THIS IS a scandalous subject: do not let there be any doubt about that. The
title is not startling and may seem to you a little vague. Most of us realize
now that in every subject there is much more that is unknown than is known. You
can make an inquiry into the unknown in every science from astronomy to
physiology. But in this series of talks*, 'Inquiry into the Unknown' does not
mean mapping the ground that lies behind each official science. It means
attempting to explore areas clean off the scientific map. Professor T. H. Huxley
defined orthodox science when he said: 'Science is organized common tense.' The
goal of orthodox science is to be able to explain the whole of nature by the
working of simple mechanical laws. Is there anything to be found beyond that?
That is the question these talks will raise. Are there facts - is there evidence
which cannot be fitted into those simple, mechanical, commonplace laws?
* This article was part of a series of ten talks
on BBC Radio in 1934 on psychical research. See also Theodore Besterman's
How Psychical Research is Done.
But why call such an inquiry scandalous? Surely today even physics, the first
and strictest of the sciences, has ceased to have anything to do with common
sense? That is true. But we must remember that these strange new theories of
physics - about bending space and contracting and expanding time - are all based
on quite commonsense observations. The calculations and the deductions made from
the observed facts may be elaborate and very difficult. But about the facts
themselves no one has any doubt. Any person possessed of the ordinary number of
common senses can view the evidence for himself - though he may not be able to
make the calculations whereby that evidence is put in order and made to agree
with other evidence. It is when we go beyond commonplace observations that our
difficulties begin. When the facts themselves are in dispute, then scandal
arises, motives begin to be questioned, honesty doubted.
So orthodox science says: Leave such a subject alone. Until there is produced
evidence which can be repeated by any researcher in a scientific laboratory,
there is nothing to explore. If you go on trying to inquire and investigate you
will only be deluded and deserve to be deluded, and your so-called evidence will
be worse than useless, for it can only serve to feed greedy superstition. There
is much to be said for taking up such an attitude. But there is one great
argument against it. It is not the way that science itself has advanced. For at
the beginning of most sciences, the phenomena studied could not be brought into
the laboratory. Fire-balls - the true thunderbolts - for example, could not and
still cannot be produced and studied in a laboratory. They have had to be
studied wherever nature chose to display them, and no one could say for certain
when and where that would be. They were and they remain rare and freakish
phenomena, uncontrollable and indefinable. On these grounds orthodox science for
a long time denied their existence. Today out-of-door observers have proved that
fire-balls do exist and at last photographs have been taken of them.
And science has not only had to begin by studying happenings which could not be
made to take place in a well-lighted laboratory. Science has often had to begin
by studying things which could not be seen at all. The cosmic radiation which
penetrates sixteen feet of lead can nevertheless only be recorded by the most
sensitive of instruments and none of our senses give us a hint of its existence,
though it is always passing through our bodies. It is not treason to truth to go
on studying phenomena although you cannot yet lay down the rules under which the
phenomena must occur.
Yet the phenomena about which this inquiry is to be made are the most difficult
that men can investigate. For, first of all, only a very few of us have ever
experienced happenings clean contrary to common sense, except in conditions of
darkness, etc., when it was very difficult for us to be sure what was going on.
That is a serious difficulty. But there is an even graver obstacle to attempting
to find out what may be behind these strange happenings. That is due to the fact
that nearly all of us feel very strongly about them: either we want them to be
true, we want something contrary to common sense to take place, or, quite as
often, quite as strongly and quite as unfortunately for the truth, we want them
to be untrue. That is why what are called psychical phenomena, happenings which
may be evidence of the working of unknown forces, are in a class by themselves.
That is why they are peculiarly and exasperatingly difficult to investigate.
When we need to be absolutely unbiased, because the evidence is so slight, so
scattered and so strange, we find that almost all of us start with strong views
as to whether there can be such facts and if so what they mean.
That, of course, is an utterly unscientific attitude and we cannot hope to
discover truth if we start in that spirit. 'Beware of finding what you are
looking for' is sound scientific advice. But the other side of that piece of
advice is: 'Beware of saying nothing is there, because you wish nothing to be
there.' The neglect of this double warning has held up psychical research. A
glance at the history of science and of what we may call psychics will make that
clear. For two hundred years science had been advancing steadily before psychics
crossed its path. It had been more and more successfully explaining away
everything in the universe as due to the working of mechanical laws, until
Laplace, the great astronomer, when asked by Napoleon: 'Is there not a spirit
behind it all?' replied: 'Sure, I have no need of such an hypothesis.' But just
then the awkward fact of mesmerism turned up. Dr. Mesmer came to Paris, where he
demonstrated mesmerism (what we now call hypnotism - the way to use a hidden
capacity in our minds to give us strange powers over our bodies). He was
examined by scientists and they had to own that he had got hold of some power
which they knew nothing about, but which they were certain was not what he said
it was. That, in a phrase, has been the position of science ever since, when it
has tried to settle this question. For the problem that Mesmer raised was: 'Can
the mind really alter the body?' If it could, then materialism was untrue. All
through the nineteenth century, science assumed materialism to be true and on
that assumption made amazing advances, advances which seemed to have no limit.
Science had, therefore, to dismiss as inherently impossible all evidence of mind
being anything but a by-product of matter. As Huxley said, mind was only the
steam given off as the bodily engine worked.
Yet all through the last century, while science advanced, other queer facts, for
which science had no use, kept on turning up. Not only was hypnotism now being
practised by qualified doctors, and pains relieved and several stubborn diseases
cured. Other odder powers came to light. For instance, water-divining - the
power of finding water by some unknown sense became better and better proved.
Mr. Besterman will tell you more about that in the next talk. And serious people
kept on vowing they had actually seen ghosts quite lately in London. Other
intelligent people attested they had had true visions of the future: others that
friends still alive but far away, sometimes at the moment of death but sometimes
when they were quite well, had suddenly appeared before them. Some people when
hypnotized could read passages in books shut up in libraries far away, others
who could not draw a line could make wonderful fantastic pictures. Some people
seemed to become possessed by another character who spoke about places long ago
disappeared and in another language. Strangest of all, some people seemed to
split up into several persons as though personality was a sort of clay out of
which one could model one figure or several. And men who studied foreign races
reported that many of them seemed to have strange powers. They could put
themselves into a trance and when they came awake again they could say what was
going on hundreds of miles away. They could also put themselves to sleep, so
that they seemed dead, cold, rigid and breathless, have themselves buried for
weeks and then be dug up and come put red-hot irons on their flesh, on their
tongues and not be burnt. They could walk slowly through fire and not be singed.
What was science to do about all this? One thing was clear: these happenings
would not repeat themselves regularly whenever people should choose to test
them. At the same time, so many people, many of them highly educated, swore that
they had seen these strange things that it was possible that happenings, so rare
as to be unknown to science, did take place now and then. If you had a really
open mind you could not dismiss the question.
So in 1882 the Society for Psychical Research was founded, and many other such
societies have since been founded. Soon it became clear that there was a nucleus
of fact which could not be accounted for on the current orthodox scientific
principles. There was a case for investigation. But then how was the
investigation to go ahead? We have seen there were three great difficulties in
the way. First, the evidence was itself rare: second, those few people who
claimed to be able to produce it on demand were nearly all unanimous in their
refusal to undergo careful tests; third, the scientists, the men most qualified
to test it, could not believe that by any chance it could be true. The
scientific principles of materialism ruled it out of court. However, since 1900,
the old-fashioned materialism has been discarded by physics itself and so
scientists no longer have to dismiss the evidence on that ground. It still
remains tremendously difficult to find out what actually happens when a
happening is owned to be rare and the laws under which it takes place are still
quite unknown. But once scientists will allow that something may be there, and
those who have had a psychic experience will allow that we really cannot at
present have any clear idea of what it is, a new age of research is opening.
Of course, we are only at the beginning. For the more we study the subject the
more we realize how inherently complicated it must be. In advanced physics it is
found that you cannot observe the electron without altering it, for the ray of
light, without which you cannot see it, must upset it. The same difficulty, but
in a more acute degree, must turn up in advanced psychology, in psychics, for
you cannot observe a mental state without altering it. Probably all psychical
phenomena are subject to this very awkward disturbance. Still, as physics
manages to advance among the too sensitive electrons, so psychical research may
manage now to advance in its still stranger exploration of rarer and even less
understood forces. That, then, is the line this inquiry will take. It will start
by making no assumptions. Mr. Besterman, in 'How Psychical Research is Done,'
will tell you how a number of researchers to-day is attempting to use scientific
apparatus and carefully thought out tests to collect evidence of rare faculties
and happenings. He will also tell you how water-divining has been tested and
brought to light. The question naturally arises whether some of these rare
powers could be explained by modern scientific theories of radiation. So in the
succeeding talk Lord Charles Hope will deal with rare happenings which seem to
take place round rare human subjects. Many of the people who claim these powers
are both odd and simple-minded. Could they have special endowments? Savages have
been said to have such powers: so anthropology, the scientific study of savage
races, may throw light here. Professor Seligman will therefore tell you
something about primitive people's practices, magic, etc., and in the succeeding
talk he will, as a physician, link this up with our new knowledge of the back of
our own minds, the primitive side of us which survives in all of us still. We
shall then be ready to listen to further evidence of strange mental powers.
First the evidence for telepathy, for minds being able to communicate without
any physical means. That will be given by Mrs. Salter, who has studied this
matter very fully. Then, further evidence of dreams and prevision, as an
extension of powers of which telepathy is an example, will be given by Dame
Edith Lyttelton. After that Sir Ernest Bennett will tell us about ghosts and
haunted houses, and Sir Oliver Lodge can then put before us in the light of all
these reports the question: 'Do we Survive?' As a summing up, a Professor of
Philosophy, Dr. C. D. Broad, will tell us what are his conclusions. This is very
important. Quite a number of famous physical scientists have been convinced by
this evidence. The answer against accepting their evidence as decisive is - they
were specialists, and, outside their own subject, they were easily misled. All
right. Let us hear the present conclusion of the whole matter from a man whose
job it is to show how to think clearly, test evidence and arrive at sound
conclusions. I think in the end we shall find our minds widened and, whatever
conclusion we arrive at about psychical research today, we shall realize that
our deepest knowledge now will look like ignorance tomorrow.
Note:
The above article was taken from Theodore Besterman's (ed.) "Inquiry into
the Unknown. A BBC Symposium" (London: Methuen & Co., 1934).
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