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equally the obtrusive inquisitiveness of the microscope and telescope.

A phenomenon which you can neither handle nor weigh, analyse nor
dissect, is naturally regarded as intractable and troublesome;
nevertheless, however intractable and troublesome he may be to reduce to
any of the existing scientific categories, we have no right to allow his
idiosyncrasies to deprive him of his innate right to be regarded as a
phenomenon. As such he will be treated in the following pages, with all
the respect due to phenomena whose reality is attested by a sufficient
number of witnesses. There will be no attempt in this book to build up a
theory of apparitions, or to define the true inwardness of a ghost.
There will be as many explanations as there are minds of the
significance of the extraordinary narratives which I have collated from
correspondence and from accessible records. Leaving it to my readers to
discuss the rival hypotheses, I will stick to the humbler mission of
recording facts, from which they can form their own judgment.

The ordinary temper of the ordinary man in dealing with ghosts is
supremely unscientific, but it is less objectionable than that of the
pseudo-scientist. The Inquisitor who forbade free inquiry into matters
of religion because of human depravity, was the natural precursor of the
Scientist who forbids the exercise of the reason on the subject of
ghosts, on account of inherited tendencies to attribute such phenomena
to causes outside the established order of nature. What difference there
is, is altogether in favour of the Inquisitor, who at least had what he
regarded as a divinely constituted authority, competent and willing to
pronounce final decision upon any subject that might trouble the human
mind. Science has no such tribunal, and when she forbids others to
observe and to reflect she is no better than a blind fetish.

Eclipses in old days used to drive whole nations half mad with fright.
To this day the black disc of the moon no sooner begins to eat into the
shining surface of the sun than millions of savage men feel "creepy,"
and begin to tremble at the thought of the approaching end of the world.
But in civilised lands even the most ignorant regard an eclipse with
imperturbable composure. Eclipses are scientific phenomena observed and
understood. It is our object to reduce ghosts to the same level, or
rather to establish the claim of ghosts to be regarded as belonging as
much to the order of N