Page:Saints or Spirits, Agnes Repplier, 1920.pdf/7

1920.] with their equally distinguished friends. It was said that Gladstone, Disraeli, Victor Hugo, and even Cardinal Manning, appeared at this bureau, while Dickens, a bustling and clamorous ghost, could not be kept away. On earth these brilliant and versatile minds acquired with every year fresh ideas and increased knowledge; but, stranded by death in a stagnant land, they had apparently not taken one intellectual step. After the death of Professor Lombroso (an ardent Spiritist), in October, 1909, Signor Guglielmo Emmanuel visited London and Julia's Bureau, hoping to receive from his dead colleague some evidence of survival. What was his amazement to discover that, in the two intervening months, Lombroso had, indeed, learned the English language—hitherto unknown—but had forgotten the Italian of his lifetime.

Professor Hyslop unhesitatingly asserts that Spiritism speaks in the name of science. "It intends that its belief shall have the same credentials as Copernican astronomy, Newtonian gravitation, and Darwinian evolution. It is not uncertain in its sound." Yet, so far, the standard of evidence is low; and the investigatory volumes which are published in swift succession reiterate for the most part unsupported claims. There is not sufficient allowance made for the influence of that strange subconscious self of which we are just beginning to take cognizance. And for that radical weakness of the human mind, credulity, there is no allowance made at all. That people see what they come prepared to see, and hear what they come prepared to hear, and believe what they come prepared to believe, is a truth as old as humanity. Another truth, less taken into account, is that credulity strengthens with every indulgence. It becomes a habit of mind. The man who accepts insufficient evidence once or twice begins to lose his power of resistance. The walls of his mind give way.

This is what has befallen Sir Oliver Lodge. A scientist, trained in accurate thinking, and accustomed to sift evidence, he has little by little surrendered his intellect to a process of disintegration. He still clings to scientific term, and has a charming clarity of speech; but the scientific spirit has collapsed under the insidious influence of the unearthly. He is no longer a cold and cautious investigator, but rather resembles a grandfather telling fairy tale after fairy tale to please confiding grandchildren.