“But are you justified in eliminating all possible natural causes in the present instance?”
“Certainly—you heard the account given; this was corroborated by all who were present. There was no one near the cupboard, the triangle was seen, in direct opposition to the law of gravitation, to fly through the air impelled by some force which could not, according to any scientific hypothesis, have had a natural origin.”
“But, assuming the elimination of all natural possibilities—which is rather a large order—does it not seem shockingly inconsistent with all our ideas on the subject of death, which lends a certain dignity that we instinctively recognise even to the passing away of the life of a puppy, to believe that the spirits of a large number of men who, in essentials were very much the same in their lifetime as we are, have found nothing better to do in ‘the vasty halls of death,’ than to remain at the beck and call of a lot of (very often) silly persons and, when so bidden, to make tables dance, rap out unmeaning nonsense, or else to scare tipplers from a billiard-room by rolling balls about the floor.”
“The world of the flesh is full of inconsistencies,” my philosopher explained; “why not, therefore, the world of the spirits? What we think of that phase of the question is this, namely: that spirits on the lower planes—which are those concerned in so-called manifestations—are the ones which cannot sever themselves from the environment their bodies were accustomed to. As there are different degrees of development among animals, of which man is the head, so there are among spirits. Thus some of the latter may be as the lower animals of the spirit-kingdom, and may indulge, as there is good reason for believing that they do, in spiritual monkey-tricks.”
Knowing that Chimer and old Isaac had detested each other, I felt it would have been of no use my attempting the rehabilitation of the old man’s ghost from the suspicion of being a spiritual monkey in the gloomy groves of Hades.
“Good-night, Chimer; I can only repeat the argument which Hume used against miracles. I do not think that Isaac had anything to do with to-night’s scare.”
And so, with the complacent dogmatism of the sceptic, I turned on my heel. The reader, no doubt, is of the opinion I expressed, but let him await the sequel.
Chimer nodded to me with an expression of pitying superiority. I went to bed and fell asleep almost immediately, for me a very unusual circumstance. I had a strange and vivid dream. I seemed to be wandering through a shadowy grove; all at once I saw a dejected-looking monkey which took great pains to conceal its face. It was sitting under a tree, to which its tail was tied. Moved by a sympathetic impulse, I approached and untied the knot; then I gently removed the paws from the downcast visage, with the view of offering consolation. The poor creature looked up diffidently and I recognised the features of Chimer.
After this I wandered on and on, until I found myself on the verge of the smiling Elysian fields, which seemed to stretch away to infinity in fertile beauty. Under a tree which was laden with many-hued spherical fruit of about the size of billiard-balls, lay old Isaac, fast asleep, and with a smile of supreme peace upon his worn face. He was wrapped in the old billiard-cloth which I had caused to be placed in his coffin.