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 FRANK PODMOBE, Stiidies in Psychical Research. 105 treatment than Mr. Podmore accords to it. It is, after all, largely the result of the social neglect to examine the facts, of the social acquiescence in conditions which provoke deception and render it easy. And if we regard the spiritists, as Mr. Podmore rightly points out they should be regarded, not as a scientific but as a religious sect, their credulity will not appear excessive. On the contrary, it will be seen that they must absorb an unusual amount of criticism in their faith. For its believers, almost without ex- ception, are converts, i.e., were originally disbelievers, and con- vinced themselves by evidence which seemed to them sufficient. And, moreover, they were convinced not by abstract argument, but by concrete and somewhat coarsely material facts which sufficiently explains the philosophic defects in their creed noted by Mr. Podmore. But once a spiritist is thoroughly convinced by what he believes to be irrefragable fact, his critical vigilance towards similar phenomena necessarily relaxes. And why should it not ? Does not the same rule hold good elsewhere ? If I am once convinced of the bond fide performance of a scientific ex- periment, I am not so much interested in its repetition, and so more easily imposed on by fraudulent imitations. Eumour has it that this principle is sometimes illustrated also by illegitimate precautions taken to secure the success of scientific experiments Jbefore popular audiences. At least there is a tale of a famous physicist who used to inflame his fire-sticks by friction not with- out the surreptitious aid of a little phosphorus. Yet had I been a spectator at such an exhibition I should be a fool, not if I .ascribed the fraud to the conditions of the performance, but if I inferred that friction could not produce fire. And the convinced spiritist may look at the frauds of the mediums in much the same way. Nor is he unreasonable from his own point of view. But his point of view is not that of science, and such tainted evidence is rightly considered to have no efficacy in producing a belief that lias yet to be established. If the spiritists are indifferent to proselytism that is their own concern, but they are not necessarily ^beyond the pale of human reason. Nor, again, is their theory as such logically inadmissible. It is no doubt often crudely stated by people whose accounts would state any theory crudely, and, as Mr. Kipling says, would ' dis- credit the creation '. It is no doubt of exceeding antiquity, and so susceptible of being construed as "an instinctive utterance of primitive animism " (p. 18). But the opposition to these super- normal phenomena is equally antique, and it might as reasonably be suggested that the attitude of modern science only continues the instinctive dislike which everywhere has led to the prohibition of 'sorcery,' to the burning of ' witches,' and to the ascription of the phenomena generally to the agency of the devil. As Mr. Lang so well points out, the coincidences in the details of super- stitions cannot be explained by tradition or collusion. The truth is that the ' spirit ' theory rests upon spontaneous and persistent