The survival of man: A Study in Unrecognized Human Faculty
by Sir Oliver Lodge
1909

It is mere dogmatism to assert that we do not survive death, and mere prejudice or inertia to assert that it is impossible to discover whether we do or not.

We in the West have hardly even begun to inquire into the matter; and scientific method and critical faculty were never devoted to it, so far as I am aware, previous to the foundation, some quarter of a century ago, of the Society for Psychical Research.…Alleged facts suggesting primâ facie the survival of death…are now at last being systematically and deliberately explored by men and women of intelligence and good faith bent on ascertaining the truth.…

I am asking you to take seriously a branch of scientific inquiry which may have results more important than any other that is being pursued in our time.

G. LOWES DICKINSON Ingersoll Lecture on Immortality at Harvard, 1908

And assuredly the religious implications of all these phenomena are worthy of any mans most serious thought. Those who most feel the importance of the ethical superstructure are at the same time most plainly bound to treat the establishment of the facts at the foundation as no mere personal search for a faith, to be dropped when private conviction has been attained, but as a serious, a continuous, public duty. And the more convinced they are that their faith is sound, the more ready should they be to face distrust and aversion, – to lay their account for a long struggle with the vis inertia of the human spirit.

F. W. H. MYERS, Human Personality