470 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



vancies, and it must be constantly remembered that the obscure phe- 

 nomena of psychology, and, indeed, the phenomena of more thor- 

 oughly established and intrinsically more definite sciences, cannot be 

 expected to pass the test of detailed and concrete combinations of cir- 

 cumstances. In other classes of knowledge the temptation to demand 

 such explicit explanations of observations and experiences is not so 

 strong because of the absence of an equally strong personal interest; 

 but that clearly does not affect the logical status of the problem. The 

 reply to this argument I can readily anticipate; and I confess that my 

 admiration of Hamlet is somewhat dulled by reason of that ill-advised 

 remark to Horatio about there being more things in heaven and earth 

 than are dreamt of in our philosophies. The occultist always seizes 

 upon that citation to refute the scientist. He prints it as his motto on 

 his books and journals, and regards it as a slow poison that will in time 

 effect the destruction of the rabble of scientists and reveal the truth of 

 his own Psycho-Harmonic Science or Heliocentric Astrology. It is one 

 thing to be open-minded and to realize the incompleteness of scientific 

 knowledge and to appreciate how often what was ignored by one genera- 

 tion has become the science of the next; and it is a very different thing 

 to be impressed with coincidences and dreams and premonitions, and to 

 regard them as giving the keynote to the conceptions of nature and 

 reality, and to look upon science as a misdirected effort. Such differ- 

 ences of attitude depend frequently upon a difference of temperament as 

 well as upon intellectual discernment; the man or the woman who flies 

 to the things not dreamt of in our philosophy quite commonly does not 

 understand the things which our philosophy very creditably accounts 

 for. The two types of mind are different, and (I am again citing Pro- 

 fessor James) "the scientific-academic mind and the feminine-mystical 

 mind shy from each other's facts just as they fly from each other's 

 temper and spirit." 



Certain special influences combine with these fundamental differ- 

 ences of attitude to favor the spread of belief in the occult; and of these 

 the character of the beliefs as of the believers furnish some evidence. 

 At various stages of the discussion I have referred to the deceptive na- 

 ture of the argument by analogy; to the dominating sympathy with a 

 conclusion and the resulting assimilation and overestimation of appar- 

 ent evidence in its favor; to the frequent failure to understand that the 

 formation of valid opinion and the interpretation of evidence in any 

 field of inquiry require somewhat of expert training and special apti- 

 tude, obviously so in technical matters, but only moderately less so in 

 matters misleadingly regarded as general; to bias and superstition, to 

 the weakness that bends easily to the influences of contagion, to un- 

 fortunate educational limitations and perversions and, not the least, 

 to a defective grounding in the nature of scientific fact and proof. The 



