science, which after all is but a reassuring and conciliatory
espression of our ignorance. Today, thanks to the labours of the
Society for Psychical Research and a host of other seekers, we
are able to approach these phenomena as a whole with a certain
confidence. Leaving the realm of legend, of after-dinner stories,
old wives' tales, illusions and exaggerations, we find ourselves
at last on circumscribed but fairly safe ground. This does not
mean that there are no other supernatural phenomena besides those
collected in the publications of the society in question and in a
few of the more weighty reviews which have adopted the same
methods. Notwithstanding all their diligence, which for over
thirty years has been ransacking the obscure corners of our
planet, it is inevitable that a good many things escape their
notice, besides which the rigour of their investigations makes
them reject three fourths of those which are brought before them.
But we may say that the twenty-six volumes of the society is
Proceedings and the fifteen or sixteen volumes of its Journal,
together with the twenty-three annuals of the Annales des
Sciences Psychiques, to mention only this one periodical of
signal excellence, embrace for the moment the whole field of the
extraordinary and offer some instances of all the abnormal
manifestations of the inexplicable. We are henceforth able to
classify them, to divide and subdivide them into general, species
and varieties. This is not much, you may say; but it is thus that
every science begins and furthermore that many a one ends. We
have therefore sufficient evidence, facts that can scarcely be
disputed, to enable us to consult them profitably, to recognize
whither they lead, to form some idea of their general character
and perhaps to trace their sole source by gradually removing the
weeds and rubbish which for so many hundreds and thousands of