ASPR Journal, V14 - Iapsop.com

6 Jcnmwl of the American Society for Psychical Research.
THE PERVERSITY OF HUMAN NATURE.
One of the curious things which this work has to meet all
the time is the persistent perversity of human natut:e in its opposition
to a belief which is orily a modification of the instinct
for self-preservation. It is true that the scientific spirit requires
men to be critical and cautious in all beliefs, but this spirit
does not require us to resort to all sorts of perverse ingenuity
to eradicate a belief which has so many excellent ethical implications,
and, as well, is consonant with the very instinct on which
we rely for the protection of the highest aspirations.
There is nothing in normal life that is more insistent than
the desire to preserve healthy consciousness. Vve will sacrifice
food, money, time and even comfort to obtain it. We pay
enormous sums of money to the doctor to preserve it. No matter
how strong our passions for pleasure of any and all kinds, the
moment we discover that their indulgence shortens life we cut
off the indulgence, if we are ordinarily normal people, and adopt
a course of conduct that will prolong healthy life. But the
moment you start to suggest that possibly man can retain his
consciousness after death the whole intellectual world rises in
arms to contest it. It acts as if it were positively wicked to try
to prolong it or to hope that it will be continued. Every resource
of science is called to aid to contest a hope that is one of the
best which human nature ever felt. One of the striking things
in my experience as an investigator is the frequency with which
men and women remain indifferent to a future life until they
have lost a friend or companion and then become frantic with
interest, not to live themselves but to be sure that the friend or
companion lives. This is not selfish. It is the highest of altruistic
instincts. But your scientist who has been raised to
security by his salary and respectability finds a fiendish and
malicious delight in laughing at these subjects of really ethical
passion. No doubt the poor victims should have had more interest
before sorrow elicited their interest and thus have
balanced life better. But that is a matter of nature's evolution,
and it certainly does not become us to meet such tendencies with
a tactless assault on what has refined and developed the social
Digitized by Goog I e