242 NATURE AND MAN. 



pels," 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, " Are the nar- 

 "ratives genuine or fictitious? Did the narrators intend to speak 

 " the truth, or were they constructing a tissue of falsehoods ? Did 

 " they really witness what they narrate, or were they the dupes of 

 " ingenious story-tellers ? " It is now, " Granting that the narrators 

 "wrote what they firmly believed to be true, as having themselves 

 " seen (or thought they had seen) the events they recorded, or as 

 " having heard of them from witnesses whom they had a right to 

 "regard as equally trustworthy with themselves; is their belief a 

 " sufficient justification for ours ? What is the extent of allowance 

 "which we are to make for 'prepossession' — (i) as modifying 

 "their conception of each occurrence at the time, and (2) as 

 "modifying their subsequent remembrance of it.-* And (3), in 

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

 " is the amount of allowance which we ought to make for the 

 "accretion of other still less trustworthy narratives around the 

 " original nucleus ? " 



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 "subjective" 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 " supernatural " (using 

 that term in its generally understood sense, without attempting a 

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

 " prepossession " 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 



