332 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



and Mr. Bonar Law walking arm in arm down Piccadilly, we should have no reason 

 to disbelieve him. But if he were to add that they were dressed in the engaging 

 costume of negro minstrels and were playing banjos, we should assume an a priori 

 improbability and think that he was joking, or mad, or— well, a liar. If he were to 

 claim that he could bring a dozen other eyewitnesses of this appalling indecorum 

 to verify his statements, we should, of course, still refuse to waste our time over 

 the inquiry and decide that our informant was merely a politician ! Indeed, even 

 if a dozen witnesses were to tell us the same thing, we should still refuse to believe 

 any or all of them — so great would be our respect for the three gentlemen named. 

 Now, all spiritualism is in the same case — there is a fundamental a priori improba- 

 bility attached to it. That improbability is even greater than the one attaching 

 to the supposititious promenade of the three statesmen (who after all are quite free 

 to walk down Piccadilly playing banjos if they wish) ; and it is nearly as great 

 as the improbability attached to the singular behaviour of the thousand triangles. 

 We disbelieve all three statements. If we are pressed to examine evidence we 

 reply, " The a priori improbabilities of your hypothesis are almost infinite, and 

 we do not think that you have even made out a prima facie case why we should 

 waste our time over conducting any investigations on the subject at all." And, be 

 it noted, men of science are frequently forced to give precisely the same reply 

 when urged to investigate scores of other wild speculations besides those of 

 spiritualism — such as the centrality or flatness of the earth and the potency of every 

 imaginable drug to cure every imaginable disease. There are many propositions 

 which require no further investigation, whatever their "devotees" may say, 

 because they obviously lead at once to deductions which will not fit in with the 

 facts around us. We do not generally trouble to argue the point, because we 

 recognise that the devotees belong to the numerous class of people who are 

 naturally incapable of thinking straight. For instance, it is not possible to believe 

 the stories regarding the three Ministers or the thousand triangles ; but it would 

 take some time to explain the grounds of our disbelief to the tellers of those 

 stories, who we think should already possess enough sense to recognise the folly 

 of their proposals. So also with spiritualism. 



Very few of our acquaintances claim to have seen ghosts ; but we have read of 

 ghosts who wore winding-sheets, chain-mail, or bob-wigs, and who carried daggers, 

 swords, pistols, candles, and bleeding hearts. Stop — let us inquire further. If 

 we believe these stories, then we must believe, not only in ghosts of the human 

 form, but also in ghosts of linen, hair, iron, and tallow — we return to the profound 

 philosophy of Swedenborg, who said that everything had a ghost. If we refuse to 

 accept this deduction, we must believe only in naked ghosts ; but here, again, we 

 are in a corner, for a man's hands, feet, face, and body are only material parts 

 of him. If only the soul of a person has a ghost, how can we ever recognise, say, 

 the ghost of our wicked stepmother when she brings us poisoned gruel ? Her 

 ghost can have no resemblance to her living form, unless we admit that mere 

 material bodily adjuncts have ghosts or may form parts of the ghost- entity. Then 

 again, how is it that these particular ghosts have the power of appearing to our 

 vision by producing or reflecting light-vibrations, or of speaking to us by means 

 of sound-vibrations, both universally associated in human experience with matter ? 

 There are some thousand million people now living ; so that, if ghosts exist at all, 

 we should assume that millions of millions of ghosts have come into being during 

 the last millennium alone, not to mention the ghosts of their inanimate habiliments 

 and the ghosts of animals, etc. Where are they all ? How is it that only such a 

 very few of them can haunt us— or, rather those of us who like to see ghosts ? 



