SKEPTICISM AND IDOLATRY 209 



mortality is a very different thing from assuming a 

 body of postulates and creating a de facto science of 

 psychic phenomena, as Sir Oliver Lodge does. Science 

 must deal with material things, and must be confined to 

 our sense perceptions. So that, whether immortality 

 and psychic phenomena be ultimately accepted or not, 

 the proof must be expected by other than scientific 

 methods, unless we give to these words a totally dif- 

 ferent significance from what they had in the past. 

 Omitting all other difficulties, one wonders how imma- 

 terial intelligences can make material noises, for, if 

 they do, what becomes of our law of conservation of 

 energy which accounts for all material motion by ma- 

 terial causes? Of course he falls back on his omnipo- 

 tent Ether : 



" The evidence to my mind goes to prove that dis- 

 carnate intelligences, under certain conditions, may 

 interact with us on the material side, thus indirectly 

 coming within our scientific ken; and that gradually 

 we may hope to attain some understanding of the 

 nature of a larger, perhaps ethereal, existence, and of 

 the conditions regulating intercourse across the chasm." 



Science is still burdened with the inexplicable mys- 

 tery of the material world, and it should not open the 

 doors of its temple for the worship of graven images, 

 even if the idol is the great god Ether. Sir Oliver 

 Lodge's speculations are not even qualified by logical 

 methods. His reasoning is apparently a mere play on 



