1942 - Dec 6 - Dec 20

1942

Dec 6 - Dec 20


December 6, 1942

[Letter from Dr. James D. Hamilton to Dr. Bruce Chown re: flatness of miniature teleplasmic face-forms.]

        Dear Dr. Chown:

"Thank you for your letter of December 1 in reply to my letter of November 25, in which I raised the question of the evidence of flatness in the face miniatures.

"During the interval of our correspondence the Toronto publication "Saturday Night" of December 5 has carried a review of Intention and Survival.  In this review the question of flatness is brought up.

        I quote:

"The point to which I want to draw attention is the fact that the source of illumination of these heads is not the same as the source of illumination for the medium and the teleplasm.
                         
"I may be unreasonably incredulous and I admit that I should find it difficult to believe that something exuded from the medium which was capable of assuming an approximation to the shape and coloring of the head of Raymond Lodge in three dimensions; but that is nothing to the difficulty I find in believing that something exuding from the medium is capable of assuming, on a flat surface, the lighting and shading of a photographic record of the face of Raymond Lodge, as it was at a given moment in time and a given point in space which are not the moment and point of the teleplasm.

"As you know, I agree with the facts brought forward in this comment.  The shadow lighting on the miniature faces do not agree with the lighting on the medium.  Were is not for other incontestable evidence I should be strongly inclined to agree with the implications expressed in the opinion of the second paragraph:

"In the case of the Raymond face the shadows in the inner angles of the eyes are not in agreement with the face that the medium's eye areas are under full illumination.

"The second Doyle teleplasm shows similar features.  The illumination is thrown full on the medium's eyes, still the Doyle miniature possesses heavy 'shadows' in the angles of the eyes.  Further, views secured from the extreme left and the extreme right of the medium (see the stereo photos) show the face to be foreshortened in a manner which can only be due to the fact that the face itself lacks elevations and is plane.  The photographs are a projection of this plane upon the plane of the camera.

"The Katie teleplasm on the back of the cabinet wall is also to be judged flat.  The view secured by the wide angle lens camera and also by one of the stereo cameras (to mention two) show a shadow cast by the medium's shoulder on the back of her chair.  The angle of this shadow is in agreement with the known position of the illuminant in the upper part of the cupboard doorway (Plate I).  However, the shadow on the left side of the Katie chin would place the illuminant of the face, if real, at about the center of the ceiling of the room.  The face must therefore be flat.

"Viewing this face stereoscopically without reference to these lower shadows, the face looks deceivingly three dimensional.  There is no question, too, but that the hair about the face is actually three dimensional.

"It has already been recognized that the small 'boy Spurgeon' face in the second Doyle is a copy of a photograph known to have been secured during his life.  It is, however, too much to agree with Saturday Night's commentator that all these face miniatures possess photographic originals as his italicized statement implies....

"Both supporters and critics of the phenomena will agree, I think, that the modus operandi whereby the teleplasms were produced cannot remain other than an open question.  The disagreement in the shadow, real and seeming proves only that the faces are flat; nothing else.

"On the question of credulity it comes down to whether or not the observers and scrutineers were capable of making mature and bona fide statements of opinion regarding the facts of the environment of the seance laboratory and the condition and state of control of the medium, etc.  In view of the agreement between multiple and independent judgment by men of unimpugned character I am satisfied that their recorded and attested statements do represent conditions as they actually were at the time.

"You will understand, I think, why I have written rather more fully and more formally than I would have to in an ordinary letter to you.
        
                                        (signed)   James D. Hamilton


December 20, 1942.

A sealed envelope marked with the cross (+) was brought to Mrs. Hamilton by Mary M. with instructions that it was to be kept unopened until the date written on the face of the envelope, August 24, 1943.  No one knows what the envelope contains, not even Mary M.  Whatever is written and placed in the envelope was written by Mary M. under psychic conditions, as were the other writings, in this book.

                                                        W.A. Wither

The envelope was sealed again with two strips of adhesive paper and the strip was signed across by Lillian Hamilton, W.A. Wither and Jean Wither.


December, 1942                          Monday Evening

Letter from Mrs. Hamilton to James Hamilton:

"... At the risk of boring you, I am going to ask you to read what follows - carefully:

"...'I am quite sure that death is not the end, that we continue, that our existence is permanent and is not terminated when the body meets with an accident and collapses.'

(Sir Oliver Lodge in "The Sunday Graphic", June, 1934.)

"...'I know how weighty the word 'fact' is in science, and I say without hesitation that individual personal continuance is to me a demonstrated fact.  This conviction has been reached through a study of obscure human faculty not yet recognized by orthodox science, and apparently not approved, as a rule, by Theologians."

[From the Foreword to "Why I Believe in Personal Immortality" , 1924]
        
"... 'To me the evidence is now virtually complete, and I have no more doubt of the continued existence of surviving personalities than I have of any deduction from ordinary normal experience.'
        
        (Page 55.  "Why I Believe ...")
        
"... With this certainty so fully expressed before his death (One could quote numerous other expressions of the type from this same man) listen to what the communicator claiming to be Lodge now says by way of the Mary M. Mediumship, by way of her trance writing.  That she could alone have evolved this from her subconscious mind is, both you and I know, utterly impossible.  Uneducated women do not write in so scientific or philosophical a fashion.  That we are, for the first time, getting some scientific light on the nature of the next existence, seems to me probable.
"... Also his message to you is, I think, delightful.  In reality we have here, I fully believe, a "letter" from the discarnate Oliver Lodge.


        "... By the Dawn hand he writes thus:  

        "... December 27, 1942.

"... The book is well received and well written.  It is the sort of book that is difficult to tear one's self away from.  It will have a long (word omitted, Was it career, or some word meaning that it would be read for a long time to come?)  Congratulations to the young man."

"... I know science can only tell of structure, but structure is the result of progress (evolution?).  The material must be constructed out of something, which can best be described as primordial mind.  The world is constituted of mind, mind in its turn expresses itself through form - and this is the meaning of individual existence."

"... Dr.  (T.G. apparently) claims that psychical research and mysticism both confirm the findings of intuition and science ... and mind may express itself further through the conscious and subconscious; these are one in point and purpose.

"... Psychic science tells us that memory persists for a longer or shorter period of what we call time - all this a matter of psychic observation; it must be taken on trust by those who have not investigated; it is an incontrovertible fact.  Not only is human survival a proven fact, but it follows that immortality is the only logical explanation of life.   

                                                (Signed O. L.)

"... I think that even you are bound to admit that this, speaking from the ordinary point of view, is an astounding miracle of intellectual accomplishment under the circumstances.  You know as well as I do that Dawn could not even spell many of the words here used, let alone employ them correctly, as has the communicator.

"... And the outlook and phraseology are so like Lodge that I am dumbfounded that such proof of his mental existence has been given to us by this illiterate woman.  Admittedly, it is not for the world but for us, quietly, who know beyond all shadow of doubt that it could not have been produced by the medium; it is an event of scientific importance of the first water.  If I can get more of this who knows but what you may not presently (to yourself at any rate) be able to formulate some sort of a theory that would take in this wider existence.  When you are an old man, and, like Crookes, full of honors, the time may come when you can pass on your theories with impunity.

"... Still another mental "miracle"  has transpired lately.  Dawn has written a poem in Gaelic of which she doesn't know a single word - Two Gaelic scholars have examined it and interpreted it and find it to be a poem "To the Skylark".  It's said to have been written by one Peter Campbell who - we find - lived in the highlands and who has been dead some years although we had up to this time never heard of him.  We are still doing research work on the whole episode, and, if you are interested, can let you have a report in the not too distant future. Writing in a foreign language, is, as you know, a very rare phenomenon.        

"... Stead, also, some time ago, gave us some information along these same lines of thought.  It is worth noticing that his manner of expression takes on more of the spiritualistic phraseology - which is wholly lacking in the script attributed to the scientist.  This is in itself not a little evidential: for Stead was, and is, seemingly, a dyed-in-the-wool follower of that order.


        "... He has this to say in this connection:

        "...November 26, 1942

"... Between you and the astral plane there is no distance in space: though we do not cognize each other by our normal senses, we are together.  The difference is one of perception - not of space.  We, your spirit friends, have not dropped the tenor of our lives.  We exist in the same universe.  We both live in and through the world ..."

                                                (Signed)   W. T. S.

Whatever you think of these (and I have more like them) you cannot say they are "trivial".
        

[Will you please clip out of this editorial page a poem by Cecil Spring Ric... and send it back to me.  I liked it very much.]