Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death

Frederic W. H. Myers's Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death is a foundational primary text of the Society for Psychical Research, published posthumously in 1903, compiling Myers's own theoretical framework and case collection arguing for evidence of consciousness surviving bodily death. As a primary source it is essential for understanding how organized psychical research first framed its evidence and terminology, several of which, including the word telepathy which Myers himself coined, entered general usage. Its evidentiary method reflects late Victorian standards for testimony and case collection rather than the controlled experimental protocols later science would require, and its central survival thesis remains unproven by any standard that has satisfied mainstream psychology or physics since, a limitation later psychical researchers themselves have acknowledged.