MAN'S DEVOTION 121 



the craft they landed, took these articles on shore, 

 and left the island without taking these articles 

 with them. What a complex and highly imagina- 

 tive assumption this is to explain the observed 

 situation! Yet there is not a sane person living 

 who would doubt the absolute correspondence 

 between the unknown facts as they occurred and 

 the purely imaginative assumption! And why? 

 Because, firstly, there exists only accord, and no 

 discord, between the known and ascertainable facts 

 in the case and the assumed imaginative situation ; 

 secondly, the conditions could not be rationally 

 explained in any other way; thirdly, the condi- 

 tions, as thus explained, are in accord with the 

 totality of average, normal, human experience, and 

 not in discord with any part of it. Of this kind is 

 the strongest possible proof of verity, and this kind 

 applies to the imaginative assumption made in 

 the five paragraphs referred to. Furthermore, as 

 demonstrated in Chapter IX, sympathy for fellow- 

 creatures of the same race is one of the " true human 

 race characteristics," and this would produce such 

 a situation and such conduct as has been depicted 

 in those paragraphs. 



But some one may reply, the possibility of human 

 beings bringing those articles to the island in the 

 manner stated and leaving them there can be 

 corroborated by experiment. Surely! Would any 

 sane person require performance of the experiment 

 before admitting the possibility ? And it is possible, 



