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For example, if it be granted, as apparently it was by Dr. Carpenter, that, in certain circumstances, certain persons, wide awake, can perform, in various ways, intelligent actions, and produce intelligent expressions automatically, without being conscious of what they are doing, then that fact is nearly as interesting and useful as the fact that we are descended from protozoa. Thus Dr. Carpenter says that, in ‘table-talking,’ ‘cases have occasionally occurred in the experience of persons above suspicion of intentional deception, in which the answers given by the movements of tables were not only unknown to the questioners, but were even contrary to their belief at the time, and yet afterwards proved to be true. Such cases afford typical examples of the doctrine of unconscious cerebration, for in several of them it was capable of being distinctly shown that the answers, although contrary to the belief of the questioners at the time, were true to facts of which they had been formerly cognisant, but which had vanished from their recollection; the residua of these forgotten impressions giving rise to cerebral changes which prompted the responses without any consciousness on the part of the agents of the latent springs of their actions.’ It is, apparently, to be understood that, as the existence of latent unconscious knowledge was traced in ‘several’ cases, therefore the explanation held good in all cases, even where it could not be established as a fact.
Let us see how this theory works out in practice. Smith, Jones, Brown and Robinson are sitting with their hands on a table. All, ex hypothesi, are honourable men, ‘above suspicion of intentional deception’. They ask the table where Green is. Smith, Jones and Robinson have no idea, Brown firmly believes that Green is in Rome. The table begins to move, kicks and answers, by aid of an alphabet and knocks, that Green is at Machrihanish, where, on investigation, he is proved to be. Later, Brown is able to show (let us hope by documentary evidence), that he had heard Green was going to Machrihanish, instead of to Rome as he had intended, but this remarkable change of plans on Green’s part had entirely faded from Brown’s memory. Now we are to take it, ex hypothesi, that Brown is the soul of honour, and, like Mr. Facey Rumford, ‘wouldn’t tell a lie if it was ever so’. The practical result is that, while Brown’s consciousness informs him, trumpet-tongued, that Green is at Rome, ‘the residue of a forgotten impression’ makes him (without his knowing it) wag the table, which he does not intend to do, and forces him to say through the tilts of the table, that Green is at Machrihanish, while he believes that Green is at Rome.
The table-turners were laughed at, and many, if not all of them, deserved ridicule. But see how even this trivial superstition illuminates our knowledge of the human mind! A mere residuum of a forgotten impression, a lost memory which Brown would have sworn, in a court of justice, had never been in his mind at all, can work his muscles, while he supposes that they are not working, can make a table move at which three other honourable men are sitting, and can tell all of them what none of them knows. Clearly the expedient of table-turning in court might be tried by conscientious witnesses, who have forgotten the circumstances on which they are asked to give evidence. As Dr. Carpenter remarks, quoting Mr. Lecky, ‘our doctrine of unconscious cerebration inculcates toleration for differences not merely of belief, but of the moral standard’. And why not toleration for ‘immoral’ actions? If Brown’s residuum of an impression can make Brown’s muscles move a table to give responses of which he is ignorant, why should not the residuum of a forgotten impression that it would be a pleasant thing to shoot Mr. Gladstone or Lord Salisbury, make Brown unconsciously commit that solecism? It is a question of degree. At all events, if the unconscious self can do as much as Dr. Carpenter believed, we cannot tell how many other marvels it may perform; we cannot know till we investigate further. If this be so, it is, perhaps, hardly wise or scientific to taboo all investigation. If a mere trivial drawing-room amusement, associated by some with an absurd ‘animistic hypothesis,’ can, when explained by Dr. Carpenter, throw such unexpectedly blinding light on human nature, who knows how much light may be obtained from a research into more serious and widely diffused superstitious practices? The research is, undeniably, beset with the most thorny of difficulties. Yet whosoever agrees with Dr. Carpenter must admit that, after one discovery so singular as ‘unconscious cerebration,’ in its effect on tables, some one is bound to go further in the same field, and try for more. We are assuming, for the sake of argument, the accuracy of Dr. Carpenter’s facts. {17a}
More than twenty years ago an attempt was made by a body called the ‘Dialectical Society,’ to investigate the phenomena styled spiritualistic. This well-meant essay had most unsatisfactory results. {17b}
First a committee of inquiry was formed, on the motion of Dr. Edmunds. The committee was heterogeneous. Many of the names now suggest little to the reader. Mr. Bradlaugh we remember, but he chiefly attended a committee which sat with D. D. Home, and it is admitted that nothing of interest there occurred. Then we find the Rev. Maurice Davies, who was wont to write books of little distinction on semi-religious topics. Mr. H. G. Atkinson was a person interested in mesmerism. Kisch, Moss, and Quelch, with Dyte and Isaac Meyers, Bergheim and Geary, Hannah, Hillier, Reed (their names go naturally in blank verse), were, doubtless, all most estimable men, but scarcely boast of scientific fame. Serjeant Cox, a believer in the phenomena, if not in their spiritual cause, was of the company, as was Mr. Jencken, who married one of the Miss Foxes, the first authors of modern thaumaturgy. Professor Huxley and Mr. G. H. Lewes were asked to join, but declined to march to Sarras, the spiritual city, with the committee. This was neither surprising nor reprehensible, but Professor Huxley’s letter of refusal appears to indicate that matters of interest, and, perhaps, logic, are differently understood by men of science and men of letters. {18} He gave two reasons for refusing, and others may readily be imagined by the sympathetic observer. The first was that he had no time for an inquiry involving much trouble, and (as he justly foresaw) much annoyance. Next, he had no interest in the subject. He had once examined a case of ‘spiritualism,’ and detected an imposture. ‘But, supposing the phenomena to be genuine, they do not interest me. If anybody would endow me with the faculty of listening to the chatter of old women and curates in the nearest cathedral town, I should decline the privilege, having better things to do.’ Thus it would not interest Professor Huxley if some new kind of telephone should enable him to hear all the conversation of persons in a town (if a cathedral town) more or less distant. He would not be interested by the ‘genuine’ fact of this extension of his faculties, because he would not expect to be amused or instructed by the contents of what he heard. Of course he was not invited to listen to a chatter, which, on one hypothesis, was that of the dead, but to help to ascertain whether or not there were any genuine facts of an unusual nature, which some persons explained by the animistic hypothesis. To mere ‘bellettristic triflers’ the existence of genuine abnormal and unexplained facts seems to have been the object of inquiry, and we must penitently admit that if genuine communications could really be opened with the dead, we would regard the circumstance with some degree of curious zest, even if the dead were on the intellectual level of curates and old women. Besides, all old women are not imbeciles, history records cases of a different kind, and even some curates are as intelligent as the apes, whose anatomy and customs, about that time, much occupied Professor Huxley. In Balaam’s conversation with his ass, it was not so much the fact that mon âne parle bien which interested the prophet, as the circumstance that mon âne parle. Science has obviously soared very high, when she cannot be interested by the fact (if a fact) that the dead are communicating with us, apart from the value of what they choose to say.
However, Professor Huxley lost nothing by not joining the committee of the Dialectical Society. Mr. G. H. Lewes, for his part, hoped that with Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace to aid (for he joined the committee) and with Mr. Crookes (who apparently did not) ‘we have a right to expect some definite result’. Any expectation of that kind was doomed to disappointment. In Mr. Lewes’s own experience, which was large, ‘the means have always been proved to be either deliberate imposture … or the well-known effects of expectant attention’. That is, when Lord Adare, the Master of Lindsay, and a cloud of other witnesses, thought they saw heavy bodies moving about of their own free will, either somebody cheated, or the spectators beheld what they did behold, because they expected to do so, even when, like M. Alphonse Karr, and Mr. Hamilton Aide, they expected nothing of the kind.