in delirious
memory, on no evidence at all. But, not possessing analogies for
telepathic crystal-gazing, he will probably decline to examine ours.

I would first draw his attention to the difference between revived memory
of a language once known (Breton and Welsh in known examples), or learned
by rote (as Greek, in an anecdote of Goethe's), and verbal reproduction
of a language _not_ known or learned by rote but overheard--each passage
probably but once--as somebody recited fragments. In this instance (that
of the mythical maid) 'the difficulty ... is that the original impressions
had not the strength--that is, the distinctness--of the reproduction. An
unknown language overheard is a mere sound....'[6]

The distinction here drawn is so great and obvious that for proof of the
German girl's case we need better evidence than Coleridge's rumour of a
rumour, cited, as it is, by Hamilton, Maudsley, Carpenter, Du Prel, and
the common run of manuals.

Not that I deny, _a priori_, the possibility of Coleridge's story. As Mr.
Huxley says, 'strictly speaking, I am unaware of anything that has a right
to the title of an "impossibility," except a contradiction in terms.'[7]
To the horror of some of his admirers, Mr. Huxley would not call the
existence of demons and demoniacal possession 'impossible.'[8] Mr. Huxley
was no blind follower of Hume. I, too, do not call Coleridge's tale
'impossible,' but, unlike the psychologists, I refuse to accept it on
'Bardolph's security.' And I contrast their conduct, in swallowing
Coleridge's legend, with their refusal (if they do refuse) to accept the
evidence for the automatic writing of not-consciously-known languages (as
of eleventh-century French poetry and prose by Mr. Schiller), or their
refusal (if they do refuse) to look at the evidence for telepathic
crystal-gazing, or any other supernormal exhibitions of faculty, attested
by living and honourable persons.

I wish I saw a way for orthodox unimaginative psychology out of its
dilemma.

After offering to anthropologists and psychologists these considerations,
which I purposely reiterate, we examined historically the relations of
science to 'the marvellous,' showing for example how Hume, following his
_a priori_ theory of the impossible, would have declined to investigate,
because they were 'miraculous,' certain occurrences which, to Charcot,
were ordinary incidents in medical experience.

We next took up and criticised the anthropolo