of each other, and do communicate with each other and with living 

 men; that either, they in communicating to us, move the entranced 

 subject to speak what they would have her speak, or her volition being 

 dormant, a spirit takes possession of her organs and operates them 

 as a man would a typewriter, making her speak mechanically the 

 thoughts of the communicating spirit. 



These are the facts implied by the theory and I shall here briefly 

 repeat the facts of evidence for them. An entranced subject speaks 

 in answer to questions and imparts supernormal pieces of knowledge; 

 the things which she speaks purport to be communications from per- 

 sons no longer living; what she says sometimes purports to be con- 

 versation between dead persons ; and there are mistakes and confusions 

 such as we should expect from persons with failing memories or with 

 deficient means of communication. 



We note that here there is no direct evidence of the existence of 

 such a part as the spirit in the human make-up. And all experiments 

 relative to that question tend to indicate that if there were such a 

 part and if it were essential to mental functioning, that it ceases 

 to function when the physical organs are injured or destroyed 

 Neither does Prof. Hyslop perform any experiments nor offer any 

 evidence to show that spirits can perceive and communicate. Nor is 

 any explanation given of how they can communicate without organs 

 of perception and communication known to us. There is then no 

 experimental evidence in the theory leading to an inference of the 

 existence of spirits; and no experiments are performed to show how 

 spirits can perceive and communicate or to lead to an inference that 

 they can. 



We have thus far exhibited the evidence offered for the theory 

 and the conclusions and implications of the theory. We now call 

 attention to the fact that the conclusions and implications concern 

 things of whose nature and abilities we have no experimental evidence 

 and no experience. And we also note that these things about which 

 the theory is concerned are like nothing in experience. Prof. Hyslop's 

 thinking then, reveals this peculiarity: that whereas evidence usually 

 leads us to infer that something out of experience is like something in 

 experience; in Hyslop's thinking we find an inference from evidence 

 in experience of what things out of experience exist and of what they 

 are like, when they are like nothing in experience. From certain 

 manifestations in experience the existence of spirits and their powers 

 are inferred. As spirits are like nothing in our experience, we can- 

 not infer that they produced the manifestations because of their 

 likeness to something in experience producing such manifestations; 

 and the theory as we have found it, offers no experiments to show that 



[5] 



