Contemporary Mind - Some Modern Answers. J. W. N. Sullivan

of his reading and of certain personal experiments in psychical research, is inclined to believe that there is a future life and that it is an imbecile form of existence. He supposes that there is a psychic factor which, in combination with a living organism, forms a mind. The psychic factor alone is not a mind, although it possesses mental characteristics. This psychic factor does, in some cases at any rate, survive bodily death. We can explain the really well-attested results of psychical research, Dr. Broad thinks, by supposing that disembodied psychic factors attach themselves temporarily to living brains—say the brains of mediums. A psychic factor thus becomes an element of a temporary mind. This temporary mind will have some of the characteristics of the medium and some of the characteristics of the mind of which it once formed part in life. This will explain the puzzling fact that so many communications from alleged discarnate minds, while revealing characteristics that belonged to those minds in life, also reveal characteristics which obviously belong to the medium.

      The hypothesis of a psychic factor is put forward by Dr. Broad as the minimum hypothesis necessary to explain certain psychic phenomena. Alleged discarnate spirits are, he points out, singularly reticent about their present surroundings and activities. Such information as they give on these points is so extraordinarily silly that it obviously comes from the medium. It would seem that whatever survives death is something incapable of further experience. Its memory, on the other hand, seems to be unimpaired. Thus it has mental characteristics, but it is not what we call a mind. Dr. Broad thinks that the established facts of psychic research warrant this hypothesis, but that they do not compel us to go beyond it.

      In order to accept Dr. Broad’s theory it is obviously necessary to overcome our desire to believe in a future life which is better than our present life. No one can derive consolation from the idea that he will persist as a psychic factor, for the most part completely inanimate, but perhaps, for brief intervals, able to manifest certain memories when attached to the brain of some medium. There is little to choose between this kind of survival and complete annihilation. From the point of view of our hopes and aspirations we should have to decide that the universe is a very disappointing affair. And if we do this, why should we not go further and accept the whole spiritualistic revelation of a spirit world where they smoke cigars, take dogs for walks, and play practical jokes? Why attribute all such information to the silliness of the medium? What ideal of beauty, of dignity, are we still clinging to, and what is our justification for clinging to any such ideal? How can we say what statement is probable, or not probable, about such a universe? It is, of course, perfectly reasonable to say that there is a future life, but that our desires afford no clue to its nature. Then every conceivable hypothesis as to its nature becomes equally probable. It must be admitted that our experience of life, surveyed reasonably, lends equal support to any hypothesis.

      Yet we do not, in fact, regard all hypotheses as equally credible. The hypothesis that the universe is ruled by a wholly beneficent creator presents grave difficulties, but it is less incredible than the hypothesis that it is ruled by a malignant devil. Yet we do not arrive at this conclusion from some sort of statistical survey of experience. It would be impossible to maintain that the happiness of the world outweighs its suffering. Our feeling that good is more fundamental in the universe than is evil is not the product of experience. It is a conviction that is arrived at intuitively. And this conviction can persist through much suffering, even when the suffering appears to be quite gratuitous and meaningless. This fact is surely significant.

      Much of the greatest art in the world, that which most moves us, owes its ascendancy over us to this conviction. In such works suffering is present, sometimes profound suffering, but it has been transmuted. It has, in some sense, been justified. Out of evil has come good. And it is to be observed that the effect of such works is not to be described as merely consolatory. It would be much more true to say that they bestow understanding. We agree, for the time being, that suffering has here received a final resolution. It has been related to something more fundamental than itself.

      This quality in great art is probably not unconnected with the mystic vision. It is probable that the peculiar state of awareness that is communicated by some great art is of the same kind as the mystic revelation. Under the influence of such art we dwell, temporarily, in a region where all our questions are answered or, rather, where they no longer exist. Such art seems to be, in itself, a justification of life. I believe that this is not an illusion. I believe that such art does spring from a level of understanding or awareness akin to that of the mystic. Perhaps the clearest examples of art of this magnitude are to be found in music and, in particular, in the later music of Beethoven. This music, as we see from the sort of references that are made to it, probably does convey, to many people, a state of awareness that we can only call mystical. In discussing this question, therefore, we may confine ourselves to the example presented by this music, since the issues involved are perhaps more clearly presented here than anywhere else.