urposes attributed to these events. Mr. Wallace says:

"The still more extraordinary phenomena--veridical hallucinations,
warnings, detailed predictions of future events, phantoms, voices or
knockings, visible or audible to numerous individuals, bell-ringing,
the playing on musical instruments, stone-throwing and various
movements of solid bodies, all without human contact or any
discoverable physical cause, still occur among us as they have
occurred in all ages. These are now being investigated, and slowly
but surely are proved to be realities, although the majority of
scientific men and of writers for the press still ignore the
cumulative evidence and ridicule the inquirers. These phenomena
being comparatively rare, are as yet known to but a limited number
of persons; but the evidence for their reality is {387} also very
extensive, and it is absolutely certain that during the coming
century they too will be accepted as realities by all impartial
students and by the majority of educated men and women."

Mr. Wallace has insisted further on the utterly unscientific position
of many of those who refuse to look into the evidence for these
phenomena, so plainly beyond the power of the ordinary forces of
nature as we know them, or of the human intelligences in the body,
that are immediately around us. He deprecates, as does Galileo, the
method by which this subject has been kept from receiving its due meed
of attention. He points out that it is because of intellectual
intolerance that this subject has been relegated to the background of
scientific attention. He even contends that a great lesson is to be
learned from this neglect, and one which will help men to free
themselves from that burden of overconservatism which, much more than
religion or theology, has impeded the progress of knowledge and the
advance of science. He says:

"The great lesson to be learnt from our review of this subject is,
distrust of all _a priori_ judgments as to facts; for the whole
history of the progress of human knowledge, and especially of that
department of knowledge now known as psychical research, renders it
certain that whenever the scientific men or popular teachers of any
age have denied, on _a priori_ grounds of impossibility or opposition
to the 'laws of nature,' the facts observed and recorded by numerous
investigators of average honesty and intelligence, these deniers
have always been