IS IT ESTABLISHED BY GHOSTS ? T,S I 



rhetoric, which would persuade us of the superior 

 dignity of unquahfied negation. But if we preserve 

 an attitude of critical moderation, there is little fear 

 that reason will so far play us false as to commit us 

 to any extravagant or unacceptable conclusions. 



§ 3. But before we consider what reasons may 

 be urged for or against the belief in immortality, 

 we must examine with what reason that belief is 

 sometimes based upon facts which would render all 

 argument superfluous by directly establishing the 

 existence of a future life. 



It is one of the chief advantages of the assertors 

 of a future life that they can bring forward direct 

 evidence in its favour, whereas the doubts of their 

 opponents must be inferential, and there can be 

 no such thino^ as direct evidence agfainst it. The 

 ghost of Lord Lyttelton, in the famous story, might 

 admonish his friend that his doubts were unfounded, 

 but not even an Irishman could return to us with 

 the assurance that there was no future life. If, 

 therefore, the allegations that the dead do return 

 are worthy of belief, if we can regard the tales of 

 ghosts and spirits as scientifically adequate, they 

 evidently settle the question. 



Nor is there anything intrinsically absurd or Im- 

 possible about this conception, or any reason to 

 reject such stories, because of our preconceived 

 notions, or on the orround of a misuse of the word 

 supernatural. It Is useless to assert that the super- 

 natural is impossible, for if these stories are true, 

 the facts to which they testify ipso facto cease to be 

 supernatural. The inference to be drawn from these 

 phenomena would simply be that we were mistaken 

 In thinking that the change of death produced an 

 absolute severance between us and the dead, and 



