Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1907-07-24
DEATH NOT
END OF ALL
STRANGE LAWS OF NATURE
MATERIALlSM AT WAR OVER
PSYCHIC PHENOMENA
Question Can Consciousness Exist
Independently of the Brain7
Opens Wide Area of
Discussion

Prof. j. H. Hyslop. Phi. D., of New
York, delivered an exceedingly interest
ing lecture in Blanchard hall last even
ing to a large audience composed of both
men and women.
He will give the last lecture of the
same course this evening on Psychic
Research and Politics"
His topic last night was Science and
Future Life" He said in part:
Men have always been interested in
existence after death, just as they are
interested in self-preservation and for
the same reason. But they have not al
ways had the same reasons for believing
it to be a fact.
Savages appealed to dreams and other
facts, some of them mere phenomena OF
nature, but were never able to impress
intelligent men with any of the force OF
their claims.
Skeptics Busy
whenever philosophic view of nature
arose from a higher civilization 1t was
at once seized with skepticism of all the
religious and ethical beliefs held by the
less intelligent.
''It sought in the examination of facts
about knowledge of the laws of nature,
and found, or thought 1t found, there the
absence of all traces Of any existence
after death. Hence between the igno-
rant and the wise man there has always
been a line of distinction in regard to
beliefs that Is as permanent and aStena-
ceous as that of caste.
"Can this distinction be overcome in
regard to the question of life after
death?
1.-The desirability of it will depend on
the value attaching to such a belief. It's
influence in the past has not always been
associated with all that is best. But this
may have been, or was, due to abuses
which were not necessarily attached to
the belief, and we can perhaps safely
leave to the best minds to determine just
what form it's usefulness may have. This
once decided, 1t will only be question
of fact to be settled whether the belief
has any credentials that a scientific age
can respect.
Ancients' Belief
1.-THE ancients based their main graund
on a belief in a future life on the dignity
of human nature. But it had to face the
admitted fact that all else perished.
"Lucrecian materialism came to deny
the fact or possibility of it regardless of
human dignity. The issue between it and
Christianity became we'll defined on this
one point and the existence of personal
intelligence at the background of the uni
verse and the battle was waged Tor CEN
turtles between the atomic nature or mat
ter and the claims of faith that the soul
was not an incident of physical phe-
nomena.
"Materialism commended that conscious
ness was necessarily function OF the
brain and therefore was perishable WIN
1t. The believer contended that con-
seriousness was not function or the OF
ganism and did not necessarily disappear
with it.
Scientists lnterrogate
THE incients based their main grounc
metho \ which was a direct interrogation
of physical phenomena to ascertain VIVA
the laws of nature were, the settled feel
ing of physicists was that there was ne
evidence of any survival after death, anc
this feeling was sutained by all the facts
of normal observation in the fields OF
physiology and psychology.
This position supported by all tha'
could be ascertained was direct chal'
lenee to the opposite belief, and unless
evidence can be obtained to show that
consciousness is not a function of the
organism the contention of materiallsm
must be accepted.
"But what the scientific study of psy-
chic phenomena maintains is that the
whole materialistic position depends for
its force solely upon its evasion or the
facts which tend to show that conscious
moss can exist independently of the brain
"It is undoubtedly true that, in our
normal life, we know consciousness as
associated with physical organisms and
do not have any evidence Of its inde-
pendent existence.
Limits of Mind
But the phenomena of teiepathy, clair
voyance, premonition and mediumship'
whatever we think of them, at least SUI
perficially represent the mind as not act
ing solely within the limits assigned to
it by the materialistic theory, and 1t Will
only be question Of the kind of facts
obtained by experiment to determine
whether we have reason to believe that
this consciousness in some way survives
the shock after death.
1--WE should remember that we have no
sensory knowledge Of any consciousness
but our own.
1--WE know of the existence of con-
seriousness in others only by inference
and Interpretation of their physical acts
''If anything prevents their use of their
bodies we do not know whether they ex-
list as mind even In this life.
when the body becomes disabled SO
that no physical action can be initiated