_I can hardly suppose he means to apply this statement to more than the
small residue of phenomena which he finds inexplicable on any other
hypothesis. Assuming this restricted view to be meant, the question
arises, Is the evidence on which it is based sufficiently_ abundant,
trustworthy, _and_ conclusive, _to warrant such a far-reaching
statement? Here we must turn from the author to ascertain what has been
the conclusion arrived at by those who have given long years to a
searching experimental investigation of these phenomena, and who have
approached the subject in a scientific and judicial spirit. The most
noteworthy instance is the testimony of that shrewd and able
investigator, the late Dr Hodgson. His patient and laborious inquiry
into the trance phenomena of Mrs Piper ultimately led him to the
conclusion arrived at by Mr Willson. Dr Hodgson's well-known exposure of
Madame Blavatsky and other fraudulent mediums and his sane and cautious
judgment render his opinion of great weight. Then, again, we find that
this also was the conclusion to which Frederic Myers was gradually
driven. And long prior to this it was the conclusion arrived at by that
acute thinker, the late Professor de Morgan, and it is the conclusion
strongly held by the great naturalist, Dr A. R. Wallace, and held also
by several other eminent investigators I might name._
_So momentous a conclusion, if capable of such complete verification as
to be universally accepted by science, would obviously throw all other
discoveries into the background. I say if capable of being verified by
scientific methods, but, although the weight of opinion will, in my
opinion, ultimately lead to a very wide acceptance of this conclusion,
yet it seems to me highly probable that the experimental discovery of
the survival of human personality after death will always elude
conclusive scientific demonstration. This particular field of psychical
investigation belongs to an order other than that with which science
deals; and, this being so, it can never be adequately investigated with
the limited faculties we now possess._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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