ests could not be applied in psychology
that are applied elsewhere, this would be no cause for scientific
despair. It would only mean that fresh tests would have to be devised
for a new group of facts, as every other science has already, as a
matter of fact, created its own special standard of value.

The second of the two lines of defence consists in the bold assertion
that the religious interpretation of subjective phenomena is itself in
the nature of a true scientific induction. The methods of science are
not repudiated, but welcomed. But it is argued that the non-religious
explanation of religious phenomena breaks down hopelessly, while the
religious explanation fully covers and explains the facts. If this were
true, nothing more remains to be said, and we must accept this dualistic
scheme, however repugnant it may be to orthodox scientific ideas. But is
it true? Is it a fact that the non-religious explanation breaks down so
completely? Hitherto the course of events has been in the contrary
direction. It is the religious explanation that has, over and over
again, been shown to be unreliable, the non-religious explanation that
has been finally established. Insanity and epilepsy, once universally
ascribed to a supernatural order of being, have been reduced to the
level of nervous disorders. All the phenomena of 'possession' are still
with us, it is only our understanding of them that has altered. And
before it is admitted that the phenomena described as religious can
never be affiliated to the phenomena described as non-religious, it must
be shown--beyond all possibility of doubt--that their explanation in
terms of known forces is impossible. As I have said in the body of this
work, the question at issue is essentially one of interpretation. The
'facts' of the religious life are admitted. Science no more questions
the reality of the visions of the medieval mystic than it questions the
visions of the non-mystic admittedly suffering from neural derangement.
The crucial question is whether we have any good reason for separating
the two, and while we dismiss the one as hallucination accept the other
as introducing us to another order of being? I do not think there is the
slightest ground for any such differentiation, and I have given in the
following pages what I conceive to be good reasons for so thinking. And
I hope that the fact of the explanations there offered running counter
to the traditional one will not prevent re