< Proofs of a Soul (continued from page 10-29) >
an apparition with absolute certainty is very great, and those who have considered all the facts in respect to haunted houses, and all the rest of the strange statements and doings, must allow. We cannot be too wary and circumspect, and should look more to psychology, physiology, and the facts of mesmerism as essential preliminary matters: merely heaping wonder upon wonder in any case will not explain laws or advance science.
Mr. St. George Mivart, a Roman Catholic, President of the Biological Section of the British Association, supposes “some unheard of essence infused in the organism of every living thing, determinant of its actions,” to which the writer of the Times' article says cui bono? Does such a theory serve any useful purpose in science as the supposed ether filling space and permeating all bodies, as the medium of light and heat does—for light and heat seem, as it were, to travel in each other’s embrace from the sun into all surrounding space; but the wonder is in the mind itself projecting, as it were, its sensible light to all the space without, and with the intuition of the sense of distance.
Boulogne-sur-Mer, France.
Night-Walkers in Brittany
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A Few Questions
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Curiosities in Japanese Temples
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Editor's notes