292 HAS SCIENCE DISCOVERED GOD? 



abnormal. Abnormality will be severely defined in 

 accordance with the following argument: Paderewski, 

 brilliant example of musical genius, is hypernormal but 

 not abnormal. The abnormal person, in the musical 

 sense, is the one who has music left out of his make-up; 

 who, if you strike the note C, then G, cannot recog- 

 nize that there is a difference in pitch. On this basis, 

 we cannot regard the possessor of psychical cognitive 

 faculties as abnormal; he can only be looked upon as 

 hypernormal, as possessing something which in some 

 degree we all possess. In him the faculty is exagger- 

 ated and in most of us it is so minimized as to rise to 

 the surface — we may not say never, we must content 

 ourselves with saying seldom. If this viewpoint is not 

 valid, psychology is reduced to confusion; if it is valid, 

 the cognitions which are made by psychically gifted 

 persons more or less as a matter of routine, should 

 occur spontaneously, every once in a great while, 

 through normal persons. Psychical research presents 

 a variety of evidence indicating that they do just this; 

 that even when awake many of us are occasionally 

 susceptible to psychic cognition, and that when we are 

 asleep, with consciousness suspended and the subcon- 

 scious holding the gate, in the closest approach to 

 auto-hypnosis and submergence of personality that a 

 normal person normally attains, we are particularly 

 liable to a considerable concentration of psychical cog- 

 nitions, particularly of the future. 



I think it rather probable that ultimately we shall 

 decide that some of the phenomena of psychical re- 

 search are best covered by a spiritistic hypothesis, 

 which must then subsist side-by-side with the psycho- 

 logical one to which I have given most of my space. 



