WCP1582

[1]

Parkstone, Dorset. Feb[ruary] 5^th 1895.

My dear Myers¹. Just a few words to explain my views on the d.t. case you refer to. It will seem to many, & perhaps it does to you, a reductio ad absurdum, yet I believe it is probably the true explanation,- and I will give my reasons. There is no teaching of modern Spiritualism more general and consistent, than that the spirits of the degraded & vicious are attracted to, & constantly haunt, human beings with like vices, murderers with murderers, drunkards with drunkards, &c. They get pleasure from the vicious indulgence in vice. And when the drunkard arrives at a c.t. and his organism easily receives impressions from his spirit attendants, what more likely than that this degraded spirit should take pleasure in frightening him with horrible pictures or impressions, just as boys will enjoy frightening a nervous person. Analogous to this is the case of the insane; and if you have by you my Miracles & Mod. Spiritualism², & x will read the note at p.196, about G.H. Lewes’³ statement and conclusions I think you will admit that there also there[sic] is probability on my side, once admit[sic] the existence and possible agency of spirits.

A quite distinct argument in my favour is the behaviour of hypnotised patients. Hypnotism induces a condition in which suggestions by the hypnotiser become sensual perceptions in the hypnotised. But it does not, usually, (does it every?) lead per se to delusions of this kind. A suggestion of the hypnotiser is required. An onlooker seeing a hypnotised patient doing some ridiculous act, and not knowing that he was acting under suggestion, might argue tha[t] it was absurd to bring in suggestion by another person not present to cause such notions. The abnormal state alone, he might say, induced it. But we and the hypnotiser know that this is not the case, & that to cause hypnotised patients to see and hear things not really present and to act in certain ridiculous or strange ways, the notion or will of the hypnotiser is required. To my mind, these converging lines of argument are almost conclusive; but you will remember, I do not object to your holding another view, but to your saying "we know" that that other view is correct:

I think your view is a pure hypothesis founded merely on the ordinary’s [2] medical view of such things, and by no means established in such a way as to justify those who hold it in saying "we know".

I shall be much interested in Hodgson’s⁴ criticism though I cannot [one word crossed out] conceive it to have more value than the accusations of carelessness & illogical conclusions already hurled at poor O.Lodge⁵ by Karl Pearson⁶ and other less distinguished ignoramuses.

Yours very truly | Alfred R. Wallace