CORRESPONDENCE 339 



the alchemists are at last utterly discredited, it suddenly turns out, as a con- 

 sequence of the discovery of radio-activity, that they were right after all in 

 their essential ideas. There is such a thing as the discovery of facts of an 

 entirely new type, and science would be quite stagnant if all scientists adopted 

 the " improbability " attitude. But apart from all this, the argument breaks 

 down in this case, for it could only hold if the alleged phenomena were of a 

 kind never experienced before, whereas every age teems with accounts of similar 

 happenings. 



The next objection urged is that the existence of " ghosts " would violate the 

 invariable association of sound- and light-vibrations with matter. But why are 

 these invariably associated ? To any one who has studied modern philosophy 

 of science the answer is clear. It is because all such are abstract conceptions 

 consisting in logical constructions built up out of co?nmon elements — namely, 

 sense-data, the ultimate data of knowledge. A visual apparition is on precisely 

 the same level as the experience of any other group of sense-data, the only 

 difference being that here the correlations among the sense-data may be some- 

 what unusual, a fact which would simply bring us back to the " improbability " 

 argument dealt with above. As for the ancient difficulty of the " ghosts of the 

 clothes," this disappears when it is realised that apparitions, if they exist, are 

 probably more akin to vivid images telepathically originated than to sensations 

 proper. With regard to the assertion made by the reviewer that ghosts do 

 not " appear to us in broad daylight, and let us examine them thoroughly, 

 and take photographs of them," it may be pointed out that Crookes stated that 

 all these phenomena had actually occurred. 



The next point raised is as follows : " Then there is the whole body of evidence 

 suggesting that mind is only ' the secretion of the brain ' — evidence which has not 

 been even damaged by the modern pseudo-philosophers, who are out to prove 

 themselves above the order of nature " (italics mine). From this we can only 

 conclude one of two things : Either the reviewer classes nearly all modern 

 philosophers as " pseudo-philosophers " (if so, comment is needless !), or else he 

 is profoundly ignorant of the whole trend of recent philosophic thought. In the 

 first place, it is now generally recognised that a phrase such as "mind is the 

 secretion of the brain" is quite meaningless as it stands. One might just as 

 well, and with equal significance, say, for example, that " digestion is the secretion 

 of the stomach." However, we may recognise that some such catch-phrase as 

 this is simply the symbolic slogan of the materialistic school of thinkers. Now 

 it is nothing less than ridiculous in the face of obvious facts to state that 

 materialism has not been even damaged by the results of modern inquiry. The 

 whole tendency of the latter is to set more and more strongly against it. As 

 for the concomitance of brain-events and mind-events on which the reviewer 

 insists, it is susceptible of quite other explanation than the materialistic — an 

 explanation far more satisfactory in the light of all the facts. Here it need only 

 be said that we know about brains through perception alone. So far as we are 

 concerned, a brain is simply a group of sense-data, and the perception of it 

 presupposes the existence of a perceiving mind. Materialism is thus a gigantic 

 va-repov Trporepov. Consequently there is no final reason against the hypothesis 

 that a mind temporarily disabled by association with a damaged brain may 

 entirely recover when that association no longer exists. It is not " Mr. Jones," 

 but his body, that is built up of bones, flesh, and blood. 



The reviewer next goes on to remark that people who have read the evidence 

 for spiritualistic phenomena will probably come to certain conclusions. The first 



