es of weak evidence
which satisfies psychologists.

Hamilton has an anecdote, borrowed from Monboddo, who got it from Mr. Hans
Stanley, who, 'about twenty-six years ago,' heard it from the subject of
the story, Madame de Laval. 'I have the memorandum somewhere in my
papers,' says Mr. Stanley, vaguely. Then we have two American anecdotes by
Dr. Flint and Mr. Rush; and such is Sir William Hamilton's equipment of
odd facts for discussing the unconscious or subconscious. The least
credible and worst attested of these narratives still appears in popular
works on psychology. Moreover, all psychology, except experimental
psychology, is based on anecdotes which people tell about their own
subjective experiences. Mr. Galton, whose original researches are well
known, even offered rewards in money for such narratives about visualised
rows of coloured figures, and so on.

Clearly the psychologist, then, has no _prima facie_ right to object to
our anecdotes of experiences, which he regards as purely subjective. As
evidence, we only accept them at first hand, and, when possible, the
witnesses have been cross-examined personally. Our evidence then, where it
consists of travellers' tales, is on a level with that which satisfies the
anthropologist. Where it consists of modern statements of personal
experience, our evidence is often infinitely better than much which is
accepted by the nonexperimental psychologist. As for the agnostic writer
on the Non-Religion of the Future, M. Guyau actually illustrates the
Resurrection of our Lord by an American myth about a criminal, of whom a
hallucinatory phantasm appeared to each of his gaol companions, separately
and successively, on a day after his execution! For this prodigious fable
no hint of reference to authority is given.[10] Yet the evidence appears
to satisfy M. Guyau, and is used by him to reinforce his argument.

The anthropologist and psychologist, then, must either admit that their
evidence is no better than ours, if as good, or must say that they only
believe evidence as to 'possible' facts. They thus constitute themselves
judges of what is possible, and practically regard themselves as
omniscient. Science has had to accept so many things once scoffed at as
'impossible,' that this attitude of hers, as we shall show in chapter ii.,
ceases to command respect.

My suggestion is that the trivial, rejected, or unheeded phenomena
vouched for by the evidence here defended may, not inconc