FOR years, the Psychical Research Societies have been lending countenance and an air of respectability to the grossest superstitions: belief in ghosts, clairvoyance, haunted houses, poltergeists, apports, ectoplasm, premonitions of the dying, and other sordid delusions.
Now comes Mr. W.H. Salter, Hon. Secretary of the British Society for Psychical Research, and, in an "answer" to the unanswerable argument of Surgeon-Rear Admiral Charles M. Beadnell in the Literary Guide for September, 1943, makes a plea for that vulgar delusion: telepathy.
We are no more impressed by the "big names" that have defended telepathy than by the "big names" (Gladstone, the Duke of Argyle, and Mary Pickford) who have defended Christianity. We are interested solely in facts.
For years, this writer (as a matter of "duty" to himself) wasted a precious lot of time studying the reports of the P.R.S.
In no series of papers are to be found more self-evidential material of downright dishonesty, outright lying, and a silly esteem for every type of voodoo enchantment and jungle witchcraft than these papers reveal. They are a disgrace to intelligence."No psychical researcher professes to know everything about telepathy," says Mr. Salter. Now, isn't that nice of him? If they knew anything at all about telepathy, they would put it to work, not in the Society's "proceedings" or in Sunday supplements, but in the world of practical demonstration.
When Marconi told the world he could send messages without the use of wires, he proved it. Today a billion-dollar industry is build on wireless telegraphy. How much is invested in telepathy? Today, after 60 years of "investigation", telepathy can't erect a single sending and receiving station. There isn't a banking house in the world -- and bankers are quick to grasp at anything that will "work" -- which would back a telepathy station or risk a German mark on any of the thought-transference didos of the psychical researchers.
After 60 years of telepathy, we still use the telephone and the telegraph, write millions of letters a year, and spend a billion dollars in needless postage when we could just as well be "thinking" our thoughts to others. Even Mr. Salter must convey his thoughts to us by means of the printed page.
Hans Driesch and Charles Richet were no more qualified to pass judgement on the "evidence" of telepathy than anyone who can analyze and think. They were, by temperament, less qualified, in fact, than thousands of scientific workers who reject telepathy and whose critical judgment is not impaired by a predisposition to swallow anything. If pressed to prove it, I will show that both Driesch and Richet were, in these matters, gullible fools.
Psychological research societies can exist only so long as they are able to feed on current superstitions. They thrive on credulity. Where would they be today if there were no victims of hallucinations, religious neurotics, ghost-chasing crackpots, hysterical subjects, and psychopathic "visionaries" on whom to base their reports? Long ago, Joseph Jastrow made a remark that is as valid today as when it was written: Create a belief in anything and the "facts" will create themselves. There are thousands of Christian Scientists today (not to mention a slough of Spiritualists) who will testify to whatever is required. Is Mr. Salter so naive as to believe that men will not lie?
"The imposing mass of evidence has convinced almost everyone who has studied it that telepathy occurs," says Mr. Salter. But has it? We haven't heard that the British Association or the American Association for the Advancement of Science has gone on record as endorsing telepathy.
When they do, telepathy will have made its first progress in sixty years.
WHEN some of our Humanist friends, like William Floyd, accept as "genuine" the performances of such fakers as "Margery", the medium, it is high time, we think, that they stop poking fun at Bible miracles. What is so funny about the tall stories of the Bible, if we are asked to believe in seance ectoplasm, ghostly materializations, and table-lifting by spooks? Does Mr. Floyd believe that "Walter", the dead brother of "Margery", left his ghostly imprints in wax, rang bells, tooted horns, and cut up capers in his sister's home? If he does, he is lost to rationalism.
Spiritualism, as Joseph McCabe remarked in his debate with Arthur Conan Doyle, "was born of a fraud. It was cradled in fraud. It was nurtured in fraud. It is based today to an alarming extent all over the world on fraudulent performances." And he elsewhere states: "It was never more than an elementary superstition based from start to finish on such fraud as even the chronicles of man's religious eccentricities had never known before."
"Margery" was detected in fraud, time and time again; Houdini, the magician, held her in contempt and pronounced her a mountebank. As a member of the Scientific American committee, he denounced her trickery. He himself wrote me and sent an account of his Boston experience.
A number of years ago, Dr. Crandon, the husband of "Margery", invited me to attend the seances of his wife. I agreed to go to Boston, if I might use my own discretion when "Walter", the ghost, put in an appearance. Dr. Crandon replied that guests were expected to observe only what went on, hold one another's hands, and report what they had seen at the end of the seance. He was not interested, he wrote, in "investigations". I never went. I could stay at home and be more richly entertained by the inimitable Houdini and other stage magicians.
Mr. Floyd says that a "Margery" seance "a bell had been rung when not connected by a wire". Today a bell can be rung by wireless control. I saw an exact duplication of the "Margery" bell trick in the science exhibit at the World's Fair in Chicago.
"Margery and her husband, Dr. Crandon never accepted money for any performance", says Mr. Floyd. They did not have to; Dr. Crandon was a well-to-do physician. But other inducements than money can make a woman, especially if she is pretty, resort to duping and mystifying others. "Margery" held the Spiritualistic spotlight for a number of years and enjoyed her prestige.
As for telepathy, it is just another delusion foisted on a gullible public. I am fully acquainted with the literature on the subject and, though I cannot go into it here, I will stake my reputation for whatever it is worth among those who have some measure of confidence in my judgement, that telepathy is a fraud.
Mr. Floyd says that he "was deceived by Christianity for many years". He will cease to be deceived by telepathy and Spirtualism when he has investigated them thoroughly.
Return to Essays of an Atheist
RELATED ARTICLES
STIGMATA, an opinion
Stigmata, and similar "miracles" witnessed in other religions.The French Church Prior to the Revolution
Controversies around the bull Unigenitus. Christian burial rites refused, to reject the bull was graver than 'the primal sin of Adam'. Jansenists and an overabundance of daily miracles, such as convulsions.Super-Sensory Superstition
Documented case in the 1940's of a Clairvoyant who could read symbols on cards at a distance and what a Skeptic has to say.Skeptics and Mediums Debate on Larry King Live
Following a debate on Larry King Live, opinions about Clairvoyancy, Psychic Powers and Near Death Experiences.Near Death Experiences
Near death experiences and their uniqueness according to culture, and religious persuasion of the individual.
Article last updated October 22, 2005
Certified error free by http://htmlvalidator.com
 |
 |
 |
 |