hic research is daily applying to that
tangled mass of world-wide evidence ancient and modern for the existence
of an X-region of experience, those same critical and historical
principles which created modern science. Men who, as often as not, have
no religion or no superstition themselves, see that both religion and
superstition are universal phenomena, and cannot be neglected by those
who would study humanity historically and scientifically. Even if there
be nothing in hallucinations, apparitions, scrying, second-sight,
poltergeists, and the rest, there is a great deal in the fact that
belief in these things is as wide and as old as the world; it is a fact
to be explained. "Each man," says Meister, "commonly defends himself as
long as possible from casting out the idols which he worships in his
soul; from acknowledging a master-error, and admitting any truth that
brings him to despair;" and indeed a system as complete and compact as
that of Mr. Spencer or Mr. Tylor is apt to become an intellectual idol
forbidding under pain of infidelity all inquiries that might cause it to
totter on its throne, or which might unravel in an instant what has been
woven by years of hard and honest thought. Few of us are in a position
to cast stones on this score; still, recognizing the weakness more
clearly in others than in ourselves, we are justified in reckoning with
it, and in discounting for the unwillingness of men of science to listen
to facts inconsistent with long-cherished theories, and for their
tendency to accumulate and magnify evidence on the other side. "If the
facts not fitting their theories are little observed by authorities so
popular as Mr. Huxley and Mr. Spencer; if _instantiae contradictoriae_
are ignored by them, or left vague; if these things are done in the
green tree, we may easily imagine what shall be done in the dry. But we
need not war with hasty _vulgarisateurs_ and headlong theorists."

We cannot for a moment question the sincerity of purpose and honesty of
intention of many of the leaders of modern scientific enlightenment,
whatever we may think of the said crowd of _vulgarisateurs_--those
camp-followers who bring disgrace on every respectable cause. But beside
wilful bias and unfairness, there is unconscious bias from which none of
us are free, but from which we need to be delivered by mutual criticism;
for, however much a man can see of himself, he can never get behind his
own back. Of such unwitting di