It will be very evident to my readers that this chapter is "extrapolatory" and speculative in the highest degree. The ideas discussed are based on experiments which are very far from being conclusive. I should be sorry indeed to guarantee them all as being of cast-iron reliability and I have no doubt that comparatively few will ever receive the amount of confirmation which is necessary before we can accept such things as proven facts. Still, tenuous as the evidence is, it all seems to point in the same sort of direction and I have therefore thought it worth while to give it the benefit of the doubt and see what could be made of it on the temporary assumption that it is really reliable. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 5: Note the insensibility.--W.W.S.] [Footnote 6: NOTE.--In future I shall borrow the term "Etheric Double" from the Theosophists and use it instead of the rather cumbrous phrase "Quasi-physical replica." I do not think that the term Etheric Double is a good one, but it is in common use, and I will adopt it until some better word is suggested.] CHAPTER VIII THE RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE HYPOTHESIS Although I have no wish to become involved in controversial theology, I feel it incumbent on me to examine briefly the question of whether a general acceptance of the four-dimensional hypothesis would be fraught with any considerable consequences in the sphere of religious thought. No one venturing to advocate conceptions so far-reaching as those I have been discussing, would be justified in ignoring their relation to any important stream of thought with which they might be held liable to come in contact. And it is evident that any hypothesis formulated, however tentatively, as a solution to the problems of Survival of Death and the nature of post-mortem conditions, must inevitably come into very close contact with Religion. I shall try to show that it is a matter of contact only and not of conflict. Even so, I might have omitted the present discussion had I not found a tendency, on the part of certain representatives of orthodox theology, to deprecate any attempt to find an intelligible solution to the problems involved. It must be clearly understood that I am not concerned here with the defence of Psychical Research as a means of investigation, but only with the legitimacy of the end. Generally speaking, those with whom I am so unfortunate as to disagree on this matter accuse me on two counts. First it is suggested that I am attempting to advance by Reason or Sight rather than by Faith and, secondly, I am told that to "explain" such a matter as the Survival of Death or the nature of the connection between matter and spirit, would tend to reduce everything to terms of mere mechanism and to leave no place at all in the Cosmos for Divine Will and Purpose or for the transcendental and mystical aspects of religion. I need hardly say that I violently resent both these accusations. The first charge seems to me to be easy of refutation.