it is practically impossible for the dead to prove their identity, whether they appear to our eyes and ears, or speak or write through Mrs. Piper or anybody else, or by table-tilting. Take a strong case: Suppose that the ghost of Queen Mary appeared to me, and told me about her quarrel with Darnley at Stirling, in December, 1566. The fact was unknown to history. I then read it, as I did, in a manuscript of Darnley's father, Lennox, at Cambridge. Does it not seem as if Queen Mary's ghost had established her identity? Not at all; the fact was known to, but not told to me by, the learned Jesuit who very kindly lent me a transcript of the manuscript of 1568. Thus, granting telepathy, what the Jesuit knew he might unconsciously transmit to me in a vision of the presence of Queen Mary. In fact, of course, I had no such vision.
That this kind of thing may happen I infer from the crystal visions of Miss Angus (in The Making of Religion). Mrs. Jones, say, thought of, say, Mrs. Brown, who was in India; her existence was unknown to Miss Angus. That lady then gave a minute description of Mrs. Brown, as seen in the glass—of her dress and her gestures, and an imitation of her manner of limping in her walk. She said how Mrs. Brown was occupied, and in what Oriental scene. All this was corroborated next day by a letter from India; the events seen by Miss Angus were remote by about a month. Suppose that Mrs. Brown had died in the interval. The spiritualist theory would be that her spirit had communicated the facts. But this is needless; other people knew them in India. A ghost can only prove its identity, then, by communicating facts not known to any living mind. But it is next door to impossible to prove that any facts are unknown to every living mind.
To conclude,—people, as far as they are interested in this topic, are interested, as a rule, because, like Dr. Johnson, they want more evidence of the persistence of the individual consciousness after death. As far as I see, nothing like such proof is given by the very unsatisfactory doings of Mrs. Piper, and of "mediums" in general. If the ghost of Queen Mary appeared to me, and told me to whom she bade David Riccio carry her secret gift of diamonds (June, 1566), I should be much more convinced if I found corroboration in a document which it could be proved that no living eyes had seen before mine did.
My conclusion, then, is that I believe in human transcendental faculties which "annihilate time and space." Again, I think that such faculties raise a presumption that somewhat in us does not wholly die, but, retaining the consciousness of earthly experience, joins "the choir invisible." I am certain that the subject deserves scientific investigation, and scientific minds ought to be quite unbiased by the wish to prove that conscience survives death, and by the wish to stamp out "superstition."
Aftermath
SUCH trivial, trivial, trivial things—
One day I did not answer to her smile,
Once did not meet the eyes that sought mine, while
Mine looked beyond—once, how the memory clings!
She went from me unkissed.
Such trivial things
To never, never, never be forgot.
Why should I ever think of them, and not
Of the million kisses given, the mute eyes met
The thousand, thousand times, the smiles that set?
