"Our duty [the duty of Psychical Researchers] is not the founding of a new sect, nor even the establishment of a new science, but is rather the expansion of Science herself until she can satisfy those questions, which the human heart will rightly ask, but to which Religion alone has thus far attempted an answer.... I see our original programme completely justified.... I see all things coming to pass as we foresaw. What I do _not_ see, alas! is an energy and capacity of our own, sufficient for our widening duty.... We invite workers from each department of science, from every school of thought. With equal confidence we appeal for co-operation to _savant_ and to saint. "To the _savant_ we point out that we are not trying to pick holes in the order of Nature, but rather by the scrutiny of residual phenomena, to get nearer to the origin and operation of Nature's central mystery of Life. Men who realise that the ethereal environment was discovered yesterday, need not deem it impossible that a metethereal environment--yet another omnipresent system of cosmic law--should be discovered to-morrow. The only valid _a priori_ presumption in the matter, is the presumption that the Universe is infinite in an infinite number of ways. "To the Christian we can speak with a still more direct appeal. You believe--I would say--that a spiritual world exists, and that it acted on the material world two thousand years ago. Surely it is so acting still. Nay, you believe that it is so acting still, for you believe that prayer is heard and answered. To believe that prayer is heard is to believe in Telepathy--in the direct influence of mind on mind. To believe that prayer is answered is to believe that unembodied spirit does actually modify (even if not storm-cloud or plague-germ) at least the minds, and therefore the brains, of living men. From that belief the most advanced 'psychical' theories are easy corollaries." A few more lines in conclusion:-- "It may be that for some generations to come the truest faith will lie in the patient attempt to unravel from confused phenomena some trace of the supernal world;--to find thus at last 'the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.' I confess, indeed, that I have often felt as though this present age were even unduly favoured;--as though no future revelation and calm could equal the joy of this great struggle from doubt into certainty;--from the materialism or agnosticism which accompany the first advance of Science into the deeper scientific conviction that there is a deathless soul in man. I can imagine no other crisis of such deep delight." FOOTNOTES: [66] _Proceedings S.P.R._, vol. ix. p. 252.