ical organization, and you have so far broken down
the barriers of materialism that there should not be the slightest
objection to granting the persistence of consciousness of any sort--with
the probability that it _would_ so persist. Cosmic Law could hardly act
otherwise.

(4) I know well enough that psychic investigation is, at present at
least, in a chaotic and uncertain condition, and that little beyond
uncertainty and discouragement has been attained in the past. As Mr. F.
C. Constable remarked:

"Many of us who have devoted our lives to psychical research can
but have moments of profound depression. We _feel_ our labours
cannot be in vain, but we are faced by such a complexity of fraud,
deliberate and unconscious, mal-observation, denial of scientific
restrictions, and ignorance of what is trustworthy in evidence and
deduction, that at times our search for truth seems as futile as
the search of past alchemists for the philosopher's stone."

And even more forcibly Count Aksakof states the objections which have
occurred to him:

"As years went by, the weak points of spiritualism became more
evident and more numerous. The insignificance of the
communications, the poverty of their intellectual content, and
finally the fraud, etc.--in short, a host of doubts, objections,
and aberrations of every kind--greatly increased the difficulties
of the problem. Such impressions were well calculated to discourage
one, if, on the other hand, we had not at our disposal a series of
indisputable facts." (_Animism and Spiritism._)

While this is doubtless true, it is nevertheless a fact that psychical
research is, as yet, in its infancy; and it is in a sense unfair to
judge the results by the few years of progress which have been possible
in the past. For while other sciences--physics, chemistry, anatomy--are
more than two thousand years old, psychical research is but forty years
old--some of the original founders of the S.P.R. being still alive and
actively engaged in the work! It is, then, somewhat premature to
pronounce upon the ultimate outcome of the investigation, and we must
wait for at least a hundred years or so before it will be possible to
see whether or not the subject has proved its claims and justified
itself in the eyes of the world. And this view of the case is further
supported by the fact that, in so exact a science as cytology, but
litt