WCP1577

[1]

Parkstone,

Dorset.

Feb. 4th.1893

My dear Mr. Myers¹

I have just finished reading your most interesting paper on The Subliminal Conciousness² in last number of "Proceedings". How excessively interesting is that case of the Medium! Will not Mrs Sidgwick³ admit that this demonstrates clairvoyance? It is very interesting how, one after another, you are rehabilitating all the old "superstitions". Twenty-four years ago Inheard [typographical error] Mr. Hockley⁴ give his evidence about the "crystal-seeing", to the Dialectical Soc. Committee. He said he had studied it 40 years, & had 30 volumes of records. He gave us some good cases but we did not thnk [typographical error] much of them then. The only thing I object to in your paper is your treating the supposed "subliminal consciousness", not as a provisional hypothesis, but as a drmonstrated [typographical error] fact; as when, at p. 432, you say- "it was the picture framed by the percipients’ subliminal self" — and at p. 531- "It has, however, been subliminally notrd [typographical error] &c.", This has now been going on so long, by so many of the writers in the Society’s publications that by many it seems to be quite forgotten that it is only a hypothesis, — (& I think a very weak one!) However, I am glad to see that towards the end you show an inclination to escape from it, — in admitting, first- as I urged some time back — that such a "consciousness" or "second-self" could not have been developed under terrestrial evolution; and, further, that the phenomena imply an "interpretation of Worlds". In the case at p. 515 — if Miss A’s "subliminal consciousness" gave the, message, then it is a great liar!, which as it is I presume a part of herself, is rather a cruel theory for the Medium.

However, thanks to your patient and thorough work, we are getting a little on. What I should like to see you get, better than anything, would be s some physical phenomena that wiuld [typographical error] satisfy the extremely rigid conditions of proof necessary for the society. Seeing in the last "Journal" the paper on the "Lourdes Miracles" I have got Mivart’s⁵ permission to send you a letter he wrote me from Lourdes in 1874 giving the personal testimony of several doctors, in order that you may, if you like, take the names and addresses there given, & if any of them are still living, ⁶get their testimony………

Believe me | Yours v. faithfully | ARWallace

[2] (..…)Some of these cases, vouched for by medical men on the spot, will hardly come under the category of the cases given by the readers of the paper. The letter is not to be made public in any way, & please return it at your leisure.