in communicating than the better developed, and we can imagine what a chaos of ideas would be communicated about that life. Make it a dream life, for that type at least, and what unity could we expect in the accounts of different communicators. Then add to all this the fact that all communications are fragmentary and many are confused, and we again have a situation justifying the utmost reservations on the messages about that life. We might well nigh suppose it impossible to obtain any clear idea about it at all. But after centuries of work we might construct some intelligent conception of it, after the manner in which astronomers have outlined the stars and their relations, or the physiologists the human organism and its functions under the aid of the microscope and the scalpel. But each communication, possibly affected by all these limitations added to those of the psychic through which they come, and nothing can be accepted until verified, and that verification is a task whose magnitude can hardly be measured as yet.

All that we can do at present is to compare the casual results of personal experience in communications or alleged communications until we can ascertain a unity that is not the effect of collusion between the parties or of common education. When we have the means and the men to carry on experiments for a long period of time we may make some advance on the problem. But the messages cannot be accepted as an unquestioned revelation in any instance. The material has to be treated as we would any statement of a living man. It must be subjected to critical study and comparison for a long period of time and from various psychics. In ordinary life, our own experience is an effective guide for measuring statements about things. We have to determine the probabilities of any man's account of some distant region by its relation to our own experience, according as that is wide or narrow,

and we can safely assume sufficient common elements to estimate the probabilities to some extent.

But when it comes to estimating the probabilities of what is said about a spiritual world, the normal man has no criterion to go by in his ordinary experience. Only the few can even claim the right to speak, and what they say has to be discounted for the influence of the subconscious and the prejudices established by normal experience, for the differences of opinion on the part of communicators, for the possibility that the conditions of communicating are sufficiently abnormal to affect the messages, for the certainty that messages are fragmentary, for the fact that they are often confused, for the possibility that different levels of spiritual development may affect the nature of communications, and for other possible limitations, so that we have before us one of the most perplexing problems science ever attacked, when we try to ascertain what such a spiritual world is like. Critical habits of mind, far beyond those usual with the people most interested, will have to be cultivated and practised, if any intelligible conception of the matter be possible. There are common elements in many of the messages from different sources, but there are also differences which are intelligible on the theory that it is a mental world, but they do not yet make us able to estimate its nature with any assurance.

T

CHAPTER VIII

THE PROCESS OF COMMUNICATING

HE discussion of the difficulties of communicating with discarnate spirits implied some conception

of what the process was, and especially in what was said of the pictographic method. But I did not go into detail in that matter. It is time to take up that subject more fully, more especially for removing misunderstandings about the whole problem as it appears to the psychic researcher.

There are few greater illusions about the spiritistic theory than those centering about the process of communicating and the nature of the evidence. We who have defended the hypothesis for twenty-five years have still to contend with perfectly inexcusable delusions about the whole problem. The only semblance of excuse is ignorance on the part of both the public and soi disant scientific men. We have gone on defending the theory with the belief that our facts could be appreciated, but the very elements of the problem seem to be unknown by those who claim to pass judgment on the subject. Too many people assume a supercilious and arrogant attitude whenever the evidence is mentioned, and, on the slightest interrogation of their reasons for it, they turn out to be literary and aesthetic objections to the triviality of the facts and the absence of great ethical and other revelations. This makes it necessary to take up the problem in detail and show such objectors that the subject is much more complex than they have suspected.

In the first place, when we say to the average man that we can communicate with the dead, or that we have obtained through apparitions or mediumistic phenomena facts which prove survival, they see that we are implying communication as well as survival of the discarnate, and with it they assume that the process of communication is as simple as our ordinary social intercourse. They read the records which we present as if they were merely jotted down conversations with the dead conducted very much as we talk with each other. They make no effort to investigate the complexity of the process, but take the phenomena at their face value and ask no scientific questions. They read an alleged message as they would a telegram or an essay. They make no account of the conditions under which the message is transmitted when it claims to come from another world, but recognize exactly what the conditions are in the physical world. If a telegraph operator makes a mistake, they do not laugh at the assertion that it is a telegram. They accept the mistake as natural. They may find fault with the operator, but they do not treat the message skeptically. If a message, however, claims to come from the dead, they set up objections as if they knew exactly what the conditions are for the receipt and delivery of the communication. There is, after twenty-five years of work on the problem by scientific men, absolutely no excuse for such conduct or ignorance.

Let me expand this situation somewhat. The average man, and I am sorry to say most alleged scientific men, read the data presented to them, as having an origin in spirits, as if there were no complications in their delivery. They pay not the slightest attention to the limitations under which the psychic researcher accepts the facts. They picture to themselves the direct communication of a spirit as if it were talking or writing precisely in the same way that a living person

would do. They do not try to understand the modus operandi as scientifically described. They wholly disregard the conditions which the inquirer allows for in his theory. They read the message as they would the morning news and if it pleases their fancy or prejudices, they listen to it. If it is fragmentary and confused, they utter a laugh and run away from the subject. If it were a spoiled telegram they would ask it to be repeated, but no allowance is to be made for the limitations under which the transcendental world has to work in sending a communication to the living. It is more convenient to laugh than it is to make an effort to ascertain the truth.

It is true that many reporters of psychic phenomena are no better than their critics. The average Spiritualist interprets his facts in the same manner as the skeptic. The only difference between him and the skeptic is that the Spiritualist believes the message to come from another world and the skeptic does not. But both have the same conception of the problem and the results. Both are wrong. The real process is a thousandfold more complicated than either of them assumes. We do not communicate directly with the dead. All that the spiritistic hypothesis claims is that the origin of the message is a spirit and not that the message comes to us with the integrity it had when it started. It is modified and distorted, often even when it is true. But the psychic researcher urges this in vain against the preconceived ideas of those who never studied the problem. The critic still persists in reading the material as he would a work on history or philosophy. He reads it exclusively in terms of his normal beliefs instead of testing the facts by their complex origin and causes. In reading a telegram I can disregard the mechanical means for its delivery, provided there is no mistake or confusion in the contents. But I can do nothing of the kind with spiritistic messages. I either