It will also appear how far-reaching were the consequences of the denial of design that was involved in Mr. Darwin's theory that luck is the main element in survival, and how largely this theory is responsible for the fatuous developments in connection alike with protoplasm and automatism which a few years ago seemed about to carry everything before them.
"Luck or Cunning?"
Samuel Butler
In chapter vii, concerning Phantasms of the Dead, forming part of Frederick W. H. Myers's Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, and in the two chapters which follow, on Motor automatism, and on Trance, Possession, and Ecstasy, all the necessary proofs above noted have been adduced; and the author was thereby one of the very first psychical researchers to have recorded before the world his conversion from the non-animistic hypothesis to the ancient belief that Man is immortal; for he admits his conviction that the human consciousness does incontestably survive the decay of the physical body.
"The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries"
W. Y. Evans Wentz
But the lower stages of mere automatism shade off so continuously into the highest supernormal manifestations, through the intermediary ones of imitative hysteria and "suggestibility," that I feel as if no general theory as yet would cover all the facts.
"The Letters of William James, Vol. II"
William James
