Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/605

Rh other choice in regard to these observations: I prefer the authority of Science to the authority of a few of her representatives, however honorable, who have, in this instance, made observations in a province which lies far from the sphere of their own special studies.

Here I might conclude, passing silently over the hopes which you attach to the reality of the spiritualistic phenomena. But your inferences, philosophical, ethical, and religious, in relation to the subject, appear to me, as I have already observed, so important that they can not be without influence upon our attitude toward the entire question. Permit me, therefore, to betake myself for the moment to your own standpoint. I will assume, as you do, that the reality of the phenomena is no longer to be doubted. What follows from this for our general view of the world, for our judgment of the past and of the future? What effect does it have upon our moral and religious sentiment?

For the purpose of answering these questions, you discuss, in the first place, the hypotheses which we can form concerning the nature of the spiritualistic phenomena. There are three such hypotheses. We can possibly see in the phenomena—1. Expressions of natural forces; 2. Operations of intelligent beings, who belong to a space of four dimensions, and who, therefore, possess the power alternately to enter, in their movements, our space of three dimensions, and to vanish from the same into the to us inaccessible fourth dimension; 3. Manifestations of so-called spirits or ghosts. I prefer the latter term, because, according to philosophical usage, we understand by a spirit (Geist) an immaterial being, while "the spirits" occasionally undergo materialization, a property which is designated, unambiguously only, by the German word "Gespenst"(ghost, apparition). Like all who have engaged themselves with the subject, you reject the first hypothesis, since the phenomena point to arbitrary actions of intelligent beings; only the last two hypotheses, therefore, remain for us to consider.

Here, respected sir, you believe yourself compelled to decide against the hypothesis of intelligent beings of four dimensions and for the hypothesis of ghosts. I will not follow you in your argument, based upon the Kantian theory of knowledge; I would, however, beg to call your attention to the fact that there is no essential difference between the two hypotheses. By a ghost we understand an intelligent being that can suddenly appear in the world of our senses and as suddenly disappear from it again, leaving no traces behind, but we understand precisely the same by an intelligent being of four dimensions. Modern mathematics, as you very well know, has advanced in its speculations astonishingly far, and it has thereby gained the power to define with exactness numerous conceptions, for the designation of which we had