marked a different type of mind, perhaps one that had less self-sufficiency and grit of character to take things as they are. But whether so or not, the immortality of the soul was not so essential a feature of Roman thought as of the centuries which followed the decline and marked the success of Christian civilization. The reaction against the primitive Animism of the earlier periods in both Greece and Rome, like the philosophic movements in India, China, Japan, and Persia against savage Spiritualism, had carried with it much antagonism to the belief because of its associations with much inhumanity and more superstitions.

Christian belief need not be examined here. Suffice to say that it was rather a direct answer by alleged facts to the Epicurean Materialism than any adoption of Platonic and other views. The Epicurean, by admitting the existence of a soul, an ethereal organism different from the grosser physical body, prepared the way for attaching importance to apparitions and coincidental dreams, and it is probable that the story of the resurrection grew out of such an experience, distorted by time and legend into the physical resurrection. The existence of a well worked out theory of the resurrection among the Pharisees prior to the origin of any story about Christ, rather suggests what the sequel to Epicurean Materialism would be if the human mind attached any interest to apparitions, and this too without deciding whether they were hallucinations or realities. To meet this position materialism had to revise its doctrine and it did so by abandoning the ethereal body and claiming that consciousness was a function of the body.*

* For fuller discussion of the relation between Epicureanism and Christianity see the following works by the present author: Problems of Philosophy, pp. 435-445; Psychic Research and the Resurrection, Chap. XII.

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CHAPTER IV

CHRISTIANITY AND PSYCHIC RESEARCH

HRISTIANITY has always been represented by its followers, at least until recent times, as a unique religion. It was contrasted with all the others, Buddhism, Brahmanism, Confucianism, Shintoism, Zoroastrianism and all other systems. The resemblances between them were slurred over or disregarded and the points of difference emphasized to prove that Christianity was the only true religion. There are differences and great ones. The oriental systems were largely ethical and spiritual teaching, mixed up with philosophy, and unaccompanied by the miraculous as illustrated in Christianity. There may have been some incidents in the lives of their founders that would give rise to remarkable stories, but these were not the essential conditions of these religions. The miraculous more distinctly characterized Christianity, though its ethical and spiritual teaching was quite as prominent and essential. The miraculous was appealed to as evidence, not as its object. But in the course of its evolution the interest of its conquests led it to make itself unique as a religion. It took eighteen centuries to make it look with a tolerant eye on oriental systems and to discover certain affinities in ethical and spiritual ideas. They may not be great, but they are there, and further investigation will find connections not now suspected except by students of anthropology.

Now it was not the ethical and spiritual teaching that gave Christianity its unique character. Its own

founder taught that he came only to restore the ideas of the prophets, but his credentials, whether presented by himself or invented by his followers, were in the doctrine of "miracles." They were supposed to guarantee the divinity of his character and teaching. We may therefore represent Christianity as based upon four connected types of alleged fact. (1) The Virgin birth; (2) "Miracles"; (3) The incidents of the Resurrection, and (4) Its ethical and spiritual teaching. The first and last type have no interest for psychic research as a scientific investigation of unusual mental phenomena, and hence will not come up for special consideration here. The relation of psychic research to Christianity is determined by the second and third types of alleged fact. The second, that of "Miracles," may be divided into three aspects: (a) Physical "miracles," (b) Spiritual healing, and (c) Mediumistic phenomena and sensory automatisms, or clairvoyance and clairaudience. While the resurrection is given a place by itself it probably belongs to the type of sensory automatisms, but I have isolated it because of its relation to the doctrine of survival after death. Regarded as an apparition after Christ's death, with attendant misinterpretations of its physical character, it makes a unique incident in the origin of a religion emphasizing immortality as its chief feature, or one of them.

For a similar reason I have isolated the story of the Virgin birth from "Miracles," though it is in reality one of that class. But it is so unique in character that it cannot be reduced to the type of psychic phenomena with which we are familiar and I desire here to bring out the alliances of Christianity rather than its uniqueness. The fundamental object of "miracles" was to establish the spiritual claims of Christ. "The Jews seek a sign," said St. Paul, and they did this in order to have ethical and spiritual

teaching guaranteed, and in this the Virgin origin of Christ was a determinant factor. It concentrated attention on the genesis or historical origin of the system. as the security for its divine nature and teaching. The validity of the Gospel was made to rest on the historicity or integrity of a physical event. This, I cannot but help think, was the great mistake of Christianity, at least in its later development. The effect of it was to expose its ethical and spiritual teaching to the vicissitudes of belief about historical events instead of its function in the realization of the ideals of the community. Validity, not genesis, should have been the point of view regarding its ethical and spiritual principles. These may guarantee themselves or have their value determined by pragmatic considerations. But the question of the historicity of certain events has no such solution. It was precisely because Christianity placed so much importance on historical genesis that it got into so much trouble with evolution when that doctrine came forward. Christianity had asserted a certain specific origin supposed to secure the validity of its teaching, but science questioned the alleged facts of that origin and evolution disputed the catastrophal and "miraculous" character of the cosmic process, at least in the form in which Christianity had presented it, and the moment that the human mind was conquered by that theory the whole historical basis of Christianity dropped from under it and left the common mind to draw the conclusion. Its teaching was supposed to be protected by a certain set of alleged historical events. When they disappeared as mythical, the mind asked whether the ethical doctrines based on them did not fall with them. Ethical and spiritual truth must be based upon personal insight, not on the integrity of a mere physical event, whatever importance this may have. We determine the validity of ethical and spiritual truths by their function in life, by their

pragmatic connections, and not by appeals to tradition. The meaning of the cosmos may have something to do with the proof or acceptance of past events, and we may learn in that way what its tendencies are. To these we have to adjust ourselves. But unless those events illustrate an ethical and spiritual truth they have no pragmatic value, though they have a philosophic interest, related, perhaps, to spiritual truths, but not determining their validity.

Consequently, as having no importance for the connection of psychic phenomena and Christianity, I dismiss the story of the Virgin birth and confine the discussion to the types of phenomena which define the scientific interest of psychic research. These are the "miracles," or at least a part of them, and the story of the resurrection with its accompanying incidents.

The resurrection was fundamental to Christianity because the immortality of the soul was the key to its religious interpretation of the ethical meaning of the cosmos. It has usually been considered a perfectly unique event, an exception to the laws of nature and so a phenomenon in which Providence contravened those laws. But what I wish to show here is that, a doctrine of the resurrection was maintained long before such an event was told of Christ, so that, assuming that there is a truth in the story about Christ, it was not exceptional or "miraculous."

Homer speaks of rising from the dead, or the resurrection, three times in the Iliad. Aeschylus also speaks of it twice in his dramas. Sophocles once, and Herodotus once. This is from five hundred to nine hundred years before Christ. They are, however, not affirming the doctrine or the fact. They simply show that they are familiar with the idea, while we must go to the popular opinion and the views of some of the earlier philosophers to ascertain just what was actually believed in regard to this point. The New Testament