tion of impure agnosticism take Hume's _a priori_ argument
against miracles, leading on to the analogous case of the attitude of
scientific men towards modern spiritualism. Notwithstanding that they
have the close analogy of mesmerism as an object-lesson to warn them,
scientific men as a class are here quite as dogmatic as the straightest
sect of theologians. I may give examples which can cause no offence,
inasmuch as the men in question have themselves made the facts public,
viz. ---- refusing to go to [a famous spiritualist]; ---- refusing to
try ---- in thought-reading[42]. These men all _professed_ to be
agnostics at the very time when thus so egregiously violating their
philosophy by their conduct.

Of course I do not mean to say that, even to a pure agnostic, reason
should not be guided in part by antecedent presumption--e.g. in ordinary
life, the _prima facie_ case, motive, &c., counts for evidence in a
court of law--and where there is a strong antecedent improbability a
proportionately greater weight of evidence _a posteriori_ is needed to
counterbalance it: so that, e.g. better evidence would be needed to
convict the Archbishop of Canterbury than a vagabond of pocket-picking.
And so it is with speculative philosophy. But in both cases our only
guide is known analogy; therefore, the further we are removed from
possible experience--i.e. the more remote from experience the sphere
contemplated--the less value attaches to antecedent presumptions[43].
_Maximum_ remoteness from possible experience is reached in the sphere
of the final mystery of things with which religion has to do; so that
here all presumption has faded away into a vanishing point, and pure
agnosticism is our only rational attitude. In other words, here we
should all alike be pure agnostics as far as reason is concerned; and,
if any of us are to attain to any information, it can only be by means
of some super-added faculty of our minds. The questions as to whether
there are any such super-added faculties; if so, whether they ever
appear to have been acted upon from without; if they have, in what
manner they have; what is their report; how far they are trustworthy in
that report, and so on--these are the questions with which this treatise
is to be mainly concerned.

My own attitude may be here stated. I do not claim any [religious]
certainty of an intuitive kind myself; but am nevertheless able to
investigate the abstract logic of the matter. And, al