they are new and strange, nor, on
the other hand, accept them hastily without sufficient proof.

On questionable points, which are decided by research and weight of
evidence, it would be well if it were widely understood that it is by no
means requisite for every man to form an Ay or Nay opinion. Let those who
have no leisure for a fair inquiry play a neutral part. There are hundreds
of subjects which we have never examined, nor ever could or can examine,
upon which we are all, nevertheless, expressing every day stubborn
opinions. We all have to acquire some measure of the philosophic mind, and
be content to retain a large army of thoughts, equipped each thought with
its crooked bayonet, a note of interrogation. In reasoning, also, when we
do reason, we have to remember fairly that "not proven" does not always
mean untrue. And in accepting matters on testimony, we must rigidly
preserve in view the fact, that, except upon gross objects of sense, very
few of us are qualified by training as observers. In drawing delicate
conclusions from the complex and most dimly comprehended operations of the
human frame observed in men and women, the sources of fallacy are very
numerous. To detect and acknowledge these, to get rid of them
experimentally, is very difficult, even to the most candid and enlightened
mind.

I have no faith in ghosts, according to the old sense of the word, and I
could grope with comfort through any amount of dark old rooms, or midnight
aisles, or over church-yards, between sunset and cock-crow. I can face a
spectre. Being at one time troubled with illusions, I have myself crushed
a hobgoblin by sitting on its lap. Nevertheless, I do believe that the
great mass of "ghost stories," of which the world is full, has not been
built entirely upon the inventions of the ignorant and superstitious. In
plain words, while I, of course, throw aside a million of idle fictions,
or exaggerated facts, I do believe in ghosts--or, rather, spectres--only I
do not believe them to be supernatural.

That, in certain states of the body, many of us in our waking hours
picture as vividly as we habitually do in dreams, and seem to see or hear
in fair reality that which is in our minds, is an old fact, and requires
no confirmation. An ignorant or superstitious man fallen into this state,
may find good reason to tell ghost stories to his neighbors. Disease, and
the debility preceding death, make people on their death-beds very liable