Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/211

No. 2.] hungry cat. Mr. Schiller thinks that I would scorn an appeal to the lower animals if it were a question of establishing the objectivity of an apparition (p. 538). I certainly should not scorn the appeal, if Mr. Schiller can give me satisfactory evidence that any real animal can smell apparitions and is in the habit of eating them with relish. There is a tale of a man who said he was taking a mongoose to eat up the snakes seen by a victim of delirium tremens; but, on being pressed, he admitted that the mongoose was not "real" any more than the snakes.

Mr. Schiller takes occasion to bring in an argument of the kind which is a favorite with people who are trying to wriggle themselves into a belief in discredited superstitions under the guise of scientific caution. "We act quite inconsistently," he says, (p. 539) "in sometimes submitting to the superior delicacy of the expert's senses, and sometimes rejecting it. A room full of unmusical or inartistic people would hardly dispute about tones or colors with a single musician or painter, but an assembly of non-sensitives would probably deny that Macbeth saw a ghost." They need not deny that Macbeth "saw" a ghost; they would if sensible, though "non-sensitive" persons conclude that if he really did, his nerves were in an unhealthy condition. The sensitiveness to musical sounds or to colors differs only in degree among different human beings not deprived of hearing and sight – although the difference may range from a very high degree of sensibility to almost complete absence of it. But we do not find that whilst one of the company sees a ghost distinctly, some of the others see it dimly, and others again not at all, or only when they put up their eyeglasses. The "expert" can have the reality of his special experiences tested by their conformity with the other experiences of other normal persons, e.g., the professing connoisseur in wines or teas can have numbered samples submitted to him without being told where they were grown or what they cost. The expert is a different sort of person from the "sensitive" whose nerves are deranged by too much spirit-rapping or spirit-drinking.

"The third criterion [i.e., the harmony of present and past experiences]," Mr. Schiller precedes (p. 539), "at first seems more valuable – until we recollect that every new fact and every new experience is in some degree out of harmony with and contradictory of our previous experience." No: contradictory of our previous interpretation of our experience, perhaps; but that is a very different thing. Mr. Schiller carries this confusion between genuine experi-