While this theory may possibly be true, it seems to me that it is very probably untrue, for the reason that this is not a question of moral worth which we are considering, but of scientific law--of the Conservation of Energy, of the ability of life and consciousness of any sort--good or bad--to exist apart from brain-functioning. That is the question! Once grant that mind of any kind can persist by and of itself, independent of a physical organization, and you have so far broken down the barriers of materialism that there should not be the slightest objection to granting the persistence of consciousness of any sort--with the probability that it _would_ so persist. Cosmic Law could hardly act otherwise. (4) I know well enough that psychic investigation is, at present at least, in a chaotic and uncertain condition, and that little beyond uncertainty and discouragement has been attained in the past. As Mr. F. C. Constable remarked: "Many of us who have devoted our lives to psychical research can but have moments of profound depression. We _feel_ our labours cannot be in vain, but we are faced by such a complexity of fraud, deliberate and unconscious, mal-observation, denial of scientific restrictions, and ignorance of what is trustworthy in evidence and deduction, that at times our search for truth seems as futile as the search of past alchemists for the philosopher's stone." And even more forcibly Count Aksakof states the objections which have occurred to him: "As years went by, the weak points of spiritualism became more evident and more numerous. The insignificance of the communications, the poverty of their intellectual content, and finally the fraud, etc.--in short, a host of doubts, objections, and aberrations of every kind--greatly increased the difficulties of the problem. Such impressions were well calculated to discourage one, if, on the other hand, we had not at our disposal a series of indisputable facts." (_Animism and Spiritism._)