May 6, 1898.] 



SCIENGE. 



641 



dium,' justifies me in making some remarks of 

 my own in comment on your remarks upon Mr. 

 Hodgson's report of her case. Any hearing for 

 such phenomena is so hard to get from scien- 

 tific readers that one who believes them worthy 

 of careful study is in duty bound to resent such 

 contemptuous pviblic notice of them in high 

 quarters as would still further encourage the 

 fashion of their neglect. 



I say any hearing ; I dou't say any fair hear- 

 ing. Still less do I speak of fair treatment in 

 the broad meaning of the term. The scientific 

 mind is by the pressure of professional opinion 

 painfully drilled to fairness and logic in discuss- 

 ing orthodox phenomena. But in such mere 

 matters of superstition as a medium's trances it 

 feels so confident of impunity and indulgence 

 whatever it may say, provided it be only con- 

 temptuous enough, that it fairly revels in the un- 

 trained barbarians' arsenal of logical weapons, 

 including all the various sophisms enumerated 

 in the books. 



Your own comments seem to me an excel- 

 lent illustration of this fact. If one wishes to 

 refute a man who asserts that some A's are B's, 

 the ordinary rule of logic is that one must not 

 show that some other A's are not B's — one must 

 show him either that those first A's themselves 

 are not B's, or else that no A possibly can be a 

 B. Now Mr. Hodgson comes forward asserting 

 that many of Mrs. Piper's trances show super- 

 natural knowledge. You thereupon pick out 

 from his report five instances in which they 

 showed nothing of the kind. You thereupon 

 wittily remark, ' We have piped into you and 

 ye have not danced,' and you sign your name 

 with an air of finality, as if nothing more in the 

 way of refutation were needful and as if what 

 earlier in the article you call ' the trivial char- 

 acter of the evidence * * * * taken under the 

 wing of the Society ' were now sufiiciently dis- 

 played. 



If, my dear sir, you were teaching Logic to a 

 class of students, should you, or should you 

 not, consider this a good instance by which to 

 illustrate the style of reasoning termed ' irrele- 

 vant conclusion,' or ignoratio elenchi, in the 

 chapter on fallacies? I myself think it an extra- 

 ordinarily perfect instance. 



And what name should you assign to the fal- 



lacy by which you quote one of those five 

 sitters as saying that he himself got nothing 

 from the medium ' but a few preposterous com- 

 pliments,' whilst you leave unquoted the larger 

 part of his report, relating the inexplicable 

 knowledge which the medium showed of the 

 family affairs of his wife, who accompanied him 

 to the sitting? I am not sure that the logic 

 books contain any technical name for the fal- 

 lacy here, but in legal language it is sometimes 

 called suppressio veri, sometimes something still 

 less polite. At any rate, you will admit on re- 

 flection that to use the conclusion of that sit- 

 ter's report alone, as you did, was to influence 

 your readers' minds in an unfair way. 



I am sure that you have committed these 

 fallacies with the best of scientific consciences. 

 They are fallacies into which, of course, you 

 would have been in no possible danger of falling 

 in any other sort of matter than this. In our 

 dealings with the insane the usual moral rules 

 don't apply. Mediums are scientific outlaws, 

 and their defendants are quasi-insane. Any 

 stick is good enough to beat dogs of that stripe 

 with. So in perfect innocence you permitted 

 yourself the liberties I point out. 



Please observe that I am saying nothing of 

 the merits of the case, but only of the merits of 

 your forms of controversy which, alas, are 

 typical. The case surely deserves opposition 

 more powerful from the logical point of view 

 than your remarks ; and I beg such readers of 

 Science as care to form a reasonable opinion to 

 seek the materials for it in the Proceedings of the 

 Society for Psychical Research, Part XXXIII. 

 (where they will find a candid report based on 

 500 sittings since the last report was made), 

 rather than in the five little negative instances 

 which you so triumphantly cull out and quote. 

 Truly yours, 



William James. 



My note in Science was not 'editorial,' but 

 was placed in that department of the Journal 

 for which editors take the least responsibility. 

 I gave my individual opinion. Professor James 

 gives his, and I fear that our disagreement is 

 hopeless. I could not quote the 600 pages 

 compiled by Dr. Hodgson, but I gave the con- 

 cluding sentences written by all the men of 



