286 HAS SCIENCE DISCOVERED GOD? 



usually so readily put into the mouth of a single spirit; 

 and the subconscious is not so greatly in command so 

 that there is less necessity felt for an explanation at 

 all costs and less possibility of the spiritoid mas- 

 querade. 



It will be noted that all this hypothesis is equally 

 valid whether the impersonated "communicator" be 

 actually alive or actually dead. The error of Imper- 

 sonating a living man as dead would occur only In 

 those cases where the facts not cognized include the 

 present status of this communicator. Inasmuch as the 

 cognitive faculty does not ever make anything ap- 

 proaching a complete canvass of the facts pertaining 

 to the sitter, this error would occur systematically. 

 The theory to which Its occurrence directs us Is gen- 

 eral and applies with full force to the entire body of 

 spiritoid cognitions. 



In one important sense for which I must spare a 

 word, this theory Is preferable to its spiritistic alterna- 

 tive. It departs less violently from existing scientific 

 doctrine. True, it pictures a human faculty for which 

 existing orthodox doctrine leaves no place. But the 

 spirit hypothesis pictures a survived human person- 

 ality for which existing scientific orthodoxy can find no 

 place, for whose real existence It can find no locus and 

 no excuse. This Is much worse. 



We have, then. In adequate outline, a self-consistent 

 non-spiritistic theory under which all the cognitive 

 phenomena of all types of mediums and psychics can 

 be rationalized, whatever their prima fades. It Is 

 clear that they cannot all be rationalized under a spirit- 

 istic hypothesis; the balanced spiritist admits this to- 



