The title which I have chosen for the present book, "The Naturalisation of the Supernatural," describes in popular language the object aimed at. The facts which the Society proposed to investigate stood, and some still stand, as aliens, outside the realm of organised knowledge. It proposed to examine their claim to be admitted within the pale. And it is important to recognise that whether we found ourselves compelled to reject them as undesirables, the aim which the Society set before itself would equally be fulfilled. In undertaking the enquiry we did not assume to express any opinion beforehand on the value of the evidence to be examined. Whatever the present bias of individual members towards belief or disbelief, it will not, I think, be charged against us, by any one who dispassionately studies the results published in the earlier volumes of the Proceedings and in the book, Phantasms of the Living, in which the case for telepathy was first set before the public, that any private prepossessions were allowed to pervert the methods of the enquiry. To ascertain the facts of the case, at whatever cost to established opinions and prejudices, has been the consistent aim of the Society and its workers. If some of our investigations have resulted in the detection of imposture, the discovery of unsuspected fallacies of sense and memory, and the general disintegration of some imposing structures built upon too narrow foundations; whilst
