native and altogether theoretic. As a student of
psychology now for many years, it has appealed to me, however, as the
only possible hypothesis that gives any plausible explanation of the
curious conversions which so inevitably result from sympathetic
attempts at investigation of the possibility of spirit interference in
mundane affairs.

How far this persuasion of spiritual interference in ordinary human
affairs has gone, will not be realized except by those who are
familiar with some of the literature which has been made in the last
twenty years on the subject of psychical research. Not long since, a
distinguished European professor of physical science went so far as to
warn people of the dangers there might be in dismissing the opinion
that other intelligences than those of men could interfere for the
abrogation of certain natural laws. This may be scoffed at as the
height of credulity, and may be received in sceptical mood by those
who refuse to look into such matters, because they know _a priori_
that they _cannot be true!_ It is hard, however, to differentiate the
attitude of mind of such persons from that which Galileo deprecated so
much, in that letter of complaint to Kepler, in which he said so
bitterly that they refused to look through his telescope and
demolished, as they thought, his observations by logical conclusions
from what they knew already. It is to be remarked that it was not
ecclesiastics of whom he was talking at this time, but professors of
science at the University of {386} Pisa, who were quite as
unsympathetic towards certain of his astronomical discoveries as were
any of the ecclesiastics of his time.

Alfred Russell Wallace has summed up this matter in a well-known
chapter on psychic research, which he places among what he calls the
failures of A Wonderful Century--the nineteenth. While personally
viewing this matter from a very different standpoint to that from
which it is viewed by Mr. Wallace, I cannot help but think that the
position he occupies is much nearer the truth than the absolute
refusal to credit stories of supra-natural or ultra-natural, if not
supernatural interferences in human affairs. When Mr. Wallace has an
opinion he is likely to express it very forcibly, and he has done so
in this case. He does not hesitate to attribute a great many marvelous
happenings to practically the same forces as the medieval people
formulated for them, though they would disagree utterly in the
p