J. MALCOLM BIRD 281 



the tendency to regard their parallelisms as funda- 

 mental and their diversions as not is strengthened. 



We may then fairly say that we have good reason 

 to question the spiritoid prima facies. Have we any- 

 thing to offer in its place? Most certainly we have. 

 If we reason from the psychometrical prima facies, 

 we can readily formulate an alternative hypothesis. 

 We must remember that we speak in terms of broad 

 general philosophy, disclaiming all responsibility for 

 mechanistic details. In this sense, it is clear that what 

 psychometry needs for its rationalization is the fol- 

 lowing picture : 



We postulate a non-sensory cognition of some sort, 

 which works as a faculty of the operator himself, in 

 his own right. In its workings it transcends the ordi- 

 nary limitations of time and space, and equally it tran- 

 scends the limitations imposed upon hypothesis by 

 the present state of scientific knowledge. The com- 

 plete absence of conscious knowledge of how it works 

 or even of conscious knowledge that it is working 

 stamps it as a faculty of the subconscious mind-levels; 

 which checks up prettily with the observed fact that 

 the operator has to get more or less away from his 

 conscious self before the faculty will work at all. Evi- 

 dently the object which we present to the psychom- 

 etrist serves as a sort of catalyzer or psychic link: 

 a means whereby the psychical cognitive faculty is 

 first put into action, and then enabled to make contact 

 with facts pertaining to the object instead of ranging 

 idly over the entire universe of facts external to the 

 operator. 



All this is of course pure hypothesis but it meets the 

 demands of the situation. When phenomena occur for 



