Modern spiritism; its science and religion - SpiritArchive.org

9o MODERN SPIRITISM
telepathy
for these wonders introduces far more
difficulties than it solves."
clear that tele-
Finally, Dr. R. Hodgson is quite
pathy does not account for Spiritist phenomena:
Professor William James has also been convinced of
spirit agency; while Professor C. Flammarion says,
on the other hand: "After two years' investigation
of automatic writing I came to the positive conclusion
that, not only are the signs not those of a
spirit, but that the intervention of another mind
from the spirit world is not proved; the fact being,
the medium is more or less consciously the author of
the communications by some cerebral process which
yet remains to be investigated."
No Complete Solution
To me this last quotation seems a very reasonable
utterance and a possible explanation of most, but
not all, psychical phenomena. And yet this is not
really an explanation, but simply the substitution
of one mystery for another, which accounts for the
interest the phenomena still excite; for once a
fact, however extraordinary, is scientifically and
fully explained, it ceases to interest, e.g., wireless
telegraphy.
Sir Wm. Crookes' reason declared that the phenomena
he saw in his own house, in bright light, and
with private friends only, were absolutely impossible
to understand. Neither Hudson's psycho-dynamics,
Professor Mayo's extra-neural theories, nor collective
hypnotism (of which more anon), nor the "ectenic
force" of Count de Gasparin, nor Professor Lombroso's
"psychic force," explain the phenomena.