THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE 409 



Sir Oliver Lodge, and other men of science who hold similar 

 views, appear to fall between two stools. On the evidential 

 side, the writer has found nothing, either in Myers' book or else- 

 where, which could carry conviction to, or even merit serious 

 consideration by, any one not naturally predisposed to form the 

 " spiritualist " conclusions. On the other hand, if the evidence 

 proves anything at all, it proves far too much, and it is more 

 logical to go to those who, for nineteen centuries, have stated 

 dogmatically, as a matter of faith, that human personality does 

 survive bodily death, and, moreover, told us more about it, than 

 to attempt, in an amateur way, to build up a little heresy of 

 one's own. These statements will, perhaps, bear some ampli- 

 fication. 



On the evidential side, all serious investigators proceed on 

 the well-known philosophic maxim : " Entia non sunt multipli- 

 canda praeter necessitatem." In all attempts to establish, by 

 observation or experiment, the existence of survival after death, 

 the would-be investigator has to consider at least the following 

 four explanations of any phenomena he may observe : (1) 

 trickery, conscious or unconscious ; (2) that striking series of 

 facts which psychologists are slowly gathering together con- 

 cerning hypnosis and dual and multiple personalities ; (3) 

 telepathy ; (4) ghosts. He will not invoke (3) until he has 

 exhausted (1) and (2) and all other known explanations. He 

 will not invoke (4) until he has exhausted (3). 



Taking these in order, with regard to the first, few will need 

 reminding that a well-known conjuror has never yet failed to 

 reproduce every phenomenon credited to " spirits " that has 

 been brought before him. Moreover, he is also known to have 

 remarked that, for the detection of trickery of this kind, he 

 would place more reliance on the acumen of two smart school- 

 boys than in the whole Council of the Royal Society. 



The second is, scientifically, a problem of surpassing interest. 

 The curious series of facts constituting multiple personalities, 

 and other allied phenomena, are adding an important province 

 to the realm of psychology, and are, indeed, doing something to 

 redeem that science from the charge of verbalism and futility. 

 But why invoke the " spirits " ? Are not all these phenomena as 

 readily explained in a perfectly natural manner as sleep uncon- 

 sciousness and dreams ? Their evidential value is nil. And, 

 moreover, the very fact of their existence supplies an alternative 



