Frank Podmore

“ We forget because life absorbs our energies and robs us of the leisure to remember; the departed, if they survive, must forget, because a new life must absorb their energies and cut off their associations with the past to an indefinitely greater degree. ”

“ But for most men, whether they claim the title of philosopher or no, the possibility of anything can only be proved by experience, and until experience furnishes adequate material, the only prudent course is suspension of judgment. ”

“ SO far the work of naturalisation has proceeded with smoothness: if we have seen reason to reject any applicants for admission it is on the ground that their credentials are unsatisfactory, not because they lie under any suspicion of an alien allegiance. If the facts of telepathy are admitted it does not yet appear that they carry us beyond the material world, the world which includes alike neural processes and ethereal undulations. ”

“ Is there not, therefore, more than a touch of human conceit in the imagination which depicts the spirits of the dead as having no other function than to hover invisibly around the living as futile spectators of the follies and the crimes of earth? ”

“ It is a vicious circle: there is no effective desire because men have despaired of success: and success will only come, in this as in any other quest, to men whom the desire of knowledge urges to eager and persistent endeavour. ”

“ But the other man who, because our present ignorance does not enable us to decide what is the true meaning of these elusive "seemings," condemns the whole enquiry as abortive, has surely no title to speak in the name of Science. ”

“ If such a force should be proved to exist, it will afford material for the physicist and the physiologist, and will no doubt considerably enlarge our conception of the potencies of living bodies. But it was not for this that the Society for Psychical Research was founded. The distinguished men who in 1882 associated themselves in the venture were certainly not attracted merely by the prospect of enlarging the domain of physics or biology. ”

“ They came together in the hope of finding empirical proof of the survival of the soul after the death of the body. No one who has read Myers's brief autobiography, or the Memoir of Henry Sidgwick, can doubt that it was this hope which formed the motive power. But it is when we approach this subject that the real difficulties of psychical research begin. We are menaced with opposition from without and danger from within. The opposition comes principally from two quarters. There are those who feel that the very quest involves a kind of impiety ”

“ We have accumulated a large number of observations and experiments, open to various interpretations, but open amongst others to this particular interpretation, that they indicate in some fashion the presence of "dead" men and women. The man who at the present stage of the enquiry invites us, on the strength—or weakness—of the evidence so far available, to acclaim the proof of human immortality, may be doing serious injury to his own cause. ”

“ The exhibitions of materialisation, spirit photography, and slate-writing which found favour a generation ago have received no scientific endorsement of late years, and are now so generally discredited that they need scarcely be considered seriously. ”

“ Hence there need be no trace of cynicism in the suggestion that probably the dead forget the living far more rapidly even than the living forget the dead: it merely expresses a psychological necessity. ”

“ It was old enough for Horace to treat it half in jest. It has been displayed at every step in human progress. There are many of the faithful now who would in their hearts join with Imaum Ali Zadi in placing all human knowledge under the ban. ”

“ Hodgson was himself satisfied, after an exhaustive study of the trance phenomena, that these suspicious characteristics were not inconsistent with the Spiritualist interpretation; and that in many cases they even lend additional support to that hypothesis; and, speaking generally, those investigators who of recent years have given the closest study to the case of Mrs. Piper and other automatists have been led to attach increasing weight to the hypothesis of some form of spirit communication. ”