t experiment, and accepted by opponents, 'non-mystical writers,'
like Dr. Parish of Munich.[7] I shall bring evidence to suggest that the
visions may correctly reflect, as it were, persons and places absolutely
unknown to the gazer, and that they may even reveal details unknown to
every one present. Such results among savages, or among the superstitious,
would be, and are, explained by the theory of 'spirits.' Modern science
has still to find an explanation consistent with recognised laws of
nature, but 'spirits' we shall not invoke.

In the same way I mean to examine all or most of the 'so-called mystical
phenomena of savage life.' I then compare them with the better vouched for
modern examples. To return to the question of evidence, I confess that I
do not see how the adverse anthropologist, psychologist, or popular
agnostic is to evade the following dilemma: To the anthropologist we say,
'The evidence we adduce is your own evidence, that of books of travel in
all lands and countries. If _you_ may argue from it, so may we. Some
of it is evidence to unusual facts, more of it is evidence to singular
beliefs, which we think not necessarily without foundation. As raising a
presumption in favour of that opinion, we cite examples in which savage
observations of abnormal and once rejected facts, are now admitted by
science to have a large residuum of truth, we argue that what is admitted
in some cases may come to be admitted in more. No _a priori_ line can here
be drawn.'

To the psychologist who objects that our modern instances are mere
anecdotes, we reply by asking, 'Dear sir, what are _your_ modern
instances? What do you know of "Mrs. A.," whom you still persistently
cite as an example of morbid recurrent hallucinations? Name the German
servant girl who, in a fever, talked several learned languages, which she
had heard her former master, a scholar, declaim! Where did she live? Who
vouches for her, who heard her, who understood her? There is, you know, no
evidence at all; the anecdote is told by Coleridge: the phenomena are said
by him to have been observed "in a Roman Catholic town in Germany, a year
or two before my arrival at Goettingen.... Many eminent physiologists and
psychologists visited the town." Why do you not name a few out of the
distinguished crowd?'[8] This anecdote, a rumour of a rumour of a
Protestant explanation of a Catholic marvel, was told by Coleridge at
least twenty years after the possible date. Th