I THE CHERITON DUGOUT

THE NEW REVELATION

CHAPTER I.

THE SEARCH

The subject of psychical research is one upon which I have thought more
and about which I have been slower to form my opinion, than upon any
other subject whatever. Every now and then as one jogs along through
life some small incident happens which very forcibly brings home the
fact that time passes and that first youth and then middle age are
slipping away. Such a one occurred the other day. There is a column
in that excellent little paper, Light, which is devoted to what was
recorded on the corresponding date a generation--that is thirty
years--ago. As I read over this column recently I had quite a start as
I saw my own name, and read the reprint of a letter which I had written
in 1887, detailing some interesting spiritual experience which had
occurred in a seance. Thus it is manifest that my interest in the
subject is of some standing, and also, since it is only within the last
year or two that I have finally declared myself to be satisfied with
the evidence, that I have not been hasty in forming my opinion. If I
set down some of my experiences and difficulties my readers will not, I
hope, think it egotistical upon my part, but will realise that it is
the most graphic way in which to sketch out the points which are likely
to occur to any other inquirer. When I have passed over this ground,
it will be possible to get on to something more general and impersonal
in its nature.

When I had finished my medical education in 1882, I found myself, like
many young medical men, a convinced materialist as regards our personal
destiny. I had never ceased to be an earnest theist, because it seemed
to me that Napoleon's question to the atheistic professors on the
starry night as he voyaged to Egypt: "Who was it, gentlemen, who made
these stars?" has never been answered. To say that the Universe was
made by immutable laws only put the question one degree further back as
to who made the laws. I did not, of course, believe in an
anthropomorphic God, but I believed then, as I believe now, in an
intelligent Force behind all the operations of Nature--a force so
infinitely complex and great that my finite brain could get no further
than its existence. Right and wrong I saw also as great obvious facts
which needed no divine revelation. But when it came to a question of
our little personalities surviving death, it seemed to me that the
whole