self-contradictory, though it may be impossible to support it by
any arguments drawn from the domain of human experience. Such is
the shape which it seems to me that, in the present state of
philosophy, the hypothesis of a future life must assume. We have
nothing to say to gross materialistic notions of ghosts and
bogies, and spirits that upset tables and whisper to ignorant
vulgar women the wonderful information that you once had an aunt
Susan. The unseen world imagined in our hypothesis is not
connected with the present material universe by any such
"invisible bonds" as would allow Bacon and Addison to come to
Boston and write the silliest twaddle in the most ungrammatical
English before a roomful of people who have never learned how to
test what they are pleased to call the "evidence of their
senses." Our hypothesis is expressly framed so as to exclude all
intercourse whatever between the unseen world of spirit
unconditioned by matter and the present world of spirit
conditioned by matter in which all our experiences have been
gathered. The hypothesis being framed in such a way, the question
is, What has philosophy to say to it? Can we, by searching our
experiences, find any reason for adopting such an hypothesis? Or,
on the other hand, supposing we can find no such reason, would
the total failure of experimental evidence justify us in
rejecting it?

The question is so important that I will restate it. I have
imagined a world made up of psychical phenomena, freed from the
material conditions under which alone we know such phenomena. Can
we adduce any proof of the possibility of such a world? Or if we
cannot, does our failure raise the slightest presumption that
such a world is impossible?