PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. 323 



there are plienoniena that sug-gest the CDiitinuation of existence 

 after bodily death and communication between the (so-called) 

 dead and the living. The evidence is, as yet, meagre and pro- 

 blematic. But there is enough of it to warrant the hypothesis 

 of survival and the testing of this hypothesis by every resource 

 and with afl the courage and sympathy, albeit, too, with all the 

 patience and impartiality, that can be brought to bear on the 

 subject. What the evidence suggests is that personality or 

 individuality persists, though still under conditions (in this 

 respect just like the conditions of our present life) which per- 

 mit of only an incomplete expression of oneself and present a 

 very great difficulty of communicating in more than the vaguest 

 and most fragmentar}^ way with those who are on a different 

 plane of life and action. 



This is an aspect of psychical research which, even more than 

 others, is still in a" too rudimentary stage for any definite con- 

 clusions. Investigators are in doubt as to how far the supposed 

 messages delivered in automatic writing or speech are to be 

 attributed to telepathic impress from the consciousness or sub- 

 consciousness of the sitter, how far to the subconscious resources 

 of the medium, and how far they, require the hypothesis of spirit 

 communication to account for them. The phenomena of cross- 

 correspondence, as exhibited in the scripts or utterances of dif- 

 ferent psychics, are suggestive, but as yet slight and inconclusive. 

 The whole subject is one that must be approacbed not with mere 

 curiosity or self-interest, but in a spirit of reverent inquiry. 



I pass now to a very few reflections concerning the inter- 

 pretation that is to be put on the foregoing phenomena and the 

 hypotheses suggested by them. One thing that seems beyond 

 ([uestion is that our conscious selves are but a fragment of the 

 mental or spiritual life that is hidden within us but may, under 

 appropriate conditions, manifest itself. This is seen in the 

 occurrence of impressions which, although too weak or too 

 little heeded to arouse conscious perception, emerge into con- 

 sciousness during sleep or hypnosis or even through sufficient 

 quiescence and absence of other impressions in the waking state. 

 It is seen again in the mental processes, of a higher order than 

 the normal, exhibited in the hypnotic state, in genius and the 

 like, in telepathic impressions of any kind, and indeed in psy- 

 chism generally. Much that has been attributed to supernatural 

 agency can be explained as the working or the expression of 

 the subconscious or subliminal self. 



Another point that is important is that, although these 

 phenomena are supernormal or supernatural in the sense of 

 lying outside the range of our ordinary experience and being 

 inexplicable by definitely established laws of nature, we must 

 not regard them as discontinuous with habitual experience or as 

 not being explicable by any extension of our present knowledge. 

 Moreover, we must avoid the common error of speaking loosely 



