In all these cases, we have not, properly speaking, to do with a
pure future, but rather with a present that is not yet known.
Thus reduced and stripped of all foreign influences and
intrusions the number of instances in which there is a really
clear and incontestable perception of a fragment of the future
remains large enough, contrary to what is generally believed, to
make it impossible for us to speak of extraordinary accidents or
wonderful coincidences. There must be a limit to everything, even
to distrust, even to the most extensive incredulity, otherwise
all historical research and a good deal of scientific research
would become decidedly impracticable. And this remark applies as
much to the nature of the incidents related as to the actual
authenticity of the narratives. We can contest or suspect any
story whatever, any written proof, any evidence; but
thenceforward we must abandon all certainty or knowledge that is
not acquired by means of mathematical operations or laboratory
experiments, that is to say, three-fourths of the human phenomena
which interest us most. Observe that the records collected by the
investigators of the S. P. R., like those discussed by M.
Bozzano, are all told at first hand and that those stories of
which the narrators were not the protagonists or the direct
witnesses have been ruthlessly rejected.
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