174 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



in his doctrines, which confirm and supplement the writings 

 of Janet. 



It is, however, not in these higher grades of philosophy that 

 the public have been interested. Philosophy at all times has 

 been the arena of a never-ending battle between emotion and 

 intellect. Man is born with powerful desires and cravings ; 

 when his mind is undisciplined, he accepts his desires as the 

 criterion of truth. He ardently wishes a certain theory to be 

 true, and he forthwith affirms that it is true. You produce 

 facts which show that it cannot be true, and he refutes you 

 by calling you a materialist, and by refusing to admit the facts 

 into his mind. The infinite tragedy of the war — a tragedy so 

 great that a human mind can no more conceive the miseries of 

 it than it can conceive the distance of a fixed star — has brought 

 in its train a powerful set of desires, perfectly natural, perfectly 

 intelligible, but strongly reinforcing the emotional obstacles to 

 the perception of truth. Now truth is the single purpose of 

 science ; and men of science must not allow the common people 

 to believe that things are true merely because they happen to 

 be ardently desired. Yet this, up to date, is the sole basis of 

 spiritualism, which has recently acquired such immense vogue. 



Of the many works lately published on this subject, only 

 one, Spiritualism and Sir Oliver Lodge, by Charles A. Mercier 

 (The Mental Culture Enterprise), has any claim to be considered 

 scientific. It is indeed one of the most brilliant expositions of 

 the subject that has yet been published. Dr. Mercier adopts 

 a purely logical attitude in his criticism, which is mainly directed 

 against Sir Oliver Lodge's The Survival of Man. Of special 

 importance, coming from Dr. Mercier, is his experience that 

 the pursuit of the occult, and especially of telepathy and so on, 

 " leads to a morbid frame of mind, and tends to render those 

 who are at all predisposed to insanity an easy prey to the 

 disease." In this experience he is not alone, for he quotes in 

 support the view of Dr. G. M. Robertson, Superintendent of 

 the Royal Asylum of Morningside, Edinburgh. Spiritualism 

 appears to have special fascination for the weaker and more 

 infirm members of the community, and this aspect of it is 

 therefore important. It is needless to refer to Dr. Mercier's 

 arguments in general, beyond remarking that they are un- 

 answerable, and that probably no attempt will even be made 

 to answer them. 



