ASPR Journal, V14 - Iapsop.com

528 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.
by Johns Hopkins and he taught in Bucknell before joining the staff
of Columbia.
From agnosticism and materialism, Dr. Hyslop graduated to a
consistent belief in the survival of human personality beyond the
grave and the reality of intercommunication between the thing and
the dead. His spiritism was akin to that of Sir Oliver Lodge. He
was an investigator, but not the credulous dupe of any pretended
medium. His books on the subject of spiritism may be assigned
generally to the same class as those of the eminent English physicist.
He wrote oftener than Sir Oliver Lodge has done for the persuasion
and instruction of the multitude. In several of his volumes he proceeded
from elementary principles.
Dr. Hyslop believed implicitly in the reality of the "spirit messages"
he had received. With the extraordinary wave of spiritism
after the war he found himself less isolated among Americans of
education and intelligence. At least he was no longer to be regarded
as an infatuated dupe. For his own part he cast ridicule
on the ouija board fad and characterized its alleged messages as
"twaddle.'' Dr. Hyslop represented a tendency of the times. If
he did nothing more than protest against materialism and stand for
the relationship of science and the spirit his life would be counted a
useful one in his day and generation.
Dr. Hyslop was deservedly esteemed. He stood as an exemplar
of honesty in a domain where fraud and chicanery throw suspicion
on everybody and everything affiliated or connected with it.
Whether or not he was mistaken the man who was trusted by fellowcitizens
to such a degree that he was able to raise an endowment
fund of $175,000 for the American Society for Psychical Research,
and thereafter contributed his own services gratuitously, was entitled
to the respect in which he was held.
New York World, June 19, 1920.
Spiritism, psychic research and allied cults of the unknowable
suffer a regrettable loss in the death of Professor James Hervey
Hyslop.
For many years he had been one of the most prominent of
students of occult phenomena, and as founder and leading spirit of
the American Soc1ety for Psychical Research he brought trained
and specialized intelligence to the investigation of matters bearing
on the possibility of communication between the living and the dead.
He inquired into the methods of re{>uted mediums, applied the tests
of science to supposedly supernatural phenomena and generally
sought to put the whole subject of psychic exploration on a higher
intellectual plane. His copious writings on this theme did much to
dignify it.
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