282 HAS SCIENCE DISCOVERED GOD? 



which no hypothesis exists we are at liberty to coin one. 

 Any one we coin is better than none at all; and of all 

 those we can coin, we retain the one that seems best 

 to serve. The present hypothesis evidently serves; 

 and if we now carry it back to the spiritoid medium- 

 ships, it suggests another extremely pertinent analogy. 

 Why may not the sitter for the spiritoid medium be 

 regarded as the direct equivalent of the psychometric 

 object: as the thing that galvanizes into action and 

 directs the course of the operator's cognitions? Under 

 the spiritistic interpretation he is just this; under a 

 non-spiritistic view he remains just this. 



We shall have more to say about the non-spiritistic 

 scheme of interpretation for psychical cognitions in 

 general which we have just advanced, and we shall 

 have a little to add to it. For the present, even if we 

 remain Inclined to favor the spiritistic view, we must 

 grant that we have found reasons for questioning it, 

 and a substitute to take its place. We do not know 

 just how effective the substitute will be when we seek 

 to apply it to the more intensely spiritoid phenomena; 

 we do not know how successful we shall be in meeting 

 the third requirement, that of explaining the spiritoid 

 prima facies away on a non-spiritistic basis. We turn 

 to this question, the direct means of attack being an- 

 other typical phenomenon. This time, because of the 

 crucial character of the situation and because I have 

 a single pertinent and brief and self-contained experi- 

 ence of my own that illustrates the point, I use this 

 illustration, taking it intact just as it occurred. 



The sitter was one even more demonstrably free 

 from all possible contact with the medium than is 

 usually the case. She did not now that the seance 



