A leading Unitarian minister who turned to psychical research after personal loss, Minot Judson Savage (1841–1918) argued that mediumistic communications and other psychic phenomena pointed not merely to telepathy but to the continued existence of the dead. His writings sought to reconcile scientific method with survivalist belief.
- Savage regarded telepathy as too limited to explain many mediumistic and clairvoyant phenomena.
- Personal sittings with Leonora Piper helped convince Savage that discarnate intelligences sometimes communicated with the living.
- He argued that psychical research must remain scientific while allowing for the independent agency of surviving personalities.
Contents
Life and Career
Savage was born on 10 June 1841 in Norridgewock, Maine, USA, where at the age of thirteen he joined the Congregational Church. In the early 1860s he became a member of Bangor Theological Seminary and served for one year during the Civil War with the Christian Commission. He graduated and was ordained at Bangor in 1864, then moved to California as a missionary.1This section is based on Eliot (1952); Melton (2001); Harvard Divinity School Library (n.d.); and Harvard Square Library (2014).
In 1867 Savage joined the Congregational Church in Framingham, Massachusetts, and two years later became minister of the Congregational Church in Hannibal, Missouri, from which he resigned when he became a Unitarian. In 1876 he published Religion of Evolution, a book which gave him some notoriety. He also published poetry and hymns. He was an active advocate of Darwinian evolutionistic optimism and social reform, and also preached a spiritualistic faith in personal survival after death. His sermons were distributed in the pamphlets Unity Pulpit and Messiah Pulpit.2Harvard Divinity School Library (n.d.).
In the early 1890s, he served in Chicago and Boston. In 1896 he received an honorary DD degree from Harvard University, and from 1896 to 1906 was associate minister of the Church of the Messiah in New York City. The passing of his son Philip in 1899 practically determined his subsequent spiritualistic beliefs in supernormal phenomena and the reality of the afterlife.
Savage died on 22 May 1918 at the Parker House Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts. One of the great preachers of the late nineteenth century, his attempt to reconcile evolution with religion was among the first to do so.3Harvard Square Library (2014).
Engagement with Psychical Research
Savage’s career as a psychical researcher lasted for nearly thirty years. He was one of the first members of the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) when it functioned as a branch of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) Committee on Mediumistic Phenomena). He had sittings with many mediums, notably Leonora Piper and Helen Berry (whom he visited with William James), and with people who claimed to have special faculties.4Knapp (2017), 162. According to his own narrative, it was through Piper that he received communications from Philip, an event which strengthened his spiritualistic vocation.5Bell (1902), 123-24.
Savage served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the American Institute for Scientific Research (as the ASPR was known briefly under James Hervey Hyslop) until 1907. He resigned for health issues.6Hyslop (1907), 37. Later, he and Amos Emerson Dolbear founded the American Psychical Society.7Knapp (2017), 120. Several times he wrote about the history, aims, methods, and results of the English SPR.8See, for example, Savage (1902), ch. V. But even if he admired this institution, to develop his views on the supernormal and immortality he ultimately relied on his own personal records. In his opinion, only the methods of science can produce knowledge. Becoming convinced, later in life, that occasional communications from discarnate agencies were a fact, he thought that personal survival after death could be proved scientifically.9Savage (1902), vi-vii. Still, he did not deny that, sometimes, a spiritualistic explanation of such questions should be welcomed, for reasons that will be seen below.
Views on Psychic Phenomena
Telepathy
In Savage’s opinion, telepathy was not the best explanation of clairvoyance, mediumship, clairaudience, apparitions, and other paranormal phenomena. He did believe in a psychical form of interaction which could be called telepathy, but exclusively between two persons. Still, he attacked the idea that its workings depended fundamentally on dividing the mind into a conscious part and a subconscious part; although he agreed with Frederic WH Myers that the mind actually functions below the level of consciousness, he denied that the subconscious was an independent entity endowed with great active powers. He contended that such a notion was arbitrary.10Savage (1899), 155-56; Bell (1902), 128-30. For an early criticism of Savage’s position, see Hudson (1896), chs. IV-V.
In Can Telepathy Explain?, he wrote:
On the telepathic theory it would seem that the sitter ought to get what he expects, i.e., such things as are in his own mind. If the mental states and the knowledge of the sitter are somehow reflected in the subconscious self of the psychic, or if the psychic is able in any way to get at the mental conditions and the memory of the sitter, then the result ought to be a correct transcript of these things. But in my experience, it has been … common for me to be … surprised by getting things which I did not expect, and frequently statements which were the direct opposite of what I supposed to be true [no matter whether the psychic was in a state of trance or not].11Savage (1902), 158-59.
Furthermore, he contended that the subconscious cannot be that powerful, since it does not follow the ‘law of suggestion’: in a certain sitting, there were ‘things of which the medium knew absolutely nothing about … things not only not suggested by the sitters, but statements concerning things of which the sitters were ignorant … and … opposite to the opinions of the sitters … [and also] statements of things not only [denied] by the sitters, but to which they were violently antagonistic’.12Savage (1902), 165.
All these unexpected outcomes and mistakes suggest the limited applicability of the ‘telepathic theory’, perhaps only to ‘physical phenomena’ and apparitions.13Savage (1902), 160-62; Savage (1893), 17-18.
The Spiritistic Theory
Savage believed that the ‘spiritistic theory’ not only explains the insufficiencies of telepathy, but also, and with greater precision, a variety of psychical phenomena. Spiritualist results seem to be more natural than those of telepathy, and hence deserve to be maintained whenever a scientific account is lacking. He wrote:
The only person in the universe which ever does things is either a human being or a being with quasi-human intelligence. We have no knowledge of intelligently exercised force except such as is under the guidance of a human or quasi-human will. [Then,] on the supposition that people do live through the fact of, and after death, the theory of their agency (sic) in accomplishing the things which we are discussing [of a paranormal nature], is much simpler … than any other….14Savage (1902), 168-71.
So, instead of assuming an arbitrary almighty subconscious, we can assume the continued existence of people who once inhabited this earth, living in some other place after death and still exercising their intelligence. To accept that there are ‘invisible beings about us, who are interested in our affairs, and who, under certain conditions, can come into contact with our lives’, is, for Savage, a good instance of rational thinking.15Savage (1902), 173.
However, we must keep in mind that ‘the people from this world make mistakes and forget, and there is no reason to suppose that the moment a man dies he becomes either a perfect angel or a perfect devil’. When we pass into the next world, we do not change but ‘carry with us our personal consciousness, our memory of what we have been, and who have been our friends, and those most closely associated with us.’16Savage (1899), 272-73; Bell (1902), 130. He dedicates chapter XIII of Life Beyond Death to speculate about the conditions and features of the lands where the personalities of those who leave us carry on with their modes of being. His descriptions are sometimes reminiscent of Swedenborg and other writers of mystical tendencies.
If no one can say whether death changes the ‘personal characteristics’ of any human being, then the dead may continue to act just as they did while incarnated, and the consequences of their actions become somehow perceived, with all possible errors or inconsistencies, in the ‘paranormal experiences’ of those who still live in this world.17Bell (1902), 129-30.
This whole standpoint is at the basis of his theory of immortality (see below).
Psychical research must be scientific, yes, but the investigators should consider the rational possibility that each individual survives as an independent being, and hence that ‘these personalities cannot be dealt with, manipulated, ordered to go and come as a chemist deals with his elements in the laboratory. By the very supposition involved in these studies, a different method … must be followed … [one] just as scientific as any other, and yet [attentive to] the facts and conditions, and abide by them.18Savage (1902), 179. See also Savage (1891).
The Afterlife
In the later years of his research career Savage concluded that psychic facts and events (ghosts, clairvoyance, raps, mediumship, and so on) are actually natural and self-evident, and that their existence is easier to believe and understand than any scientific theory proposed to explain them, including telepathy. He was then only one of many men who, according to him, had come to accept ‘that there is no … way of explaining that which has been over and over again proved to be fact’, without supposing that every paranormal occurrence took place in so far as it was in communication with ‘some invisible intelligence’.19Savage (1899), 269.
This can be valued as a mere ‘provisional hypothesis’; however, it works as a simple enough explanation. But the most important thing was, for Savage, that all the ‘psychical’ experiences and facts which one can get to know first-hand ‘take us over the border and whisper in our ears the certainty of immortal life’.20Savage (1899), 268-70; Bell (1902), 134-35.
Selected Publications
The Religion of Evolution (1876)
The Morals of Evolution (1880)
Beliefs About Man (1884)
Psychics: Facts and Theories (1893)
Life Beyond Death (1901)
Can Telepathy Explain? (1902)
Immortality (1906)
Roberto R. Narváez
Works Cited
Bell, C. (1902). Spiritism, hypnotism and telepathy as involved in the case of Mrs. Leonora Piper and the Society for Psychical Research. New York: Medico-Legal Journal. [PDF Download.]
Eliot, S.A. (ed.). (1952). Heralds of a Liberal Faith. Vol. 4, 206-10. Boston: American Unitarian Association. [Book excerpt.]
Harvard Divinity School Library. (n.d.). Savage, Minot J. [Web page.]
Harvard Square Library. (2014). Savage, Minot Judson (1841-1918) [Web page.]
Hudson, T.J. (1896). A scientific demonstration of the future life. Chicago, Illinois, USA: A.C. McClurg and Company. [PDF Download.]
Hyslop, J.H. (1907). Editorial. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 1/1 (January), 35-39.
Knapp, K.D. (2017). William James: Psychical Research and the Challenge of Modernity. Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA: University of North Carolina Press. [Book excerpt.]
Melton, J.G. (ed.). (2001). Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology. Vol. 2, 1351. Detroit, Michigan, USA: Gale Group. [Book excerpt.]
Savage, M.J. (1891). A reply to Mr. Hawthorne. The Arena 3, 680-91.
Savage, M.J. (1893). Psychics: Facts and Theories. Boston: Arena Publishing Company. [Book excerpt.]
Savage, M.J. (1899). Life Beyond Death. New York & London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons. [Book excerpt.]
Savage, M.J. (1902). Can Telepathy Explain? Results of Psychical Research. New York & London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons. [Book excerpt.]