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SIR OLIVER LODGE ON THE SOUL’S SURVIVAL

24 November 1914

SIR,—IN VIEW OF THE eminent position of Sir Oliver Lodge and the prominence you have given in The Times of to-day to the report of his statement that he has obtained definite scientific proofs of the continued existence of some of his dead friends, I ask for permission to request him not to delay longer the publication of his promised information regarding the nature of the proofs on which he bases this announcement.

Sir Oliver’s belief that he has talked with the dead has been published before this; and this is not the first time he has been challenged to produce his proofs to the scientific world. But hitherto he has confined himself to the mere reiteration of his conviction of the reality of his discovery.

That a serious statement of this kind, on such a grave subject, solemnly given forth ex cathedra by a professor of science, must surely have harmful results on the minds of many needs no argument. Numerous mental wrecks have been occasioned by so-called “spiritualistic” studies among the large class of persons who are ready to believe most of what they hear. It is not too much to say that, unless Sir Oliver Lodge is prepared to submit his evidence to competent judges, the reiteration of his claim to have talked with the dead is unjustifiable and even inexcusable.

Your obedient servant,

H. BRYAN DONKIN

Lodge was an eminent physicist who came to believe that the spirit lived on after death in an invisible substance that he thought filled the universe: ether.