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Show Science Shows How a Man May Lead Many Lives at Oiice By PROFESSOR L. P. JACKS, President of the British Psychical Research Society. AMONG the dangers and the difficulties of psychical research not the leaM aro thore which arise from the ufc of the common words "spirit," "spiritual" and "Spirit-uallsm"; "Spirit-uallsm"; and the suggestion I have to make is, that as a temporary measure we should hn well advised to drop these words front our working vocabulary and pursue our Investigations Investiga-tions for the time being as though they did not exist. Kverynne who has thought out the problem of proving the Identity of those who nre alleged al-leged to communicate from beyond the gtnve must have experienced both the dancer nnd the difficulty that lurk in theso words. To prove identity, to prove that the person who was here and tho person who Is there are really one and the samo, you want as much resemblance and as much continuity as possible. Difference and discontinuity, on tho other hand, are always obstacles (o identification. identifica-tion. But whnl greater difference, what wider breach, could be conceived than that between n embodied and a diseml-oilied being between be-tween a man and a gho:t? No two beings that I can think of could he more unlike one another than myself in my body and myself out of my body. What it may be to see without, an e e, to speak without a tongue, to think without a liraln. or to move about without limbs I find myself wholly unable to conceive. 1 ennnot deny that such things may ho possible; but I nru certain that they are very different from Roclng with an eye, speaking with a tongue, thinking with a brain, and moving about, with tho nld of my bodily limbs. The difference Is' ho great nnd the discontinuity so startling that I cannot recognize my::elf under those conditions condi-tions as one with the person I now am. no- do I understand how anybody else could possibly Ident Ify me. Wo will assume that communications, genuine genu-ine commtinlcat Ions, aro taking place; nnd, dismissing dis-missing from our minds the notion that they nro coming from disembodied spirits or from nnolher world, wo will lot tho communications themselves toll us where they nro coming from, nnd what kind of beings Ihey are who nre making them. Kapecla II v will we be on our guard against letting the words "spiritual. " or "sniieiriaturnl." or ".supernormal" Intrudo theimrlveH on our observation. '1'hosn words Imply that, we have already made up our minds as to what the comuiunleat ions mean, which Is the very Ihlng we want, to llnd out. We will not tifo these adjectives unless the evidence Itself convinces that, they and no olhcra aro the adjectives we ought In use. These precautions taken, we ahall find (hat certain tacts now slart into prominence which rsrap' il us allogether whilo wn were under the malign Inlluoneo of our preconceptions; while Copyt tght, 1917, by thn Htjr . .in pa TO others which we previously thought unimportant unimpor-tant become very itr.por'rnt indeed. To begin with, these communicating beings, wherever they aro, nnd whoever they may be, fj'n'e nhrioiisly retain tlir distinction of sex. They make use of the personal pronouns masculine mas-culine ami feminine; they speak of one another an-other as "he" and "she"; .and they employ the distinction wiih no discernible difference of meaning from that with which we are all familiar. This suggests at once that the communicating com-municating beings stand wiih ourselves on a common biological ground; and since biological biologi-cal facts, like all other farts, an not isolated, but form part of a context in which the whole order of nature is involved, we could from this one fact alone build out a wholo system to correspond, just as tiie palaeontologist when ho discovers the hone of an o'tmct animal can reconstruct the whole animal to which It belonged. be-longed. This. I say, we could do; and the only thing that has prevented us doing It hitherto Is the notion that everything we are going to discover dis-cover must boar a "spiritual" sense, must mean something oilier than it would mean if It occurred oc-curred In Die known order that Is, may mean anything we choose to make it. mean. Dismissing Dis-missing that notion, we lind ourselves In the presence of a fact enormously rich in complications. com-plications. Tlif.ir brlic; retain the distinction 1 .ie.r. Next, and almost ptmnlly striking. Is their us' of langunc.o, both In the spoken nnd the written form. . . . Memory and expectation expecta-tion nre theirs. How Is It that thero has been so llltlo scrutiny of the evidence on theso lines? How Is-il, I cannot help asking myself, that a fact which would throw a Hood of light on any world, or sphere, or plant t. whore it w-as discovered dis-covered has so far thrown baldly any light nt nil on the world which these conunuuicatln; beings are supposed to inhabit? Is It because wn have made two compartments In our thinking, just, as we have made two worlds In the universe, in one of which every fact has lis Intelligible context, while In the other each fact can bo treated as though it had no context: at all V If, then. It Is true and T think It mmnesttrm-nblv mmnesttrm-nblv I a true that you cannot separate the Individual In-dividual from his world, that you cannot tear him out of his known context without destroying destroy-ing his Identity--what follows? It follows that the theory of human survival Involves far more than It seems to do at first sight. It means that lhe individual carries his world with him, nnd e.nnnot survive on nny other condition. In oilier word.', when we are proving lhe survival of A. H and C, wo aro proving also the survival of the world of reladons In which their Individ Indi-vid mil II les are rooted, and which Is I he necessary background to each one ot them, being the man ho is. .v is the I nit it niici the theory ot survival, sur-vival, so tor ns it is hasril on selenKfle. evidence, ii ill ultimately hare, to sioiniit. ., CiriMt lliiluln lilghts Hiw rvoil. |
