trace of a full-blown
hallucination.[35] And I venture to think that, if we examine the
evidence in the case of D. D. Home, we find very few cases which could
have been illusions--the vast majority of them seem to have been "pure
hallucinations"--if they were psychological processes (as opposed to
physical) at all. So that we should have to suppose that we find in
these seances--not mere illusions, commonly seen at spiritualistic
seances, but full-blown hallucinations of a type rarely or never seen
elsewhere. In other words, these seances present evidences of
psychological processes for which we can find no analogy in any other
series of seances, or in hypnotic or any other phenomena with which we
are familiar. I venture to think that this entirely _new_ order of
things cannot be accepted upon such evidence: that the hypothesis of
hallucination cannot be said to explain anything whatever, inasmuch as
it is entirely unsupported by facts, and finds no analogies whatever in
any other psychological processes known to us.

At the very conclusion of his paper, Count Solovovo places his finger
upon the vulnerable spot: he there points out the only way to solve the
difficulty. It is by the accumulation and study of _new facts_.
Discussions as to the historical phenomena might go on for ever and the
question still remain unsolved. The only way out of the difficulty is to
establish, if possible, the objective or the hallucinatory character of
these newer phenomena--if such are obtained--and from them draw
conclusions concerning the older manifestations. If these newer
phenomena turn out to be hallucinatory--in spite of all the testimony in
favour of their being objective--then it is highly probable that many of
the older phenomena were hallucinatory also. If, on the other hand, the
newer phenomena turn out to be physical and objective, then the
improbability of the older manifestations having been hallucinatory is
proportionately increased--until it becomes almost a certainty that they
were not so. For, if physical phenomena of a genuine character ever do
occur, the _a priori_ improbability is at once removed, and
thenceforward there is but little ground for objecting to the phenomena
in Home's case; and not only those, but the phenomena in the case of
Stainton Moses, and scores of others less well attested. The props would
have been knocked from beneath all logical scepticism of the historical
phenomena, once newer manifestatio