884 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. III. No. 77. 



edge comes by the use of our eyes and ears 

 and other senses. And we must remember 

 also that this undermining of the strength 

 of a presumption by reiterated report of 

 facts to tlie contrary does not logically re- 

 quire that the facts in question should all 

 be well proved. A lot of rumors in the air 

 against a business man's credit, though 

 they might all be vague, and no one of 

 them amount to proof that he is unsound, 

 would certainly weaken the presumption of 

 his soundness. And all the more would 

 they have this effect if they formed what 

 our lamented Gurney called a faggot and 

 not a chain, that is, if they were independ- 

 ent of each other, and came from dilferent 

 quarters. Now our evidence for telepathy, 

 weak and strong, taken just as it comes, 

 forms a faggot and not a chain. No one 

 item cites the content of another item as 

 part of its own proof. But, taken together, 

 the items have a certain general consistency ; 

 there is a method in their madness, so to 

 speak. So each of them adds presumptive 

 value to the lot ; and cumulatively, as no 

 candid mind can fail to see, they subtract 

 presumptive force from the orthodox belief 

 that there can be nothing in any one's in- 

 tellect that has not come in through ordi- 

 nary experiences of sense. 



But it is a miserable thing for a question 

 of truth to be confined to mere presumption 

 and counter-presumption, with no decisive 

 thunderbolt of fact to clear the baffling 

 darkness. And sooth to say, in talking so 

 much of the merely presuniption-weakening 

 value of our records, I have been wilfully 

 taking the point of view of the so-called 

 ' rigorously scientific ' disbeliever, and mak- 

 ing an ad hominem plea. My own point of 

 view is diiferent. For me the thunderbolt 

 has fallen, and the orthodox belief has not 

 merely had its presumption weakened, but 

 the truth itself of the belief is decisively 

 overthrown. If you will let me use the 

 language of the professional logic shop, a 



universal proposition can be made untrue 

 by a particular instance. If you wish to 

 upset the law that all crows are black, you 

 mustn't seek to show that no .crows are ; it 

 is enough if you prove one single crow to be 

 white. My own white crow is Mrs. Piper. 

 In the trances of this medium, I cannot re- 

 sist the conviction that knowledge appears 

 which she has never gained by the ordinary 

 waking use of her eyes and ears and wits. 

 What the source of this knowledge may be 

 I know not, and have not the glimmer of an 

 explanatory suggestion to make ; but from 

 admitting the fact of such knowledge, I can 

 see no escape. So when I turn to the rest 

 of our evidence, ghosts and all, I cannot 

 carry with me the irreversibly negative bias 

 of the rigorously scientific mind, with its 

 presumption as to what the true order of 

 nature ought to be. I feel as if, though the 

 evidence be flimsy in spots, it may never- 

 theless collectively carry heavy weight. 

 The rigorously scientific mind may, in 

 truth, easily overreach itself. Science 

 means, first of all, a certain dispassionate 

 method. To suppose that it means a cer- 

 tain set of results that one should pin one's 

 faith upon and hug forever is sadly to mis- 

 take its genius, and degrades the scientific 

 body to the status of a sect. 



But I am devoting too many words to 

 scientific logic, and too few to my review of 

 our career. In the question of physical 

 mediumship, we have left matters as baffling 

 as we found them, neither more nor less. 

 For if, on the one hand, we have brought 

 out new documents concerning the physical 

 miracles of Stainton Moses, on the other 

 hand we have, by the Hodgsou-Davey ex- 

 periments, and the Paladino episode, very 

 largely increased the probability that testi- 

 mony baaed on certain sorts of observation 

 may be quite valueless as proof. Eusapia 

 Paladino has been to us both a warning and 

 an encouragement : an encouragement to 

 pursue unwaveringly the rigorous method 



