The occasional introduction of the word supernormal may perhaps be excused.

For we find throughout the world's history a series of great events which, though differing widely in detail, have a certain general resemblance both to each other and to some of those incidents both of savage and of ordinary civilised life to which reference has already been made.

The elements which are common to the great majority of religions seem to be mainly two - namely, the promulgation of some doctrine which the religious reformer claims to have received, or actually to communicate, in some supernormal manner; and the report of a concurrent manifestation of phenomena apparently inexplicable by ordinary laws.

Now, with the rise of one religion our Society has already had practically to deal. Acting through Mr. Hodgson, whose experiences in the matter have been elsewhere detailed,1 a committee of the Society for Psychical Research has investigated the claim of the so-called "Theos-ophy," of which Madame Blavatsky was the prophetess, to be an incipient world-religion, corroborated by miraculous, or at least supernormal, phenomena, - and has arrived at the conclusion that it is merely a rechauffe of ancient philosophies, decked in novel language, and supported by ingenious fraud. Had this fraud not been detected and exposed, and had the system of belief supported thereon thriven and spread, we should have witnessed what the sceptic might have cired as a typical case of the origin of religions. A Gibbon of our own cay, reviewing the different motives and tendencies which prompt, or spread, revelations, might have pointed to Thcosophy and Mormonism as covering between them the whole ground; - from the adroit advantage taken of mystical aspiration in the one religion, to the commonplace action of greed and lust upon helplessness and stupidity which forms the basis of the other.

But if it should be argued from these analogies that in no case of the foundation of a religion would any scientific method of psychical inquiry prove necessary or fruitful, if we knew all the facts; but that such developments might be sufficiently dealt with by ordinary common-sense, or, like Mormonism, by the criminal law, the generalisation would be hasty and premature. We need not go far back to discover two religions whose central fact is not a fact of fraud at all, but an unexplained psychical phenomenon. I allude to the vision-life of Swedenborg, and the speaking with tongues which occurred in the church of Irving, - each of which constitutes a central point of faith for a certain number of intelligent and educated persons at the present day. Of neither of these facts can Science at present offer a satisfactory explanation. The speaking with tongues seems plainly to have been for the most part (though not entirely) a genuine automatic phenomenon. But as to the origin of such automatic utterances (conveyed in speech or writing), as to the range from which their contents are drawn, or the kind of attention which they can claim, there is little or nothing to be learnt from accepted textbooks.

We are groping among the first experiments, the simplest instances, on which any valid theory can be based.²

1 Proceedings of the S.P.R., vol. iii.

2 See papers on "Automatic Writing" in Proceedings of the S.P.B., vols. ii. and iii.

The case of Swedenborg carries us still further beyond the limits of our assured knowledge. Of madness and its delusions, indeed, we know much; but it would be a mere abuse of language to call Swedenborg mad. His position must be decided by a much more difficult analogy. For before we can even begin to criticise his celestial visions we must be able in some degree to judge of his visions of things terrestrial; we must face, that is to say, the whole problem of so-called clairvoyance, of a faculty which claims to be not merely receptive but active, - a projection of super-sensory percipience among scenes distant and things unknown.

And the existence of such a faculty as this will assuredly never be proved by a mere study of the transcendental dicta of any single seer. This problem, too, must be approached, partly through the hypnotic trance, in which the best-attested instances of clairvoyance are alleged to have occurred, and partly through the collection of such supernormal narratives as some of those which find place in the present book.

Even a sketch like this may indicate how complex and various may be the problems which underlie that "History of Sects " in which a Bossuet might see only the heaven-sent penalty for apostasy against the Church, - a Gibbon, the mere diverting panorama of the ever-varying follies of men.

§ 10. But reflections like these lie on the outskirts of a still larger and graver question. What (it is naturally asked) is the relation of our study - not to eccentric or outlying forms of religious creed - but to central and vital conceptions; and especially to that main system of belief to which in English-speaking countries the name of religion is by popular usage almost confined?

Up till this time those who have written on behalf of the Society for Psychical Research have studiously refrained from entering on this important question. Our reason for this reticence is obvious enough when stated, but it has not been universally discerned. We wished to avoid even the semblance of attracting the public to our researches by any allurement which lay outside the scientific field. We could not take for granted that our inquiries would make for the spiritual view of things, that they would tend to establish even the independent existence, still less the immortality, of the soul. We shrank from taking advantage of men's hopes or fears, from representing ourselves as bent on rescuing them from the materialism which forms so large a factor in modern thought, or from the pessimism which dogs its steps with unceasing persistency. We held it to be incumbent on us, in an especial degree, to maintain a neutral and expectant attitude, and to conduct our inquiries in the "dry light " of a dispassionate search for truth.