e limitations of investigation
of occult phenomena:

People of well-balanced judgment, whether learned or not,
are inclined to look askance upon those who have dealings
with the spirit world. Some believe that communication
between the living and dead is possible, but wicked.

Others, while their faith is firm that life continues after
death, hold, nevertheless, that the gulf between the two
worlds can never be recrossed by those who have once passed
over, and that no message can traverse its dark immensity.

Still others believe that death ends our existence utterly;
there is no future life, no world of spirits, and therefore
all phenomena purporting to be caused by the disembodied
dead necessarily originate in some other way.

None of these opinions is held by the sternly scientific
mind, like Dr. Osler's, for example. In his well-known
Ingersoll lecture that distinguished physician and graceful
man of letters comes to the conclusion that we do not and
never can know whether there is a future life or not.

There is absolutely no evidence looking either way, and
there never can be any such evidence. To his view and to all
the others one may easily find objections.

The belief that communication with disembodied souls is
wicked is a mere superstition derived from the ancient
Jewish laws against witchcraft. With them, as with all
primitive peoples, a witch was one who, like Glendower,
could call spirits from the vasty deep, and the reason for
discouraging the practise is obvious; it set up a dangerous
competition with the regular priesthood, and cut off their
revenues.

The Jewish priests had a prescribed orthodox method of
consulting spirits, which contributed handsomely to their
income, and it was scarcely to be expected that they would
tolerate the piratical competition of hideous old women like
the Witch of Endor.

Hence that command in the law of Moses, "Thou shalt not
suffer a witch to live," which has been the cause of so much
cruelty and bloodshed.

Science and Experience.

When science says a thing cannot be done, experience proves
that she speaks prematurely almost always. We may as yet
have no evidence of the reality of a future life, but that
by no means demonstrates that we never shall have such
evidence.

A century ago