he information
thus received is known to the living, its truth or falsity can never be
proved or disproved. This is the dilemma which spiritism is finally
brought to face and from this dilemma there is absolutely no escape. It
does not forbid the conclusions which may be drawn from a seeming
preponderance of evidence, but it does forbid absolute certainty, for,
to repeat, if the information is to be verified it must be verified by
the living, which proves that some one does possess it and may have
communicated it--if we assume such communication to be possible--to the
medium. On the other hand, if no one at all possesses the information,
then we may never be sure that it is real information, or anything else
than a creation of an excited imagination.

There is one test here which, if it were really made under absolutely
dependable conditions, conditions, that is, in no wise open to suspicion
or misunderstanding, might be final. If a message written before death
and so sealed as to be unknown to any one save the one who wrote it,
could be correctly reported, it would have, everything else being
right, an immense force. (Though even here clairvoyance--for which, on
the whole, there is a pretty dependable evidence--might afford the true
explanation.) F.W.H. Myers left such a message as this. In January,
1891, he sent Sir Oliver Lodge a "sealed envelope, in the hope that
after his death the communication contained in the envelope would be
able to be given by means of a medium. Many different messages obtained
by a well-known medium, Madame Verrall, and coming supposedly from
Frederick Myers, led them to believe that they represented this
communication. The envelope was opened in December, 1904, and 'it was
found that there was no resemblance between its actual contents and what
was alleged by the script to be contained in it.'"[80] If there is any
authentic case of this final test being successfully maintained, the
writer does not know it. There are instances of hidden articles
discovered, but these tests by no means possess the same force of
testimony.

[Footnote 80: Boirac, "The Psychology of the Future," p. 278.]

We may assume, then, that we have no absolute demonstration of spirit
communication. We have only a very complex group of phenomena capable of
varying explanations. Any fair-minded student of the whole subject must
recognize that men who have had ample opportunity for first hand
investigation, not hasty in t