278 HUMANISM xv 



of spirit-identity, and it is suggestive that whereas at 

 first Mrs. Piper s G.P. communications abounded in 

 such tests, they have gradually grown rare. 



(3) As we must try to explain all the facts by prin 

 ciples already known to be valid, we must account for the 

 remarkable dissociation between this world and the next 

 by the principle of psychological continuity. That such 

 dissociation must exist will hardly be denied by any one 

 who has realised how very rare an experience a ghost 

 is, even with the most expert of ghost seers and in its 

 most favoured haunts. But it would seem that if the 

 departed still retained their personality and psychical 

 continuity, ghosts ought to be more plentiful than 

 blackberries, and unhedged by that divinity which makes 

 people so reluctant to make a clean breast of their ghost 

 stories. Prima facie, therefore, it requires explanation 

 that in spite of psychic continuity so much dissociation 

 should prevail. 



Nevertheless it may, I think, be shown that the 

 assumption of psychical continuity would be quite com 

 patible with the prevalence of an almost complete 

 dissociation between this world and the next. For any 

 great event tends to dissociate us from our past, and this 

 would apply a fortiori to an event like death, which ex 

 hypotJiesi launches us into a new world. A new world, 

 moreover, would engross us not only by its novelty, but 

 also by the practical need of accommodating ourselves 

 to new conditions of existence. Hence the psychological 

 conditions for great concern about the world we had left 

 behind us would hardly be present. This argument, 

 moreover, could be considerably strengthened by psycho 

 logical observations with regard to the interest which is 

 taken in the affairs of our world by the aged. For it 

 would be unlikely that an interest which had already 

 grown faint should effectively maintain itself amid the 

 distractions of a new life. 



And even if the desire to communicate were felt, it 

 could hardly be assumed that the knowledge and power 

 to do so would at once be at the disposal of the new- 



