ded data as phenomena of
extra-telluric forces, expressed in physical terms. Therefore I regard
poltergeists as evil or false or discordant or absurd--names that we
give to various degrees or aspects of the unassimilable, or that which
resists attempts to organize, harmonize, systematize, or, in short, to
positivize--names that we give to our recognitions of the negative
state. I don't care to deny poltergeists, because I suspect that later,
when we're more enlightened, or when we widen the range of our
credulities, or take on more of that increase of ignorance that is
called knowledge, poltergeists may become assimilable. Then they'll be
as reasonable as trees. By reasonableness I mean that which assimilates
with a dominant force, or system, or a major body of thought--which is,
itself, of course, hypnosis and delusion--developing, however, in our
acceptance, to higher and higher approximations to realness. The
poltergeists are now evil or absurd to me, proportionately to their
present unassimilableness, compounded, however, with the factor of their
possible future assimilableness.

We lug in the poltergeists, because some of our own data, or alleged
data, merge away indistinguishably with data, or alleged data, of them:

Instances of stones that have been thrown, or that have fallen, upon a
small area, from an unseen and undetectable source.

London _Times_, April 27, 1872:

"From 4 o'clock, Thursday afternoon, until half past eleven, Thursday
night, the houses, 56 and 58 Reverdy Road, Bermondsey, were assailed
with stones and other missiles coming from an unseen quarter. Two
children were injured, every window broken, and several articles of
furniture were destroyed. Although there was a strong body of policemen
scattered in the neighborhood, they could not trace the direction whence
the stones were thrown."

"Other missiles" make a complication here. But if the expression means
tin cans and old shoes, and if we accept that the direction could not be
traced because it never occurred to anyone to look upward--why, we've
lost a good deal of our provincialism by this time.

London _Times_, Sept. 16, 1841:

That, in the home of Mrs. Charton, at Sutton Courthouse, Sutton Lane,
Chiswick, windows had been broken "by some unseen agent." Every attempt
to detect the perpetrator failed. The mansion was detached and
surrounded by high walls. No other building was near it.

The police were called. Two constables, assiste