The Eternity of Life May Be Known By Psychometry

"UNKNOWN GUEST," SAYS MAETERLINCK, ALWAYS WITH US

Belgian Writer in Newest Book Offers Interesting Glimpse Into Spirit Realm

RESULTS OF PSYCHIC RESEARCH

Eternity of Life May Be Probed Through Study of the Theories of Psychometry

By Henry Noble Sherwood, Ph.D.

Do you believe in ghosts?

Do you attach any significance to dreams?

Do you think fortune-tellers are fakirs?

Are you informed on the method and work of the Society for Psychical Research?

All of these topics are treated by Maurice Maeterlinck in his new book, "The Unknown Guest," (New York: Dodd Mead & Co.) in a most charming and suggestive way. An idea of the book may be had from the following review:

One of the mysterious manifestations of "The Unknown Guest" is the rope climbing feat performed by the people of the Far East. "The juggler takes his stand in an open space, far from any tree or house. He is accompanied by a child; and his only impedimenta are a bundle of ropes and an old canvas sack. The juggler throws one end of the rope up in the air; and the rope, as though drawn by an invisible hook, uncoils and raises straight into the sky until the end disappears; and soon after, there comes tumbling from the blue, two arms, two legs, a head and so on, all of which the wizard picks up and crams into the sack. He next mutters a few magic words over it and opens it; and the child steps out, bowing and smiling to the spectators."

Seen in Haunted Houses

The unknown guest is also seen in haunted houses. The Society for Psychical Research in 1884 examined carefully sixty-five cases of haunted houses. The scenes enacted were all simple and commonplace. For example, "an old woman, with a thin grey shawl meekly folded over her breast, who bends at night over the sleeping occupants of her old home," or on the stairs and in the halls, she, silent, mysterious, and a little grim, frequently encounters the passersby.

What is the explanation of such manifestations of the Unknown Guest? It is said the dead do not die entirely, that their spiritual or animistic entity neither departs nor disperses into space after the dissolution of the body. The utmost they can do is occasionally to cause a few glimpses of their existence to penetrate the fissures of those singular organisms known as mediums.

Definite Force Impels Medium

In this connection what is known as psychometry is very interesting. Psychometry is "the faculty possessed by certain persons of placing themselves in relation, either spontaneously or, for the most part, through the intermediary of some object with unknown and often very distant things and people." A medium is given an object handled by a person about whom it is proposed to question her. Perhaps the object is a letter. The medium sees the writer of this letter, his appearance, habits and surroundings, and traces in outline his future. Maeterlinck is inclined to believe that the object touched enables the medium's sensitiveness to distinguish a definite force from among innumerable forces that assail it. It is impregnated with human "fluid" and "contains, after the manner of some prodigiously compressed gas all the incessantly renewed, incessantly recurring images that surround a person, all his past and perhaps his future, his psychology, his state of health, his wishes, his intentions, often unknown to himself, his most secret instincts, his likes and dislikes, all that is bathed in light and all that is plunged in darkness, his whole life, in short, and more than his personal and conscious life, besides all the lives and all the influences, good or bad, latent or manifest, of all who approach him."

Brutes Show Attitude

This story of the Unknown Guest is carried into the kingdom of the brutes. A most interesting chapter is devoted to the Elberfeld horses. They perform feats in mathematics, know the meaning of words, which possess no interest to them, represent no picture, no memory. Does this mean that, if the brute world was taught as ardently as we teach our children it, too, would show itself our equals?

All of these manifestations of the Unknown Guest and the hundreds of other enumerated or referred to in Maeterlinck's book might be intelligible to us if the field of the mind has been exploited as thoroughly as the field of the material. Modernity, however, has found matter a more profitable field than mind. We can build great skyscrapers, organize gigantic industrial concerns, build irrigation ditches, and harness waterfalls. Many are the Edisons, Burbanks and DeLesseps. But the Bergsons are few. When more study is given to the subconscious, the supernatural, and the psychic, then the unknown guest may be better known. We may have an indisputable proof of the eternity of life and the immortality of the spirit.

Maeterlinck is a Belgian

Our author is a Belgian with a French education and habit of life. He was trained in the law and has been a deep student of philosophy and zoology. In religion he is a Catholic. In preparation no one is better suited to write a book on The Unknown Guest. Teixeira de Mattos, a Dutch, has translated this work as well as many other books of Maeterlinck from the French language into our own. This Belgian author, now fifty-two, like us, is still tapping hauntingly at the Gates of the Unknown.

--The La Crosse Tribune, La Crosse, Wisconsin, February 1, 1915, page 1. The translation referred to above and other details written about the book pertain to the edition current at the time of this 1915 article.