We know only too well that there are universal fallacies as well as universal truths of the human mind. For the practical necessities of life the imagination stands to man in good stead, but as the inadequate instrument of speculative thought its fertile deceitfulness is betrayed in his very earliest attempts at philosophy; nor are his subsequent efforts directed to anything else than the endeavour to correct and allow for its refractions and distortions, to transcend its narrow limitations, to force it to express, meanly and clumsily, truths which otherwise it would entirely obscure and deny. There might well be facts, nay, there are undoubtedly facts, which to the untutored mind necessarily and always seem altogether supernormal, but which science rightly explains to be, however unusual, yet natural, and in no way outside the ordinary laws. So far as the marvels of sorcerers and medicine-men are the work of chicanery, they will lack that persistence and ubiquity which justifies the investigation of other marvels for whose universality some basis must be sought in the uniform nature of things. Cheats will not always and everywhere hit on the same plan, nor will the independent testimony of false witnesses be found agreeing. But if besides facts and appearances that science can really explain away, there be a residue which takes us into a region wherein science as yet has set no foot, then we may indeed be on our way to a confirmation of the usually accepted arguments for immortality by which the positivist may be met upon his own ground. In truth, metaphysical, moral, and religious arguments, however much they may avail with individuals who are subjectively disposed to receive them, cannot in these days influence the crowd of men who need some sort of violence offered to their intellect if they are to accept truths against which they are biassed. The temper of the majority is positivist; it will believe what it can see, touch, and handle, and no more. If then the natural truth of the independent existence of spirits can be inade experimentally evident--and _à priori_, why should it not?--men may not like it, but they will have either to accept it, or to deny all that they accept on like evidence. Such unwilling concession would of itself make little for personal religion in the individual; but its widespread acceptance could not fail to counteract the ethics of materialism, and so prepare the way for perhaps a fuller return to religion on the part of the many.