others have revealed the occurrence of phenomena which neither chance nor fraud nor fallacy of sense can plausibly explain, and for which the present scientific synthesis has as yet found no place, it is pertinent to remember that the investigators have been the same, the methods pursued the same, and the object in all cases was simply the discovery of the truth.
There is another point to be made clear. The prospectus just cited speaks of an "organised and systematic" investigation. It was characteristic of the Society in the first few years that its methods of work were elaborated and the canons of evidence laid down in committee; and that the greater part of the actual work, whether of experimental investigation or merely of weighing and analysing reports made by contributors, was again done in concert. It may be admitted that the leading investigators were attracted to the enquiry mainly in the hope of finding empirical evidence for the existence of the soul after death. So long as the collection and appraisal of evidence was a joint work, there were no grounds for thinking that the existence of this hope in any way biassed our reception of the evidence or the scope of the conclusions based upon it. But after the preliminary survey which occupied the first few years of the Society's existence, the need for concerted action was no longer so urgently felt. Different portions of the field attracted different workers; and the results of individual investigations in the outlying regions show
