From the PREFACE.
The elaborate Reports of the Society for Psychical Research seldom get beyond the shelves of its members, and it is possible that few of this class read them with any such care and patience as students are made to bestow upon Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel. I know one prominent member who had my own lengthy report on his table for six months without knowing what it was about. If those who profess allegiance to the work do no better than this what can we expect of the Philistines? Of course it is hard to blame anyone for this, because this is a busy world and there is too much to read. But I remark the fact to indicate the difficulties in the way of interesting even the best minds on so intricate a subject as this.
I have endeavored in the present volume to summarise the most important of the Societys work, more especially with reference to such matter as might claim to bear upon the problem of a future life. I have accepted Mr. Podmores book on Apparitions and Thought Transference as sufficiently illustrative of supernormal phenomena not claiming to be spiritistic and do not duplicate its material. I have also perhaps discussed the Piper Case more than does M. Sage in his admirable summary, because I wished to reach a class of English readers who may wish a fuller resume1 of the general work. The chief questions which I wished to cover and which are not fully
Covered in M. Sages book are found in Chapters III, XII, and XIII. I have not intended that the book should satisfy the more exacting scientific standards, but serve the purpose of inducing the scientific psychologist to go to the detailed records where his demands may be better satisfied, and give the general reader some conception of the complexity of the problem with which we have to deal. Hence I have only given samples of the facts which are accessible for the student, and many of the most important are too intricate to justify using the space necessary to make their cogency perceptible. I have, therefore, limited myself to the best and the most easily intelligible type, and students who wish to know more must either go to other and more detailed records or make personal investigations. This work is for the reader who is more interested in explanation than in wearisome details.
The chapters summarising the Piper Case may seem unnecessarily long and tedious. But I could not discuss so large a theory as the spiritistic without affording intelligent people some idea of the amount and complexity of the material with which any explanatory theory has to contend.
The present work is also a part of the sequel to a work on philosophy which is in the press and will appear some time later. The remaining part of the sequel is another Report on mediumistic phenomena which is ready for press but can be published only as a work of scientific detail. The work of which these are the sequel discusses the general problems of knowledge and metaphysics without any attempt to solve them by adducing scientific facts as proof. It considers the proof of a future life as the desideratum for making a solution of metaphysical problems possible....