Michael Prescott's Blog

Spiritualism and the early Christian Church

Here's some interesting material from Arthur Conan Doyle's History of Spiritualism, Vol. II. All the excerpts are taken from Chapter  10, "The Religious Aspect of Spiritualism." I have added a few pertinent links and omitted a couple of minor digressions (marked with ellipses).

Everything that follows is from Doyle's book.

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[Start of excerpts]

It is quite amazing when we read the early documents of the Church, and
especially the writings of the so-called "Fathers," to find out the
psychic knowledge and the psychic practice which were in vogue in those
days. The early Christians lived in close and familiar touch with the
unseen, and their absolute faith and constancy were founded upon the
positive personal knowledge which each of them had acquired. They were
aware, not as a speculation but as an absolute fact, that death meant no
more than a translation to a wider life, and might more properly be
called birth. Therefore they feared it not at all, and regarded it rather
as Dr. Hodgson did when he cried, "Oh, I can hardly bear to wait!" Such
an attitude did not affect their industry and value in this world, which
have been attested even by their enemies. If converts in far-off lands
have in these days been shown to deteriorate when they become Christians,
it is because the Christianity which they have embraced has lost all the
direct compelling power which existed of old.

Apart from the early Fathers, we have evidence of early Christian
sentiment in the inscriptions of the Catacombs. An interesting book on
early Christian remains in Rome, by the Rev. Spence Jones, Dean of
Gloucester, deals in part with these strange and pathetic records. These
inscriptions have the advantage over all our documentary evidence that
they have certainly not been forged, and that there has been no
possibility of interpolation.

Dr. Jones, after having read many hundreds of them, says: "The early
Christians speak of the dead as though they were still living. They talk
to their dead." That is the point of view of the present-day
Spiritualists-one which the Churches have so long lost. The early
Christian graves present a strange contrast to those of the heathen which
surround them. The latter always refer to death as a final, terrible and
irrevocable thing. "Fuisti Vale" sums up their sentiment. The Christians,
on the other hand, dwelt always upon the happy continuance of life.
"Agape, thou shalt live for ever," "Victorina is in peace and in Christ,"
"May God refresh thy spirit," "Mayest thou live in God." These
inscriptions alone are enough to show that a new and infinitely consoling
view of death had come to the human race....

It is not possible, however, to draw any psychic inferences from the
inscriptions or drawings in the Catacombs. For these we must turn to the
pre-Nicene Fathers, and there we find so many references that a small
book which would contain nothing else might easily be compiled. We have,
however, to tune-in our thoughts and phrases to theirs in order to get
the full meaning. Prophecy, for example, we now call mediumship, and an
Angel has become a high spirit or a Guide. Let us take a few typical
quotations at random.

Saint Augustine, in his "De cura pro Mortuis," says: "The spirits of the
dead can be sent to the living and can unveil to them the future which
they them selves have learned either from other spirits or from angels"
(i.e. spiritual guides) "or by divine revelation." This is pure
Spiritualism exactly as we know and define it. Augustine would not have
spoken so surely of it and with such an accuracy of definition if he had
not been quite familiar with it. There is no hint of its being illicit.

He comes back to the subject in his "The City of God," where he refers to
practices which enable the ethereal body of a person to communicate with
the spirits and higher guides and to receive visions. These persons were,
of course, mediums -- the name simply meaning the intermediate between the
carnate and discarnate organism.

Saint Clement of Alexandria makes similar allusions, and so does Saint
Jerome in his controversy with Vigilantius the Gaul. This, however, is,
of course, at a later date-after the Council of Nicaea.

Hermas, a somewhat shadowy person, who was said to have been a friend of
St. Paul's, and to have been the direct disciple of the Apostles, is
credited with being the author of a book "The Pastor." Whether this
authorship is apocryphal or not, the book is certainly written by someone
in the early centuries of Christianity, and it therefore represents the
ideas which then prevailed. He says: "The spirit does not answer all who
question nor any particular person, for the spirit that comes from God
does not speak to man when man wills but when God permits. Therefore,
when a man who has a spirit from God" (i.e. a control) "comes into an
assembly of the faithful, and when prayer has been offered, the spirit
fills this man who speaks as God wills."

This exactly describes our own psychic experience, when séances are
properly conducted. We do not invoke spirits, as ignorant critics
continually assert, and we do not know what is coming. But we pray -- using
the "Our Father," as a rule -- and we await events. Then such spirit as is
chosen and permitted comes to us and speaks or writes through the medium.
Hermas, like Augustine, would not have spoken so accurately had he not
had personal experience of the procedure.

Origen has many allusions to psychic knowledge. It is curious to compare
the crass ignorance of our present spiritual chiefs with the wisdom of
the ancients. Very many quotations could be given, but a short one may be
taken from his controversy with Celsus.

Many people have embraced the Christian faith in spite of themselves,
their hearts having been suddenly changed by some spirit, either in an
apparition or in a dream.

In exactly this way leaders among the materialists, from Dr. Elliotson
onwards, have been brought back to a belief in the life to come and its
relation to this life by the study of psychic evidence.

It is the earlier Fathers who are the most definite upon this matter, for
they were nearer to the great psychic source. Thus Irenaeus and
Tertullian, who lived about the end of the second century, are full of
allusions to psychic signs, while Eusebius, writing later, mourns their
scarcity and complains that the Church had become unworthy of them.

Irenaeus wrote: "We hear of many brethren in the Church possessing
prophetic" (i.e. mediumistic) "gifts, and speaking through the spirit in
all kinds of tongues and bringing to light for the general advantage the
hidden things of men, and setting forth the mysteries of God." No passage
could better describe the functions of a high-class medium.

When Tertullian had his great controversy with Marcion, he made the
Spiritualistic gifts the test of truth between the two parties. He
claimed that these were forthcoming in greater profusion upon his own
side, and includes among them trance-utterance, prophecy, and revelation
of secret things. Thus the things, which are now sneered at or condemned
by so many clergymen, were in the year 200 the actual touchstones of
Christianity. Tertullian also in his De Anima says: "We have to-day
among us a sister who has received gifts on the nature of revelations
which she undergoes in spirit in the church amid the rites of the Lord's
Day, falling into ecstasy. She converses with angels" -- that is, high
spirits -- "sees and hears mysteries, and reads the hearts of certain people
and brings healings to those who ask. 'Among other things,' she said, 'a
soul was shown to me in bodily form, and it seemed to be a spirit, but
not empty nor a thing of vacuity. On the contrary, it seemed as if it
might be touched, soft, lucid, of the colour of air, and of the human
form in every detail.'"

One mine of information as to the views of the primitive Christians is to
be found in the "Apostolic Constitutions." It is true that they are not
Apostolic, but Whiston, Krabbe and Bunsen are all agreed that at least
seven out of the eight books are genuine ante-Nicene documents, probably
of the early third century. A study of them reveals some curious facts....

It is, however, in discussing the "gifts," or varied forms of mediumship,
that these ancient documents throw a light upon psychic subjects. Then,
as now, mediumship took different forms, the gift of tongues, of healing,
of prophecy and the like. Harnack says that in each early Christian
Church there were three discreet women, one for healing and two for
prophecy. The whole subject is freely discussed in the "Constitutions."

It appears that those who had gifts became conceited over them, and they
are earnestly adjured to remember that a man may have gifts and yet have
no great virtue, so that he is really the spiritual inferior of many who
have no gifts.

The object of phenomena is shown, as in Modern Spiritualism, to be the
conversion of the unbeliever, rather than the entertainment of the
orthodox. They are "not for the advantage of those who perform them, but
for the conviction of the unbelievers, that those whom the word did not
persuade the power of signs might put to shame, for signs are not for us
who believe, but for the unbelievers, both Jews and Gentiles"
(Constitutions, Book VIII, Sec. I).

Later the various gifts, which roughly correspond with our different
forms of mediumship, are given as follows. "Let not therefore anyone that
works signs and wonders judge anyone of the faithful who is not
vouchsafed the same. For the gifts of God which are bestowed through
Christ are various, and one man receives one gift and another another.
For perhaps one has the word of wisdom" (trance-speaking), "and another
the word of knowledge" (inspiration), "another discerning of spirits"
(clairvoyance), "another foreknowledge of things to come, another the
word of teaching" (spirit addresses), "another long-suffering," -- all our
mediums need that gift.

One may well ask oneself where, outside the ranks of the Spiritualists,
are these gifts or these observances to be found in any of those Churches
which profess to be the branches of this early root?

[End of excerpts]

A soldier's tale

In his book The History of Spiritualism, Vol. II, Arthur Conan Doyle relates the following story. (This material appears in Chapter 9, "Spiritualism and the War.")

Of the many cases recorded of the return of dead soldiers, the following stands out because the particulars were received from two independent sources. It is related by Mr. W. T. Waters, of Tunbridge Wells, who says that he is only a novice in the study of Spiritualism:

In July last I had a sitting with Mr. J. J. Vango, in the course of which the control suddenly told me that there was standing by me a young soldier who was most anxious that I should take a message to his mother and sister who live in this town. I replied that I did not know any soldier near to me who had passed over. However, the lad would not be put off, and as my own friends seemed to stand aside to enable him to speak, I promised to endeavour to carry out his wishes.

At once came an exact description which enabled me instantly to recognize in this soldier lad the son of an acquaintance of my family. He told me certain things by which I was made doubly certain that it was he and no other, and he then gave me his message of comfort and assurance to his mother and sister (his father had died when he was a baby), who, for over two years, had been uncertain as to his fate, as he had been posted as "missing." He described how he had been badly wounded and captured by the Germans in a retreat, and that he had died about a week afterwards, and he implored me to tell his dear ones that he was often with them, and that the only bar to his complete happiness was the witnessing of his mother's great grief and his inability to make himself known.

I fully intended to keep my promise, but knowing that the lad's people favoured the High Church party and would most likely be absolutely sceptical, I was puzzled how to convey the message, as I felt they would only think that my own loss had affected my brain. I ventured to approach his aunt, but what I told her only called forth the remark: "It cannot be," and I therefore decided to await an opportunity of speaking to his mother direct.

Before this looked-for opportunity came, a young lady of this town, having lost her mother about two years ago, and hearing from my daughter that I was investigating these matters, called to see me, and I lent her my books. One of these books is "Rupert Lives," with which she was particularly struck, and she eventually arranged a sitting with Miss McCreadie, through whom she received such convincing testimony that she is now a firm believer. During this sitting, the soldier boy who came to me came to her also. He repeated the same description that I had received, mentioned in addition his name -- Charlie -- and begged her to give a message to his mother and sister-the selfsame message which I had failed to give. So anxious was he in the matter, that at the close of the sitting he came again and implored her not to fail him.

Now, these events happened at different dates -- July and September -- the same message exactly being given through different mediums to different persons, and yet people tell us it is all a myth and that mediums simply read our thoughts.

When my friend told me of her experience I at once asked her to go with me to the lad's mother, and I am pleased to state that this double message convinced both his mother and his sister, and that his aunt is almost brought to the truth if not quite.

Now, at first glance this seems like quite a strong case, but when we look more closely, its evidential value is harder to establish.

For one thing, apparently no one in the soldier's family actually knew how (or even if) he had died, so the detailed report of his capture by the Germans and subsequent death cannot be verified.

Second, the soldier had been missing for two years, so it was probably safe to assume he was dead.

Third, in a relatively small town, word of the family's predicament would have spread to strangers. (Tunbridge Wells today has a population of 56,000; probably it was even smaller in Doyle's day.)

Fourth, the two mediums could have been in collusion. In his book The Psychic Mafia, M. Lamar Keene (a reformed fake medium) reports that unscrupulous mediums routinely exchange information.

On the other hand, the case does have its interesting features. Note that the dead soldier was "the son of an acquaintance of [the sitter's] family." This connection is close enough to explain why the spirit chose to come to this particular sitter, yet distant enough to make it unlikely that the medium could have known about it.

Also, the second sitter had no obvious connection to the narrator (unless of course she mentioned him to the medium), yet she got the same message.

It's also perhaps of interest that the soldier's name was not given in the first séance but was supplied in the second. If the first medium had already researched the family, why hold back this piece of evidence? But if genuine communication was going on, the absence of the name makes more sense, since names are often the most difficult facts to receive (and some mediums are better with names than others).

Overall, the case shows both the strengths and weaknesses of reports of this kind. It helps us see why spiritualism became so very popular during the First World War, but also why the doubts of skeptical critics were never quite assuaged.

Doyle also makes some interesting points about reports of mediumship by the early Fathers of the Christian Church. We'll cover that next time. 

Windbridge

Julie Beischel, who formerly worked with Gary Schwartz at the University of Arizona, has opened a new research institute dedicated to exploring the survival of consciousness after death, alternative healing, intuition, and other subjects of interest to readers of this blog.

It's called the Windbridge Institute, and it boasts an impressive array of scientific advisors.

I certainly wish this new venture all the best. You can become a member here.

A moldy tale, continued

In the comments thread of my last post, Renaud Evrard pointed me to an excellent article by Mario Varvoglis on the Kluski materializations. This piece goes into more detail about the experiments and clearly shows the weaknesses of the attempted skeptical explanation.

The two skeptical researchers, Massimo Polidoro and Luigi Garlaschelli, performed some tests supposedly showing how Kluski produced his spirit molds fraudulently. Their main intent was to prove that a person could remove his hand from the wax mold without cracking the mold. But in presenting this explanation, they left unmentioned a number of crucial points.

Polidoro and Garlaschelli write,

Strictly following Geley's instructions, we prepared two basins (each had a diameter of 10 inches): one with hot water (approximately 5 litres at 55ºC), in which we poured a layer of molten paraffin (approx. 1 kg, previously melted in a pan with boiling water on a kitchen stove), and the other with cold water (5 litres), which we later used to immerse our hands and allow the paraffin to solidify. In turn, we immersed our hands first in the basin filled with paraffin and then in the one containing water.

But this is quite misleading, as Varvoglis' article makes clear. In the Kluski tests, there was no basin of cold water. Varvoglis:

Rather than using a second bowl for cooling, the IMI [Institut Metapsychique International]researchers preferred to allow the wax moulds to rigidify on their own, this being, as we shall see, a precaution against fraud.

The unnaturally rapid rate of cooling of Kluski's paraffin molds was itself a sign that something unusual was going on. Without any cold water available, the molds still cooled and set within one or two minutes - much faster than should have been possible. Kluski's hands (controlled throughout) were observed to get quite cold at times, as if he could produce a change in temperature at will.

The two skeptics, Polidoro and Garlaschelli, continue:

In all of these cases, we were able rather easily to make some fairly thin moulds (a few millimeters thick) just by immersing the hands a couple of times in the basin with the paraffin. But our most significant result was that in every instance we managed to remove our hands from the solidified paraffin glove without breaking it.

This sounds persuasive until we realize that molds "a few millimeters thick" are still significantly thicker than those produced in the Kluski tests, as Varvoglis observes:

Finally, it should be mentioned that the wax moulds were less than a millimeter thick (thinner than a sheet of paper).

And again:

the wax moulds were exceptionally delicate : at most a millimeter thick.

The thinness and fragility of the Kluski molds would have greatly complicated efforts to extricate the hand from the mold without having the mold fall to pieces - something the skeptics fail to mention.

Another fact creating difficulty for the skeptics is that Kluski's molds were much smaller than his own hands. The molded hands were child-sized; no one in the séance room had hands so small. In addition, the fingerprints of the molded hands were not those of Kluski. (It is a tribute to the thoroughness of the researchers that they actually checked this detail with the help of the police.)

Polidoro and Garlaschelli try to address this point:

It would not be difficult to conclude ... that particularly complex moulds could have been shaped with extreme care, before a séance took place, by the medium himself or his accomplices and, during the séance, jumbled up with other moulds forged at the moment of performing the spiritualist occurrence.

This won't do. The séance room was locked; only the investigators and Kluski were present. Who, then, was the accomplice? More important, there could have been no substitutions in at least three of the cases, when the investigators secretly treated the paraffin wax with telltale chemicals.

Here is one such case, per Varvoglis:   

Just prior to beginning, Richet and Geley had secretly added a bluish coloring agent to the paraffin. Control of the medium was considered excellent, with controllers regularly checking and verbally reporting ‘I am holding the right hand’, ‘I am holding the left hand’. Splashing sounds were heard about twenty minutes into the session, and one to two minutes later two warm paraffin gloves were deposited next to the controllers. Both wax moulds had precisely the same bluish tint as that of the tank, strongly suggesting that these were indeed created during the séance, and not smuggled in by the medium. An additional control was the weighing of all substance. Prior to the experiment, the paraffin was 3.920 grams, while at the end of the session it weighed 3.800 grams. The two moulds weighed 50 grams, and there was considerable wax scattered near the medium (around 15 grams), on his clothing, and on the floor 3.5 meters away from him (about 25 grams). Insofar as the sum of these weights correspond very closely to the initial weight, this further establishes that the wax gloves were produced during the session.

Moreover, Kluski's hands were held at all times throughout the sessions by investigators who were well aware of the old "substitution of hands" ploy used by fake mediums. The red light in the room, though dim, was sufficient to allow the sitters to see the outlines of the people at the table. Any gross movements occurring right in front of their faces would have been seen.

Why, then, did the researchers not see the spirit hands entering the paraffin bath? On at least one occasion, they apparently did. Varvoglis writes:

Finally, in one session the researchers actually saw the production of the wax moulds. In other words, they witnessed a continuity between the visual apparitions of luminous hands and the creation of the moulds. As Geley describes it :

We had the great pleasure of seeing the hands dipping into the paraffin. They were luminous, bearing points of light at the finger-tips. They passed slowly before our eyes, dipped into the wax, moved in it for a few seconds, came out, still luminous, and deposited the glove against the hand of one of us.

Varvoglis' complete article is well worth reading. In total, it makes a compelling case for the reality of the Kluski phenomena, and points up the extreme deficiencies of the skeptics' counterargument.

A moldy tale

Arthur Conan Doyle's History of Spiritualism, in two volumes (complete text available online: Vol. I and Vol. II), makes rewarding reading for anyone interested in the early years of parapsychology. That's not to say there aren't problems with the book. Doyle's dogged commitment to the reality of psi phenomena, especially as pertaining to life after death, led him to endorse some questionable characters. In Volume I, he goes to some lengths to establish the Davenport Brothers as legitimate, even though most observers then and later have made then out to be clever frauds. He endorses such dubious activities as slate-writing and spirit photography, and seems genuinely peeved at the efforts of the Society for Psychical Research to tighten up the experimental controls on mediums.

Despite these caveats, the two volumes of his book are well worth a look. There are many fascinating anecdotes, and a good deal of seemingly solid evidence is presented. Doyle's smooth, lucid prose style makes the pages turn quickly.

One section I found particularly interesting is found in Vol. II, in a chapter titled "Voice Mediumship and  Moulds." Here Doyle discusses the practice of producing paraffin molds of spirit forms - faces and hands, usually - in the séance room.

Skeptics understandably dismiss such claims, saying that the medium or an accomplice made the impressions surreptitiously, or that pre-made molds were smuggled into the room and substituted in the dark. This is undoubtedly true in some cases, as in the infamous case of "Margery" (Mina Crandon), who produced a spirit thumbprint that turned out to belong to her all-too-living dentist.

But consider the following series of tests first reported in the magazine Revue Metapsychique in June, 1921. It seems that every reasonable precaution against fraud was taken, yet positive results were obtained. Doyle tells us: 

Dr. [Gustave] Geley carried out with [Franek] Kluski a number of remarkable experiments in the formation of wax moulds of materialized hands. He has recorded the results of a series of eleven successful sittings for this purpose. In a dim light the medium's right hand was held by Professor Richet and his left hand by Count Potocki. A trough containing wax, kept at melting-point by warm water, was placed two feet in front of Kluski, and for the purpose of a test the wax was impregnated (unknown to the medium) with the chemical cholesterin, this to prevent the possibility of substitution. Dr. Geley writes:

The feeble light did not admit of the phenomena being actually seen; we were aware of the moment of dipping, by the sound of splashing in the liquid. The operation involved two or three immersions. The hand that was acting was plunged in the trough, was withdrawn, and, covered with warm paraffin, touched the hands of the controllers of the experiments, and then was plunged again into the wax. After the operation the glove of paraffin, still warm but solidified, was placed against the hand of one of the controllers.

In this way nine moulds were taken: seven of hands, one of a foot, and one of a chin and lips. The wax of which they were composed on being tested gave the characteristic reaction of cholesterin. Dr. Geley shows twenty-three photographs of the moulds and of plaster casts made from them. It may be mentioned that the moulds exhibit the folds of the skin, the nails and the veins, and these markings in nowise resemble those of the medium. Efforts to make similar moulds from the hands of human beings were only partially successful, and the difference from those obtained at the sittings was obvious. Sculptors and moulders of repute have declared that they know of no method of producing wax moulds such as those obtained at the séances with Kluski.

Geley sums up the result thus:

"We will now enumerate the proofs which we have given of the authenticity of the moulds of materialized limbs in our experiments in Paris and Warsaw.

"We have shown that quite apart from the control of the medium, whose two hands were held by us, all fraud was impossible.

"1. The theory of fraud by a rubber glove is inadmissible, for such an attempt gives crude and absurd results which can be seen at a glance to be imitations.

"2. It is not possible to produce such gloves of wax by using a rigid mould already prepared. A trial of this shows at once how impossible it is.

"3. The use of a prepared mould in some fusible and soluble substance, covered with a film of paraffin during the séance and then dissolved out in a pail of water, will not fit in with the actual procedure. We had no pail of water.

"4. The theory that a living hand was used (that of the medium or of an assistant) is inadmissible. This could not have been done, for several reasons, one being that gloves thus obtained are thick and solid, while ours are fine and delicate, also that the position of the fingers in our moulds makes it impossible that they could be withdrawn without breaking the glove. Also that the gloves have been compared with the hands of the medium and of the assistants, and that they are not alike. This is shown also by anthropological measurements.

"Finally, there is the hypothesis that the gloves were brought by the medium. This is disproved by the fact that we secretly introduced chemicals into the melted wax, and that these were found in the gloves.

"The report of the expert modellers on the point is categorical and final."

Nothing is evidence to those who are so filled with prejudice that they have no room for reason, but it is inconceivable that any normally endowed man could read all the above, and doubt the possibility of taking moulds from ectoplasmic figures.

A rebuttal of Geley's work was presented by two Italian researchers, Massimo Polidoro and Luigi Garlaschelli, who cast doubt on some of his claims. In particular, they showed that thin molds could be obtained rather easily, and that it was possible for a person to twist his hand free of the paraffin without breaking the mold. Their work is important and interesting, but it does not address the most significant claims made by Geley - namely, that the medium's hands were controlled throughout the séance, and that the paraffin had been pretreated with a certain chemical (without the medium's knowledge) to expose any attempted substitution.

If substitution is eliminated as a possibility, and if the medium's hands were properly controlled, then the only remaining non-paranormal explanation is the action of an accomplice, who would make a mold of his own hand. Could Geley have been careless enough to allow a potential accomplice into the séance room, and would this person's actions pass unnoticed in the dim red light? It seems doubtful.

Skeptics will probably say Kluski fooled the experimenters into believing they had control of both his hands, when actually they were controlling only one. But remember that one of the molds was of a foot, and another was of a partial face ("chin and lips"). Maybe, just maybe, Kluski could have lowered his face into the paraffin, though it seems likely that this action would have been observed, and that some traces of the paraffin would cling to his face afterward.

More important, how would he get his bare foot onto the table and into the trough of paraffin?

What were they thinking?

Some signs of the times ...

I suppose it takes a dirty mind to see something wrong with these.

Guilty as charged.

Guest blogger: Michael Tymn

Here are some thoughts from Michael Tymn (whose own blog is here) about the hullabaloo surrounding the release of Randy Pausch's book.

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I am curious as to how some of your blog readers react to supposed sage advice being given by the dying professor, Randy Pausch, in The Last Lecture. The media is treating it as if he has given some very profound advice, when all he has said is "always have fun."   His secondary messages are:  dream big, ask for what you want, dare to take a risk, look for the best in everybody, make time for what matters, let kids be themselves.   All that seems basic stuff to me. 

Actually, I think I would take issue with the "having fun" part of it.  That's the problem with the world today -- everyone is trying to have too much fun, especially the younger generation.  Of course, "fun" can be interpreted in different ways.  But do people need to be told to have fun?  I'm sure there are some people who, given only a few months to live, would stay in bed and mope, but does anyone really think that such a person would jump out of bed and start having fun just because another dying person suggests it.  Moreover, it is one thing for a man with a wife and three children to have fun (he can have fun though his children), quite another for someone without such a family to have fun.  What exactly does "having fun" mean?  Does it mean further escaping into novels or movies?  Does it mean going to Atlantic City or Vegas and playing the slots?  I can't think of anything I would do differently if given only three months to live.  I might consider an around-the-world cruise, but lack of medical care on the ship and in foreign countries would prevent that.  I'd have to continue with the same humdrum "fun" I am having.

I'm very curious as to what I am missing in Professor Pausch's message and why it is being made into such a big deal.

The future of reading - maybe

I'm a big booster of e-books. Not that I have anything against traditional printed books, but I think the publishing industry needs to be revitalized and reconceived.

These days, publishing is in a slump. I don't mean just an economic slump, although that's certainly part of it; the nationwide bookstore chain Borders recently announced they are looking for a buyer after posting disappointing revenues.

But the real slump is creative. There used to be 20 or more major publishers, but because of mergers, acquisitions, and bankruptcies, the number is now down to only five or six. All of them are located in Manhattan, within a short drive of each other. Editors move freely from one company to another. A trend at one company quickly becomes a trend everywhere. (How many ripoffs of The Da Vinci Code have we seen? And how much vampire porn can people read?) There is a kind of groupthink that stifles new ideas and shuts out books that might appeal to parts of the reading public unknown to New York intellectuals.

What's needed is to diversify the publishing business, to open the door to newcomers, to encourage new voices and new perspectives; and e-books (along with print-on-demand books) may be a way of doing this.

If they ever catch on.

So far they haven't. A small coterie of aficionados sing the praises of e-books, but the vast majority of readers want nothing to do with them. This is a shame, because in many ways e-books offer all the advantages of traditional books and plenty of new options besides.

Years ago I bought the Rocketbook, one of the earliest digital reading devices. It was a rather bulky gadget, but ergonomically designed and comfortable to hold. The screen was backlit and easy to read in dim light, but tended to get washed out in bright light. The Rocketbook had definite potential, but unfortunately its manufacturer, Nuvomedia, sold out to Gemstar, the company that owns TV Guide. Gemstar proceeded to run the Rocketbook into the ground, removing most of the free online content available for the device, setting up an online bookstore that carried only bestsellers, and coming out with a new version of the reader that had fewer capabilities yet managed to be more expensive. In short order the Rocketbook was defunct. However, an enterprising outfit called eBookwise bought up the unsold Rocketbook readers in Gemstar's warehouse, made some modifications, and started selling them as eBookwise readers. I guess they're doing pretty well, since they're still in business today.

The future, however, does not lie with backlit LCD screens. The new thing is digital ink, which simulates the look of a printed book and can be read in direct sunlight. Several new readers feature this technology, but the two most prominent ones, at least in the United States, are the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader.

Of the two, the Kindle, although aesthetically unappealing, seems to be more user-friendly. And it's linked to a huge selection of proprietary content on Amazon.com. Looking for a new reading device, I took a close look at the Kindle and I was definitely interested -- until I learned that the rollout of the device proved so popular that the existing units have already sold out; the product is now back-ordered.

Since I didn't feel like waiting a year or more for my device, I went with the Sony Reader instead. Aesthetically, the Sony is a big improvement over the Kindle. It does not have quite as many features, but on the other hand it's also not saddled with an ugly keyboard and a weird trapezoidal shape. Proprietary content is available at the Sony eBook Store, which offers about 20,000 titles. Some users complain that the site will lock up on them, but I haven't had this problem. I do admit that the site is not well designed for browsing. Actually, you're better off going to a brick-and-mortar bookstore, or to Amazon.com, and making a list of books that interest you; then go to the Sony site and see if those titles are available.

The Sony is lightweight, about 10 ounces, and comes with a nice softcover binder that protects the unit and gives it something of the feel of a regular book. You can adjust the font size, within limits, and you can display grayscale pictures and play MP3 audio files. The main advantages of the reader, of course, are that you can download a book and start reading it instantly, and you can store a large number of books on the device. If you're traveling, you don't have to choose between three or four books; you can take them all. In fact you could take a hundred books or more, if you were so inclined. You can also download non-proprietary content off the Internet and read it on your Sony, in most cases with the help of third-party conversion freeware. Text, RTF, HTML, DOC, and LIT files are among the formats that can be converted. Given the huge number of free public-domain books available at Project Gutenberg and similar sources, there is an endless amount of material to choose from.

Will e-books ever catch on in a big way? I'm heartened by Amazon's decision to aggressively push the Kindle, and by the early success of that device. But it's too soon to tell if the public at large is ready for the next generation of reading. I suspect that most people will not give e-books a try until the reading devices are inexpensive enough to qualify as impulse purchases. Prices of the digital books themselves also need to come down; Amazon has taken a big step in this direction by lowering the prices of its most popular Kindle books to only $9.99, but many of their other books - and most of the Sony titles - are only slightly cheaper than their print counterparts. This is foolish; e-books, unlike printed books, have virtually no production, storage, or distribution costs, and their price should be adjusted accordingly.

One thing's for sure: as long as publishing continues to plod along with antiquated and inefficient 19th-century technology, there will be fewer books and fewer people who read them. The revolution can't come soon enough.

Much ado about very little

In the wake of Charlton Heston's death, the Weekly Standard republished a letter written by the actor to that publication some years ago championing the Stratfordian cause. Among other things, Heston criticizes the view that "the queen and Oxford's family would have been 'scandalized' ... to know he'd written works of genius."

He asks,

Why? Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII, published at least one book and wrote music and songs for court masques; her successor, James I, sponsored the first production of Macbeth mounted indoors, at court.

This is mixing categories. Yes, some nobles published the occasional book -- a sober religious tract or a sententious political essay, written not for money or personal glory but for the betterment of society. And it was perfectly acceptable for nobles to pen plays and masques for the private amusement of the court. But any form of remunerative work was considered an affront to a nobleman's dignity. To write plays for the unwashed public -- to openly consort with common players, who were legally in the same class as pickpockets, prostitutes, and vagabonds -- and worst of all, to publish vulgar, crowd-pleasing plays for money ... this would have been unthinkable for any self-respecting member of the upper class. Even so noted a poet as Sir Philip Sidney published nothing in his lifetime; his works were printed posthumously, by special arrangement of his adoring sister.

In any case, the Oxfordian claim is not that the queen and Oxford's family didn't know about his pastime; they surely did. But they did not want this secret to become general knowledge -- embarrassingly public knowledge. That was the "scandal" they feared.

Linked to Heston's letter is an article by Paul Cantor, a professor of English dead-set against the Oxfordian heresy. Cantor's 1997 piece, a hostile review of Joseph Sobran's Alias Shakespeare, sternly informs us that an education wasn't necessary for a natural genius like the Stratford man:

But does having a college degree really make it any more likely that someone could write Hamlet? There is something embarrassingly bourgeois about this way of thinking, as if some 12-step program were available that leads to literary achievement of the highest order. Some of Shakespeare's fellow playwrights, like Christopher Marlowe, did have university degrees, but the fact is that many of the greatest authors in history never set foot in college. Geniuses are geniuses precisely because they do not play by the ordinary rules.

Well, this is silly. The argument is not that only college graduates can be geniuses; rather, Oxfordians point to the many indications that these particular plays and poems were written by a highly educated man. Among other things, the author

-- seems to have been fluent in Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, and Greek. (Several of the plays' sources were available only in those languages; Shakespeare coined many English words from foreign tongues; significant parts of Henry V are written in French.)

-- was widely versed in Greek and Roman mythology, the Bible, and the intellectual controversies of his day, as well as the customs and climes of foreign lands, notably Italy. (Some of this information could have been picked up in grammar school, in church, or on the street, but the breadth of Shakespeare's learning argues for an extensive education and considerable foreign travel.)

-- was intimately familiar with the law. (Legal expressions and concepts turn up constantly in the plays and, most noticeably, in the sonnets, even in seemingly inappropriate contexts.)

So whoever wrote the Shakespearean corpus was multilingual in contemporary and ancient languages; was widely read and well-traveled; and had studied law. "Does having a college degree really make it any more likely that someone could write Hamlet?" Indeed it does, precisely by providing knowledge in all these areas -- as a university education of the time, augmented by a tour of the Continent, would have done.

Incidentally, having branded Sobran "embarrassingly bourgeois," Cantor goes on to suggest that his way of thinking places him in company of "contemporary radicals" with "a Marxist view of literature." Bourgeois or radical Marxist - which is it? Apparently anything goes when the argument consists only of empty name-calling.

Cantor acknowledges that Shakespeare the author was in sympathy to the aristocracy, or at least to aristocratic virtues. But he cannot believe the Bard was an aristocrat himself. Addressing the Oxfordian claim that the earl of Oxford was very much like a character in a Shakespeare play, Cantor seems to agree, but he sees a purely negative significance in this fact.

How could anyone [like de Vere] who led such a dissolute life find the time and discipline to write the plays we know as Shakespeare's? Sobran confuses living an aristocratic existence with being able to portray it. He writes of Oxford: "His life sounds more like the subject of a Shakespeare play." But could King Lear have written King Lear or Macbeth Macbeth? If literary history teaches us anything, it is that authors are usually the opposite of the heroes they create. Homer was no Achilles.

"Authors are usually the opposite of the heroes they create." Really?

Ernest Hemingway wrote about hard-living men who fought in combat, hunted big game, and loved a good bullfight.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about expatriate American intellectuals searching for meaning while idling on the Continent.

Mark Twain wrote about imaginative, energetic boys growing up in rural Missouri.

Ayn Rand wrote about fiercely individualistic, chain-smoking capitalists who defied the moral conventions of their day.

Is there no similarity between these authors and characters they created?

Moreover, if some of Shakespeare's characters do indeed resemble de Vere, as even Cantor appears to concede, then how did the lowly commoner from Stratford get away with writing such plays? Depicting a living nobleman on stage was the sort of thing that got people thrown in the Clink -- the Clink being an actual jail of the period. Ben Jonson was jailed twice for sedition on account of topical references in his plays, and other playwrights suffered similar fates; Thomas Kyd seems to have been driven to his grave by government persecution. Yet the long arm of the law never touched the Stratford man, even when "his" plays were making unmistakable (and derogatory) references to leading figures of the realm. It is widely acknowledged that Polonius in Hamlet is based on the Queen's counselor (and de Vere's father-in-law) William Cecil. What commoner would dare mock a man who could easily toss him in prison and throw away the key?

Or consider Richard III. The title character is very likely a caricature of Cecil's powerful and much-feared son, Robert -- right down to Robert's humped back. Clare Asquith, though a resolute Stratfordian herself, provides a persuasive rundown of parallels between Robert Cecil and King Richard in her book Shadowplay:

Richard III, a play about the hunchbacked fifteenth-century king notorious for murdering two princes in the tower, dates from the early 1590s and is a startling portrait, not merely of the general style of the 'Regnum Cecilianium' but of the unpopular public persona of Robert Cecil in particular.... Cecil is recorded as saying, 'God knows I labour like a pack horse'; the 'pack' one of his joking references to his own deformity. The only play in which Shakespeare uses the word 'packhorse' is when the hunchback Richard describes the services he did for his brother, the king, in the role the Cecils so often adopted -- that of the selfless public servant: 'I was a pack-horse in his great affairs,/A weeder-out of his proud adversaries' (I.3.121).... Richard's spectacular success in seducing the widow of one of his victims over her husband's corpse recalls another Cecil characteristic -- his unlikely prowess as a womaniser.... Both Richard and Robert were called 'Toad'; 'Here lies the Toad' was scrawled on the door of his house. Robert was an 'Elf' to Queen Elizabeth; Richard is called 'elvish-marked' (I.3.227) in the play. [pp. 79-80]

We have, then, a playwright and poet who aligns himself with the aristocracy; who shows all the signs of learning and foreign travel to be expected of an aristocrat; who has the temerity to attack the most powerful men in England, and the ability to get away with it; and whose plays repeatedly feature characters and incidents strongly reminiscent of the life of Edward de Vere -- known in his day as a leading poet, though one who (like other nobleman) did not publish under his own name.

More than ten years since the publication of Cantor's hit piece, the Oxfordian case is stronger than ever.

Sounds interesting ...

Here's a post about a book I haven't read. I'm mentioning it only because, from the description and some of the reader reviews, it sounds like it may be worth a look. The title is The Spiritual Brain, and the authors are Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary.

Here's Booklist's review:

Neuroscientist Beauregard is no flighty New-Ager or Creationist but, he says, one of a minority of neuroscientists who don't adhere to strictly materialist interpretation of the human mind. He and his ilk believe that scientists who strive to explain the mind as an illusion created by the brain's chemical reactions ignore or vastly miscalculate the expanse of all that goes on in the universe. That is, it is too limiting to strictly confine the origin of all human thought to material or chemical interactions. In this complex tome, he describes the intricacy of his work and proposes that humans don't so much generate as transmit thoughts, and that by virtue of human ability to mentally interconnect with a higher consciousness, the actions of the mind become distinct and separate from, though observable by means of, the brain. He set out to prove his theory by studying a group of Carmelite nuns as they experienced God in prayer and meditation. Beauregard would be the first to note that, while his work doesn't ipso facto prove the existence of God, it does lend scientific credence to the existence of a higher or universal consciousness.

Denyse O'Leary maintains a blog called Post-Darwinist, centered on intelligent design controversies, and she seems to have a hand in six, count 'em six, other blogs as well. (Check the blogroll at Post-Darwinist.)