Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/528

 514 CRITICAL NOTICES : unending sleep, and would fix once more upon our necks the yoke of that vague dread before the ills we know not of, which mankind has seemed to be slowly and painfully sloughing off. There is of course a large class of persons of intellectual habits to whom the pursuit of "the doctrine of the enclitic De " or the classification of the varieties of the common Trilobite may seem an all-sufficient mental exercise. But even to them Myers' work should in some degree appeal when it is pointed out that its results may be of most intimate and practical importance to each one of us during our life on earth. For if Myers' conclusions are in the main well founded, we shall have to admit the reasonableness of the doctrines of the Christian-scientists, and each one of us may set about the regulation of his life by methods allied to theirs, with good hopes of great practical benefits to himself and to the world in general. The formation of a decided opinion as to the success or failure of Myers' main contention, the survival of the personality after death, must be postponed, probably for a whole generation at least, and indefinitely longer if the Society for Psychical Eesearch, or other societies of similar aims, should fail to carry on its work by the .scientific methods employed by Myers, Sidgwick and Gurney, and in the critical spirit which they displayed. At present the main strands in the rope of evidence are too few to permit us to cast Ourselves upon it with confidence. For if one of those seemingly sound strands should prove worthless, the rest would not bear the weight of our belief. To illustrate my meaning, let me imagine for a moment that it could be shown that Myers himself was a well-meaning but unscrupulous fanatic (a thing I do not in the least suspect or wish to suggest) bent upon leading us back at all costs to the ancient forms of religious bondage. In that case the whole evidential rope would be fatally weakened. The book is so rich in matter presented with so much skill that for its adequate criticism a large volume would be necessary. Already a number of men of the highest distinction and of the most diverse intellectual pursuits have given us their apprecia- tions and their criticisms. But for the psychologist one obvious task remains, a critical examination of Myers' doctrine of the /'subliminal Self". For this doctrine is not only a prominent part of Myers' argument for the reasonableness of the belief in the survival of the personality, but is, if true, a novelty of the first im- portance for the science of psychology. Of this conception Prof. James has given a sympathetic account, and has stated that by it Myers " colligated and co-ordinated a mass of phenomena which had never before been considered together ". Sir Oliver Lodge has recorded his opinion that it is "a good working hypothesis" and a "great conception ". Prof. Flournoy has declared it to be " extremely remarkable and worthy of the serious attention of even official and university psychologists ". Mr. Mallock has con- descended to misrepresent it, and Mr. Andrew Lang has abundantly