§ 1. In bringing to a close the principal division of this work - the presentation of the case for spontaneous telepathy as supported by a considerable body of first-hand records - it will scarcely, I think, be necessary to attempt anything like a summary of the foregoing chapters. It is indeed impossible effectively to summarise facts the whole force of which lies in their cumulation. One point only I would once again emphasise - the one with which I started - to wit, that radical connection between experimental and spontaneous telepathy, the importance of which in my own view I may best express by saying that I am unable even to guess what effect the body of testimony to the latter class of cases would have on me, were I not convinced of the reality of the former. This being understood, so far as the evidential position of the subject admits of a brief connected statement, I have endeavoured to state it in the closing pages of the fourth chapter. Neither there nor subsequently have I extenuated the evidential shortcomings of many of the spontaneous cases; but for the evidence taken as a whole, it may be claimed that it resembles not so much a shifting shadow, which may be left to individual taste or temperament to interpret, as a solid mass seen in twilight, which it may be easy indeed to avoid stumbling over, but only by resolutely walking away from it.

The temptation to walk away from it - to dismiss it with a hasty glance - will be very strong. The matter presented is from a literary point of view monotonously dull, from a scientific point of view confusingly inexact: the study of it in detail is hard work, while at the same time it is work which affords none of the stimulus of high intellectual activity. Yet it is only by detailed study that my colleagues and I have arrived at our own view; and so far are we from putting ourselves into antagonism to the sceptical attitude of Science, that we should regard any conclusion formed without such study as premature. On this still dubious territory, a number of direct and independent attestations, which would be utterly superfluous elsewhere, will be - or ought to be - demanded; and others will need, as we have done, to have the true nature and amount of the evidence far more distinctly brought home to them than is necessary in realms already mastered by specialists to whose dicta they may defer.

But in point of fact, the dulness of the work in detail scarcely needs apology; for it would never be specially remarked except in connection with that totally unscientific view on which I commented at the very opening of the treatise. The whole subject of psychical influences has been mixed up in the public mind with ideas of the supernatural or uncanny - with nervous thrills and spurious excitements. When such associations are carefully excluded the details of the inquiry cannot be expected to have more, and may perhaps have not much less, attraction than those of the recognised physical sciences. And so far as the unexciting character of the present collection - poor in thrills, but tolerably rich in verified dates - tends to make this sober view prevail, it will be a direct advantage. For, exactly like the physical sciences, the research has to go on, methodically, not sensationally; and it has only just begun to be methodised. The present instalment of facts, though probably solid enough to surfeit those who are not troubled by a priori difficulties, and to repel the mere seeker after marvels, cannot be expected to convince every reasonable searcher after truth; and no one (as I have remarked before) can fix the precise amount of testimony which a candid mind is bound to regard as adequate.

And we accept this view of the position rather as an incentive than as a discouragement. For we are fortified by the belief that it is not so much the necessary material, as the combined effort to render it available, that has hitherto been lacking. Even the record now presented, as I have pointed out, is drawn from the comparatively small number of persons who have heard of our existence, and much of it from the limited circle of our own acquaintance. We are justified, therefore, in regarding the area hitherto explored as but a corner of a very much larger field, which may be gradually swept; and the very flaws in the present collection will have had their use, if they direct attention to the true standard of evidential requirements, and if through them future telepathic incidents stand a better chance of being caught at the critical moment, while the opportunities for investigation are complete.

§ 2. The commoner difficulties which hamper progress may, moreover, be expected largely to disappear, as time goes on. As the idea of Telepathy becomes understood, the difference will be more and more realised between facts which make for it and facts which do not; aid towards the establishment of some strong item of proof will not so often be refused on the ground that no proof is needed - that everybody has had presentiments fulfilled, or has occasionally guessed what his friend was thinking of; and efforts will be more profitably directed through the mere existence of a scheme into which the results may fall. And further, a rational public spirit in the matter may be trusted to develop. The reluctance to give any prominence to what are often legitimately regarded as very private experiences will gradually give way, when it is recognised that the significance of each item of evidence, even as matter for private contemplation, depends on the combination of many items; and among those who take this wider view, fewer will shrink from the direct attestation which alone can ensure the result that they profess to desire, and which they would readily give to any other sort of fact in heaven or earth that they truly believed in.

As for the merely negative difficulties - the general grounds of objection to our work - we see them already diminishing from the mere spirit of the age. The set of that spirit is very observably towards a wider tolerance - a distrust of finalities and restrictions, by whatever party imposed, and a faith in free inquiry, wherever it may lead. Men are already ceasing to argue that the alleged facts did not happen because they could not happen; or that telepathy is perhaps not true, and, therefore, if true, is not important; or that the recognised paths of labour, along which steady progress is being made and may still be made to an unpredictable extent, are so various and abundant that it is mere trifling to desert them for a dubious track, where progress, even could it be supposed possible, would still be a useless anachronism.

§ 3. But though " psychical research" is certain in time to surmount ridicule and prejudice, and to clear for itself a firm path between easy credulity on the one side and easy incredulity on the other, the rate of its advance must depend on the amount of sympathy and support that it can command from the general mass of educated men and women. In no department should the democratic spirit of modern science find so free a scope: it is for the public here to be, not - as in anthropological researches - the passive material of investigation, but the active participators in it. We acknowledge with warm gratitude the amount of patient assistance that we have received - how patient and forbearing in many instances, none can judge who have not tried, as private individuals, to conduct a system of strict cross-examination on a wide scale. But unless this assistance is largely supplemented, our undertaking can scarcely hold its ground. Its interest must not for a moment be supposed to be of the merely curious sort, sufficiently illustrated in a loose batch of more or less surprising facts; indeed, so far as the facts excite surprise. it is a proof that the work is only beginning.

If the natural system includes telepathy, Nature has certainly not exhausted herself in our few hundreds of instances: that these facts should be genuine would be almost inconceivable if she had not plenty more like them in reserve. And here is the practically interesting point; for, till the general fact is universally admitted, the several items of proof must ever tend to lose their effect as they recede further into the past. This peculiarity of the subject cannot be gainsaid, and must be boldly faced. For aught I can tell, the hundreds of instances may have to be made thousands. If the phenomena cannot be commanded at will, the stricter must be the search for them: if they are exceptionally transient and elusive, all the greater is the importance of strong contemporary evidence. The experimental work needs to be, and easily might be, enormously extended: for many a year to come the spontaneous phenomena must be as diligently watched for and recorded as if each case stood alone in its generation.

And whatever the defects of the present attempt, so far as it supplies an impulse or lends an aid in either of these directions, it will not have failed in its object.