xiii THE DESIRE FOR IMMORTALITY 249 



of queer persons and things, and heard that my friends 

 were beginning to express serious concern for my sanity, 

 and that I was endangering my professional reputation, 

 I very wisely dropped the matter. Be sensible, therefore, 

 and take my word for it, we are not meant to know about 

 these things. Suppress your morbid craving for truth. 

 You will soon get over it, and think as every one else does. 

 As a piece of wordly wisdom this advice is unex 

 ceptionable, and not to be disregarded by any who 

 would avoid the madhouse or the workhouse. But 

 scientifically regarded, it is somewhat lacking in con- 

 clusiveness. A question which, on account of the 

 resistance of social sentiment, it has never yet been 

 possible to investigate with the dispassionate, and yet 

 persistent, curiosity of science, can hardly be said to be 

 settled. And if it should turn out as one of the results 

 of the inquiry described above that on the one hand social 

 sentiment has the character I have supposed, and on the 

 other that a small (or even a considerable) number of 

 persons are desirous of a real investigation, the latter 

 would have a chance, slender perhaps, but at all events 

 such as they have never had before, of combining to effect 

 their object. The Society for Psychical Research, in 

 particular, would, have to change its tactics. Instead of 

 pouring out volume after volume of minutely and dully 

 accurate reports of sittings with its Mrs. Pipers and Mrs. 

 Thompsons, which the world ignores until the lapse of 

 time, by removing the first-hand witnesses beyond the 

 reach of cross-examination, has rendered its evidence as 

 inconclusive as the testimony which in the past has failed 

 to move the world, 1 it would have to address itself, in the 

 first instance, to modifying the existing sentiment of 

 society. And whether it succeeded or not, it might at 

 least induce us to be more honest with ourselves, and to 

 cease from our insincere laments over the impossibility of 

 a knowledge than which the gods could bestow no more 

 embarrassing gift upon the generality of men. 



1 The favourable reception of the late Frederic Myers s work on Human 

 Personality may possibly mean that a real scientific interest is now at last being 

 aroused (1903). 



