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
Scarcely a year passes that mediums do not bring me drawings of plants and
animals in the Moon, in Mars, Venus, Jupiter, or certain of the stars.
These designs are more or less pretty, and more or less curious. But there
is nothing in them that leads us to admit their actual resemblance to
real things in other worlds. On the contrary, everything proves that they
are the products of imagination, essentially terrestrial, both in look and
shape, not even tallying what we know to be the vital possibilities of
those worlds. The designers of them are the dupes of illusion. These
plants and animal are metamorphoses (sometimes elegantly conceived and
drawn) of terrestrial organisms. Perhaps the most curious thing of all is
that they have a family resemblance in the manner of their execution, and
have stamped on them, in some way or other, the mediumistic hall-mark.
To return to my own experiences. When I took the role of writing-medium, I
generally produced astronomical or philosophical dissertations signed
"Galileo." I will quote but one of them as a sample. It is taken from my
notebooks of 1862.
SCIENCE.
The human intellect holds in its powerful grasp the infinite universe
of space and time; it has penetrated the inaccessible domain of the
Past, sounded the mystery of the unfathomable heavens, and believes
that it has explained the riddle of the universe. The objective world
has unrolled before the eyes of science its splendid panorama and its
magnificent wealth of forms. The studies of man have led him to a
knowledge of truth; he has explored the universe, discovered the
inexorable reign of law, and the application of the forces that
sustain all things. If it has not been permitted to him to see the
First Cause face to face, at least he has attained a true mathematical
idea of the series of secondary causes.
In this latest century, above all, the experimental _a priori_ method,
the only really scientific one, has been put into practice in the
natural sciences, and by its aid man has freed himself from the
prejudices of the old school of thought, one by one, and from
subjective or speculative theories, and confined himself to a careful
and intelligent study of the field of observation.
Yes, human science is firmly based and pregnant with possibility,
worthy of our homage for its difficult and long-proved past, worthy of
our sympathy for its future, big with the promise of useful and
profitable discoveries. For nature is henceforth to be a book
accessible to the bibliographical researches of the studious, a world
open to the investigations of the thinker, a fertile region which the
human mind has already visited, and in which we must needs advance
boldly, holding in our hand experience as our compass....