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experimental originality, fertility and clearness," writes Prof. Geddes, of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. "I look upon him," says Theodore Dreiser, “as one of the great mental leaders upon whose periodic appearance on the earth the advancement of human thought depends." Ella Wheeler Wilcox, our modern -and greater than-George Eliot writes, "Elmer Gates I consider one of the most remarkable men of his age, if not the most remarkable." Prof. Eustace Miles, M. A., Cambridge University, England, says: "I am interested in every aspect of his work and see nothing at fault either with his methods or his conclusions."

Scores of others bear witness to the genius, the originality and pre-eminent intellectual qualifications of Prof. Gates.

Immortality from New Standpoints.

INTRODUCTORY.

My Dear Mr. Thompson: Your several urgent requests for a brief statement of my strongest reasons for believing in the continuance of one's conscious personal identity after the change or biotic crisis called death finds me rather unwilling to attempt to write out my speculations and convictions upon that subject. This reluctance is partly due to the diffidence one might naturally be expected to feel in undertaking to discuss a problem about which there is no definite scientific knowledge; and chiefly because what I have to say is deduced from certain psychologic data contained in one of my yet unpublished books. These data, too extensive and technical to be epitomized in so short an article, are facts derived from certain new and special methods of studying consciousness and of using the mind, and which, if not understood, will deprive my arguments of their main force and meaning. Furthermore, I have no knowledge of any other kind of exist

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ence than those ordinary forms of life with which biologists are acquainted, and my statements must therefore consist of deductive speculations based on psycho-physical principles and on certain difficultly-describable subjective experiences derived from a study of my own consciousness by special methods of experimental introspection.

I do not deem it necessary to refer to any of the well known arguments which, whatever their value, have failed to convince beyond the possibility of a reasonable doubt. In this article I can offer only the merest suggestions of a few of the main points upon which I base the hope that death is but a doorway to some kind of continued existence, the precise nature and conditions of which the world has probably not even guessed. Those who are interested in following further these lines of insight will find them more fully elaborated in some one of my forthcoming books on Psychology and Psychurgy;1 wherein will be found data for two other arguments, and the arguments herein given will acquire a much more profound meaning after becoming acquainted with the subject matter of these volumes.

WHAT WOULD BE PROOF OF IMMORTALITY? Science needs just one inductive fact from a direct observation of the objective conditions of the other life; and whilst I do not deny the possibility that there are those who have had such a personal experience, yet, if such is the case, that experience is so purely personal

1 Psychology is the science of mind, and Psychurgy is the art of more skillfully and efficiently using it. As Psychology is the science of all mental experiences whatsoever it follows that the sciences as taxonomic groups of experiences are subdivisions of Psychology, and that Psychology is the science of the sciences, and Psychurgy is the art of the arts.

that it is divested of the essential characteristics of scientific proof.

To give a concrete instance of what I would consider to be adequate proof of another kind of existence I will give an hypothetical case. Suppose there were a form of wave-energy somewhat similar to Roentgen Rays, but differing from them as they differ from sound. Let us suppose this new kind of radiant force to be invisible, but that it can be made visible by projecting it upon a wall coated with a substance whose color is altered by the action of the rays. Suppose, further, that all known inorganic and inanimate substances are transparent to that force, so that they can be held in the path of the rays, between their source and the wall, without cutting off part of the rays, and thus causing the color of the wall to be changed over a corresponding area-producing an effect like a shadow. Suppose, also, that it were discovered that a living thing is opaque to these rays and that it casts a shadow as long as it is alive, but becomes transparent at the moment of actual death. If on killing the animal hermetically sealed in a glass tube it were found, after a certain lapse of time, to become suddenly transparent, and if at the same instant a shadow precisely the same shape as the animal were seen to pass out through the wall of glass and move upward in front of the wall, then the presumption would be that some organism, not atomic, perhaps etheric, and capable of passing through glass, had left the atomic body of the animal. If that escaping organism could be caught and made to give evidence that it still possesses mind, then we would have an inductive laboratory proof of the existence of a

"spiritual" organism and of the continuity of life beyond death, but this would not demonstrate endless existence. If such an experiment can ever be made, then biology and psychology will have been extended across the border without an intervening chasm, and the continuity of personal identity beyond death will be scientifically demonstrated. It might be argued that the visible animal organism is composed of atomic solids and liquids and gases; and may there not be etheric solids and liquids and gases, the particles of which are infinitesimally smaller than atoms, and might there not be an etheric body composed thereof? Such proof could be made a co-ordinate part of the growing body of scientific knowledge. In the judgment of nearly every scientist in the world such demonstration of the actuality of another life has not yet been made.

(The Editor visited the Elmer Gates Laboratories in April, 1902. He learned then, by personal inquiry, of certain experiments carried on by Prof. Gates in the as yet unknown fields of etheric phenomena and radiant force, which promise to lead to interesting results, but he was unwilling to say much about them until after they shall have been further investigated by others besides himself.-Editor.)

Even if a disembodied or excarnate mind could communicate with me by speech, apparition, materialization, or telepathically, I would still have to be sure that the phenomenon was not an illusion, hallucination or delusion, and even if I were personally sure that such direct communication with a spirit had taken place, the proof would be wholly personal and could not become a scientific datum except to those who, like myself, had had.. like experience. In true science the

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