class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[38]"/> pretend to get messages from people whom everyone knows to be mythical—messages which are indeed comic and therefore enable opponents to score points with the general public by obvious witticisms.

Huxley is often referred to, as having wisely declined to investigate, knowing beforehand that it was all nonsense. Huxley was busy with his own work, and, believing à priori that alleged psychical phenomena were either fraud or self-delusion, naturally declined to give any time to them. We need not regret his decision, for he was doing work that was more important than psychical investigation would have been, just then. But he was wrong in his à priori belief, or rather unbelief. He had never seen any of these phenomena, but that did not prove that they did not happen. A native of mid-Africa may never have seen snow, but that does not prove that no snow exists.

And it happens that the Dialectical Society went on with its task, appointing committees which investigated without any paid medium. The majority of the investigators were utterly sceptical at first; they were practically all convinced at the finish. I state this merely as a fact, not as a specially important fact; for I find that beginners, when suddenly faced with striking phenomena, are liable to go from the extreme of unbelief to an extreme of belief. When one’s materialistic scheme is exploded, there seems no criterion left, and anything may happen. It usually takes an investigator a year or two to adjust himself and to learn to follow the evidence and not overshoot it.