must be subject to critical examination by competent authorities;
and he always welcomed any such aids to the fractional distillation
o f the spirit o f truth from material which he believed contained
the essence o f it. After many years o f study and experiment, he
deemed that he had ascertained evidence o f the reality o f a realm
beyond physics and endeavoured to understand its human mean
ing. In his psychical research work, he followed the same method
o f critical enquiry and cautious conclusion as that upon which all
scientific investigation must be based.
It follows that the records obtained by him in the psychical
field must be given the same consideration as those o f observed
results o f other experiments. This is the attitude taken by every
scientific society towards the account o f any original research
presented to it by a responsible investigator. W ithout this
confidence in faithful testimony, it would be impossible to build
up a structure o f scientific knowledge. W hether experiments
are well-designed and crucial, or whether interpretations o f them
are convincing, is, however, a legitimate subject for criticism.
Many psychical researchers are content to collect evidence o f
unusual ultra-physical experiences o f all kinds with the view of
sifting from it a few grains o f gold which will lead them to the
lode they are seeking. Others are prospectors looking for promis
ing sites upon which to sink their shafts. In each o f these groups
the value o f the ore is assayed by the discoverers themselves and
is given sterling significance as a medium o f exchange. A
scientific explorer is, however, not satisfied in obtaining such
rewards o f sustained effort: he wishes also to know the true
nature o f the mineral and its relation to the earth’s structure. He
has, therefore, to construct in his own mind an explanation or
hypothesis which will account for the existence and origin o f the
noble metal recovered by him.
Lodge, like all men o f science, clearly distinguished between
ascertained evidence and hypothesis to interpret its meaning.
The accurate observations o f celestial bodies made in ancient
Egypt and Mesopotamia have survived many hypotheses con
ceived then and later to explain them. Such hypotheses change
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w ith the advance o f scientific knowledge: they are verified or
discarded according to their capacity to account for facts o f
observation. The Ptolemaic and other astronomical systems thus
gave place to the Copernican theory o f celestial movements.
Hypotheses which relate to causes o f phenomena belong to a
different category. It is impossible, for example, to establish by
observation how the solar system came into existence or what was
the origin o f life. A hypothesis may, however, be serviceable to
science, even though it is not directly verifiable, because it
correlates phenomena and suggests directions o f further enquiry.
The whole o f ultra-microscopic physics is based upon hypothetical
considerations which are unverifiable because the ultimate units
and events cannot be directly observed, but only their effects or
sense-impressions.
Lodge was convinced that the phenomena he had observed
in the meta-atomic field were sufficient to justify a hypothesis to
correlate, if not to explain, them. He knew very well that other
psychical researchers explained the same type o f observation
in a different way, and realized that his hypothesis was not o f the
nature o f an unchangeable creed but an explanation which m ight
have to be revised or discarded in the light o f fuller knowledge.
His view was that the evidence he had obtained justified the
conception o f the hypothesis o f survival o f human personality
after physical death and the reality o f communication w ith
discarnate minds through sensitive living receivers. Another
group o f psychical investigators would explain the revelations as
having their origin in telepathy. W hich o f these hypotheses
represents the nearer approach to truth must depend at present
upon personal knowledge and judgm ent. All that can be said is
that if mind exists apart from matter, the inevitable conclusion
must be that reached by Lodge and now accepted by most
authorities in the field o f psychical research.
The spiritistic hypothesis was accepted by Lodge to account
for a large number of, as it seemed to him, otherwise inexplicable
facts o f observation and experiment. According to it, the human
body is the transient centre o f activity o f an influence which
existed before, and continues after, organic life. W e are allr
therefore, spirits operating on material bodies for a time, but our
real existence does not depend upon our association w ith matter.
The potential permanent part o f us is spirit, and it always operates
upon the material through the ether. All our actions on matter
are conducted through this entity and may be continued in the
same sort o f way through etheric mechanism when the body has
disappeared. In other words, human beings are immortal spirits
in temporary association with matter.
It was F. W . H. Myers who convinced Lodge that obscure
psychical phenomena could be legitimately investigated by
observation and experiment, and be regarded as part o f a suffici
ently comprehensive scheme o f natural knowledge. In his
psychical researches, Myers followed truly scientific methods in
his ascertainment o f such knowledge by patient, systematic and
dispassionate enquiry and cautious conclusion. Evidence o f this
is afforded in his great work, Human Personality and its Survival oj
bodily Death, published in 1903. Lodge was greatly impressed by
Myers’ researches and became gradually convinced o f the truth
o f the hypothesis o f survival o f personality.
After Myers’ death, Lodge firmly believed his friend com
municated w ith him through psychical mediums. After Lodge’s
youngest son, Raym ond, had been killed by shrapnel near
Ypres, in September 1915, he learned through these channels that
Myers had continued the friendship by practically adopting
Raym ond. The evidence o f the survival o f their spirits and o f
sensory reactions in the world beyond the grave, was described
by Lodge in his book entitled Raymond: or Life and Death. With
Examples of the Evidence for Survival of Memory and Affection after
Death. This w ork and that o f Myers on human personality are
the two most important contributions to the subject.
In the field o f psychical research, Lodge did not expect to be
able to construct ‘models’ o f the machinery o f the kind familiar
to fellow physicists o f his generation. He testified to the reality
o f certain super-material phenomena but held theories and
hypotheses lightly, open to emendation, but holding always
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loyally to facts so far as they had been ascertained. He regarded
much o f modern thought in physics as belonging to the same
category. ‘The abstract method o f treatment at present in vogue’,
he said, ‘probably represents a phase through which science has
to go. It is being conducted through the temporary haze with
great ability; but in time, I believe, it will emerge on the other
side and become intelligible once more, with an added perception
o f reality and a clearer conception o f the working. To that
conception the ether belongs, and we shall then be better able to
understand its nature and its relation w ith matter. The laws o f
dynamics, however modified and extended, will still be true;
the labour o f our scientific ancestors will not have been in vain.
By that time it is probable that the scheme o f physics will be
enlarged so as to embrace the behaviour o f living organisms,
under the influence o f life and m ind.’
Full references to all Lodge’s writings and scientific papers
from 1875 to 1935 are given in A Bibliography of Sir Oliver Lodge,
by M r Theodore Besterman, published by the Oxford University
Press in the latter year. The total number is 1156. The first was
read before the Physical Society in 1875, and his last contribution
to physics was on the Larmor-Lorentz transformation in the
Philosophical Magazine in 1933, in collaboration with his brother,
Professor Alfred Lodge. Lodge’s original communications to
scientific societies are relatively few in the total number o f his
writings, which represented his influence as a scientific educator
rather than a creator o f new knowledge. Taking his published
writings as a whole, and including papers, books and articles in a
single group, nearly 600 are on electricity and radio, the ether, and
other physical subjects. About 170 deal with philosophy, religion,
and related subjects, 118 are biographical, prefaces and reviews,
145 on psychical research and spiritual survival, 64 are educational
and academic, and 71 are miscellaneous writings.
Lodge was elected a Fellow o f the Royal Society in 1887. He
served on the Council o f the Society in 1893-94, and was
awarded the R um ford Medal in 1898. He received the Albert
Medal o f the Royal Society o f Arts in 1919 as a pioneer o f wireless
telegraphy, and the Faraday Medal o f the Institution o f Electrical
Engineers in 1932. He was President o f the Mathematical and
Physical Section o f the British Association in 1891, President o f
the Physical Society in 1899-1900, President o f the Society for
Psychical Research, 1901-4 and 1932, and President o f the British
Association 1913-14. He was created a Knight Bachelor in 1902,
and received the honorary degree o f D.Sc. o f the Universities o f
Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds,
Adelaide and Toronto, o f LL.D. o f St Andrews, Glasgow,
Aberdeen and Edinburgh, and M.A. o f Birmingham.
Lodge and Mary F. A. Marshall, who became his wife, met
when they were children. They were born in the same year and,
strangely enough, Mary Marshall’s mother, as well as Lodge’s
father and mother, were all born in another same year. Mary
had remarkable artistic gifts and became a student at the Slade
School o f Fine Art, University College, in 1876. By undertaking
much additional w ork in examining and teaching, he was able
to earn a sufficient income to obtain her parents’ consent to their
marriage, which took place in the following year. They had
twelve children—six sons and six daughters—and celebrated their
golden wedding in 1927. Two years later, Lady Lodge died at
N orm anton House, Lake, near Salisbury, which she and Sir
Oliver himself firmly believed was the home to which they were
led by the spirit o f their son Raymond, to pass the remaining
years o f their lives. It was there that he passed peacefully into the
silence o f death on 22 August 1940—the anniversary o f their
wedding-day—in the sure and certain hope o f meeting her spirit
again in the ethereal world to the exploration o f which he
devoted the main part o f his life.
As scientist, administrator and author, Lodge influenced
profoundly the life o f his day, but it was impossible to know
him without realizing that the man was greater than his work,
great though that work has been. His innate kindliness; his
immense capacity for friendship; his eager youthfulness o f out
look, preserved to extreme old age; his freedom from all those
smallnesses which afflict so many o f the sons o f men; his
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devotion to the pursuit o f knowledge and courage in maintain
ing truth as revealed to him; these are qualities which those
who have know n and loved him will not readily forget.
Those o f us whose privilege it was to be present on that bright
afternoon o f autumn when his remains were committed to
earth felt that there was nothing for tears in the passing o f a
figure so venerable and so venerated, nothing but a deep
thankfulness that Oliver Lodge had been granted so long and
so full a life o f unselfish service.
W hen we undertook to prepare this notice, we wrote to Miss
N orah Lodge, who was her father’s devoted companion, and
she put us in communication with Miss Helen Alvey, Sir Oliver’s
secretary for eighteen years, who was left in charge o f all his books
and papers after his death. Miss Alvey has been o f the greatest
help in providing us with copies o f most o f these publications;
and we gratefully acknowledge our indebtedness to her for this
material. Professor F. G. Baily, who was associated w ith Sir Oliver
in the pioneer w ork on wireless telegraphy at University College,
Liverpool, was good enough to send us several very im portant
documents dealing with the early history o f the subject, particu
larly in presenting the patent and legal aspects o f practical
applications o f scientific investigation.
Reference has already been made to the valuable bibliography
o f Sir Oliver’s publications, prepared by M r T. Besterman,
who was investigation officer o f the Society for Psychical
Research, 1927-35. Another friend in this field o f enquiry,
who was for many years a voluntary private secretary for
Sir Oliver, was Mr J. Arthur Hill, o f Bradford. More than two
thousand letters passed between Sir Oliver and his friend, and
an annotated selection from them, by M r Hill, was published
in 1932. This collection served as an appendix to Sir Oliver’s
autobiography, published in the previous year under the title
Past Years.
R . A.
G
regory
A
llan
F
erguson
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