A BOOK OF THE MOMENT

THE FACULTY OF COMMUNION

[COPYRIGHT IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY TILE New York Times.] The Faculty of Communion. By the Hon. Mrs. Alfred Lyttelton, D.B.E. (Longman. 4s. ed. net.).

Tors is a most difficult book to review. It is so, because of its courage, simplicity, and want of artifice. The writer

has not been restrained by doubts, or fears, or by a worldly anxiety as to hostile criticism and comment. I mean the anxiety lest people should call her credulous, or " cranky," or suffering, if not from delusions, at any rate from illusions. She has dared to tell us all that she really believes, instead of only half truths, the truth, that is, told with deliberate omissions, for fear of being misunderstood, or again confuted by great names, or scientific principles, or fashionable theories. She has acted on the noble principle laid down by that great realist and yet great exponent of the higher mysticism, Dr. Johnson: 1" Not to put things into a book because people tell you they (will not be believed is cowardice."

And yet a very wrong impression of this little book might easily be given by such words as these. Hurried readers might perhaps draw from them the conclusion that they were being shown the way to some great discovery, or revelation—some opening of a new window upon spiritual things. That, as Mrs. Lyttelton would be the first to admit, is not the intention pr the result of her book. Hers is a very simple effort, one which from the literary and philosophical point of view might well be called " innocent." It is a plea for the culti- vation of the faculty of Communion with the Unseen, or, to put it in rougher, cruder language, with the dead. She wants us to understand the laws governing our relations, not with those who have passed out of life, for that is a wrong description, but with those who have suffered the change of death. That is her main endeavour. Her secondary purpose js to be found in a hope that she expresses with real eloquence as well as sincere feeling. Why should not the Churches, instead of passing over the faculty of Communion as some- thing to be dreaded and put out of sight, if not actually condemned, study and guide it ?

To put the thing in plain language, Mrs. Lyttelton desires to make us realize the possibility of getting into personal contact with the dead, directly rather than through professional or other mediums. Finally she suggests—and here I believe she is on specially firm ground—that the attempt to do this " is in the direct line of spiritual development and progress." Such a purpose calls once more for an expression of admiration at Mrs. Lyttelton's pluck. But the men of the wiser mind will claim for her that liberty of prophesying which is the gift of our race in general, and was once the proudest claim of the Church of England. I speak advisedly when I say that she has the wiser minds on her side. Shakespeare has put the defence for a book of this kind with amazing poignancy, and put it, with that glorious irrelevance in which he often delighted, in the mouth of a secondary character in a secondary play. This is how " Lafeu " burst out without any excuse, except the final excuse that the manna of a great thought drops from heaven and is always welcome no matter where it falls :— " They say, miracles are past ; and we have our philosophical persons, to make modern and familiar things supernatural and causeless. Hence is it that we make trifles of terrors ; ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear."

Mrs. Lyttelton's book is a protest against those persons who would suffer wounds and death rather than admit that there are certain things in life which are " supernatural and cause- less." She will not " make trifles of terrors," using terrors in the sense of those things which " beat up and alarm the soul " —things which ordinary men and women always try to persuade themselves are only trifles, which need not be Mended to and are therefore best ignored altogether. She

will not " ensconce " herself—i.e., dig herself into the trench of " seeming knowledge," or pretend that there is a ready explanation of certain psychic phenomena, of which, as a matter of fact, if we deal honestly with ourselves, we have no understanding, no knowledge. She realizes that there are certain cases in which we should " submit ourselves to an unknown fear," look it in the face, and make it our concern.

" Do we indeed desire the dead ? " asked Tennyson. The thought exactly suits her argument. But, though we cannot ignore the tremendous inhibition which makes so many people turn from the thought of the dead, we must not suppose that the inhibition will always exist. Probably that inhibition was at one time useful. It is perhaps, indeed, not too much to say that without it human progress on the material side would have proved impossible. That may sound a difficult saying, but I think it can be made good. I remember once asking Miss Mary Kingsley, the African explorer, whether the people on the Guinea coast and in Nigeria believed in ghosts and spirits. Here is her reply : " Of course they do ; but, remember, not as people do here—half-heartedly and occasionally. To them

the spiritual world is quite as real as their own villages and communal life. Instead of finding it difficult to get a whole- hearted and confident believer in survival after death, you would find it impossible to come across anyone who did not believe in an after-life." It was not a case of believing or of faith, she went on to say. Every man would tell you that there was another world and that they are constantly in com- munication with it. That was why there was so little objection to that form of human sacrifice in which the native chiefs indulge, or, at any rate, used to indulge. The men killed on the -anniversary of a chief's death regard themselves merely as messengers sent into a strange and far-distant country, but nothing more. The consciousness of the natives on the coast of the spiritual realm was uncannily distinct, if in many ways absurd and chaotic. Indeed, they thought so much of the other world as sometimes to lose interest in existence here.

It is quite an intelligible theory that man gradually dropped his communications with the dead because they were of little or no use to him in the struggle for life, and, indeed, were sources of weakness. The types which survived were the types of men who could, as it were, best shut themselves off from the thousand voices and thronging communications from the other world and concentrate their thoughts upon themselves. Assuming that this is a sound hypothesis, it does not involve the assumption that it will always be necessary to stick to our own job here and not let ourselves be influenced by the dead. It is quite possible that we have reached, or soon shall reach, a phase of intellectual development where we shall be able to bear without inconvenience the silent voices and to fathom the Unseen—when, so to speak, it will not be necessary for our spiritual leaders and theologians to " jam " the wireless and shut off all communications except those which they choose to tell us are alone necessary for our salvation.

The scientific materialists in effect tell us that every-

thing in this world is immortal, though, of course, liable to change. The one exception they make is apparently the consciousness. Not a grain of sand, a wisp of gas, can ever be destroyed. It merely passes into some new shape. The only thing that goes out for ever is the human soul. Though our experience makes us feel with Descartes that we are because we think, and that con- sciousness is therefore the most knowable as well as the most important thing in the world, we are to take it on the faith of some piece of crude ratiocination that this same consciousness is " merely ours and mortal." When I hear such things as this I feel inclined to rest myself upon the old limerick about the Zulu and the latitudinarian Bishop :—

" Said the infidel Zulu, 'Do you believe this, you fool, you ?' No I don't,' said the Bishop of Natal."

The black postulant wrung from his teacher the admission that he did not really believe what he fancied he held to be true. I hope that some day the materialists of science will own up as bravely as did the South African Ordinary.

J. ST. LOE STRACHEY.