Curious that Macaulay's fears for America should not have been felt by Americans themselves until now. Even to-day, when in some degree the symptoms he described a half century ago are making their appearance, the American people is more interested in the situation than alarmed by it; for the Americans, like the English, rely with confidence upon the Anglo-Saxon genius for working things out.
AN OPEN ATTITUDE IN STUDYING THE OCCULT.
What Shall the Man of Scientific Mind
Say in the Presence of Apparently
Supernatural Phenomena?
Sir Oliver Lodge, writing in the Fortnightly Review a short time ago, asserted that every man of science who has seriously undertaken to investigate the "occult" has ended by believing in it.
This statement, as the Portland Oregonian suggests, may not be so important as might appear, for comparatively few trained scientists have ventured into the vague problems of the threshold. The Oregonian, however, proceeds to answer some of the objections commonly made to belief in spirit communications, and also to define limitations of investigation of occult phenomena:
People of well-balanced judgment, whether learned or not, are inclined to look askance upon those who have dealings with the spirit world. Some believe that communication between the living and dead is possible, but wicked.
Others, while their faith is firm that life continues after death, hold, nevertheless, that the gulf between the two worlds can never be recrossed by those who have once passed over, and that no message can traverse its dark immensity.
Still others believe that death ends our existence utterly; there is no future life, no world of spirits, and therefore all phenomena purporting to be caused by the disembodied dead necessarily originate in some other way.
None of these opinions is held by the sternly scientific mind, like Dr. Osler's, for example. In his well-known Ingersoll lecture that distinguished physician and graceful man of letters comes to the conclusion that we do not and never can know whether there is a future life or not.