PSYCHIC FORCES : I. THE FIELD OF RESEARCH
By PROFESSOR C. D. BROAD *
IHAVE been asked to write the introductory article of a series dealing with Psychical Research. In each subsequent article of the series one department of the subject will be discussed by a writer who has expert first-hand knowledge of that department. My business is to give a brief general account of what has been accomplished up to date and of the lines of research which arc being mast actively pursued at present.
In order to avoid misunderstandings, I shall begirt with. a few words of personal explanation. I shall be concerned mainly with work that has been done in connexion with the Society for PSychical Research. This is because I am much better acquainted with that work than with any other, and because I am President of the Society. It must not be taken to imply any depreciation of the labours of other persons or institu- tions* in this field. Again, the reader must not assume that any opinions which I express are those of the Society. The S.P.R., as such, haS no opinion except that there is a mass of ostensibly sUpernormal phenomena Which. ought to be investigated by scientific methods. It is important to emphasise this for two reasons. Iii the first place, I have found that many intelligent and otherwise Well-inforined persons imagine the S.P.R. to be 'a Spiritualistic organisation*. • On the other hand, Many' Spiritualists regard it as a body of hardened Materialists, who devote the time which they can spare froin persecuting mediums to the task of disingenuously ignoring Or ingeniously explaining.' away incontestible facts.
The ostensibly supernormal phenomena to be investi- gated fall into three classes, the purely physical, the purely mental, and the borderline cases. Under the last heading I include *alleged eases of haunted houses. • The purely physical phenomena may be divided into spOradie cases and phenomena which can be produced and reproduced under controlled conditions 'at sittings with mediums. Under the first head come Poltergeist phenomena, i.e., the mysterious violent movements of plates, kettles, dishes and other small articles of domestic utility without apparent human agency. Reports of Poltergeist phenomena come from all over the world and from all periods of history. There is a surprising amount of resemblande between all the stories. On investigation it is nearly always found that the mysterious Movements happen only in presence of a young boy or * Dr. Broad, who is Professor of Moral Philosophy at Cambridge is President of the Society for Psychical Research, which was founded in 1882 by F. W. H. Myers, Henry Sidgwick and Edmund Gurney. girl, and that the latter is of that stunted or • mentally backward type known to our ancestors as " changelings."
In the vast majority of such eases careful investigation has shown that the movements arc produced deliberately and normally by the child, who has developed great skill in diverting the attention of its elders at the critical moment.. The motive is probably the very natural desire of a neglected and despised individual to make itself a centre Of • attention and interest. It seems doubtful whether there is 'anything supernormal in any of these cases ; but 'there is something abnormal, which demands the attention of the Psycho-analyst rather than the Psychical Researcher, Investigation of alleged movements without contact, inaterialisations and levitation by mediums in the séance-room has proved singularly unfruitful of positive results. Most physical mediums decline to' be investi- gated under test conditions ; those who consent generally allege that subdued light and loud singing or talking are essential conditions for the prodUctiOn of the phenomena ; and 'Many insist on being accompanied by another person who acts as protector 'or impresario. Whether these conditions are essential to the phenomena or not, they are plainly very helpful to fraud and very hampering to scientific investigation. The experience of the Society has • been that, as the conditions are tightened up, the phenomena fade Away.
Although the investigation of physical phenomena has given no assured positive results, it has had some very important collateral consequences. Far more is now known than was ever suspected before of the extreme fallibility of human observation and the extreme unrelia- bility of human testimony. The experimental work of Mr. S. J. Davey, described in Vol. IV of the S.P.R. Proceedings, is probably the most important contribution that has ever been made to this subject. Again, a great deal has been learnt about the standard tricks of fraudulent mediums, about the extreme difficulty of keeping continuous control of hands and feet, and so on.. It has become plain that investigations of physical phenomena by amateurs, no matter what their scientific eminence may be,' are worthless ; and that, even with expert investigators, it is most desirable that all alleged phenomena should be recorded mechanically or elec- trically.
When we pass to the purely mental phenomena we have a different story to tell. *Here, again, the pheno- mena may be diVided into sporadic and experimental. The classical work of Edmund' Gurney, entitled Phantasms of the Living, and its supplements, the Census of Halluci- nations and Phantasms of the Living in Vols. X and XXXIII of the S.P.R. Proceedings, for the first time replaced gossip by definite statistics in the matter of spontaneous telepathy occurring in the lives of ordinary people. It showed that waking hallucinations concerning a person occur within twelve hours of his death enor- mously more often than might be expected . from the frequency of waking hallucinations. and the, frequency of deaths. .,SOrne causal connexion is plainly; operative.
The various experimental. researches on telepathy which been published., from time to time , in the S.P.R. Proceedings seem to me to provide adequate cumu- lative evidence that certain people can produce in certain others at -a . distance sensations similar to those which they are having at the time of the experiment. It is, however,, very .desirable that such experiments .should be repeated, for the following reasons. The older experi- ments did not distinguish between telepathy and a possible faculty of pure clairvoyance ; they were seldom susceptible of elaborate statistical treatment ; and perhaps some of them failed to take due account of the possible hyperaesthesia of normal persons in half-dissociated states. Experiments are now being conducted with these considerations in view.. The most interesting of the mental phenomena occur in connexion with trance-mediums. There is no doubt whatever that good trance-mediums display knowledge of incidents in the lives of dead and living persons which cannot have been acquired normally and is too detailed to be explained by chance coincidence. If telepathy be accepted, much of this knowledge might be derived telepathically from the sitter. But some of it would require telepathy from persons who are not and never have been present at sittings with the. medium.. In fact, to account for the knowledge displayed in trance - mediumship telepathy is the Minimum that is required, and it has. to be stretched to bursting-point.
The situation, in my opinion, may be summed up as follows. If we look only at the best features of the best cases of trance-communication, it Is difficult to resist the conviction that the spirit of a dead man has survived and is communicating. If, on the other hand, we consider the mass of irrelevance, error, ignorance and twaddle in which these gems are imbedded, it is equally difficult to believe anything of the kind. , Plainly this is exactly the kind of situation which challenges the experimentalist to further detailed investigation and demands new theoretical concepts from the philosopher.
[Next week': Precognition, by H. F. Saltmarsh.]
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