Research source

The needed clue, as I believe, can be afforded only by the discovery of laws affecting primarily that unseen or…

Date of account: Published 1903
Source: Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death
Reference: Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death · selected passage 30
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

The needed clue, as I believe, can be afforded only by the discovery of laws affecting primarily that unseen or spiritual plane of being where I imagine the origin of life to lie

Published source text

Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.

Source passage

Source text · mention only

The needed clue, as I believe, can be afforded only by the discovery of laws affecting primarily that unseen or spiritual plane of being where I imagine the origin of life to lie. If we can suppose telepathy to be a first indication of a law of this type, and to occupy in the spiritual world some such place as gravitation occupies in the material world, we might imagine something analogous to the force of cohesion as operating in the psychical contexture of a human personality. Such a personality, at any rate, as the development of higher from lower organisms shows, involves the aggregation of countless minor psychical entities, whose characteristics still persist, although in a manner consistent with the possibility that one larger psychical entity, whether pre-existent or otherwise, is the unifying continuum of which those smaller entities are fragments, and exercises over them a pervading, though an incomplete, control.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This comes from historical psychical research. Methods, witness handling and standards of evidence differ from present-day research and should be assessed from the cited passage and edition.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

The passage can support a history of claims and recurring descriptions. It does not establish a paranormal mechanism, and competing psychological, social and physical explanations remain relevant.

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