FORMS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 267 



evidence of this hypothesis, but what are now described as phenomena 

 of multiple personality, automatic writing, etc., which if not thor- 

 oughly understood, have surely been shown to bear no such interpre- 

 tation as that involved with the spiritistic hypothesis. 



So it seems probable that in twenty-five years from now many more 

 of these recorded facts above spoken of will appear similarly explicable 

 without resort to this spiritistic hypothesis. 



Of such of these facts as then remain unexplained, a very small part 

 may be interpreted as fraudulent, but a very large part indeed as due 

 to perfectly honest but false judgments, or to illusions of forgetful- 

 ness, and especially to illusions of memory. 



The small remnant of these facts which still remain unexplained 

 on well established psychological principles, if they seem tangible 

 enough to point to anything at all, will surely not point to the exist- 

 ence of disembodied human spirits; but rather to the existence of 

 consciousnesses other than human consciousnesses similar to those of 

 which we have just spoken; consciousnesses, as we have said of forms 

 very different from those known to us in our own experience, but 

 which may occasionally attach themselves to ours in such a way as to 

 produce modifications of our consciousnesses which seem to point to 

 influences from outside of such human forms of consciousness as are 

 familiar to us. 



If they are found to point to anything, they will surely not point 

 to the existence of disembodied human consciousnesses as I have just 

 said; nor to the existence of disembodied consciousnesses at all: but 

 rather to the existence of consciousnesses so differently embodied that, 

 in Eoyce's words above quoted, ' we can not adjust ourselves to a live 

 appreciation of their inward fluency, although our consciousnesses do 

 make us aware of their presence.' 



I do not hesitate to agree that such influences very probably do 

 affect us, and as evidence in favor of such a view I shall close by 

 quoting the mature convictions of Professor Wm. James, who will be 

 acknowledged to be one of the most acute of introspectionists the world- 

 has known. 



Eeferring to certain early experiments of his he says :* 



One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression 

 of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking 

 consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of 

 consciousness; whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, 

 there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through 

 life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and 

 at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality 

 and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which 

 leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. 



* ' Varieties of Religious Experience,' p. 388. 



