

64 METHOD OF DISCOVERY. 



laws of Nature are the same when you are asleep as 

 when you are awake. 



■Well, now, you caunot at the moment answer that 

 kind of reasoning. You feel that your worthy friend 

 has you somewhat at a disadvantage. You will feel 

 perfectly convinced in your own mind, however, that 

 you are quite right, and you say to him, " My good 

 'friend, I can only be guided by the natural probabili- 

 ties of the case, and if you will be kind enough to stand 

 aside and permit me to pass, I will go and fetch the 

 police." Well, we will suppose that your journey is 

 successful, and that by good luck you meet with a 

 policeman ; that eventually the burglar is found with 

 your property ou his person, and the marks correspond 

 to his hand and to his boots. Probably any jury would 

 consider those facts a very good experimental verifica- 

 tion of your hypothesis, touching the cause of the ab- 

 normal phenomena observed in your parlour, and would 

 act accordingly. 



Now, in this supposititious case I have taken phe- 

 nomena of a very common kind, in order that you 

 might see what are the different steps in an ordinary 

 process of reasoning, if you will only take the trouble 

 to analyze it carefully. All the operations I have de- 

 scribed, you will see, are involved in the mind of any 

 man of sense in leading him to a conclusion as to the 

 course he should take in order to make good a robbery 

 and punish the offender. I say that you are led, in 

 that case, to your conclusion by exactly the same train 

 of reasoning as that which a man of science pursues 

 when he is endeavouring to discover the origin and 

 laws of the most occult phenomena. The process is, 

 and always must be, the same ; and precisely the same 



