J. MALCOLM BIRD 287 



day, and clings to a duality of interpretation. Under 

 this, the fraction of the phenomena which cannot con- 

 veniently be attributed to spirits at all or cannot with 

 dignity be ascribed to spirits for whom you would 

 wish to hold any esteem, is charged off to a non- 

 spiritistic species of supernormal psychical cognition 

 by the medium himself — ^just the thing we have been 

 driving toward here. This is combined, by the apolo- 

 getic spiritist himself, with the same notion of sub- 

 conscious masquerade by the operator as a spirit that 

 we have here set forth. Then the remaining fraction 

 of the phenomena is reserved for the spirits, in actual 

 truth. 



This double scheme is contrary to the principle of 

 economy of hypothesis and we cannot accept it with- 

 out a lot of argument. Nevertheless it is not contrary 

 to the whole nature of things and we must not reject 

 it offhand. There are numerous arguments, some ex- 

 tremely cogent, which make it difficult to escape the 

 conclusion that in some of our mediumistic phenomena 

 the spirits of the dead are involved just as they claim 

 to be. I omit these arguments here only because they 

 are not a part of my central theme. 



In common, I believe, with all other experienced 

 psychical researchers, I am persuaded to the point of 

 complete certainty that if we must have a single ex- 

 planation for all the cognitive phenomena in our field, 

 this will of necessity be a non-spiritistic one. But I 

 am far from persuaded that we must have a single 

 scheme. My thesis to this point is not directed against 

 the spirit hypothesis per se, but merely against its uni- 

 versal applicability; and against the propagandist no- 

 tion that it is the only theory that makes any sense or 



