The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 by Various

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But those brains perish. Must individuality be conceded at the cost of our
mental continuity? Perhaps not. Grant even the original mind-atom to be a
constituent, or inseparable companion, of an original matter-atom
(wouldn't it be more up to date to say vibration in each case?), mind, as
we have already tried to demonstrate, is not limited, as matter seems to
be, to those primitive atoms.

* * * * *

The vague but almost unescapable notion of the cosmic soul also opens up
some hint of an explanation of hypnotism, including, of course, thought
transference. These vague hints or gleams on the borderland of our
knowledge are of course something like what must be such hints of what we
know as color, as go through the pigment spots on the surface of one of
the lower creatures. Such as our limits are, we can express them only in
metaphors. But for that matter all of our language beyond a few material
conceptions, is metaphor from them. Well, on the hypothesis (or facing the
fact, if you prefer) of the cosmic soul, telepathy, hypnotism and all that
sort of thing at once affiliates itself with all our easy conceptions of
interflow--in fluids, gases, sounds, colors, magnetism, electricity, etc.
It's all a vague groping, but there seems something there which, as we
evolve farther, we may get clearer impressions of.

Well, to return to our sheep. Foster didn't get the clearness and
intensity of his visions from the comparatively indistinct and placid
impressions in his sitters' minds. There must be something more than
hypnotism from the sitter.

* * * * *

Now here is a tougher case which opens a new element of the problem. It is
from _The Autobiography of a Journalist_, by W.J. Stillman, Boston, 1901,
Vol. I, pp. 192-4: Not many of our older readers will require any
introduction of Stillman. For the younger ones, we may say that he was a
very eminent art-critic; spent most of the latter half of his life abroad,
being part of the time our consul at Crete; wrote a history of the Cretan
Rebellion, and other books; and was a regular correspondent of _The
Nation_, and of _The London Times_. We never knew his veracity questioned.

Here is the story:

A "spiritual medium," Miss A. was "under the control" of Stillman's dead
cousin "Harvey." The "possession" seems to have been throughout free from
trance. Stillman says:

I asked Harvey if he had seen old Turner, the landscape painter,
since his death, which had taken place not very long before. The
reply was "Yes," and I then asked what he was doing, the reply
being a pantomime of painting. I then asked if Harvey could bring
Turner there, to which the reply was, "I do not know; I will go
and see," upon which Miss A. said, "This influence [Harvey's.
Editor] is going away--it is gone"; and after a short pause added,
"There is another influence coming, in that direction," pointing
over her left shoulder. "I don't like it," and she shuddered
slightly, but presently sat up in her chair with a most
extraordinary personation of the old painter in manner, in the
look out from under the brow, and the pose of the head. It was as
if the ghost of Turner, as I had seen him at Griffiths's, sat in
the chair, and it made my flesh creep to the very tips of my
fingers, as if a spirit sat before me. Miss A. exclaimed, "This
influence has taken complete possession of me, as none of the
others did. I am obliged to do what it wants me to." I asked if
Turner would write his name for me, to which she replied by a
sharp, decided negative sign. I then asked if he would give me
some advice about my painting, remembering Turner's kindly
invitation and manner when I saw him. This proposition was met by
the same decided negative, accompanied by the fixed and sardonic
stare which the girl had put on at the coming of the new
influence. This disconcerted me, and I then explained to my
brother what had been going on, as, the questions being mental, he
had no clue to the pantomime. I said that as an influence which
purported to be Turner was present, and refused to answer any
questions, I supposed there was nothing more to be done.

But Miss A. still sat unmoved and helpless, so we waited.
Presently she remarked that the influence wanted her to do
something she knew not what, only that she had to get up and go
across the room, which she did with the feeble step of an old man.
She crossed the room and took down from the wall a colored French
lithograph, and, coming to me, laid it on the table before me, and
by gesture called my attention to it. She then went through the
pantomime of stretching a sheet of paper on a drawing-board, then
that of sharpening a lead pencil, following it up by tracing the
outlines of the subject in the lithograph. Then followed in
similar pantomime the choosing of a water-color pencil, noting
carefully the necessary fineness of the point, and then the
washing-in of a drawing, broadly. Miss A. seemed much amused by
all this, but as she knew nothing of drawing she understood
nothing of it. Then with the pencil and her pocket handkerchief
she began taking out the lights, "rubbing-out," as the technical
term is. This seemed to me so contrary to what I conceived to be
the execution of Turner that I interrupted with the question, "Do
you mean to say that Turner rubbed out his lights?" to which she
gave the affirmative sign. I asked further if in a drawing which I
then had in my mind, the well-known "Llanthony Abbey," the central
passage of sunlight and shadow through rain was done in that way,
and she again gave the affirmative reply, emphatically. I was so
firmly convinced to the contrary that I was now persuaded that
there was a simulation of personality, such as was generally the
case with the public mediums, and I said to my brother, who had
not heard any of my questions [He says above that they were
mental. Ed.] that this was another humbug, and then repeated what
had passed, saying that Turner could not have worked in that way.

Six weeks later I sailed for England, and, on arriving in London,
I went at once to see Ruskin, and told him the whole story. He
declared the contrariness manifested by the medium to be entirely
characteristic of Turner, and had the drawing in question down for
examination. We scrutinized it closely, and both recognized beyond
dispute that the drawing had been executed in the way that Miss A.
indicated. Ruskin advised me to send an account of the affair to
the _Cornhill_, which I did; but it was rejected, as might have
been expected in the state of public opinion at that time, and I
can easily imagine Thackeray putting it into the basket in a rage.

I offer no interpretation of the facts which I have here recorded,
but I have no hesitation in saying that they completed and fixed
my conviction of the existence of invisible and independent
intelligences to which the phenomena were due.

To me they seem perhaps the nearest I have come to a communication of
something not known to any earthly intelligence, and yet it _may_ have
been so known.

When manifestations of this general nature first attracted systematic
study, they were attributed, as already stated, to telepathy from the
sitter. Stillman knew Turner, and as Stillman had an artist's vividness of
impression, the sensitive could have got from him a pretty good idea of
Turner, and have acted it out. But how about the innumerable cases not
unlike the Foster cases quoted, where sensitives get impressions much more
vivid than the sitter appears capable of holding, and act them out with
dramatic verisimilitude of which the sitter is absolutely incapable; and
how about the innumerable cases where the sensitive gets impressions and
memories which the sitter never had?

These have been accounted for as being picked up from absent persons, by a
kind of wireless telegraphy, for which we have ventured, with the
assistance of a couple of Grecian friends, to suggest the name
teloteropathy.

Well! In this Turner case, _somebody_ somewhere, _may_ have known what
neither the sensitive nor Stillman knew of Turner's method of work, and
the sensitive's wireless _may_ have picked up all those detailed
impressions and dramatic impressions of them from that unknown _somebody_.
But is that any easier to swallow than that old Turner himself was the
somebody--that his share of the cosmic soul, or a sufficient portion of
his share, flowed into or hypnotized the sensitive, and made her act as
she did?

* * * * *

And now let us go on to some of the developments of these phenomena
manifested by Mrs. Piper. Unlike the manifestations already given, hers
are not from waking dreams, but from dreams in trance. Moreover, so far
the sensitives have manifested impressions of but one personality at a
time, but Mrs. Piper has manifested one by speech and, at the same time,
another by writing, the expressions of the two apparent personalities
progressing independently, with full coherence and consistency. Moreover,
in many of her trances she seemed as if surrounded by a crowd of persons
endeavoring, with different degrees of success, to express themselves
through her, or she endeavoring to express them. All this of course, is
counter to the impression prevailing during the early years of her career,
that her soul had left her body, and the body was "possessed" by a
postcarnate soul expressing itself through her. The present aspect of the
facts is more as if she had impressions such as we all have in dreams, of
any number of personalities around her. Some of her typical manifestations
may give still further indications of interflowing of mental impressions.

The George "Pelham" famous in the annals of Psychical Research was a
friend of the present writer, and his alleged postcarnate self appeared
through Mrs. Piper to the following effect. There could not have been
anything cooked up about it; it was my first and only sitting with Mrs.
Piper, who knew nothing about me or my friends. In fact, the old theories
of some form of fraud, now, in the light of the vast accumulation of later
knowledge, seem ridiculous. However the phenomena have to be explained,
that explanation is out of date.

G.P. speaks.--"A" [assumed initial. Ed.] "is in a critical state.
He's not himself now. He's terribly depressed." Sitter--"Can you
tell anything [more] about A?" G.P.--"Friend of yours in body."
S.--"Of Hodgson?" [Who was present. This question and the
following were mild "tests": I knew the man well. Ed.]
G.P.--"Yes." S.--"Did I ever know him?" G.P.--"Yes, you knew him
very well. You're connected with him." S.--"Through whom?"
G.P.--"Do you know any B----?" [assumed initial. Ed.] S.--"Are A.
and I connected through B?" G.P.--"Write to B. and he'll tell you
all about it."

It turned out later that A. actually was low in his mind, and that B.,
whom nobody present knew, _was_ trying to get him occupation. I knew
nothing whatever about any such circumstances, nor did Hodgson. To suppose
that Mrs. Piper did, would be absurd. _But_ they were known to other minds
"in the body," and hence the medium's utterance of them is open to the
interpretation of teloteropathy. Similar instances are not rare, but the
interpretation of teloteropathy seems to be rapidly losing probability.

In this instance, I _was_ "connected with" B., but only so far as he had
become a professor at Yale long after my graduation: I did not know him
personally. But my intimate connection with A. was not only direct, but
through several persons intimate with us both, including G.P. when living.
Mere telepathy, certainly mere telepathy from my mind, would have
"spotted" some one of these connections much more readily than the alleged
one with B., which was hardly a connection at all.

The _simplest_ solution for the whole business, though perhaps not the
most "scientific," or even probable, is that the spirit of G.P. was
troubled about A. and habitually thinking of me at the University Club as
a Yale man, on my turning up at the seance, was reminded of the solution
of A.'s troubles proposed through B., and wanted me to help.

And now to this rather commonplace manifestation comes an interesting
sequel illustrating the reach of mind spoken of at the outset. Out of a
perfectly clear sky came to me in New York on April 8, 1894, the message
from G.P., to look out for A., who was low in his mind, and that B. was
trying to get a place for him. On May 29th, Hodgson writes me as follows,
showing that the same thing had come up _through the heteromatic writing
of A.'s wife at Granada in Spain_, and meant nothing to her or to A.

--You may be interested in the inclosed. Keep private. [This
injunction is of course outlawed by time, but I still conceal the
names of the parties. Ed.] and please return. I am writing from my
den, and haven't copy of your sitting at hand. But I remember that
something was said at your sitting _re_ B. and A.

(_Copy of Enclosure._)

"GRANADA, May 6, 1894.

"Dear H.[odgson]:

"Those suggestions from Geo. that I write to B. prove interesting
in the light of what I first learned here: that he had been
lamenting my silence and had been urging me to a place as ----
[at] Yale where he is. I had no notion of this move on his part
till four days ago when I received a letter telling me. Of course
nothing came of it, but anything less known than that cannot be
imagined. The message came once earlier thro' [his wife. Ed.] to
whom George wrote it [heteromatically. Ed.]. George [in life. Ed.]
never heard of B. nor saw him, nor did we ever speak of B. to Geo.
or Phinuit.... Of course I don't want mention made of the effort
of B. to get me the Yale place. What Geo. said was to write to B.;
he is a good friend of yours [_i.e._, of A. Ed.]

"All send kind messages. Yrs. ever.

"A----."

Being intensely busy, and not as much interested in the matter as later
experiences have made me, I did not at the moment catch the full purport
of Hodgson's letter, or write him till June 5th, and did not keep any copy
that I can find of my letter. He wrote me on the 8th:

"Thanks for yours of June 5th, with return of A.'s letter. I knew
nothing whatever of the circumstances connected with B., neither,
so far as I can tell by cross-questioning, did Mrs. Piper."

And I, the present scribe, certainly did not. A. did not. B. alone did,
with whatever persons he may have approached on the matter, and Mrs. Piper
had presumably never seen one of the group. So where did Mrs. Piper and
Mrs. A. get it? The only answers that seem possible are that she and Mrs.
A. either got it teloteropathically from one of those absent, or that the
postcarnate George Pelham himself wrote her about it, and also told me of
it through Mrs. Piper's organism in New York, and four days later was
working it into a cross-correspondence through Mrs. A. in Spain. At first
blush the latter seems easier; and I am not sure but that it does on
reflection.

Hodgson's letter continues:

"I never knew of any B. connected with Yale. When B. was first
mentioned at the sitting, I had a vague notion that some B. or
other had gone to England or France as United States consul. I
also knew the name of ---- ---- B. [a celebrated author. Ed.], and
met her after she became Mrs. C. two or three years ago.

"On questioning Mrs. Piper, which I did by referring to books
first, I found that she remembered the name of ---- ---- B. when I
mentioned it, and connected it in some way with [a certain book.
Ed.], which was widely circulated some years ago. This was the
only B. that she seemed to know anything about....

"Yours sincerely,

"R. HODGSON."

Now does not all this give a strong impression of an interflow among minds
all over--in New York (the place of the sitting), Granada (Mrs. A.'s place
of sojourn), Boston (A.'s home), New Haven (B.'s home), and the universe
in general (G.P.'s apparent home)--of an interflow free from the
limitations of time and space, and independent of all means of
communication known to us?

This impression tends to grow deeper with farther study. We have had a
cross-correspondence between two incarnate intelligences and one apparently
postcarnate. Mr. Piddington has unearthed a cross-correspondence between
one apparently postcarnate intelligence and seven "living" ones.

Perhaps the significance of cross-correspondences justifies a little more
specific treatment, and even the repetition of a paragraph from the first
number of this REVIEW. The topic has lately attracted more attention from
the S.P.R. than any other.

If Mrs. Verrall in London and Mrs. Holland in India both, at about the
same time, write heteromatically about a subject that they both
understand, that is probably coincidence; but if both write about it when
but one of them understands it, that is probably teloteropathy; and if
both write about it when neither understands it, and each of their
respective writings is apparently nonsense, but both make sense when put
together, the only obvious hypothesis is that both were inspired by a
third mind.

There are many instances of strict cross-correspondence of this type. The
one we have given was perhaps more impressive than a stricter one would be
apt to be.

* * * * *

Accounts of sittings generally suggest apparent intercommunication
independent of time and space between postcarnate intelligences: often the
controls say that they will go and find other controls, and, generally,
after a short interval, the new control manifests. It is impossible to
read many of the accounts, whether one regards them as fictitious or not,
without getting an impression--like that given by a good story-teller, if
you please, of a life outside this one, among a host of personalities who
communicate freely with each other and, through difficulties, with us. The
nature of the communication we have already tried to express by
"interflow." But all metaphors are weak beside the impression of the
Cosmic Soul that has been brought to most of those who have persistently
studied the phenomena, as to nearly all those who have speculated _a
priori_ on the nature of mind.

* * * * *

Judged by the foregoing specimens, the literature of what we are
provisionally considering as hypnotic telepathy would not be regarded as
very cheerful. As a whole, however, the pictures it presents from an
alleged postcarnate life, are cheerful, and some of them very attractive.

Below are some from an alleged George Eliot. They are from notes of Piper
sittings kindly placed at our disposal by Professor Newbold.

To my taste the matter savors _very_ little of the reputed author. And yet
assuming for the moment that our great authors survive in a fuller life,
presumably they would have to communicate under very embarrassing
conditions: for not only would they have to cramp themselves to produce
work comprehensible here, but the System of Things would have to limit
them, lest their competition should upset the whole system of our literary
development, or rather would have involved a different one from the
beginning.

My first reading of the alleged George Eliot matter inclined me to scout
it entirely. It is certainly not in all particulars what that great soul
would have sent from a better world if she had been permitted to
communicate anything more profound than we have been left to find out for
ourselves, or even if she had had the commonplace chance to revise her
manuscript. But on reflection I realized that, although the matter came
through Mrs. Piper, it could not have come _from_ her, wherever it came
from; and that if George Eliot were communicating tidings naturally within
our comprehension, and merely descriptive of superficial experience as
distinct from reflection, and were communicating, through a poor
telephone, words to be recorded by an indifferent scribe, this material
would not seem absolutely incongruous with its alleged source, and to a
reader knowing that the stuff claimed to be hers, might possibly suggest
the weakest possible dilution or reflection of her. Yet in ways which I
have no space for, it abounds in the sort of anthropomorphism that might
be expected from the average medium or average sitter, but not from George
Eliot.

And now, since writing the last paragraph and going through the material
half a dozen times more, I have about concluded, or perhaps worked myself
up to the conclusion, that if a judicious blue pencil were to take from it
what could be attributed to imperfect means of communication, and what
could be considered as having slopped over from the medium, there would be
a pretty substantial and not unbeautiful residuum which might, without
straining anything, be taken for a description by George Eliot, of the
heaven she would find if, as begins to seem possible, she and the rest of
us, have or are to have heavens to suit our respective tastes. But what
would have to be taken out is often ludicrously incongruous with George
Eliot, and taking it out would certainly be open to serious question.

Yet whatever may be the qualities, merits, or demerits of this "George
Eliot" matter, what character it has is its own, and different materially
from any I have seen recorded from any other control. What is vastly more
important, despite the lapses in knowledge, taste, and style, which
negative its being the unmodified production of George Eliot, it
nevertheless presents, _me judice_, the most reasonable, suggestive, and
attractive pictures of a life beyond bodily death that I know of: it is
not a reflection of previous mythologies, it is congruous with the tastes
of what we now consider rational beings, and might well fill their
desires; and it _tallies with our experiences_--in dreams. Yet it is not a
great feat of imagination; but in recent times no great genius has
attacked the subject, and George Eliot would not have been expected to
devote her imagination to it, which raises a slight presumption that what
is told is really told by her from experience.

If I had to venture a guess as to how it came into existence, I should
guess that somebody within range, hardly Mrs. Piper herself, had been
reading George Eliot, or about George Eliot, and the musk-melon pollen had
affected the cucumbers. Professor Newbold, for instance, was entirely able
involuntarily to create and telepath the stories, and better shaped ones.
Some real George Eliot influence may have flowed in too, but on that my
judgment is in suspense.

"George Eliot" comes in abruptly to Hodgson, on February 26, 1897. After a
few preliminaries, in response to a remark of Hodgson's on her dislike of
and disbelief in spiritism, she says:

"... You may have noted the anxiety of such as I to return and
enlighten your fellow men. It is more especially confined to
unbelievers before their departure to this life."

This remark and the persistent efforts of the alleged G.P. who, living,
was a thorough skeptic, would seem strongly "evidential."

_March 5, 1897._

_Hodgson sitting._

[G.E. writes:] "Do you remember me well?... I had a sad life in
many ways, yet in others I was happy, yet I have never known what
real happiness was until I came here.... I was an unbeliever, in
fact almost an agnostic when I left my body, but when I awoke and
found myself alive in another form superior in quality, that is,
my body less gross and heavy, with no pangs of remorse, no
struggling to hold on to the material body, I found it had all
been a dream...." R.H.: "That was your first experience?" G.E.:
"... The moment I had been removed from my body I found at once I
had been thoroughly mistaken in my conjectures. I looked back upon
my whole life in one instant. Every thought, word, or action which
I had ever experienced passed through my mind like a wonderful
panorama as it were before my vision. You cannot begin to imagine
anything so real and extraordinary as this first awakening.... I
awoke in a realm of golden light. I heard the voices of friends
who had gone before calling to me to follow them. At the moment
the thrill of joy was so intense I was like one standing
spellbound before a beautiful panorama. The music which filled my
soul was like a tremendous symphony. I had never heard nor dreamed
of anything half so beautiful....

"Another thing which seemed to me beautiful was the tranquillity
of everyone. You will perhaps remember that I had left a state
where no one ever knew what tranquillity meant."

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