Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death. F. W. H. Myers

EDITOR'S NOTE

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      NEARLY four years have elapsed since the first appearance of my Father's book "Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death." It cost two guineas and was published in two volumes, each of which was little under 700 pages in length.

      The price and dimensions of such a work made the future issue of a more popular edition not improbable. Indeed, my Father himself indicated briefly the lines on which an abridgment could best be made. In accordance with his indications I have endeavoured to keep as closely as possible to the original scheme and construction of the book.

      The task of abridging, however, must always be an ungrateful one. It is inevitable that somewhere or other I should disappoint the reader who, already acquainted with the unabridged edition, finds some admired passage curtailed in favour of others that are to him of secondary interest. This I cannot avoid. All I can hope to do is so to reconcile the principles of omission and condensation as least to do violence to the style while preserving as far as possible the completeness of the exposition.

      One half of each volume in the unabridged edition consists of appendices containing examples of the various kinds of phenomena discussed and analyzed in the text. It has been possible to reduce considerably the number of these cases without, I think, detracting much from the value of the work for the purposes of the ordinary reader. Those cases, however, which are included in this edition are quoted in full, an abridged version having very little value.

      It must be remembered that the author in his preface insists that "the book is an exposition rather than a proof," and the remark naturally applies with even greater force to this abridgment. Here the cases must be regarded simply as illustrative of the different types of the evidence upon which in its entirety the argument of the book ultimately rests.

      The reader who may feel disposed to study this evidence will find numerous references given in the foot-notes. The cases, however, to which he is thus referred are scattered in many different publications, some of which will probably be less easy of access than the unabridged edition. In the many instances, therefore, where a case is quoted in the latter its place therein is indicated by means of a number or a number and letter in square brackets, thus [434 A]: these being in accordance with the plan of arrangement observed in the larger book.

      I wish to express my sincere thanks to Miss Alice Johnson, who very kindly read over the whole of the proof of this abridgment. I have profited largely by her advice as well as from that given me by Miss Jane Barlow, to whom my thanks are also due.

      L. H. M.

PREFACE

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      [This unfinished preface consists of several passages written at different times by the author, who died on January 17th, 1901. In 1896 he arranged that the completion of his book should be in the hands of Dr. Richard Hodgson in case of his death before its publication. In the meantime he had entrusted the general supervision of the press work and much of the detail in marshalling the Appendices to Miss Alice Johnson (now Secretary of the Society for Psychical Research), who was therefore associated with Dr. Hodgson also in the editorial work needed for the completion of the book, and much the greater part of the labour involved fell to her share.]

      THE book which is now at last given to the world is but a partial presentation of an ever-growing subject which I have long hoped to become able to treat in more adequate fashion. But as knowledge increases life rolls by, and I have thought it well to bring out while I can even this most imperfect text-book to a branch of research whose novelty and strangeness call urgently for some provisional systematisation, which, by suggesting fresh inquiries and producing further accumulation of evidence, may tend as speedily as possible to its own supersession. Few critics of this book can, I think, be more fully conscious than its author of its defects and its lacunæ; but also few critics, I think, have yet realised the importance of the new facts which in some fashion the book does actually present.

      Many of these facts have already appeared in Phantasms of the Living; many more in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research; but they are far indeed from having yet entered