eam
reconcilable with his waking circumstances, will he not judge of it by
the vast majority of his dreams which are palpable illusions, and not by
the few exceptional cases? If at times we ourselves doubt whether we
witnessed something or dreamt it, yet we do so not because the seeming
fact is one which makes for the existence of another world of a
different order to this, but for the very contrary reason. If the savage
only dreamt of the dead, he might find in this an evidence of their
survival, but he dreams far more often of the living, and that, with
circumstances which make the illusion manifest on waking. Seeing the awe
and terror which all men have of the supernatural region, we ought, on
the animistic hypothesis, to find among savages a great reluctance to go
to bed--"to sleep! Perchance to dream--aye, there's the rub!" But we do
not. Finally, just as the Chinese, who are supposed to mistake epilepsy
for possession, have, unfortunately for the supposition, got two
distinct words for the two phenomena, so it will doubtless be found that
there is no savage who has not some word to express illusion; or whose
language does not prove that he knows dreams are but dreams. We may well
doubt if even animals on waking are affected by their dreams as by
realities, or if a dog ever bit a man for a kick received in a dream. In
short the dream-theory of souls is plausible only in the gross, but
melts away under closer examination bit by bit.

Whether the S.P.R. will ever succeed in bottling a ghost, and in
submitting it to the tests necessary to convince science, matters
little. The real fruit of its labours will be to "convince men of sin,"
to convict science of being unscientific, and criticism of being
uncritical--of being biassed by fashion to the extent of refusing to
examine evidence which must be either admitted or explained away.
Scepticism and credulity alike are hostile both to science and religion,
and it is the common interest of these latter to secure a full
recognition, on the one side of the principle of faith, that with God
all things are possible; and on the other, of the principle of science
which is: to prove all things, and hold fast that which is good.
Credulity tends to make the actual co-extensive with the possible; while
scepticism would limit the possible to the known actual. The true mind
would be one in which faith and criticism were so tempered as to secure
width without slovenliness, and exactitu