ABSTRACT
Frederic Myers’ theory of the ‘subliminal self’ was set forth in a series of articles in the Society for Psychical Research (S.P.R.) Proceedings from 1892 onwards, and in his large and unfinished posthumous book, Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, which incorporates substantial chunks of the articles. No doubt someone who had known Myers at the time of the S.P.R.’s foundation—who had known his religious history and his admiration for Plato and Wordsworth—could have predicted the general nature of his theory. Whatever one may think of Myers’ sonorous style or for that matter of his theory of the subliminal self, his Human Personality is a work of very considerable value. It is of value partly because of its extensive coverage of the evidence for ‘psychical’ phenomena which had been gathered up to the year 1900—and even then the quantity of such evidence was by no means slight.
