OBITUARY NOTICES
o f Harvard University, and came to England in 1890, when her
strange powers o f revealing knowledge while in a trance were
investigated by Lodge and Myers at Cambridge. The aunt who
had so greatly influenced his studies in his early years had told
him that she would communicate w ith him after her death and
‘N o w ’, said Lodge, ‘through Mrs Piper, she clearly and forcibly
carried out her promise and then in a manner continued my
education—an enterprise in which she had already functioned so
largely
Lodge records many personal observations o f movements o f
heavy objects by agencies unknown in physical science and under
conditions in which every precaution seems to have been taken
to exclude trickery. A large heavy table, for example, several
feet from any one, and clearly visible, would approach and
recede, rise from the floor, and be tilted over; a musical-box
which Lodge himself hung high up near the ceiling o f a room,
and the spring o f which he let run down, was wound up and
played in this position until the string broke and the box sailed
placidly about until it came to rest on F. W . H. Myers’ chest.
Such mechanical movements required the exertion o f consider
able physical force. Lodge believed that they were produced
by some structure extruded from the human body, controlled
apparently by an external agent and called ectoplasm by Professor
Charles Richet. These telekinetic movements were in accordance
with ordinary physical laws, and it is left to biology to discover
the nature and powers o f the extrusions believed to be able to
produce them.
To most physicists, the phenomena o f levitation and similar
telekinetic effects are difficult to believe and more difficult to
explain. Their attitude is aptly expressed in the verse—
‘Can this be true?’ an arch observer cries,
‘Yes’, rather moved, ‘I saw it with mine eyes’.
‘Sir, I believe it on that account alone,
‘I would not, had I seen it with mine own.’
To Lodge, the ether o f space was a fundamental physical
entity in terms o f which everything else in the universe will
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have ultimately to be explained. A minute fraction o f its potential
energy is manifested in the constitution and properties o f matter,
and in the course o f evolution, matter-particles receive and
incorporate other fractions to create forms o f life, in some o f
which mind becomes incarnate, thus beginning the reign o f
individual consciousness. The ether thus becomes the primordial
ingredient o f the universe, and from its storehouse o f energy
are derived not only matter and radiation, but also life and mind.
The process by which these developments take place is outside
the range o f ordinary experience or knowledge, and the problem
it seeks to solve may therefore be regarded as belonging to
philosophy as well as to physics.
Lodge, however, found support for his views in some concep
tions which have directed fruitful researches in contemporary
physics. As wave-groups subserve the functions o f matter, so
he suggested that their constituent waves o f excessively high
frequency were the physical basis o f life and mind. The ether
was assumed to be full o f such constituent waves, which make
no appeal to direct observation or experiment and have no
energy o f their own, though they constitute a guiding and
directing agency. O n this basis, and with wave-mechanics
making use o f the ether, Lodge brought problems o f life and
mind into the philosophy o f physics. ‘N ow ’, he said, ‘opens
up the possibility o f extending physics, the physics o f conjoint
m atter and space, till it enters the hitherto excluded phenomena
o f life. Life transmits no energy, but exerts a guiding and directing
influence. In association with form-waves it might be most o f
w hat is wanted. Gradually biology and psychology may be
thus allied w ith physics.’
‘All physical fields o f force exist in the ether, and must be
effective in every change produced in inert particles o f matter,
whether they be parts o f an inorganic substance or parts o f an
animated body.’
The wave theory o f matter involves the perception that a
particle is closely associated, and in some cases identical, with a
set o f group-waves which are directed by another hypothetical
OLIVER JOSEPH LODGE
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OBITUARY NOTICES
set o f form-waves which, though they possess energy, transmit
none, but nevertheless guide the group-waves and determine
their path. In the form-waves, therefore, a guiding and directing
agency is conceived which achieves its end w ithout interfering
w ith energy. Lodge regarded life and mind as analogous mani
festations o f the existence o f ethereal waves which control the
path o f particles w ithout affecting the balance o f energy.
W hether the atom or the universe is considered, the material
part o f it is infinitesimal in comparison w ith the space occupied
by it. Matter is the only part that appeals directly to the senses,
yet it consists only o f specks in a medium which is the source o f
all activity, matter itself being inert apart from fields o f force in
the ether.
Matter is the palpable part o f the ether—the only portion o f it
which affects any organs o f sense and can be physically investigated.
Instincts and similar attributes belong to another category, and
in Lodge’s philosophy are influenced by an etheric or metetherial
world. The ether thus operates in the region o f life and mind
and constitutes the mechanism whereby spirit and matter interact.
Sense organs, including the brain, only give interpretations o f
physical objects: the realities underlying them are inferred not by
the brain but by the mind, and Lodge believed that this continues
to operate even apart from matter. All studies o f ‘behaviour’ o f
organisms, or physiological reactions, represent knowledge o f
only a material part o f the universe. Such observations cannot
reveal the whole truth unless space as well as matter are embraced
in an acceptable philosophy.
Most biologists are content to study the behaviour o f organisms
as displayed to the senses rather than to philosophize upon the
ultimate causes o f the sensations themselves. In dealing with
radiation and many other phenomena, physicists go beyond
material mechanism and construct fields o f energy in space to
account for them. These fields are in the ether, and they are
similarly manifested in life and mind.
In his studies o f psychical phenomena, Lodge’s observations
and judgments, like those made by other natural philosophers,
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