Mysterious Psychic Forces: An Account of the Author's Investigations in Psychical Research, Together with Those of Other European SavantsFlammarion, Camille
Philosophy
Mysterious Psychic Forces: An Account of the Author's Investigations in Psychical Research, Together with Those of Other European Savants
Flammarion, Camille
Parapsychology -- Investigation; Spiritualism
To stop short in any research that bids fair to widen the gates of
knowledge, to recoil from fear of difficulty or adverse criticism, is
to bring reproach on science. There is nothing for the investigator to
do but to go straight on, "to explore up and down, inch by inch, with
the taper, his reason;" to follow the light wherever it may lead, even
should it at times resemble a will-o'-the wisp.
I have nothing to retract. I adhere to my already published
statements. Indeed, I might add much thereto. I regret only a certain
crudity in those early expositions, which, no doubt justly, militated
against their acceptance by the scientific world. My own knowledge at
that time scarcely extended beyond the fact that certain phenomena new
to science had assuredly occurred, and were attested by my own sober
senses, and, better still, by automatic record.
I was like some two-dimensional being who might stand at the singular
point of a Riemann's surface, and thus find himself in infinitesimal
and inexplicable contact with a plane of existence not his own.
I think I see a little farther now. I have glimpses of something like
coherence among the strange elusive phenomena; of something like
continuity between those unexplained forces and laws already known.
This advance is largely due to the labors of another Association of
which I have also this year the honor to be President--the Society for
Psychical Research. And were I now introducing for the first time
these inquiries to the world of science I should choose a starting
point different from that of old. It would be well to begin with
_telepathy_; with the fundamental law, as I believe it to be, that
thoughts and images may be transferred from one mind to another
without the agency of the recognized organs of sense, that knowledge
may enter the human mind without being communicated in any hitherto
known or recognized ways.
Although the inquiry has elicited important facts with reference to
the mind, it has not yet reached the scientific stage of certainty
which would entitle it to be usefully brought before one of our
sections. I will therefore confine myself to pointing out the
direction in which scientific investigation can legitimately advance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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