§ 11. shall leave this proposition expressed thus in its most abstract and general form. And I may add - it is a reflection which I must ask the reader to keep steadily in mind, - that any support or illumination which religious creeds may gain from psychical inquiry is likely to affect not their clauses but their preamble; is likely to come, not as a sudden discovery bearing directly on some specific dogma, but as the gradual discernment of laws which may fundamentally modify the attitude of thoughtful minds.

Now, in what I have called the preamble of all revelations two theses are generally involved, quite apart from the subject-matter, or the Divine sanction, of the revelation itself. We have to assume, first, that human testimony to supernormal facts may be trustworthy; and secondly, that there is something in the nature of man which is capable of responding to - I may say of participating in - these supernormal occurrences. That is to say, revelations are not proved merely by large external facts, perceptible to every one who possesses the ordinary senses, nor again are they proved solely by what are avowedly mere subjective impressions, but they are largely supported by a class of phenomena which comes between these two extremes; by powers inherent in certain individuals of beholding spiritual visions or personages unseen by common eyes, of receiving information or guidance by interior channels, of uttering truths not consciously acquired, of healing sick persons by the imposition of hands, with other faculties of a similarly supernormal kind.

And I hope that I shall not be thought presumptuous or irreverent if (while carefully abstaining from direct comment on any Revelation) I indicate what, in my view, would be the inevitable effect on the attitude of purely scientific minds towards these preliminary theses, - this preamble, as I have said, of definite religions, - were the continued prosecution of our inquiry to lead us after all to entirely negative conclusions, were all our evidence to prove untrustworthy, and all our experiments unsound.

For in the first place it is plain that this new science of which we are endeavouring to lay the foundations stands towards religion in a very different position from that occupied by the rising sciences, such as geology or biology, whose conflict or agreement with natural or revealed religion has furnished matter for so much debate. The discoveries of those sciences can scarcely in themselves add support to a doctrine of man's soul and immortality, though they may conceivably come into collision with particular forms which that doctrine has assumed. Religion, in short, may be able to assimilate them, but it would in no way have suffered had they proved altogether abortive.

But with our study the case is very different. For, to take the firs of the two preliminary theses of religion already referred to, the question whether human evidence as to supernormal occurrences can ever be trusted has been raised by our inquiries in a much more crucial form than when Hume and Paley debated it with reference to historical incidents only. We discuss it with reference to alleged contemporary incidents; we endeavour to evaluate by actual inspection and cross-examination the part which is played in supernormal narratives by the mere love of wonder, "the mythopceic faculty," the habitual negligence and ignorance of mankind. And if all the evidence offered to us should crumble away on exact investigation - as, for instance, the loudly vaunted evidence for the marvels connected with Theosophy has crumbled - it will no doubt be questioned whether the narratives on which the historic religions depend for their acceptance could have stood the test of a contemporaneous inquiry of a similarly searching kind.

And more than this, it will not only be maintained that the collapse of our modern evidence to supernormal phenomena discredits all earlier records of the same kind by showing the ease with which such marvels are feigned or imagined, but also that it further discredits those records by making them even more antecedently improbable than they were before. Not only will it be said that the proved fallibility of the modern witnesses illustrates the probable fallibility of the ancient ones, but the failure of the inquiry to elicit any indication that supernormal faculties do now exist in man will pro tanto throw a retrospective improbability on the second of the preliminary theses of religion, which assumes that some such supernormal faculty did at any rate exist in man at a given epoch. It may indeed be urged that such faculties were given for a time, and for a purpose, and were then withdrawn. But the instinct of scientific continuity, which even in the shaping of the solid continents is fain to substitute for deluge and cataclysm the tideway and the ripple and the rain, will rebel against the hypothesis of a bygone age of inward miracles, - a catastrophic interference with the intimate nature of man, I will illustrate my meaning by a concrete example, which does not involve any actual article of Protestant faith.

The ecstasy and the stigmata of St. Francis are an important element in Roman Catholic tradition. They are to some extent paralleled in the present day by the ecstasy and the stigmata of Louise Lateau. And Catholic instinct has discerned that if this modern case be decided to be merely morbid, and in no true sense supernormal, a retrospective discredit will be cast on the earlier legend. The old reluctance of the Catholic Church to submit her phenomena to scientific assessors has therefore to some extent been overcome; and Catholic physicians, under ecclesiastical authority, have discussed Louise Lateau's case in the forms of an ordinary medical report.

Enough will have been said to indicate the reality of the connection between our inquiries and the preliminary theses of religion. And so far as our positive results go in this direction, they will perhaps carry the more weight in that they are independently obtained, and intended to subserve scientific rather than religious ends; - coming, indeed, from men who have no developed theory of their own to offer, and are merely following the observed facts wherever they may seem to lead. I see no probability, I may add, that our results can ever supply a convincing proof to any specialised form of religion. The utmost that I anticipate is, that they may afford a solid basis of general evidence to the independence of man's spiritual nature, and its persistence after death, on which basis, at any rate, religions in their specialised forms may be at one with science, and on which the structure of definite revelation (which must be up-built by historical or moral arguments) may conceivably be planted with a firmness which is at present necessarily lacking.