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When I speak of the present position of the mystery, I of course
do not mean the mystery of life, its end and its beginnings, nor
yet the great riddle of the universe which lies about us. In this
sense, all is mystery, and, as I have said elsewhere, is likely
always to remain so; nor is it probable that we shall ever touch
any point of even the utmost borders of knowledge or certainty.
It is here a question of that which, in the midst of this
recognized and usual mystery, the familiar mystery of which we
are almost oblivious, suddenly disturbs the regular course of our
general ignorance. In themselves, these facts which strike us as
supernatural are no more so than the others; possibly they are
rarer, or, to be more accurate, less frequently or less easily
observed. In any case, their deep-seated cause, while being
probably neither more remote nor more difficult access, seem
to lie hidden in an unknown region less often visited by our
science, which after all is but a reassuring and conciliatory
espression of our ignorance. Today, thanks to the labours of the
Society for Psychical Research and a host of other seekers, we
are able to approach these phenomena as a whole with a certain
confidence. Leaving the realm of legend, of after-dinner stories,
old wives' tales, illusions and exaggerations, we find ourselves
at last on circumscribed but fairly safe ground.
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