It has nevertheless been suggested, from a philosophic point of view, that strict proof of individual survival must in the last resort depend on examination and collation of these 'travellers' tales,' rather than on any kind of resuscitation of the past; because, until we know more about memory, it is possible to conjecture, as I think Professor Bergson does, that all the past is potentially accessible to a super-subliminal faculty for disinterring it. And so one might, in a sceptical mood, when confronted with records of apparently personal reminiscence, attribute them to an unconscious exercise of this faculty, and say with Tennyson "I hear a wind Of memory murmuring the past." I do not myself regard this impersonal memory as a reasonable hypothesis, I think that the simpler view is likely to be the truer one, so I attach importance to trivial reminiscences and characteristic personal touches; but I do agree that abstention from recording and publishing, however apologetically, those other efforts has had the effect of making ill-informed people--_i.e._ people with very little personal experience--jump to the conclusion that all communications are of a trivial and contemptible nature. CHAPTER XII ON THE CONTENTION THAT ALL PSYCHIC COMMUNICATIONS ARE OF A TRIVIAL NATURE AND DEAL WITH INSIGNIFICANT TOPICS That such a contention as that mentioned at the end of the preceding chapter is false is well known to people of experience; but so long as the demand for verification and proof of identity persists--and it will be long indeed before they can be dispensed with--so long are trifling reminiscences the best way to achieve the desired end. The end in this case amply explains and justifies the means. Hence it is that novices and critics are naturally and properly regaled with references to readily remembered and verifiable facts; and since these facts, to be useful, must not be of the nature of public news, nor anything which can be gleaned from biographical or historical records, they usually relate to trifling family affairs or other humorous details such as seem likely to stay in the memory. It can freely be admitted that such facts are only redeemed from triviality by the affectionate recollections interlinked with them, and by the motive which has caused them to be reproduced. For their special purpose they may be admirable; and there is no sort of triviality about the thing to be proven by them. The idea that a departed friend ought to be occupied wholly and entirely with grave matters, and ought not to remember jokes and fun, is a gratuitous claim which has to be abandoned. Humour does not cease with earth-life. Why should it?