o do. And if the folk in the spiritual world do not talk more
wisely and sensibly than their friends report them to do, I put them in
the same category. The only good that I can see in the demonstration
of the 'Truth of Spiritualism' is to furnish an additional argument
against suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper, than die and be made
to talk twaddle by a 'medium' hired at a guinea a _Seance_." [2]

Obviously the mind of the excellent Huxley has here but two
whole-souled categories namely revelation or imposture, to apperceive
the case by. Sentimental reasons bar revelation out, for the messages,
he thinks, are not romantic enough for that; fraud exists anyhow;
therefore the whole thing is nothing but imposture. The odd point is
that so few of those who talk in this way realize that they and the
spiritists are using the same major premise and differing only in the
minor. The major premise is: "Any spirit-revelation must be romantic."
The minor of the spiritist is: "This _is_ romantic"; that of the Huxley
an is: "this is dingy twaddle"--whence their opposite conclusions!

Meanwhile the first thing that anyone learns who attends seriously to
these phenomena is that their causation is far too complex for our
feelings about what is or is not romantic enough to be spiritual to
throw any light upon it. The causal factors must be carefully
distinguished and traced through series, from their simplest to their
strongest forms, before we can begin to understand the various
resultants in which they issue. Myers and Gurney began this work, the
one by his serial study of the various sorts of "automatism," sensory
and motor, the other by his experimental proofs that a split-off
consciousness may abide after a post-hypnotic suggestion has been
given. Here we have subjective factors; but are not transsubjective or
objective forces also at work? Veridical messages, apparitions,
movements without contact, seem _prima facie_ to be such. It was a
good stroke on Gurney's part to construct a theory of apparitions which
brought the subjective and the objective factors into harmonious
co-operation. I doubt whether this telepathic theory of Gurney's will
hold along the whole line of apparitions to which he applied it, but it
is unquestionable that some theory of that mixed type is required for
the explanation of all mediumistic phenomena; and that when all the
psychological factors and elements involved have been told off--and