Books of the Day
Psychical Research
Fifty Years of Psychical Research. By Harry Price. (Long- mans. los. 6d.)
This is at once the most comprehensive and the most enter- taming book on the subject of psychical research known to me. In the course of his thirty years' career as an investigator, the author has enjoyed a curious assortment of experiences, in- cluding the examining of a great variety of mediums, the visit- ing of haunted houses, serving as a target for poltergeist missiles and a stumbling-block to the spiritua'ist faithful, drafting a Bill for the registration of mediums, trying to persuade London University to set up a department for the study of psychical research, and generally doing, saying, and suffering more in the sphere of the abnormal than would go to fill the lifetime of a dozen ordinary men.
All this is very clearly and entertainingly set forth. Mr. Price tells a good story, is a shrewd observer, and a judicious commentator, and I can confidently recommend the book to those who enjoy a good yarn no less than to those who want to know the past history and present position of psychical research.
The conclusions of one who has been on the job as long as Mr. Price are obviously of considerable importance. Let me summarise them as briefly as I can. Most mediums are fraudulent and most of the phenomena observed by " the usu- ally rather unintelligent sort who frequent seances " are faked. There is no single case of ectoplasm, materialisation, haunt- ings, or poltergeists whose genuineness has been demonstrated to the satisfaction of science. The same may be said of mental phenomena such as telepathy and clairvoyance. (In this con- nexion Mr. Price delivers a trenchant criticism of Professor Rhine's claim to have demonstrated " extra-sensory percep- tion.") The spirit hypothesis is unproven.
How much, then, does Mr. Price consider to have been established? There are, first, certain psychological phenomena, such as split personality, dissociation, dowsing and hyperaesthesia.
Mr. Price is further convinced that he has witnessed the abnormal yet intelligently directed movements of material objects, that he has touched luminous masses of " pseudopods " in the shape of hands, arms, legs, and has felt brushings and cool breezes. (The cool breezes sound unsensational, but for my part, I have found the lowering of the temperature in the seance room as recorded by a scaled thermograph one of the most puzzling of all the phenomena that occur. When four or five people sit in a room for some hours, you would expect the temperature to go up ; in fact it goes down. And the lowest point reached coincides in time with the maximum occurrence of phenomena.)
Mr. Price also believes that he has witnessed at least one living full-form materialisation ; he believes that some haunt- ings really occur, and that some poltergeist phenomena are genuine. He puts forward the following theory to account for hauntings : —" An emanation of our ego or personality, or a part of our intelligence, persists after death, and can be picked up by a suitable mind attuned to that emanation." He adds a highly ingenious suggestion in support of his " emanations " theory. There is a periodicity about hauntings which tend to occur after regular and fairly constant intervals; a nun, for example, always appears in a garden in July ; certain poltergeist phenomena reach their maximum every September. Mr. Price suggests that a particular room or place becomes saturated with the emanation of a dead person which " increases or ' accumulates ' exactly like a storage battery." When the accumulations have reached saturation point, there is an explo- sion into a burst of phenomena, after which the hypothetical " battery " is slowly re-stored.
This ingenious theory admittedly does not cover the case of materialisations or of seance room phenomena, but one of the most baffling features of the whole subject is that there is no one theory in the field which covers more than a very small proportion of the phenomena to be explained.
Although the theory postulates the survival of a something, the " something " in question is less than a full personality. In this respect it recalls the views of survival held by the Greeks and Romans, according to which what survives is a poor squeaking, gibbering wraith, not an immortal spirit, still less a disembodied intelligence. But I cannot help thinking that Mr. Price treats a little cavalierly the evidence from cross- correspondence collected, for example, by Mr. Saltmarsh, which does clearly point to the existence of a surviving intelli- gence and constitutes, in my view, the strongest piece of evidence for the " spirit " hypothesis.
The fact that Mr. Price is convinced of the genuineness of a number of phenomena which he has investigated does not, as he is careful to point out, mean that science would regard them as established facts. The reason for this reluctance is that psychical research is still scientifically disreputable, and it will remain disreputable until it is officially recognised by the Universities. It is not recognised by the Universities for the simple reason that there is at the moment no money to endow Chairs or Departments of Psychical Research. Another reason for the coyness of official science is the atmosphere of charlatanism and trickery with which the whole subject is invested. Mr. Price suggests two very sensible remedies : the first, the licensing of mediums; the second, the establish- ment of Psychical Research Departments at Universities. Mr. Price, being a man of action, has drafted a Bill which was to have been presented to Parliament this autumn to effect the first, and offered a sum of money and presented a library to the University of London in pursuance of the second.
He ends his book with a striking quotation from Lord Kelvin: " Science is bound by the everlasting law of honour to face fearlessly every problem that can fairly be presented to it."
Reflecting upon the extent to which psychical research has been allowed to remain a twilight territory in which the quack happily and lucratively hunts the dupe, one cannot but con- clude that science is evading its obligations. Let us, then, take off our hats to Mr. Price, who has not only persistently re- minded science of its duty, but has so generously expended both time and money in the endeavour to remedy its neglect.
C. E. M. Jonas.
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