CORRESPONDENCE 443 



judge from his frequent and obvious credulities he must often be really a man 

 who starts with an a priori list in favour of the hypothesis which he proposes to 

 test (to use the words in Mr. Richardson's sense). We have not the least 

 objection to such a pursuit, except for the loss of time which will be occasioned 

 by so forlorn a hope ; but I think that, owing to this very circumstance, only those 

 who are already biased are likely to undertake the investigation. I remember 

 that just before the war Science Progress published a much better apology 

 for spiritualism than that of Mr. Richardson, in which the author, after protesting 

 his scientific detachment, recorded his belief that the cast-off clothing of a dead 

 man can retain memories of the wearer and communicate them to mediums after 

 that wearer's death ! Such people think that the mere statement of an hypothesis, 

 however wild, is sufficient proof of it. What most " rigorous investigators " are in 

 want of is not evidence but experience in legerdermain and — judgment. I 

 suggest that " psychic phenomena " should be investigated, not by men of 

 science, but by a committee of professional conjurers. Mediums would then 

 quickly resolve themselves into ether, like the ghosts which haunt them. 



But there is this final " intuitive " objection against the whole business under 

 C — that if the higher spiritualism were true, the lower spiritualism must be false. 

 We were taught in our childhood that the spirits of the worthy dead are bright 

 and beautiful beings. If they are allowed to communicate with us they should 

 do so in the fields and the woods, and in the sunlight. There is an indescribable 

 meanness even in the mere supposition that they could ever be forced to 

 communicate with us through shady persons, before curious audiences, within 

 closed chambers, and in an atmosphere, if not of trickery, yet of intrigue, art, 

 and compulsion. 



Turning now from the case of empirical spiritualism under C to that of 

 metaphysical spiritualism under B, we maintain that, while the literature of the 

 latter may often be astute, clever, or even occasionally instructive, it really does 

 not weigh a straw against the mass of evidence under A— and most men of 

 science, especially the biologists, will agree. The mind of humanity — composed, 

 as it were, of the minds of innumerable individuals, as their brains are of brain- 

 cells — has grown considerably since the days of Berkeley and of Kant. It has 

 become instantly suspicious of any trace of the desire to prove things — as when 

 the admirable Bishop sets out to confound "sceptics and atheists," and the 

 Prussian psychocrat resolves to create God. It dreads concatenated propositions 

 because it recognises how often the chain breaks at the weakest link. Berkeley, 

 the father of modern idealists, was probably the cleverest of all of them ; but his 

 chain broke as early as the sixth link (Principles) when he neglected to extend 

 his reasoning regarding material objects to others' minds. This neglect vitiates 

 all his subsequent matter. Really his reasoning leads simply to solipsism, the 

 last absurdity of metaphysics ; and we can scarcely admit that, with all his 

 virtues, he was the Deity. As for Kant, surely no one trained in modern scientific 

 criticism can accept his psychology. Why it never seems even to have occurred 

 to him that his a priori 's might be instincts, similar to those of animals, of which 

 we possess many ; and he ignores the whole of that first period of mental growth 

 from experience, all memory of which is effaced from our adult minds. And their 

 followers are of the same kidney — constantly avoiding the evidence on the other 

 side, proceeding upon the may-i>e ergo is fallacy, mistaking speculations for 

 theorems, and juggling with words. 1 Thus, when I use a priori in the proper 



1 See, for example, Mr. Hugh S. R. Elliot's Modern Science and the Illusions 

 of Professor Bergson (Longmans, Green & Co.). 



