The Notion of Survival
BY SIR OLIVER LODGE.
THERE is nothing really perturbing in the fact which has so far been disinterred and is being rendered more and more probable by the investigations of Psychical Research—namely, that the life of human beings is not limited to its association with a material organism. The nature of life is unknown ; but it is clearly a guiding and directing principle, which operates on matter, subject to the conservation of energy and the laws of Physics and Chemistry, so as to produce results which otherwise Would not have occurred. It does this not by interfering with the amount of energy available, but by guiding it into unwonted channels.
We learn about the universe primarily through our senses. Those senses we share with the lower animals ; and their mechanism is such that they only give informa- tion about material objects. But matter in itself is quite inert, and is unable to do by its own powers a multitude of things which we see happening all around us. It is acted on by light, for instance, by electricity, by mag- netism ; its atoms are held together by cohesion ; while every particle is subject to gravitation. None of these things are explicable by matter alone : they all represent the interaction with matter of something which operates on it and determines its course : and the tendency of Modern Physics is more and more to trace the existence of these agents to the space in between the particles of matter—that is, to the ether, whose properties when known will presumably explain them all.
All the activity we sec around us is due to the inter- action with matter of one of these influences. Matter is able to do nothing but move, or rather to be moved, and that is all we are able to do to matter. It does nothing of itself ; but we can act on it through our muscles, so as to shift its position, or change its speed and direction of motion. We cannot even strain matter ; for when we wind up a spring we are straining, not the particles of matter, but the uniting mechanism, whatever it may be, that holds the particles together. We arc only altering the configuration of the particles of matter. The potential energy thus stored is stored in the ether. Matter is com- pletely inert ; it takes the path of least resistance, and moves as it is compelled.
When matter is electrified or magnetized, it has the added property of being acted on from a distance ; and this property we know is due to the agency of the field which surrounds it. When matter is animated, it appears to have a self-moving power of its own. There is a school which seeks to forsake all analogies, and find the reason for this apparently spontaneous movement in some new property of matter, so that animated matter behaves differently from inorganic matter. This materialistic view is becoming negatived by the progress of science. I hold that animated matter differs in no respect from ordinary matter, but that, as in all other cases, it is acted on by something not material, which determines its behaviour.
A magnetic field when it ceases to be operative does not go out of existence ; it merely shuts or closes up, so that its activity.disappears from our ken. This is charac- teristic of all physical things ; they never go out of existence, though " when they. cease to act perceptibly upon matter they disappear from observation : it is by the behaviour of matter alone that they are studied. The motions of matter are not spontaneous, but are a sign, an index, a demonstration, of something which is causing them to behave in that way.
I say it is only reasonable to apply that experience to life also, and to -hold that when life ceases to operate on matter it has not gone out of existence, but can no longer be observed. Its association with matter has given it the opportunity, not only of displaying itself but also of acquiring an individuality or character of its own, in partial isolation from the rest ; and thus the higher animals have acquired a consciousness and a memory, and their actions to some extent are controlled by the future, in a way which it has been the task of Biology and Psychology and Psychical Research to investigate.
It is found that under certain conditions it is possible to tap this memory, by letting it operate on some other organism, much as we tap etheric waves, when we experience them by the mechanism of a wireless set, and interpret thou -into- speech or music. Without an instrument they make no impression on our senses, and are unknown ; but their instrumental detection is now a simple affair of pure physics. The instrument in a psychical case is usually a human organism, called a medium, able and willing to lend itself so as to be con- trolled by some intelligence not its own. That such control should be possible is not obvious, but I assert that it is a fact of observation. And taking the whole 'of physical analogies into account, - the fact is only per- turbing to those who imagined that the familiar actions of matter were due to its own powers, and did not require the intervention of anything in space. The brain has always to be stimulated into activity by a mental process. To those who follow all the developments of Modern Phy_ sics, the operation of tapping the memory and the minds of those who have left their material organisms is an interesting development, but contains nothing startlingly new or incredible. To accept it as a fact merely requires that we shall have minds open enough to consider the evidence for what it is worth, and come to some definite and rational conclusion about it. If the fact is so, a rational explanation is sooner or later sure to be forth- coming. It only sounds revolutionary and surprising because we have not yet got used to the idea.
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