century Ireland, became manifest. This \ rings
us directly to the question of what sort of empirical evidence, il
we had it, we would regard as constituting definite proof of re
incarnation.

Chapter XXVI

HOW STANDS THE CASE FOR THE
REALITY OF SURVIVAL AS
REINCARNATION

The distinctions formulated in Secs. 2, 3, and 4 of Chapt.
XIV make it possible to give to the expression “survival after
death” a meaning which is precise but involves no assumption as
to whether the life-after-death one has in view is life discarnate,
or life reincarnate. In the present chapter, however, what we are
concerned with is survival specifically as reincarnation of the
mind, or of some part of the mind, of a deceased person in another
human body. The question before us is therefore whether the
facts we have reviewed, which seem to evidence reincarnation,
admit of alternative interpretations perhaps more plausible.

1. Mediumistic communications from minds surviving dis¬
carnate, vs. memories in a reincarnated mind. If the possibility
of life at all after death is assumed, then the most obvious of the
alternative interpretations of the facts which suggest reincarna¬
tion is the one Spiritualists would ordinarily adopt; namely, that
the person, through whose organs of expression true statements
are uttered concerning the past life on earth of a deceased person,
is not a reincarnation of the mind of the deceased, but is a me¬
dium through whose temporarily borrowed lips or hand the sur¬
viving discarnate mind of the deceased speaks or writes, mention¬
ing facts of its past life it remembers, that are adequate to identify
him.

This hypothesis concerning the source of true communica¬
tions of past facts recommends itself especially when, as for in¬
stance in the case of Mrs. Piper, the true communications re-

300

THE REALITY OF SURVIVAL AS REINCARNATION 301

ceived appear to emanate from several quite different persons who
were contemporaries of one another. On the other hand, the re¬
incarnation hypothesis remains as plausible as the Spiritualistic
when, as in the Bridey Murphy case, virtually only one personality
manifests itself through the entranced organism, and does so
steadily throughout a prolonged series of experiments; or, if sev¬
eral personalities appear, they present themselves as a series of
incarnations of the same entity, memory including experiences of
discarnate existence during the intervals between the several in¬
carnations. In the Bridey Murphy case, there seemed to be
memory of a brief and painful life as a sick baby in New Amster¬
dam at some time before the birth of Bridey; but because of its
brevity, of the distress attaching to it, and of the unlikelihood that
it could have contained memories of verifiable details, BeniMein
did not push the attempt to explore it. There is no evidenn
then, that this brief life as a sick baby actually occurred, nor th«n
the scanty account of it Virginia gave represented a memory of
some episode rather than only an invention to satisfy ihe hypn<>
tist’s demand for regression to a time before Bridey s birth

2. Reincarnation as “possession.” The best case on record
of reincarnation as “possession” is that of the Watseka Wonder
described in Sec. 4 of Chapt. XVII. In that case, the inind of a
definitely identified person, Mary Roff deceased at age 18 some
12 years before, did to all intents and purposes reincarnate in the
body not of a neonate but of a 13 year old girl, Lurancy Vennum,
displacing altogether the latter’s personality for a period of some
14 weeks.

Reincarnation in the sense this would illustrate is very rare,
and is anyway not reincarnation as ordinarily conceived, which is
not thus episodic but lasts through the whole time between the
birth and death of the body concerned; and in which what is re
incarnated is not a developed mind and therefore can be opposed
to be only a set of latent aptitudes brought from one or more
previous lives.

It should, however, be noted that aside from this, reincama
tion in the “possession” sense illustrated by the Watseka Wonder
case differs from the cases of direct control of a medium s bodv hv

302

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

the surviving mind of a deceased person only in two respects,
which are a matter of degree rather than of kind.

One is that, in the mediumistic cases, the "possession," i.e.,
the direct control, is but momentary—usually a matter of minutes
rather than of even as long as an hour—whereas Mary RofFs pos¬
session or "direct control" of Lurancy's body endured for more
than three months.

The other difference is that the body Mary Roff "controlled"
was not in trance like that of a medium used for communication
by the surviving mind of a deceased person, but was as aware of
and active upon its physical environment as that of a normal
person. It is true that some mediums or automatists do not go
into trance while giving communications purporting to emanate
from the surviving mind of a deceased person. But in this case
this means that they remain aware that they are functioning as an
intermediary, while so functioning. That is, only a part of their
organism is being "possessed"—only their organs of speech or of
writing. Their body does not, even for the duration of the seance,
proceed to behave and to occupy itself as it would if the "possess¬
ing" personality were controlling the whole body instead of only
its organs of speech or its hand. In the Watseka case, on the other
hand, the Mary Roff personality possessed the whole of Lurancy’s
body which, during 14 weeks, then did occupy itself and respond
to its environment as Mary Roff’s own body would have, had it
been still alive and occupied by the mind of Mary Roff.

3. Reincarnation and illusion of memory. If the possibility
of survival after death is not , as in the two preceding sections it
was, assumed ab initio, then the verified memories that purport to
be memories of an earlier life on earth of the person who has them
are likely to be dismissed by the critic as being really illusions of
memory similar to those cited in Sec. 2 of Chapt. XXII, of a man
whose memories of incidents in the Harrison presidential cam¬
paign really were memories only of the images of those incidents
he had formed as a child from descriptions of them by his uncles.

The difference would be only that the experient’s verified
memories, instead of being referred by him to an early part of
his life, would be referred to an earlier life he imagined he had

THE REALITY OF SURVIVAL AS REINCARNATION 30S

lived on earth; whereas the truth would be that the facts he really
remembers are facts he learned in a normal manner during his
present life and then forgot, but which the subconscious part ul
his mind retained, and which eventually emerged again into hi$
consciousness in dramatized form as content of a so-called “pro-
gignomatic fantasy;’* that is, of an imagination or day-dream
which he does not realize to be this, of himself as living on earth
a life anterior to his present one. The fantasy might be presenting
itself spontaneously as an effect of repression of strong but un
acknowledged impulses or cravings. Or it might be created under
hypnosis, in compliance with the hypnotist’s command to the
subject to push back his consciousness to a time earlier than the
birth or conception of his body.

Evidently, the acceptability or not in a given case, »• us
explanation of the fact that the incidents remembered and as¬
cribed to an earlier life did really occur, though in the present
life, turns on the probability or improbability a p< haps th<
certainty or impossibility—in the light of all we know abou the
person’s contacts, his education, his available sources of informa
tion, etc.—that he should have learned normally during the course
of his present life the past facts he now remembers but refers to
an earlier life.

The probability that he did so learn them, however, depends
in part on the “antecedent” improbability that the mind, or anv
part of the mind, of a deceased person survives after death; for ii
it does not, it could of course not remember anything. But in
Part III it was shown that such survival is not antecedently eithev
improbable or probable—the allegations to the contrary being
based not on facts known, but only on gratuitous fideistir or scien¬
tistic assumptions.

4. Extrasensory perceptions, vs. memories of an earlier life.
If one proceeds under the assumption that survival after death
is not possible, and if it turns out to be highly improbable or im¬
possible that some of the memories purportedly of an earlier life
should really be memories of facts normally learned in the present
life and then forgotten, then one might attempt to account for
the correspondence of those purported memories to real facts bv

304

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

supposing that the person concerned ascertained those facts not
normally but by extrasensory perception— by telepathy, perhaps,
from the minds of persons who know them, or by clairvoyance or
retrocognition. The probabilities or improbabilities of this, how¬
ever, are the same no matter whether the survival to which this
supposition would provide an alternative be survival as reincarna¬
tion, or survival in a discarnate state. It will be recalled that in
Chapt. XIX, we examined Prof. E. R. Dodds* contention that the
identificatory information alleged by believers in survival to
emanate from the surviving discarnate spirits of deceased persons is
really obtained through unconscious exercise of telepathy or/and
clairvoyance by the mediums or automatists who communicate it;
and we concluded that although some of the prima facie evidence
for survival may with some plausibility be explained away in this
manner, nevertheless certain others of the evidential items can¬
not be so accounted for without postulating for extrasensory per¬
ception a scope far outranging that for which there is independent
evidences; nor without depending even then on certain additional
and unplausible postulations.

These conclusions apply with equal force when the form of
survival under consideration is not discarnate survival specifically
but is survival as reincarnation, whether immediately after death
or after survival in a discarnate state for some time.

5. What would be the best possible evidence of reincarna¬
tion. That the mind of a now living person is the same mind
as that of a person whose body died some time before means, ac¬
cording to the analysis offered in Sec. 4 of Chapt. XIV, that the
mind of the person who died has become the mind present in
the now living person. If they are in this sense the same mind,
then automatically the history of the later one includes the his¬
tory of the earlier one. Such knowledge, however, as a mind has
of its own history consists of such memories as it has of its past
experiences.

At this point, we need to distinguish between memories and
memory. Memory is the capacity of a mind to “remember” past
events that were its own subjective experiences, and objective
events or facts that it experienced, i.e., perceived. According to

THE REALITY OF SURVIVAL AS REINCARNATION 305

the analysis of the notion of “capacity’’-or “ability" or ‘ disposi
tion” or “power"—given in Sec. 2 of Chapt. VI, a capacity is an
abiding causal connection between any event of a given kind C
and some event of a given other kind E, occurring in any state of
affairs of a given kind S. And exercise of a capacity-e.g., of the
capacity designated “memory"—is what occurs when an event of
kind C occurring in a state of affairs of kind S causes in it an event
of kind E.—e.g., awareness of an event experienced in the past.

A memory, on the other hand, is the present awareness of an
event or fact one experienced in the past, which occurs if some¬
thing now causes exercise of one’s capacity to remember that
event or fact. Memory, then, is a capacity, not an occurrence;
whereas a memory is an occurrence, not a capacity.

If now we ask how a given mind knows itself to be the same
mind as one which existed earlier, the answer is as follows.

If a memory it has is of a subjective experience—e.g., of a
thought, an emotion, an intention, a desire, etc., which it
had—and it is a genuine memory of it, then the mind tha has
this memory is necessarily the same mind as the mind that had
the subjective experience remembered; for nobody ml oneself
can remember his own subjective experiences. Another person
could, at most, only remember such perceptible objective expres¬
sions, if any and whether candid or deceitful, as one gave to them;
and anyway one gives no perceptible expression to many of them
This, however, brings up the question whether memory of any
of one’s subjective experiences can be illusory not genuine; and I
submit that, if one distinguishes clearly between subjective ex¬
periences themselves, and such status-e.g., of dream,” or “hallu¬
cination,’* or “perception," or “sign of. . .*’ etc.—as one may
ascribe to them, then it becomes evident that memory of one s
subjective experiences, like presentness of them, cannot be il¬
lusory. For illusion is possible at all only where interpretation
enters. And pastness of a subjective experience one remembers
is not inferred but is just as direct an experience as is presen mess
of a subjective experience. Vacuousness of the supposition that
one’s memory of a subjective experience can be illusory (e.g., of
a subjective experience one calls “pain," or “dizziness,” or “fear, ’

306

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

or “bitter taste,” etc.) follows from the fact that any attempt one
might make to prove either that it is or is not illusory would
automatically presuppose that one does remember the subjective
experience one designates by the particular one of those words
one employed.

If, on the other hand, a memory is of some objective fact or
event, then the only evidence there could be—which, however,
would be adequate—that a mind whether incarnate or discarnate
having that memory is the same mind as a certain mind that was
incarnate at a given earlier time, would consist of the following
three items together: (a) that the memories of objective facts or
events the present mind has include memories of them which
the earlier mind had; (b) that these included memories were
veridical, i.e., are known to correspond to what those objective
facts or events were; and (c) that those memories are known to
be genuinely memories because the person having them is known
not to have had opportunity to acquire his knowledge of those
objective facts or events in any way other than personal observa¬
tion of them.

Possession by a given mind of memories of subjective ex¬
periences of an earlier mind, or/and possession of memories of
objective facts or events also remembered by that earlier mind,
would thus mean that the earlier mind had eventually become
the given mind and was thus an intrinsic early part of it.

This relation, however, is precisely the relation which, ac¬
cording to the accounts we have of the cases of Katsugoro, of
Alexandrina Samona, and of Shanti Devi, did obtain between the
whole of the memories each had, and the portion of these relat¬
ing to a period anterior to the birth of their present body.

These cases, then—if the reports are accurate, which we have
of them and of other cases where memory likewise spontaneously
extends to a period earlier than the birth or conception of the
present body—provide the best conceivable kind of evidence that
the person having those memories is a reincarnation of one who
had died earlier. Indeed, the account we have of each of these
cases, if it is accurate, constitutes an account of what it means,
to say that the mind of a given deceased person reincarnated in
the body of a neonate who has now reached a certain age.

THE REALITY OF SURVIVAL AS REINCARNATION 307

If, however, we wish to speak—as ordinarily—of reincarnation
also in cases other than these; that is, in cases like that of each of
the rest of us, where no such spontaneous memories of an earlier
incarnation are possessed; then that which is supposed to be re¬
incarnated in our body cannot be an earlier mind. It can be
only the “seed” left by an earlier mind—a seed consisting ot the
set of what Prof. Broad would term its “supreme dispositions.”
and which we have described as the set of its basic aptitudes; that
is, of its capacities to acquire under respectively appropriate cir
cumstances various more determinate kinds of capacities.

It is conceivable, however, that one of those reincarnated
basic aptitudes should be aptitude to regain, under appropriate
stimulus, memories now latent that would satisfy requirement
(a), (b), and (c) above, and would therefore be memories of an
earlier incarnation. Moreover, the appropriate stimulus—or a
sometimes adequate stimulus—for the regaining of them whether
temporarily or enduringly, might consist of a demand to this i
feet made on a person under hypnosis by the hypnotist.

To have regained them in this manner would then mean that
knowledge of the sameness of the mind of the deceased person and
of the mind of the person who has been given that stimulus, has
been temporarily or enduringly achieved , instead of having been
spontaneous and native as in the cases of Katsugoro and of the
other children cited.

INDEX

Abilities, 52-54
Accusative
“connate,” 47
“internal," 47

Aksakof, A. on reincarnation in French
Spiritism 235, 236
Albertelli, Sra., 253
Alger, W. R.

on reincarnation, 208
on resurrection as reincarnation, 209
on superiority of reincarnation hypo¬
thesis, 209

Amenhotep III, 248, 250, 252
“Animal spirits," in Descartes philos¬
ophy, 100, 101

Apparitions, 9, 21, 22, 139, 154, 156,
157

clothes of, 160, 169
of the living, 159
and materializations, 168-170
and proof of survival, 169, 170
Appius Claudius, 263
Aptitudes, 30, 55, 122
basic, 306

and heredity, 229-231
and acquisition of skills, 230, 231
Archdale, Mrs., 187
“Astral projection," 161
Automatists, 175, 176
Autotelism, 88

Balfour, G. W.. 187, 189, 190, 199, 203
Barker, Wra. J., 276n, 279, 280-283 , 285,
286, 288-290, 292
Barrett, W. F., 160n

“Basic limiting principles," 137-139, 149
Bateman, F., 233n

Baudin. Ed., 273
Bayfield. M. A., 182
Bebbington, J., 283
Bechofer Roberts, C. S., 196n
Becoming, 125
Belief in survival, 14-17
arguments for, 18, 23-27
Bequet, C.. 236
Bergson, H., 146

Bernstein, M., 276-278, 287, 296, 297.
299

experience as hypnotist, 277
hidden motivations in, 297
Benalauffy, L. von, 92
Bilocation, 161
Blavatsky. H. P. 237-239
Bodin, Mme., 236
Body, fate of after death. 19
sameness of a, at two times. 125. 126
Bounoure, L., 93, 94
Bourdon, J. C., 272
Bourne, A., 171
Bowen, F., 228
Bowers, M. K., 281
Bozzano, E., 162, 163
Brahmanism, and reincarnation, 210, 211
Brain, as objectification of will-to-know,
82

"Bridey Murphy," 258, 276ff., 301
and Virginia’s mythical brother, 291
and Virginia’s childhood memories,
289-294

conclusions about, 298, 299
documents of the case. 279ff.
emergence of, 279
essentials of the evidence for, 289
address as “The Meadows," 285, 286
opinions of some psychiatrists on case,
295ff.

and Queens University, 286

309

310

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

and rice, 286, 287
and spirit communication, 300
Unverified statements of, 282
upgrading of her family, 282
verified statements of, 282-289
her wood house, 285
Bridgman, P. W., 193n
Broad, C. D., 6, 19, 55, 106, 131, 133,

137, 142, 151, 306; on reincarnation,
219, 220, 228, 229

Buddhism, and reincarnation, 210, 211
Burns, G., 278

Burns, Mrs. M., and Irish tales, 290
Butler, Mrs. G., 21-33, 154
Butcher, S. H., 188
Byers, R., 281,284, 294

Cadenn’s, in “Bridey Murphy” case, 283

Caesar, Julius, 216

Cahagnet, A., 236

Camels, in Egypt, 251, 252

Cannon, H. G., 93n

Capacities, 52-54, 60

Carmichael, L., 29n

Carrigan, J., grocer, in “Bridey Mur¬
phy” case, 283
Carrington, H., 163n
Causality, 84
and events, 101, 102
revealed in experiments, 104n
and mind-body interaction, 116
nature of its terms, 101, 103, 104
Causation, the "how” of, 91, 92, 116,
117

Cayce, E., 274, 275
Celts, 214
Cerminara, G., 275
Chaffin will case, 157, 158
Chand, B., 246
Chand, L. K., 246
Charpigny, Ph., 272
Chaubey, K. N., 246, 247
Christianity, 210
Cleckley, H. M.. 123, 255
Clement XIV, Pope, 161, 168
Commonsense, 133
Communication, automatic, 183

from the deceased, 175
mediumistic, 141
Conation, 83
blind, 87, 88

creative vs. activative, 90, 91
“Connate” accusative, 47
Connection, distinguished from iden¬
tity, 64-67
Consciousness, 7, 8
and brain areas, 29
and behavior, 32
“content” of, 47
evidence of, and death, 29, 43
affected by drugs, 30
only in living organisms, 29
and nervous system, 29
“object” of, 47

privacy of states of, 45, 46, 48
as brain processes, 31, 32
as product of body, 43
states of, publishable. 45
states or modes of, 45
vocabulary for states of, 48, 65, 66
“Control," 176

Convincing, vs. proving, 12, 13, 28
Cook, FI., 166

Cooper. Mrs. B., 183, 186, 197, 198
Corkell, Mrs. Bridie (Murphy?), 280,
281,294, 295
Corkell, John, 294
Costa, G., 162, 163n
Crookes, Wm„ 146, 165
"Cross-correspondences.” 127, 186-190,

192

Cummings, A., 22, 154, 155

Dalai Lama, 221
Davis. G., 183, 197, 198
Death, 8
biological, 42
certainty of, 11

Deceased, communications with the, 9

“Deceiving spirits,” 183

Deirdre, 288

D£jd vu, 232, 233

Delafosse, M., 221

Democritus, 109

INDEX

311

Descartes, R., 100, 101
Desire, vs. blind conation, 88
Determinism, “radically experimental,”
102, 103

Laplace on, 102, 103
physicochemical, 103
“Directiveness,” of biological processes,
83, 92

Dingwall, E. J., 284
Diogenes Laertius, 211
Dispositions, 52-54
"supreme,” 306
“Ditching,” 279, 287
Dodds, E. R., 193-199, 304
Dogmatism, in the name of science, 146,
149

“Double,” projection of the, 9
Dreams, 7, 9
Dricsch, H., 83, 92, 146
Druids, 216

Dualism, 108, 109, 111, 112, 115
Duns Scotus, 33n

Ear of Dionysius case, 199
Ectoplasm, 140, 166, 167
Egyptians, 214, 216
Eisenbud, J., 296
Elijah, 214
Empedocles, 211
Energy, and causality, 107
conservation of, 106, 107
Entelechy, 83, 92
Epiphenomenalism, 74-80
arbitrariness of, 77-79
definition of, 76, 77
and experimentation, 96
Equanimity, and religion, 17
“Equifinality,” of biological processes,
83,92
Esau, 215

Esse est percipi, 47
“ESP-projection,” 161
Extrasensory perception, 135, 184, 186,
188, 191,193-199, 303, 304
and distance, 135

and mediumistic communications, 94,
191, 193, 195-199

vs. memories of an earlier life, 303,
304

Faculties, 52-54
Faraday, M., 145, 148
Farr’s grocery, in "Bridey Murph/” case.
283

Perm, V., 24n

Fichte, J. G., on plurality of lives, 2J7

Flammarion, C., 146

Flavius Sextilius, 262

Flournoy. Th., 183

Forbes, Mrs. (pseud.), 187

Fox, O., 163

Frallic, M. E., 163

Francis. Saint, 114, 115

Fraud, 142, 192

Fullerton, G. S., 75

Function, productive vs. transmissive,
113

Garrett, Mrs. E., 197

Gaster, M., 215n

Gesell, A., 3In

Ghosts, 154

Ginsburg, C. D., 215

God, 7. 23, 25, 26, 71, 81, 100, 155, 214

Goldney, K. M., 233n

Gorman, Fa. John Joseph, 279, 282, 291

Grung, Mrs. M., 278

Gunn, B., 250

Gupta, L. D., 246

Gurney, Ed., 159, I60n, 188

Hamilton, W. # 33n
Hall, G. S., 183
Hallucinations, 79, 80, 153
complete, 168
heautoscopic, 141
veridical, 140
Hart, H., 160n
Hayward, R., 286-288
Hearn, L., 241,243
Heisenberg, W., 102
Heredity, and native aptitudes, 229

312

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

Herodotus, 216
Heterotelisra, 88
Hill, E., 280

Hodgson, R., 17In, 177*182, 187, 188
196, 198, 203
Hodgson, Sh., 76
Holland, Mrs. (pseud.), 187, 199
Holms, A. C., 239
Home, D. D., 165, 237
Hugo, V., 183

Hulme, A. J. H., 248n, 249, 250
Human body, “one’s own,” 105, 106
Hume. D., 84, 101-103, 216
on reincarnation, 216
Huxley, T. H., 76, 148
Hymans, L. L., 161

Hypnosis, age-regression or progression,
under, 257, 258, 271, 272, 273, 275-
277

potentialities of, 297

Hypnotism, and memory of earlier lives,
307

and relation between hypnotist and
subject, 298

Hypophenomenalism, 74, 81-99
biological vs. cosmological, 82, 83
and experimentation, 96, 97
biological, and mind-body interaction,
95

interest of its contention, 99
merits of, 95
thesis of, 83

Hyslop, J. H., 145, 176-180, 184, 196,
198, 203, 228, 233, 234
on illusions of memory, 233, 234
on survival as reincarnation, 228

Idealism, 68, 69

Ideas, privacy and communicability of,
109-111

Identity, distinguished from connection,
64-67

evidence of personal, 178
not proved by likeness, 125, 126
personal, 125

Illusions, of perception, 143
of memory, 233, 234

Immortality, 6
arguments for, 9
Impersonation, 191

Impossibility, sources of belief in, 148,
149

Faraday on natural, 145
“Independent voice,” 176
Indeterminacy, 102
Inspection, 46

Interaction, between brain and mind, 31
Interactionism, 74
its contention, 104, 105
and survival, 100, 107
Infernal accusative, 47
Introspection, 45
Intuition, 46, 47
Itard, J. M. G., 30n

Jacob, 215

James, Wm., 62, 146, 171n, 173, 177,
179

Japhet, C. (pseud.), 236
Jennings, H. S., 95, 102-104, 134n, 146
Jeremiah, 215
Jerome, Saint, 215
Jesus, 18-23, 115,214
apparitions of, 23
John the Baptist, 215
Jews, 214

“John Doe,” 200-203
Johnson, Miss A., 187
Johnson, R. C., 163n
Johnson, W. E., 56
Josephus, 215
Jourdain, Miss E. F., 234

Kant, I., 228

on preexistence and immortality, 216,
217, 219

purposiveness and mechanism, 86, 87
Kardec, Allan (pseud.), 235-237
Karma, 210, 226
“Katie King,” 165, 170
Katsugoro, 241-243, 247, 251, 275, 306
Kavanaugh, S., 287, 288
Keeton, M. T., 107

INDEX

313

Key concepts, ingenuous vs. analytical
understanding of, 34, 35
Kline, M. V., 281

Lamont, C., 32-34. 51, 67, 107ff.
his position an interactionistic dual¬
ism, 116

Lancelin, Ch., 244

Laplace, P. S. de, determinism as con¬
ceived by, 102, 103
"Larquen, J. de," 275n
Leibniz, G. W., 70, 225
Levitation, 140, 145
Life, biological, 5, 42
dormant, vegetative, active, 126, 127
a habit, 8

psychological, 5, 42-44
its processes purposive, 83
vegetative, animal, human, 43, 44
without beginning or end, 6
Life after death (see also Survival),
v-vii

causes of belief or disbelief in, 7, 9,

11, 12

and Christianity, 18-21
desire for, 10
discarnate, 14, 33, 34
duration of, 6, 124

not disproved by epiphenomenalists,
80

eternal, 6

evidence for, 10, 18
forms of, 10, 11, 126, 127
impossibility of, 28ff.
and God, 15

grounds for belief or disbelief in, 12

and justice, 24
material, 5
personal, 5

as physical reembodiment, 130

physiological, 5, 6

possibility of, 61

psychological, 5, 6

four questions concerning, 61

and religion, 15

reward and punishment, 16

Liguori, A. de, 161, 168

Likeness, not proof of identity, 125, 126

Lillie, R S., 92

"Living,” 39, 42

Living things, how distinguished from
non-living, 59, 83, 84
Lobotomy, 30

Lodge, O., 146, 177, 179, 187, 203
Loisy, A., 20n
"Lough,” 288
Lynam, R., 280

Machon, P., 272
Mai, C. K., 247
Mai, K., 246
Mandingos, 221, 241
Marcuse, F. L., 281
Martin, J., 253
Mason, Mrs., 248

"Material," derivatively vs. fundamen¬
tally, 41

meaning of, 59, 193
which things are called, 40, 41
Materialism, 109

as metaphysical creed, 149, 150, 151
Paulsen’s refutation of, 63, 64
and apparitions, 168
Materialization, 164-170
Material things, distinct from percepts
of them, 69

Matter, ultimate constituents of, 40
‘‘dematerialization” of, 39
Mathur, B. R. B., 246
Mathur, T. C., 246
Matthews, W. R., 5
McConnell, R. A., 137n
McCarthy, Sean Brian Joseph, and
“Bridey Murphy,” 279, 282
McTaggart, J. E., on heredity, 229-231
on reincarnation, 218, 219
"Meadows, The,” address of "Bridey
Murphy,” 285, 286, 291
"Meanings," 110, 111
Mechanism, as conceived by Kant, 86
and purposiveness, 89
Mechanisms, mental, physical, 89

314

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

Mediums, 9, 175, 176
Mediumship, ‘'possession” vs. extrasen¬
sory perception, 123, 124
Meehl, P. E., 193n
Memories, of earlier lives, 174, 241
or extrasensory perceptions? 303, 304
vs. memory, 304, 305
of objective facts, 305, 306
of subjective experiences, 305
Memory, 8

lack of, and non-existence, 224, 225
of our acts, 226
illusions of, 233, 234
of past lives, lacking, 218, 224
vs. memories, 304, 305
and personal identity, 225
“Mental," 45. 47, 59, 193
derivatively vs. fundamentally, 49
Mental activity, as "function of” cer¬
ebral, 73

Metal bedsteads, 284, 285
Metempsychosis, 7, 131, 207-210, 218
Metensomatosis, 207
Mind, 39

species of capacities of, 51, 54, 56
existence of a, 55, 60
history of a, 54, 55, 60
nature of a, 54, 55, 60
parts of a, 56

sameness of a, at two times, 124-126
and "soul" and "spirit," 56
unity of a, 56

Mind-body relation, 34, 62, I12ff.
alleged absurdity of, 66
mind as affecting body, 114-116
double aspect conception of, 71*73
as epiphenomenalism, 75ff.
and ontological heterogeneity of its
terms, 101
not identity, 64
nature of its terms, 99
as pre-established harmony, 70, 71
mind as product of body, 114
Mindkins, 56

Moberly, C. A. E., Miss, 234
"Modes,” and "substances" in Descartes,

101

Monads, 70

Monism, 11, 112
Morgan, H. O., 170
Morton ghost case, 158, 159
Muhl, A., 224
Muldoon, S., 163
Muller, H. J., 146, 151
Mundle, C. W. K., 134
Murphy, Duncan, 279, 282
Murphy, Duncan Blaine, 279
Mutations, 93
Myers, C. S., 66

Myers, F. W. H., 121, 156n, 159. 177,
179, 188, 199
Mythopoeic faculty, 258

Naobas, 271
Naturalism, 109
Nature, 109
Nirvana, 211

"Nona," 248. 249, 250, 253-255

Object-reading, 140, 194, 195
"Obsession," 241
Occam’s razor, 33n

Origen, on reincarnation and preexis¬
tence, 213,214, 215

Orthodoxy, attacks by, on "Bridev
Murphy" case, 283; the method of.
174

Osty, E., 161, 162, 196
"Ouija" board, 175

"Out-of-the-body" experience, 9, 159-164
not evidence for life after death, 164

Palingenesis, 131, 207, 218
Pap, A., 11 In
"Parabiological,” 133
Parallelism, psycho-physical, 70ff., 74
Paranormal occurrences, chief kinds of,
139-141

physical, 191, 192

questions relevant to reports of, 141-
144

and science, 145
significance of, 144

INDEX

315

spontaneous, experimental, mediumis-
tic, 141

as defined by Broad, 137139
as defined by Rhine, 133-137
“Parapsychological,” 133
Parsimony, law of, 32
Paulsen, F., 63, 68
“Pelham, George,” 169, 181, 184
Pcrclman, Ch., 149
Personality, 9

acquired, vs. native aptitudes, 227
components of, 121

differences between males and females,
30

dissociations of, 123, 296
effects of environment on, 30
and heredity, 30
not simple, 122

“Physical,” which things are called, 40,
41

Piddington, J. G., 187, 188

Pineal gland, 100, 101

Piper, Mrs. L., 179-187. 192, 300

Plato, and reincarnation, 211, 212, 216

"Plazz,” 293

Plotinus, 81

on reincarnation, 212-214
Podmore, F., 159, 160n, 179n, 187, 188
Ponce, John, of Cork, 33n
“Possession,” 170, 171, 184, 185, 197. 241
Powers, 52-54
Pratt, J. B., 8, 11, 12
Precognition, 140
“Pre-established harmony,” 70, 71
Price, G. R., 193n
Price, H. H, 56, 160n
and a “next world” of images, 128,
129, 130

“Primary organic consciousness,” 94
Prince, M., 123, 171, 180, 254
Prince, W. F., 123, 148, 171
Privacy, of consciousness, 45, 46, 48
“Progignomatic fantasy,” 303
Projection, 9
of the “double,” 159-164
(see also "Out-of-the-body” experi
cnce)

Proof, of paranormal occurrences, 192
Protestantism, 210

Prothesiology, 86
Proving, vs. convincing, 12, 13, 28
Psychiatrists, occupational disease of.
296, 297

Psychiatry, an infant branch of medi¬
cine, 298

“Psychical,” 45, 47, 59
“Psychogenic factor,” 228
Psychometry, 140
see also “Object-reading ’

Purposive activity, blind, 88
conscious, 88

Purposivcness, as most commonly con¬
ceived, 84

a familiar type of, 87
differentiated from mechanism, 89
objections to, as explanatory of life
processes, 84-86
Purucker, G. dc, 220
Pythagoras, 211

“Quantitative ESP experiments, whai
they quantify, 135

Queens University, Bridey Murphy's’
reference to, 286

Queer beliefs, value of attention to, 97

Raginsky, B. B . 281, 297
Rameses, 268
Rayleigh, Lord, 146

Reality, as conceived by the natural
sciences, 149, 150, 151
Rebirth. 207
see also Reincarnation
Recognition, 233
Reembodiment, 207

Regressions, to earlier age under hypno¬
sis, 224, 257,258,271-273, 275ff.
Reincarnation, 131, 207 (see also Me¬
tempsychosis, Rebirth, TransmigTa
tion)

in animal form, 212, 220
in Brahmanism, 210
what is brought to rebiTth, 224, 226,
228

in Buddhism, 210, 211
of a developed mind, 306

316

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

and Empedocles, 211

what would best evidence it, 304-306

Fichte on, 217

forms of doctrine of, 220, 221
and growth, 229
J. H. Hyslop on, 228
and illusions of memory, 302
implausibility of, 207, 208
interpretations of the evidence for,
300

interval between incarnations, 221,
238

and justice, 276
in Kabbala, 215
and materialism, 223
and absence of memory of past lives,
224

merits of the idea of, 208-210
neutral as to origination of soul, 210
in New Testament, 214, 215
as “possession” 301, 302
and Pythagoras, 211
as rebirth in a neonate, 241
as true meaning of resurrection, 209
and Spiritism, 234-236
a doctrine unorthodox in West, 276
Religion, v, vi, 14, 15
and education of the heart, 17
personal function of, 17
social function of, 16
a psychological instrument, 16
vagueness of beliefs of, 17, 18
Renouvier, Ch., on reincarnation, 218
Resurrection, 18-23, 43, 121, 209
Retrocognition, 140, 234, 243
Rhine, J. B., 28, 136, 193n
paranormality as defined by, 133-137
Rice, “Bridey Murphy's” mention of,
286, 287

Richet, Ch., 146, 166, 169
Rignano, E., 134n
Rivail, H. D.. 235, 236
Rochas, A. de, 244n, 258, 271-274
Roff, Mary, 171, 173, 301,302
Role-selves, 122, and survival, 123
“Rosemary,” 248-256, 295, 296
Roustan, M., 236
Rosen, H., 281, 295
Rufinus, 213, 214n

Russell, E. S., 92
Ruyer, R., 78, 93, 94
Ryle, G., 49, 11 In, 117n

Sahay, K. N., 247
Salter, W. H., 196
Saltmarsh, H. F., 170, 189, 199, 202
Sameness, of a mind, at two times, 304
how known by it, 305, 306
Samona, Alexandrina, 243, 244, 245, 251,
275, 300

Samona, C., 244, 245
Samona, Mme. C., 244, 245
Sardou, V., 236
Satan, 155

Saulnier, Mrs. H. G., 294
Schneck, J., 280
Scholem, G., 215n
Schopenhauer, A., 81, 82, 91
on reincarnation, 217, 218
Schroedinger, E., 93n, 134
Science, v, 12

and paranormal occurrences, 145
Scientific attitude, 146, 147
Scientists, and pontification in the name
of science, 147, 148
Striven, M., 193n
Seed, of a mind, 307

Sensations, dependent on sense organs,
30

Separability, 112, 113
Servo-mechanisms, 85
not themselves purposive, 89, 90
as purpose serving, 90
Shanti Devi, 245-247, 251, 275, 306
Shapiro, A., 281
Sharma, N. R., 246
Shirley, R., 244n
Shorter, A., 249n

Sidgwick, H., 146, 177, 179, 188, 192
Sidgwick, Mrs. H., 184, 185, 189, 190,
203

“Silver thread,” 160, 164
“Simmons, Ruth” (pseud.), 276, 278, 292,
295

Singh, J. A. L., 31n

Single difference, method of, 78

Sinnott, E. W., 84, 134n

INDEX

317

“Sitter,” 176, 185
Siwek, P., 220

Skill, factors in acquisition of, 230, 231
Soal, S. G., 183, 193n, 194, 197, 198, 23Sn
Soul, 14, 108

and matter in Plotinus, 81
Spirit, 14
Spiritism, v, vi

“Spirits,” testimony of, on reincarnation,
240, 254

Spiritualism, v, vi
and hypophenomenalisra, 96, 97
Spiritualists, 183, 254, 300
Squires, P. C., 31 n
Stark, M., 257
Stawell, Miss F. M., 199
Stevens, E. W., 171, 172, 173, 241
Stevens, W. O., 22n
Stevenson, I., 247n, 256n, 281,296
Strayne, Mrs., 279
Subconscious processes, 49, 50
Substance, 56

Descartes’ conception of, 100, 101
and ordinary language, 101
Substantive, the mind a, 56
“Supernatural soul,” 33
Supernaturalism, 108
Survival after death, 55 (see also Life
after death)

ambiguity of term, 121, 122
conclusions apparently warranted, 203
possible sources of evidence for, 132
premise of arguments for impossibil¬
ity of, 61, 62

antecedent improbability of, 193
and mediumistic communications, 191
what would prove or make probable,
199-203

Swann, W. F. G., 133
Swedenborg, E., 97
Symbolization, 76

Telepathy, 140
Telika Ventiu, 249, 253-255
Teutons, 214, 216
Thigpen, C. H., 123, 255
Thomas, D., 196
Thompson, Mrs., 187

Thorbum. W. M., 33n
Thought, conceived as physical process,
63

vs. the word “thought," 67, 68
Tighe, H. B., 278

Tighe, Virginia, Mrs H. B.. 276, 278,
288

possible childhood memories of, 289
hidden motivations of, 297
Time, 7
Tozo, 242, 243
Transmigration, 207, 209
see also Reincarnation
Trattner, E. R.. 20
Tuppence, 288
Tyndall, J., 148
Tyrrell, G. N. M.. 160n, 189

Ueberweg, F., 211

Unconscious psychological processes, 49,
50

Unconsciousness. 7, 8

Valerius Maximus, 216

Vennum, Lurancy, 171-174, 243, 301, 302

“Verdict of Science,” 117, 118

Verrall, A. W. ( 182. 187, 188

Verrall, Miss H., 187

Verrall, Mrs. A. W 187, 199

Vitalism. 83

“Vola,” 250-256

Volitions, 49

Waddell, L. A., 221
Waksman, S., 42, 43
Walker. E. D., 220, 228
Wallace, A. R., 116
Ward, J., 217
on reincarnation, 219
Warren, H. C., 29n, 153
Watseka Wonder case, 171-174, 241, 243,
296

and reincarnation as ‘possession," 301
White, Rev. Wally, 290, 292, 294

318

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTI

Wickland, C. A., 222, 237, 241

Words, in<

Wickland, Mrs. C. E., 238

tion ol

Wilcox, E. W., 237

Willett. H. L., 20

Willett, Mrs. (pseud.), 187, 189
Will-to-live, 81

Xenoglossy

Wild boy of Aveyron, 30

Wishful thinking, vii, 10

Wish to believe, vii, 23

Younghusb

Wish to disbelieve, vii

Wolberg, L., 280

Yram, (pse

Wolf children, 30

Wood, F. H., 248-250. 252, 254, 255

Zinng, R. \

Wood house. "Bridcy Murphy’s,” 285

Zorab, G., 1

h 7 /lo'/osfs-

JHEOLOGY LIBRARY
CLAREMONT. CALIF.

THEOLOGY LIBRARY
SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
AT CLAREMONT
CLAREMONT, CALIFORNIA

23-262-C

318

THE BELIEF IN A LIFE AFTER DEATH

Wickland. C. A., 222, 237. 241

Wickland, Mrs. C. E., 238

Wilcox, E. W.. 237

Willett. H. L., 20

Willett, Mrs. (pseud.), 187, 189

Will-to-live, 81

W T ild boy of Aveyron, 30

Wishful thinking, vii, 10

Wish to believe, vii, 23

Wish to disbelieve, vii

Wolberg, L., 280

Wolf children, 30

Wood. F. H., 248-250. 252, 254, 255

Wood house. "Bridcy Murphy’s,” 285

Words, indicative vs. predicativ
tion of, 64-67

Xenoglossy, 251, 253. 255, 295

Younghusband, F., 221
Yram, (pseud.), 163

Zinng, R. M., 31
Zorab, G„ 160n

22 4 ? /lo</0 5

JHEOLOGY LIBRARY
CLAREMONT. CALIF.

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