ments operating against known laws and even
the building of this mysterious force into complete or fragmentary
body-like forms.

[Footnote 76: See Carrington, "The Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism,"
p. 377.]

[Footnote 77: Geley, "From the Unconscious to the Conscious."]

On the psychical side there is dependable evidence for information
conveyed by supernormal means across considerable spaces--possibly long
distances and the power to secure and report information not gained in
any normal way. These are bare statements capable of great
amplification. But they cover the ground.

_Three Possible Explanations of So-Called Spiritistic Phenomena_

Admitting the facts, there are three possible explanations. First, the
Daimonistic. There are, according to this theory, in the unseen
world--wherever and whatever that may be--an order of beings akin to
ourselves, either less or more highly developed, mischievous or benign.
This is an old, old belief; it has pervaded animistic religions,
fathered witchcraft, persisted in the belief of demoniac control,
enriched folk lore, filled the friendly silences of the night with
terror and haunted humanity. Now it has found its renaissance in the
full blaze of Twentieth Century Science.

"It seems not improbable," says Sir William Barrett, "that many of the
_physical_ manifestations witnessed in a spiritualistic seance are the
product of human-like but not really human intelligence--good or bad
daimonia they may be, _elementals_ some have called them, which
aggregate round the medium; drawn from that particular plane of mental
and moral development in the unseen which corresponds to the mental and
moral plane of the medium."[78] This is, with little enough alteration,
the very point from which we set out in the remote dawn of our endeavour
to interpret the mystery of the world about us. The only difference is
that Sir William has his daimon for a tipping table and the savage had
his for a flowing spring. Sir William may be right but primitive man was
wrong. The whole trend of science heretofore has been to eliminate
capricious and isolated elements from observed phenomena and include
them in a sweep of law for whose operation the resident forces in the
universe and human personality are seen to be sufficient. The
daimonistic hypothesis has always up to this time been proved not only
unnecessary but positively misleading. It belongs to a region where
proof and disproof are equally