sophisticate primitive ideas; whether the growth of language is not evidence
of a true growth of knowledge; whether, when all is said and done, there may
not be some valid evidence for the existence of a soul."
"The soul!" exclaimed Lisa, joyfully. "Oh, I believe in the soul!"
"Very improper!" rejoined the mystic; "Belief is the enemy of knowledge.
Skeat tells us that Soul probably comes from SU, to beget."
"I wish you would speak simply to me, you lift me up, and throw me down
again all the time."
"Only because you try to build without foundations. Now I am going to try
to show you some good reasons for thinking that the soul exists, and is
omniscient and immortal, other than that about genius which we have
discussed already. I am not going to bore you with the arguments of Socrates,
for, although, as a member of the Hemlock Club, which he founded, I
perhaps ought not to say so, the Phaedo is a tissue of the silliest sophistry.
"But I am going to tell you one curious fact in medicine. In certain cases of
dementia, where the mind has long been gone, and where subsequent
examination has shown the brain to be definitely degenerated, there
sometimes occur moments of complete lucidity, where the man is in
possession of his full powers. If the mind depended absolutely on the
physical condition of the brain, this would be difficult to explain.
"Science, too, is beginning to discover that in various abnormal
circumstances, totally different personalities may chase each other through a
single body. Do you know what is the great difficulty with regard to
spiritualism? It is that of proving the identity of the dead man. In practice,
since we [28] have lost the sense of smell on which dogs, for instance,
principally rely, we judge that a man is himself either by anthropometric
methods, which have nothing to do with the mind or the personality, or by the
sound of the voice, or by the handwriting, or by the contents of the mind. In
the case of a dead man, only the last method is available. And here we are
tossed on a dilemma. Either the 'spirit' says something which he is known to
have known during his life, or something else. In the first case, somebody
else must have known it, and may conceivably have informed the medium; in
the second case, it is rather disproof than proof of the identity!
"Various plans have been proposed to avoid this difficulty; notably the
device of the sealed letter to be opened a year after death. Any medium
divulging the contents before that date receives the felicitations of her critics.
So far no one has succeeded, though success would mean many thousands of