Mysterious Psychic Forces: An Account of the Author's Investigations in Psychical Research, Together with Those of Other European Savants — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Mysterious Psychic Forces: An Account of the Author's Investigations in Psychical Research, Together with Those of Other European Savants
John Stuart Mill · en
On the one hand, we have the universal belief in the objective
existence of a world unknown to us in our normal state; that faith
(the basis of all religions) in a future life where the injustices of
this one will be atoned for and where we shall be confronted with the
good or evil deeds that we have done on earth; that uninterrupted
tradition of systematic or spontaneous observances and rituals, thanks
to which man is constantly kept in relation more or less with that
unknown world.
On the other hand, we have the sceptical and disheartening negation of
systems of pessimistic philosophy and of atheism, a negation which
takes its rise in the absence of positive proofs of the survival of
the soul; the ever more and more marked tendency of science toward a
monistic interpretation of the enigma of human life; and the belief
that all the known phenomena of life appear only in connection with
special organs.
In order to decide in so abstruse a matter as this, mediumistic
experiments do not suffice; everyone may draw from these as much of
credence or of incredulity as he may need in order to resolve his
doubts in one way or another; but he will never divest himself of the
substratum of temperamental tendencies which the more or less
scientific education of his mind or the more or less mystical
inclinations of his nature shall have developed in him.
One word more and I have done.
While admitting it as the most probable hypothesis that the
intelligent beings to whom we owe these psychical phenomena are
pre-existing, independent entities, and that they only derive from us
the conditions necessary for their manifestation in a physical plane
accessible to our senses, ought we to admit also that they are really
the spirits of the dead?
To this question I will reply that I do not feel that I am as yet
capable of giving a decisive answer.
Still I should be inclined to admit it, if I did not see the
possibility that these phenomena might form part of a scheme of things
still more vast. In fact, nothing hinders us from believing in the
existence of forms of life wholly different from those which we know,
and of which the life of human beings before birth and after death
forms only a special case, just as the organic life of man is a
special case of animal life in general.
But I am leaving the solid ground of facts to explore that of the most
hazardous hypotheses. I have already spoken at too great length, and
will therefore close the discussion of this particular topic.
I have considered the above subjects in several of my own works.[41]