HAUNTED HOUSES

...her death? Any physical original: "material" explanation original: "hypothesis" is unlikely. We might suppose that she called her brother before her death, and that the call remained hidden original: "latent" in her brother's spirit until an hour of quiet enabled his brain to perceive it. On the other hand, we may suppose that the appeal was made after her death. We must consider every possibility.

The simplest solution original: "expedient" would be to deny it, and to declare that the young student simply had a nightmare which accidentally coincided with the death of his sister. That is indeed very simple. But does it satisfy you? Does it satisfy you when you are faced with hundreds of cases of the same kind? Does it satisfy you also in the cases where the person telling the story has "seen" from a distance all the details of a death, a suicide, an accident, or a fire? No. You have too scientific and rational a mind to be satisfied with this old theory of chance, and you know that the mathematics of probability original: "calculus of probability" makes it unacceptable. What then?

Then it follows that the psychic problem has been presented, and we may as well acknowledge it.

I do not claim to explain it. Science has not advanced that far. To admit a fact and to explain it are two different things. We are forced to admit facts even when we cannot explain them. Imagine a man passes the corner of a street and a flowerpot falls on his head. He is forced to admit the fact without immediately guessing how it happened, or how the horizontal and vertical paths met exactly at the spot occupied by his head.

No indeed, what we call matter and its properties are not enough to explain these facts. Therefore, they belong to another category—a category which we have every right to call "psychic"—and which leads us to admit the existence of souls, spirits, and intelligent spiritual beings, which are not simply brain functions original: "cerebral functions"...