WCP1577

[1]¹

Parkstone, Dorset. Feb.[ruary] 4^th.1893

My dear Mr. Myers²

I have just finished reading your most interesting paper on The Subliminal Conciousness³ in last number of "Proceedings". How excessively interesting is that case of the Medium! Will not Mrs Sidgwick⁴ 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 [I heard] Mr. Hockley⁵ give his evidence about the "crystal-seeing", to the Dialectical Soc. Committee. He gave us some good cases but we did not thnk[sic] 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[sic] 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[sic] &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[sic] satisfy the extremely rigid conditions of poor necessary for the society. Seeing in the last "Journal" the paper on the "Lourdes Miracles" I have got Mivart’s⁶ 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, get⁷ their testimony………

Believe me | Yours v. faithfully | ARWallace [signature]

[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 reader of the paper. The letter is not to be made public in any way, & please return it at your leisure.