in the conduct of life. But every one will admit that our
experience is not infinite, and that our capacity of conception
is not coextensive with the possibilities of existence. It is not
only possible, but in the very highest degree probable, that
there are many things in heaven, if not on earth, which are
undreamed of in our philosophy. Since our ability to conceive
anything is limited by the extent of our experience, and since
human experience is very far from being infinite, it follows that
there may be, and in all probability is, an immense region of
existence in every way as real as the region which we know, yet
concerning which we cannot form the faintest rudiment of a
conception. Any hypothesis relating to such a region of existence
is not only not disproved by the total failure of evidence in its
favour, but the total failure of evidence does not raise even the
slightest prima facie presumption against its validity.

These considerations apply with great force to the hypothesis of
an unseen world in which psychical phenomena persist in the
absence of material conditions. It is true, on the one hand, that
we can bring up no scientific evidence in support of such an
hypothesis. But on the other hand it is equally true that in the
very nature of things no such evidence could be expected to be
forthcoming: even were there such evidence in abundance, it could
not be accessible to us. The existence of a single soul, or
congeries of psychical phenomena, unaccompanied by a material
body, would be evidence sufficient to demonstrate the hypothesis.
But in the nature of things, even were there a million such souls
round about us, we could not become aware of the existence of one
of them, for we have no organ or faculty for the perception of
soul apart from the material structure and activities in which it