This brief sketch shows that science is confronted by certain facts,
which, in his time, Hume dismissed as incredible miracles, beneath the
contempt of the wise and learned. We also see that the stranger and rarer
phenomena which Hegel accepted as facts, and interwove with his general
philosophy, are still matters of dispute. Admitted by some men of science,
they are doubted by others; by others, again, are denied, while most of
the journalists and authors of cheap primers, who inspire popular
tradition, regard the phenomena as frauds or fables of superstition. But
it is plain that these phenomena, like the more ordinary facts of
hypnotism, _may_ finally be admitted by science. The scientific world
laughed, not so long ago, at Ogham inscriptions, meteorites, and at
palaeolithic weapons as impostures, or freaks of nature. Now nobody has
any doubt on these matters, and clairvoyance, thought-transference, and
telepathy may, not inconceivably, be as fortunate in the long run as
meteorites, or as the more usual phenomena of hypnotism.

It is only Lord Kelvin who now maintains, or lately maintained, that in
hypnotism there is nothing at all but fraud and malobservation. In years
to come it may be that only some similar belated voice will cry that in
thought-transference there is nothing but malobservation and fraud. At
present the serious attention and careful experiment needed for the
establishment of the facts are more common among French than among English
men of science. When published, these experiments, if they contain any
affirmative instances, are denounced as 'superstitious,' or criticized
after what we must charitably deem to be a very hasty glance, by the
guides of popular opinion. Examples of this method will be later quoted.
Meanwhile the disputes as to these alleged facts are noticed here, because
of their supposed relation to the Origin of Religion.

[Footnote 1: See Mr. Myers's paper on the 'Ancient Oracles,' in _Classical