spiritual world is a purely mental one the differences of opinion about it will be extraordinarily great. And we find them so in reports about it. Let us see the actual situation about the physical world among the living.

Two people can hardly describe a physical object in the same way. One will mark features that the other does not notice and the description as a whole will not be the same in the two instances. Then if one of the two is an educated person and the other ignorant the accounts will differ so much often as not to recognizably refer to the same thing. Then if the description in any respect depends on opinions about it instead of mere observation of facts in sense perception, the differences will vary out of all calculation. Suppose a common peasant is asked to describe the moon. Compare his account of it with that of a learned astronomer and we should not imagine that the two were describing the same thing unless they both used the word "Moon." The astronomer's account would be mixed up with his theories about it and would not be based on the limited observations of the peasant. His theories about it would be a part of the description. It is the same with every object of existence. The scientific man's account of it would be quite different from that of the common man.

Now when we allow for differences of sensory natures the two might differ radically from each other in describing what they see or feel. The color blind person will not see what the color perceiver can see. Training and education of the senses may enable one man to see what another cannot see, or even make the same person see at one time what he could not see at another. In each and all experience and various interpretations of sense perception may introduce opinions into our ideas of reality and instead of reporting what we see we will inevitably report the results of what

see.

we believe about an object rather than what we actually There is no uniformity of conception of the physical world and people's accounts of it vary as much as do the accounts of a spiritual world. But we do not sufficiently reckon with this circumstance in estimating the revelations of a spiritual world. We get into the habit of accepting without question what is reported of that world on the ground that it comes from a spirit, after we have removed our skepticism of their existence. We think spirits are to be believed because they are spirits and we do not practise critical ways as we would regarding the statements of the living. People who read fiction and the newspapers do it for amusement, not for instruction or study. We have been taught to believe that a spiritual existence is such that only the truth can come from its inhabitants. But there is no scientific reason for believing this of that world, while the facts we get tend to prove the very opposite, namely, that the statements are more unreliable than anything we obtain from the living about their own earthly existence.

Even if the transcendental world were like the physical world in its formal characteristics, or in all others save their non-sensory influence, we might expect the accounts of it to be imperfect and varying. We find it so with the living, as I have remarked. If its inhabitants are in any way abnormal in their mental life, the effect of that on their communications would have to be expected. I do not assert or assume that they are so, but we know so little opposed to this hypothesis, and so much in accord with it, that we have to allow for its possibility. But if it be a purely mental world, we may imagine that the differences in opinion about it would be as great as the differences of opinion among the living. Add to this the possibility that the cranks among the living still retain their ideas and identity and may be those who are more interested

in communicating than the better developed, and we can imagine what a chaos of ideas would be communicated about that life. Make it a dream life, for that type at least, and what unity could we expect in the accounts of different communicators. Then add to all this the fact that all communications are fragmentary and many are confused, and we again have a situation justifying the utmost reservations on the messages about that life. We might well nigh suppose it impossible to obtain any clear idea about it at all. But after centuries of work we might construct some intelligent conception of it, after the manner in which astronomers have outlined the stars and their relations, or the physiologists the human organism and its functions under the aid of the microscope and the scalpel. But each communication, possibly affected by all these limitations added to those of the psychic through which they come, and nothing can be accepted until verified, and that verification is a task whose magnitude can hardly be measured as yet.

All that we can do at present is to compare the casual results of personal experience in communications or alleged communications until we can ascertain a unity that is not the effect of collusion between the parties or of common education. When we have the means and the men to carry on experiments for a long period of time we may make some advance on the problem. But the messages cannot be accepted as an unquestioned revelation in any instance. The material has to be treated as we would any statement of a living man. It must be subjected to critical study and comparison for a long period of time and from various psychics. In ordinary life, our own experience is an effective guide for measuring statements about things. We have to determine the probabilities of any man's account of some distant region by its relation to our own experience, according as that is wide or narrow,

and we can safely assume sufficient common elements to estimate the probabilities to some extent.

But when it comes to estimating the probabilities of what is said about a spiritual world, the normal man has no criterion to go by in his ordinary experience. Only the few can even claim the right to speak, and what they say has to be discounted for the influence of the subconscious and the prejudices established by normal experience, for the differences of opinion on the part of communicators, for the possibility that the conditions of communicating are sufficiently abnormal to affect the messages, for the certainty that messages are fragmentary, for the fact that they are often confused, for the possibility that different levels of spiritual development may affect the nature of communications, and for other possible limitations, so that we have before us one of the most perplexing problems science ever attacked, when we try to ascertain what such a spiritual world is like. Critical habits of mind, far beyond those usual with the people most interested, will have to be cultivated and practised, if any intelligible conception of the matter be possible. There are common elements in many of the messages from different sources, but there are also differences which are intelligible on the theory that it is a mental world, but they do not yet make us able to estimate its nature with any assurance.

CHAPTER VIII

THE PROCESS OF COMMUNICATING

HE discussion of the difficulties of communicating with discarnate spirits implied some conception

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of what the process was, and especially in what was said of the pictographic method. But I did not go into detail in that matter. It is time to take up that subject more fully, more especially for removing misunderstandings about the whole problem as it appears to the psychic researcher.

There are few greater illusions about the spiritistic theory than those centering about the process of communicating and the nature of the evidence. We who have defended the hypothesis for twenty-five years have still to contend with perfectly inexcusable delusions about the whole problem. The only semblance of excuse is ignorance on the part of both the public and soi disant scientific men. We have gone on defending the theory with the belief that our facts could be appreciated, but the very elements of the problem seem to be unknown by those who claim to pass judgment on the subject. Too many people assume a supercilious and arrogant attitude whenever the evidence is mentioned, and, on the slightest interrogation of their reasons for it, they turn out to be literary and aesthetic objections to the triviality of the facts and the absence of great ethical and other revelations. This makes it necessary to take up the problem in detail and show such objectors that the subject is much more complex than they have suspected.