NATURE 



145 



THURSDAY, JUNE 18, 1903. 



A SCHEME OF VITAL FACULTY. 

 Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death. 

 By Frederic W. H. Myers. In two volumes. Vol. 

 i. pp. xlvi + 700; vol. ii. pp. XX +660, including 

 elaborate index. (London : Longmans, Green and 

 Co., 1903.) Price 2I. 2s. net. 



IN introducing this book to what must be regarded 

 for the most part as a hostile audience, I would 

 claim for it that it is a record of the life-work of a per- 

 tinacious and industrious student, in a region beyond 

 the borderland of present orthodox science ; and would 

 explain that it has for its object the better comprehension 

 and coordination of a multitude of human faculties, some 

 of them recognised as real though obscure, others not 

 yet generally recognised as existing. The phenomena of 

 sleep, of genius, of multiple personality, of hysteria, of 

 hypnotism, of hyperaesthesia, and of trance, are among 

 those generally recognised by medical specialists and 

 practically treated; though, in truth, most of them seem 

 to be regarded chiefly or solely as pathological curiosi- 

 ties. The phenomena of sensory and motor auto- 

 matism, of telepathy, and of clairvoyance, are not 

 among the human faculties yet generally recognised. 

 By long study Myers was able to accept them all, in 

 various degrees, and he discerned a thread of con- 

 nection running through them, so that he felt it 

 possible gradually to design a comprehensive scheme 

 which should include them all, — a building, as it were, 

 in the composition of which each constituent filled its 

 appointed place, so that no part was left forlorn and 

 unsupported by adjacent materials, and so that the 

 eye of science subsequently glancing over it might be 

 willing to recognise the possibility and appropriate- 

 ness of structures which when isolated had seemed 

 strange and fantastic and incredible. 



The construction of such a unified scheme, welding 

 together phenomena often spoken of as occult with 

 others which, though recognised by science, were diffi- 

 cult of interpretation and classification, — like genius, 

 for instance, or hysteria in its many aspects, — was 

 Myers's end and aim ; and the result is embodied in two 

 closely-printed volumes. Whether he has succeeded, 

 it is for posterity and for psychologists to say. His 

 treatment is not likely at once to commend itself to 

 philosophers, and it is not as a philosopher that he 

 writes ; his treatment aims at being scientific, but it is 

 i unusual in being very distinctly literary in form, i 

 shall not argue the matter, but shall content myself 

 with giving such few extracts from the earlier portion 

 of the book as may legitimately present to a critical 

 audience the object and motive power of the whole 

 treatise, a treatise on human personality and vital 

 faculty, which, whether successful or not, is, at all 

 events, more comprehensive and more ambitious than 

 anything which has hitherto been attempted by man 

 in that direction. 



If the objection is made that Myers was not a man 



of science, he himself would have admitted it at once ; 



but I am not so ready to admit it for him. Without 



the technical training, he seemed to me definitely to 



NO. 1755, VOL. 68] 



have many of the faculties and instincts and powers 

 of a man of science, combined with such a mental 

 grasp, vivid imagination, and power of expression, as 

 would put most of us to shame. 



However that may be, I would point out that men 

 not professionally scientific have had a profound in- 

 fluence on scientific progress before now, and if I were 

 to seek for an analogy to the effect which I expect 

 these volumes will have upon the development of the 

 psychical sciences, I would liken it by anticipation to 

 the effect of the " Novum Organon " upon the physical 

 sciences. Francis Bacon was a man of letters, not a 

 scientific man, but he recalled all educated men to the 

 possibility of exploration by experiment and observa- 

 tion, and so cleared the ground and paved the way for 

 the general acceptance of the results of Gilbert and 

 other great and truly scientific men of the same and 

 subsequent eras, whose pioneering work might else 

 have been lost in a mist of dislike, disbelief, and 

 obscurantism, 



Myers has shown that obscure psychical phenomena 

 can be legitimately investigated by observation and 

 experiment, and can be regarded as part of a sufficiently 

 comprehensive scheme of natural knowledge ; him, 

 then, I liken to Bacon. If we ask who corresponds to 

 the Gilbert of the same age in the psychical sciences, 

 few of us would have any hesitation in bringing for- 

 ward such names as those of Wallace and of Crookes. 



In so far as it may be said that Bacon did not wholly 

 appreciate the work of Gilbert, so we may say some- 

 thing similar of Myers's attitude to what he was con- 

 strained to consider the somewhat too trusting dis- 

 position of that eminent man Dr. Wallace ; though of 

 the more stringent methods and results of Sir W. 

 Crookes he was keenly appreciative. 



I am merely stating facts without comment, and 

 will now content myself with a few explanatory and 

 helpful extracts, showing Myers's recognition to the 

 full of the importance of strictly scientific procedure, 

 his appreciation of the stringency and value of scientific 

 proof, and of the difficulties attending scientific in- 

 vestigation in so unknown and comparatively unex- 

 plored a territory as that of the psychical nature and 

 spiritual faculties of man. 



" The method which our race has found most effec- 

 tive in acquiring knowledge is by this time familiar to 

 all men. It is the method of modern Science — that pro- 

 cess which consists in an interrogatiqn of Nature en- 

 tirely dispassionate, patient, systematic; such careful 

 experiment and cumulative record as can often elicit 

 from her slightest indications her deepest truths. That 

 method is now dominant throughout the civilised 

 world; and although in many directions experiments 

 may be difficult and dubious, facts rare and elusive, 

 Science works slowly on and bides her time— refusing 

 to fall back upon tradition or to launch into specula- 

 tion, merely because strait is the gate which leads to 

 valid discovery, indisputable truth. . . . 



" It is my object in the present work — as it has from 

 the first been the object of the Society for Psychical Re- 

 search, on whose behalf most of the evidence here set 

 forth has been collected — to do what can be done to 

 break down that artificial wall of demarcation which 

 has thus far excluded from scientific treatment pre- 

 cisely the problems which stand in most need of all the 

 aids to discovery which such treatment can afford. 



" Yet let me first explain that by the word ' scien- 



H 



