NA TURE 



31 



THURSDAY, MARCH 10, 1910. 



THE SURVIVAL OF MAN. 

 Survival of Man. A Study in Unrecognised Human 

 Faculty. By Sir Oliver Lodge, F.R.S. Pp. xi+357. 

 (London : Methuen and Co., 1909.) Price 7s. 6d. net. 



THIS is a book that will attract great attention, 

 and deservedly so. There is a well-known say- 

 ing recommending men, especially judges, to give 

 their conclusions, but never their reasons. Possibly 

 this is wise advice in the realm of law, but it is a 

 hopeless attitude of mind in the regions of philosophy, 

 where the reasons are of the essence of the trans- 

 action, and the conclusions may be merely the incor- 

 rect deduction of a mind as imperfect as our own. 

 When, therefore, a man of the standing of Sir Oliver 

 Lodge consents, if we may use the expression, to do 

 his thinking aloud, to lay himself open indifferently to 

 the scoffs of the convinced unbeliever and the wistful 

 commiseration of the unconvinced would-be believer; 

 when he allows us to see the process by which he 

 himself has become persuaded of the most funda- 

 mental doctrine of life, the whole community owes 

 him a very great debt of gratitude. 



To most people the question of the survival of 

 human personality is the greatest problem of life; a 

 positive answer one way or another would affect the 

 actions and aspirations of mankind more than anv 

 other possible consideration or discovery. It is be- 

 cause of the momentous character of the subject, 

 because of the effect that a positive assurance would 

 have on the majority of mankind, that it has never 

 been possible for a person who believed himself by 

 any means to have obtained this assurance to keep 

 the grounds of his conviction to himself. From the 

 point of view of the present band of invcbiigators, of 

 which Sir Oliver Lodge is a distinguished member, 

 having regard to the intensely intimate nature of 

 their experiences, one may well doubt how far it has 

 been expedient to take the general public, as yet, 

 into the confidence of the small group of fellow- 

 workers. Science has this great advantage over other 

 kindred branches of intellectual activity, such as litera- 

 ture and art : — the general public does not profess to 

 understand its workings; nay, a large section of the 

 public prides itself on its inability to understand the 

 methods of science. By this means, men of science 

 often escape the premature notoriety which is destruc- 

 tive alike to patient investigation and to the inspiration 

 of wayward genius. Especially in the case of the 

 experiments with which Sir Oliver Lodge deals in the 

 iast chapters of his book, we may wonder how far it 

 has been entirely discreet at present to open the dis- 

 cussion to the general public. 



But the very magnitude of the issues at stake makes 

 it difficult for any earnest mind to keep the results, 

 tentative as they appear, the property of a small circle. 

 It is not easy to imagine circumstances which would 

 justify the creation, even for a short period, of a 

 " corner " in truth. It is therefore in accordance with 

 the best traditions of English science that the results 

 of these investigations, as soon as they seem to be of 

 value to the outside world, should be at its disposal. 

 NO.' 2106, VOL. 82] 



The book before us does not profess to give an 

 account, or even a summary, of all the work which 

 has now been accomplished on the subjects of tele- 

 pathy, clairvoyance, hypnotism, &c. As we have 

 already said, it contains the story of the way in which, 

 throughout the last quarter of a century, Sir Oliver 

 Lodge has been led to believe, as the result of care- 

 fully planned experiments, if not that evidence of the 

 survival of man — or, more correctly, of certain men — 

 has already been collected, at any rate that there is 

 no reason why it should not be collected. We do not 

 think that anyone unfamiliar with the recent publica- 

 tions of the Society for Psychical Research will feel 

 that he has proved his point. The nature of the evi- 

 dence prevents any single or any several incidents in 

 themselves from carrying conviction, and will always 

 prevent it. It is the cumulative effect, added to a 

 personal realisation of the nature of the evidence, that 

 must be relied on. But even the proceedings of the 

 Society for Psychical Research are published in an 

 abbreviated form, and Sir Oliver only gives a few 

 quotations and references to this mass of already 

 selected facts. 



At present the chief interest of the subject centres 

 round the theory of cross correspondences, emanating 

 chiefly from the so-called controls that are manifested 

 in certain well-known and much discussed automatic 

 scripts, and claim to represent the surviving person- 

 alities of Myers, Hodgson, and others. Here again 

 the general reader cannot possibly realise how much 

 is conveyed by the revelation of personality-, in char- 

 acteristic phraseology, in appropriate knowledge, in 

 intellectual equipment. A voice in the dark may bring 

 absolute assurance to anyone familiar with that voice 

 of the corporal presence of a certain being, while it is 

 meaningless or passes unheard to a p>erson who is 

 unfamiliar with it. Similarly, indications of known 

 personalities, examples of typical intellectual activities 

 continuing after earthly existence has ceased, may 

 accumulate to such intensity that no hypothesis is so 

 simple or so effective as that which involves the 

 acceptance of the belief in their manifest survival ; 

 and after all, it is the essential nature of a satisfactory 

 hypothesis, which in due course may develop into one 

 of the so-called laws of nature, that it should offer the 

 simplest and most effective explanation of certain 

 ascertained facts. We do not imagine that the pre- 

 sent book will suffice to convince anyone who is with- 

 out other assurance; but we can well understand that 

 those who have had the experience of Sir Oliver 

 Lodge should feel that the hypothesis of the survival 

 of man cannot long remain in the outer court of the 

 enshrined truths of natural philosophy. 



AN AMERICAN HIGH-SCHOOL BOOK ON 

 AGRICULTURE. 



Elements of Agriculture. By Prof. G. F. Warren. 

 Pp. xxiv + 434. (New York : The Macmillan Co., 

 1909.) Price 55. net. 



'" I ""HE purpose of the present book," says Dr. 

 jL Bailey in an introducton,' note, " is to make the 

 teaching of agriculture in the existing high schools 

 comparable in extent and thoroughness with the teach- 

 ing of physics, mathematics, history and literature." 



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