J. MALCOLM BIRD 279 



watch) as you would hope to get through direct mes- 

 sage medlumship. 



But where the message and the clairvoyant reading 

 were got under striking prima facies of spirit action, 

 there is no such prima facies here. Instead the prima 

 facies is quite opposed to a spiritistic interpretation, 

 which would put your grandfather in metaphorical 

 chains to the watch, like Aladdin to the lamp. The 

 complications that would ensue if we took several of 

 his former possessions simultaneously to several psy- 

 chometrists are only the more obvious and amusing 

 barriers to believing this; the idea outlaws itself. The 

 process of psychometry carries with it no spiritoid 

 prima facies whatever and any attempt to inflict a 

 spiritistic philosophy upon it is absurd. 



Nevertheless, there is a large common denomi- 

 nator between psychometry and spirit mediumship. 

 In both, an operator whose mental state is plainly one 

 of auto-hypnosis and submergence of the conscious 

 effects cognitions for which no explanation in terms of 

 ordinary scientific dogma is available. Shall we re- 

 gard this parallelism as essential; or shall we dismiss 

 it as an incident, and fix our attention on the prima 

 facie difference as the vital factor? 



Scientific method has but one possible answer here. 

 Economy of hypothesis Is a scientific fetish. It is not 

 true that two different agencies may never produce 

 substantially identical results. It is however true that 

 when substantially Identical effects are produced, we 

 usually find the agencies to be Identical, or at worst, 

 different aspects of a larger common cause. It is true, 

 moreover, that no scientific mind can submit to the 



