lication cannot be knowledge,
and probably--for the practical purposes of human life we may say
certainly--cannot be truth. They are wrong in alleging that the ideas
for which they can find no foundation in the subjects to which
scientific method has hitherto been applied, are therefore
unscientific, or sure to disappear under scientific investigation. I
hold that the existence of a Creator and Ruler of the Universe can be
logically deduced from first principles, as well as justly inferred
from cumulative evidences of overwhelming weight. The existence of
something in Man that is not merely corporeal, of powers that can act
beyond the reach of any corporeal instruments at his command, or
without the range of their application, is not proven; it may be, only
because the facts that indicate without proving it have never yet been
subject to systematic verification or scientific analysis. But of such
facts there exists a vast accumulation; unsifted, untested, and
therefore as yet ineffective for proof, but capable, I can scarcely
doubt, of reduction to methodical order and scientific treatment.
There are records and traditions of every degree of value, from utter
worthlessness to the worth of the most authentic history, preserving
the evidences of powers which may be generally described as spiritual.
Through all ages, among all races, the living have alleged themselves
from time to time to have seen the forms and even heard the voices of
the dead. Scientific men have been forced by the actual and public
exercise of the power under the most crucial tests--for instance, to
produce insensibility in surgical operations--to admit that the will
of one man can control the brain, the senses, the physical frame of
another without material contact, perhaps at a distance. There are
narratives of marvels wrought by human will, chiefly in remote, but
occasionally in recent times, transcending and even contradicting or
overruling the known laws of Nature. All these evidences point to one
conclusion; all corroborate and confirm one another. The men of
science ridicule them because in so many cases the facts are
imperfectly authenticated, and because in others the action of the
powers is uncertain, dependent on conditions imperfectly ascertained,
and not of that material kind to which material science willingly
submits. But if they be facts, if they relate to any element of human
nature, all these things can be systematically investigated,