In Cock Lane and Common-Sense an attempt is made to reconcile these
rather hostile sisters in science. Anthropology ought to think
humani nihil a se alienum. Now the abnormal and more or less
inexplicable experiences vouched for by countless living persons of
honour and sanity, are, at all events, _human_. As they usually
coincide in character with the testimony of the lower races all over
the world; with historical evidence from the past, and with rural
Folklore now and always, it really seems hard to understand how
anthropology can turn her back on this large human province. For
example, the famous affair of the disturbances at Mr. Samuel
Wesley's parsonage at Epworth, in 1716, is reported on evidence
undeniably honest, and absolutely contemporary. Dr. Salmon, the
learned and acute Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, has twice
tried to explain the phenomena as the results of deliberate
imposture by Hetty Wesley, alone, and unaided. {0a} The present
writer examined Dr. Salmon's arguments (in the Contemporary Review,
August, 1895), and was able, he thinks, to demonstrate that scarcely
one of them was based on an accurate reading of the evidence. The
writer later came across the diary of Mr. Proctor of Wellington,
near Newcastle (about 1840), and found to his surprise that Mr.
Proctor registered on occasion, day by day, for many years,
precisely the same phenomena as those which had vexed the Wesleys.
{0b} Various contradictory and mutually exclusive theories of these
affairs have been advanced. Not one hypothesis satisfies the
friends of the others: not one bears examination. The present
writer has no theory, except the theory that these experiences (or
these modern myths, if any one pleases), are part of the province of
anthropology and Folklore.
He would add one obvious yet neglected truth. If a 'ghost-story' be
found to contain some slight discrepancy between the narratives of
two witnesses, it is at once rejected, both by science and common-
sense, as obviously and necessarily and essentially false. Yet no
story of the most normal incident in daily life, can well be told
without _some_ discrepancies in the relations of witnesses. None
the less such stories are accepted even by juries and judges. We
cannot expect human testimony suddenly to become impeccable and
infallible in all details, just because a 'ghost' is concerned. Nor
is it logical to demand here a degree of congruity in testimony,
which daily experience of human evidence proves to be impossible,
even in ordinary matters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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