LIFE AFTER DEATH

Until 1882 when the London Society for Psychical Research was organized for the investigation of alleged telepathy, visions and apparitions, clairvoyance, crystal gazing, automatic writing, predictions of the future, and in fact all kinds of occult phenomena, evidence on these subjects was either accepted with superstitious credulity or scornfully denied as phantasms of the ignorant imagination. Realizing that past evidence had been largely vitiated by fraud, defects of observation, prejudice, lack of technical knowledge and lapses of memory, the London Society has made the most critical and painstaking examination of every unusual case that has come before it, with the intention of investigating the facts rather than their interpretation. The societies of other countries have followed this admirable lead, and their combined efforts unearthed an extraordinary mass of evidence bearing on ghosts, telepathy and other manifestations of the occult. Various theories have been elaborated which attempt to explain what are regarded as incontestable facts, but so far with no very satisfactory result. The membership roll of the Society has included many of England's foremost men, Henry Sedgwick, A. J. Balfour, Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Crookes, Lord Rayleigh, Alfred Russell Wallace and Professor Gilbert Murray.

In this country Stanford University has been provided with a special endowment to facilitate the prosecution of psychical research. An American Society, organized in 1884, is also carrying on similar work. Its efforts, like those of the London Society, have been directed particularly towards the telepathic communication of thought by means of the extreme sensitiveness of the subliminal mind, and to the gathering of evidence tending to prove the continued existence of the mind after the death of the body. At an open meeting of the Graduate Schools Society, to be held in Phillips Brooks House this evening at 7 o'clock, Dr. J. H. Hyslop, secretary and editor of the Proceedings and Journal of the American Society and leader of American activity in psychical research, will discuss these questions in an address on "The Evidence For Immortality From Psychical Research."