ASPR Journal, V14 - Iapsop.com

Book Reviews. 375
BOOK REVIEWS.
Realms of the Living Dead. A Brief Description of the Life After
Death. By Harriette Augusta Curtiss in Collaboration with F. Homer
Curtiss, B. S., M.D. Edward}. Clade, New York, 1918.
There seems to be a great rush for paradoxical titles in these days.
Within the last few years this sort of play has gone on in several instances,
It may help in selling a few copies of the book, but it does not encourage
intelligent readers to expect anything of a scientific or convincing character.
The authors ·take for granted that survival is proved, and with this
verdict we should hardly disagree. But it is not so clear that the doctrines
and ideas of this !book are well enough established to play on the credulity
of a public under the illusion that any highsounding message from spirits
is to be taken as gospel. The authors say of the contents of the book the
following. "The teachings herein presented are not the result of psychical
research as ordinarily conducted, but are the teachings on this subject given
the authors by the teachers of the Order of Christian Mystics from the
higher Realms, transmitted through Mrs. Curtiss by the independent method
known as Theophany while in full waking consciousness, m collaboration
with Dr. Curtiss, and verified by their personal psychic experiences in the
Astral World"
There is no attempt to verify the revelations so received, and indeed but
for this statement we might have supposed that it was fiction or imagination
of the old theological type. The authors, however, have not the slightest
sense of responsibility to the world in the matter of evidence. They naively
think that we have only to get something which we call messages from the
de&d and expect both that fact and their own statement to carry conviction
and to obtain followers. The credulity of the authors is amazing. Much
that they give may be true, for all diat we know, but it has no evidence
in its support and often no meaning except what the imagination, and the
untrained imagination at that, can give. Then what is the " independent
method" called "Theophany?" Is that word self-explanatory? We know
what automatic writing is because it is but a form of normal process with
a slight difference. But " theophany" we know nothing about aqd . require
to have a detailed description of it and its dovetailed connection wilh normal
life.
But there is no use to go into the details of the lbook. We have no
criterion to distinguish between what is pure imagination of the authors and
what is or may have come from beyond. Indeed we have no evidence in
the volume that any of it came from beyond. There is no evidence for any
supernormal information in it. It depends for acceptance only upon the
false assumption that what comes from spirits is to be accepted as true,
especially if what the spirits say pleases us and conforms to our preconceptions
of what ought to be true. What evidence have the authors that the
personalities delivering the revelation are more than ordinary persons dealing
in platitudes? Are they stating facts or merely their opinions? These
questions have to bi;' answered before we can accept a single view expressed
in the book, tho it has much sound ethics. But these ethics we did not get
from spirits.
As a sample of what needs careful scientific investigation and verification
I shall quote at length the only thing in the book that has any ring of communication
from another world. It purports to come through Mrs. Curtiss
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