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
I must confess to you, in the first place, gentlemen, that, of those
who call themselves "mediums" and "spiritists," a considerable number
are persons of limited intelligence, incapable of bringing the
experimental method to bear on the investigation of this order of
phenomena, and consequently are often the dupes of their credulity or
ignorance; while others, of whom the number is also considerable, are
impostors whose moral sense has become so blunted by the habit of
fraud that they seem to be incapable of appreciating the heinousness
of their criminal abuse of the confidence of those who apply to them
for instruction or for consolation.
And even where the subject is being investigated seriously and in good
faith, the force to which the production of these phenomena is due is
so capricious in its action that much delay and disappointment is
inevitable in the prosecution of any experimental inquiry in regard
to them. It is, therefore, no easy matter to put aside the obstacles
thus placed in the way of the serious inquirer, to eliminate these
sources of error, and to get at genuine manifestations of the
phenomena in question; carefully guarding one's own mind against all
error, all self-deception in the methodical and scrupulous examination
of the order of facts now under discussion. Nevertheless, I do not
hesitate to affirm my conviction, based on personal examination of the
subject, that any scientific man who declares the phenomena
denominated "magnetic" "somnambulistic," "mediumistic," and others not
yet explained by science, to be "impossible," is one _who speaks
without knowing what he is talking about_; and also any man
accustomed, by his professional avocations, to scientific
observation--provided that his mind be not biased by preconceived
opinions, nor his mental vision blinded by that opposite kind of
illusion, unhappily too common in the learned world, which consists in
imagining that the laws of Nature are already known to us, and that
everything which appears to overstep the limit of our present formulas
is impossible--may acquire a radical and absolute certainty of the
reality of the facts alluded to.
After an affirmation so categorical, it is hardly necessary for me to
assure the members of the Dialectical Society that I have acquired,
through my own observation, the absolute certainty of the reality of
these phenomena....