Lang begins by entering a protest
against the attitude observed towards the subject by contemporary
science, especially by anthropology, which, as having been so lately "in
the same condemnation," might be expected to show itself superior to
that injustice which it had itself so much reason to complain of. Yet
anthropology, abandoning the first principles of modern science, still
refuses to listen to the facts alleged by psychical research, and
justifies its refusal on Hume's oft-exploded fallacy, namely, on an _a
priori_ conviction of their impossibility and therefore of their
non-occurrence.
However wide the range of experience upon which physical generalizations
are based, it can never be so wide as on this score alone to prove the
inherent possibility of exceptions; more especially when we consider the
confinement of the human race to what is relatively a momentary
existence on a whirling particle of dust in a sandstorm. There may
indeed be abundant evidence of a certain impetus or tendency enduring
from a comparatively distant and indefinite past and making for an
equally indefinite future; but there is not, cannot be evidence against
the possibility of interference from other laws whose paths, at points
unknown and incalculable, intersect those followed by the (to us)
ordinary course of events.
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