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106 CEITICAL NOTICES : peculiarities of the alleged facts themselves, and forces itself as a working theory even upon the most cautious and patient observers (as shown, e.g., by the recent admissions of Dr. Hodgson with regard to Mrs. Piper's trances). The real offence of the spiritists with respect to it is that they do not use it as a scientific theory, as a basis for further investigation, but proceed to get absorbed in such of its practical corollaries as satisfy their emotional needs. But this simply shows that their motives are emotional, and not. scientific. To pass from a palliation of spiritism to that of the opposite extreme, viz., of invincible scepticism, I cannot think Mr. Pod- more' s critical via media is likely to be more acceptable. He cannot hope to propitiate the implacable, the fanatic of an a priori scepticism. For in spite of all his scepticism Mr. Podmore is a revisionist, a man of open mind, a disbeliever in the policy of the chose jugee. A thoroughgoing champion of science considered as orthodoxy, therefore, can as little welcome Mr. Podmore's book as any other ' revisionist ' publication. For he needs no argument to dispose of the phenomena he rejects. If he is truly logical, he rejects them a priori. Such phenomena subvert the whole system of science ; ergo they are miracles ; ergo they are impossible ; ergo no testimony can in the slightest affect their incredibility. For it is always more probable that all sorts of improbabilities should have coincided, that any amount of testimony should be false, than that ' the thing that couldn't ' should have occurred. Hence the sceptic a la Hume would make short work of what even Mr. Podmore would spare. In spite of Mr. Podmore's protestations (p. 8) that it is only a harmless working theory involving nothing transcendental, telepathy is just as obnoxious as the most startling of spiritist wonders. There are no degrees of the impossible. And with sufficient firmness in assuming hyperaesthesia, halluci- nation, mendacity and collusion all Mr. Podmore's best evidence could be got rid of. Indeed my only difficulty is to conceive what, evidence would not yield to such solvents, what evidence could ever prove anything but a foregone conclusion. But such scru- ples would not perhaps perturb the Humian ; he is safe unless he should be induced to descend into the arena of discussion, where weakness of the flesh might overcome him and tempt him to listen to the arguments of others or the testimony of his own senses. And yet perhaps there is a logical flaw at the heart of his posi- tion. That any fact should really subvert the scientific order of nature seems infinitely more ' antecedently improbable ' than the weirdest of alleged miracles. Yet the initial assumption of the Humian position is that certain disputed phenomena really would subvert the scientific order of experience. That assumption is one which no ' intellectual ' revisionist, would accept. It issues from a deep distrust of the scientific order which it pretends to protect. It is necessarily unwarranted