242 NATURE AND MAN. 



pels,&quot; no longer possess their former cogency. For the question 

 has now passed into a phase altogether different from that which 

 it presented a century or two ago. It was then, &quot;Are the nar- 

 &quot;ratives genuine or fictitious? Did the narrators intend to speak 

 &quot; the truth, or were they constructing a tissue of falsehoods ? Did 

 &quot; they really witness what they narrate, or were they the dupes of 

 &quot; ingenious story-tellers ? &quot; It is now, &quot; Granting that the narrators 

 &quot; wrote what they firmly believed to be true, as having themselves 

 &quot; seen (or thought they had seen) the events they recorded, or as 

 &quot;having heard of them from witnesses whom they had a right to 

 &quot;regard as equally trustworthy with themselves; is their belief a 

 &quot; sufficient justification for ours ? What is the extent of allowance 

 &quot;which we are to make for prepossession (i) as modifying 

 &quot;their conception of each occurrence at the time, and (2) as 

 &quot;modifying their subsequent remembrance of it ? And (3), in 

 cases in which we have not access to the original records, what 

 &quot; is the amount of allowance which we ought to make for the 

 &quot;accretion of other still less trustworthy narratives around the 

 &quot; original nucleus ? &quot; 



Circumstances have led me from a very early period to take 

 a great interest in the question of the value of testimony, and to 

 occupy myself a good deal in the inquiry as to what is scien 

 tifically termed its &quot;subjective&quot; element. It was my duty for 

 many years to study and to expound systematically to medical 

 students the probative value of different kinds of evidence ; and 

 my psychological interest in the curious phenomena which, 

 under the names of mesmerism, odylism, electro-biology, psychic 

 force, and spiritual agency, have been supposed to indicate the 

 existence of some new and mysterious force in nature, led me, 

 through a long series of years, to avail myself of every oppor 

 tunity of studying them that fell within my reach. The general 

 result of these inquiries has been to force upon me the convic 

 tion, that as to all which concerns the &quot; supernatural &quot; (using 

 that term in its generally understood sense, without attempting a 

 logical definition of it), the allowance that has to be made for 

 &quot;prepossession&quot; is so large, as practically to destroy the validity 

 of any testimony which is not submitted to the severest scrutiny 

 according to the strictest scientific methods. Of the manner in 



