PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 757 



" see what Rome has to teach him," because the Roman Catholic 

 Church has had a lot of experience — well, I suppose this is a 

 joke. Scientific method is a modern thing; the stringent 

 psychical-research canons of evidence are only about thirty 

 years old ; the evidence of pre-scientific days does not come 

 up to our standard. The Virgin of the Pillar, at Saragossa, is 

 said to have restored a worshipper's amputated leg. Spanish 

 theologians regard this as a specially well-attested case. 1 But 

 the "evidence," such as it is, would leave an S.P.R. investi- 

 gator unmoved, and I tremble to think with what ferocious joy 

 the late Mr. Podmore would have hewed it in pieces before the 

 Lord. 



The Roman Catholic Church says that our investigations 

 " are better not attempted." I rather think she has said some- 

 thing like that to every science in its turn. She tried to dis- 

 courage Galileo — tried rather strenuously, we may remember, 

 for there is some evidence (not conclusive) that he was put to 

 the torture. Fortunately science has now won its freedom from 

 ecclesiastical control. 



Now to the more congenial positive side. First as to general 

 considerations. 



The question, " Does this or that alleged but not generally 

 accepted thing really happen ? " is to be answered by observa- 

 tion and inference. It is a question of evidence. No scientific 

 man believes without evidence, but, on the other hand, neither 

 does he say a priori that any alleged occurrence is impossible. 

 J. S. Mill in his Three Essays on Religion, and Huxley in his 

 Hume and elsewhere, sufficiently demolished the " impossibility " 

 dogma. Says the latter, in Science and Christian Tradition : 



" Strictly speaking, I am unaware of anything that has a 

 right to the title of an impossibility, except a contradiction in 

 terms. There are impossibilities logical, but none natural. A 

 \ round square,' a ' present past,' ' two parallel lines that 

 intersect,' are impossibilities, because the ideas denoted by the 

 predicates ' round,' ' present,' ' intersect,' are contradictory of 

 the ideas denoted by the subjects ' square,' • past,' • parallel.' 

 But walking on water, or turning water into wine, are plainly 

 not impossibilities in this sense" (p. 197). 



In matters of alleged objective fact, it is a question of 



1 Lecky's Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe, vol. i. p. 141. 



