Introduction

In 1907, Duncan MacDougall published an article. “Hypothesis Concerning Soul Substance Together with Experimental Evidence of the Existence of Such Substance“; in the American Society for Psychical Research Journal.

“The Weight of a Soul” is the article’s nickname

The Leery has edited the text of this interesting read, for better readability and format.

The Weight of a Soul

Hypotheses and Reasoning

Heredity and experience establish our consciousness. If personal continuity after the event of a bodily death is a fact. Then also if the psychic functions continue to exist after the death of brain and body. Then such personality can only exist as a space occupying body. Any other way would be such a breach in the continuity of nature. That I can not imagine it.

It is unthinkable that personality and consciousness continuing personal identity should exist, and have being, and yet not occupy space. It is impossible to represent in thought that which is not space occupying, as having personality. That would be equivalent to nothing having become something. That emptiness had personality, that space itself was more than space, all of which are contradictions and absurd.

Therefore it is necessary to the continuance of conscious life after death, that the consciousnesses be space occupying. A substance. The question arises, has the substance weight?

The essential thing is that there must be a substance as the basis of continuing personal identity and consciousness. For without space occupying substance, personality or a continuing conscious ego after bodily death is unthinkable.

According to the latest conception of science, substance or space occupying material is divisible into which is gravitation: solids; liquids; gases – all having weight; and non-gravitational either.

It seemed impossible to me that the soul substance should consists of ether. Ether is continuous and not capable of existing in separate masses. We have here the most solid ground for believing that the soul substance we are seeking is not ether. One of the very first attributes of personal identity is the quality or condition of separateness.

Therefore the soul substance must be a form of gravitational matter. Otherwise it would have to be a middle form of substances. Neither gravitational matter nor ether.

Experiments

Soul substance would linked organically with the body until death takes place. It appears to me more reasonable to think that it must be some form of gravitational matter. Capable of being weighted.

The subjects experimented upon all gave their consent to the experiment weeks before the day of death. The experiments did not subject the patients to any additional suffering.

Patient One

My first subject was a man dying of tuberculosis. It seemed to me best to select a patient dying with a disease that produces great exhaustion. Thus the death occurring will have little to no muscular movement. Therefore, the beam is kept more perfectly at balance. Any loss occurring readily noted.

The patient was under observation for three hours and forty minutes before death. The were lying on a bed arranged on a light frame work built upon very delicately balanced platform beam scales. The patient’s comfort was always looked after. He was practically moribund when placed upon the bed. He lose weight slowly at the rate of one ounce per hour. This was due to evaporation of moisture in respiration and evaporation of sweat.

During all three hours and forty minutes I kept the beam end slightly above balance near the upper limiting bar. This was in order to make the test more decisive if it should come.

At the end of three hours and forty minutes he expired. Suddenly coincident with death the beam end dropped with an audible stroke hitting against the lower limiting bar. It remained there with no rebound. The loss was three-fourths of an ounce.

This loss of weight could not be due to evaporation of respiratory moisture and sweat. Already been determined to go on. In his case, at the rate of one-sixtieth of an ounce per minute. Whereas this loss was sudden and large, three-fourths of an ounce in a few seconds.

The bowels did not move. If they did, it would had been slow loss by evaporation of moisture. Depending of course, upon the fluidity of the feces.

The bladder evacuated one or two drachmas of urine. This remained upon the bed and could only have influenced the weight by slow gradual evaporation. Therefore in no way could account for the sudden loss.

There remained but one more channel of loss to explore upon the bed. Myself, my colleague put the beam at actual balance. Inspiration and expiration of air as forcible as possible by had no effect upon the beam.

My colleague got upon the bed and i place the beam at balance. Forcible inspiration and expiration of air on his part had no effect. In this case we certainly have an inexplicable loss of weight of three-fourths of an ounce. Is it the soul substance? How else shall we explain it?

Patient Two

My second patient was a man moribund from consumption. He was on the bed about four hours and fifteen minutes under observation before death. The first four hours he lost weight at the rate of three-fourths of an ounce per hour. He had much slower respiration them the first case. This accounted for the difference in loss of weight from evaporation and respiratory moisture.

The Last fifteen minutes he had ceased to breathe but his facial muscles still moved convulsively. Then, coinciding with the last movement of the facial muscle, the beam dropped. The weight lost was half an ounce. Then my colleague auscultated the heart and found it stopped.

I tried again and the loss was one ounce and half and fifty grains. Compared with the loss of three ounces during a period of four hours. During which the ordinary channels of loss were at work.

No bowel movement took place. The bladder moved buy the urine remained upon the bed. It could not have evaporated enough through the thick bed clothing to have influenced the result.

After eighteen minutes the beam was placed with the end in slight contact with the upper bar. After forty minutes no further loss took place.

My scales were sensitive to two-tenths of an ounce. If placed at balance one-tenth of an ounce would lift the beam up close to the upper limiting bar. Another one-tenth ounce would bring it up and keep it in direct contact. If two-tenth was removed the beam would drop the the lower bar. It would slowly oscillate til balance was reached again.

This patient was a totally different temperament from the first, his death was very gradual. So that we had great doubt from the ordinary evidence to say just what moment he died.

Patient Three

My third case, a man dying of tuberculosis, showed a weight of half an ounce lost. This was coincident with death, and an additional loss of one ounce a few minutes later.

Patient Four

The fourth case a women dying of a diabetic coma. Not accurately adjusted were the scales. People opposed to the experiment interfered. At death the beam sunk. Requiring from three-eighths to one-half ounce to bring back to the point preceding death. Yet I regard this test as of no value.

Patient Five

The fifth case was a man dying of tuberculosis. It showed a distinct drop in the beam requiring about three-eighths of an ounce which could not be accounted for. This occurred exactly simultaneously with death. The beam was put up again with weights. Then the weights were removed. The beam did not sink back until fully fifteen minutes. It was impossible to account for the three-eighth of an ounce drop. It was so sudden and distinct. The beam hitting the lower bar was as great a noise as the first case. Sensitively balanced were our scales.

Patient Six

My sixth and last case was not a fair test. Five minutes after being place upon the bed, the patient died. This was while I was adjusting the beam.

In my communication to Dr. Hodgson I note that I have said there was no loss of weight. It should have been added that there was no loss of weight that we were justified in recording.

My notes taken at the time of experiment show a loss of one and one-half ounces. Rushed was the experiment. Jarring of the scales had not wholly ceased. The apparent weight loss one and one-half ounces. This might have been due to accidental shifting of the sliding weight on the beam. This is not true of the other tests. My sixth case I regard as of no value from this cause.

Animal Experiments

Fifteen dogs were part of the experiments. The results were uniformly negative; no loss of weight at death. Lose of weight takes place about twenty to thirty minutes after death. Due to the evaporation of the urine generally passed. This is verified by evaporating the same amount of water on the scales. Every other condition being the same(temperature of the room), except the presence of the dog’s body.

The dogs experimented on weighed from fifteen to seventy pounds. The scales with the total weight upon them were sensitive to one-sixteenth of an ounce. The tests involved administering two drugs. To secure the necessary quite and freedom from struggle so necessary to keep the beam at balance.

The ideal dog test subjects would be obtained in those dying from some disease that rendered them much exhausted. Therefore incapable of struggle. It was not my fortune to get dogs dying from such sickness.

Conclusion of Human Experiments

The net result of the experiments conducted on human beings is that a loss of substance occurs at death. This loss is not accounted for by known channels of loss.

Is it the soul substance?

It would seem to me to be so. According to our hypothesis such a substance is necessary to the assumption of continuing or persisting personality after bodily death. Here we have experimental demonstration that a substance capable of being weighed, leaves the human body at death.

If this substance is a counterpart of the physical body, has the same bulk, occupies the same dimensions in space, there it is a very much lighter substance than the atmosphere surrounding our earth which weighs about one and one-fourth ounces per cubic foot.

This would be a fact of great significance, as such a body would readily ascend in out atmosphere. The absence of a weigh able mass leaving the body at death would of course by no argument against continuing personality. For a space hiccuping body or substance might exist not capable of being weighted, such as the ether.

It has been suggested that ether is this substance. That the ether is the primary form of all substances. That all other forms of matter are merely differentiation of the ether having varying densities. The soul substance in life is linked organically with the body. Thus, it can not be identical with the ether.

Moreover, the ether is non-discontinuous, a continuous whole. It is not capable of existing in separate masses as ether, whereas the one prime requisite for a continuing personality or individuality is the quality of separateness, the ego as separate and distinct from all things else, the non-ego.

To my mind therefore the soul substance can not be the ether as ether, but if the theory that ether is the primary form of all substances is true, then the soul substance must necessarily be a differentiated form of it.

Conclusion of Animal Experiments

If it is definitely proven that there is in the human being a loss of substance at death not accounted for by known channels of loss, and that such loss of substance does not occur in the dog as my experiments would seem to show, then we have here a physiological difference between the human and the canine at least and probably between the human and all other forms of animal life.

Overall Conclusion

Further sufficient experimentation is necessary. The establishment of such a truth, as soul substance, is to be of the utmost importance.

One ounce of fact more or less will have more weight in demonstrating the truth of the reality of continued existence with the necessary basis of substance to rest upon, than all the hair splitting theories of theologians and metaphysical philosophers combined.

If other experiments by other experimenters prove that there is a loss of weight occurring at death, not accounted for by known channels of loss, we must either admit the theory that it is the hypothetical soul substance, or some other explanation of the phenomenon should be forthcoming. If proven true, the materialistic conception will have been fully met, and proof of the substantial basis for mind or spirit or soul continuing after death of the body, insisted upon as necessary by the materialists, will have been furnished.

It will probe also that the spiritualistic conception of the immateriality of the soul was wrong. The postulates of religious creeds have no been a positive and final settlement of the question.

The Theories of all the philosophers and all the philosophies offer no final solution of the problem of continued personality after bodily death. This fact alone, if verified, furnishes the substantial basis for persisting consciousness surviving death. In the element of certainty is worth more then the postulates of all the creeds and all the metaphysical arguments combined.

Duncan MacDougall’s Inspiration

In the year 1854 Rudolph Wagner proposed a discussion of a “Special Soul Substance.” He was a physiologist at the Gottingen Congress of Physiologist. The challenge was accepted but no discussion followed, and among the five hundred voices present not one was raised in defense of a spiritualistic philosophy. Have we found Wagner’s soul substance?

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