ASPR Journal, V14 - Iapsop.com

War Predictions through Mrs. Chenoweth. 321
ment were concealed from the community the prediction 'would
be easy and determinism of the fatal sort would not enter into
the problem. It is knowledge of the conditions that makes prediction
possible.
(2) If a spirit should happen to know some facts that the
living did not know it might easily enough predict where it would
seem mysterious to us. A physician can predict a death where
the ordinary person cannot, and a spirit may sustain the same
relation to events that an astronomer does to an eclipse of the
sun. I repeat that knowledge of fac!s is all that is necessary
to make prediction possible.
( 3) Again spirits might be able actually to bring about the
events they predict. If they can communicate with the living; if
they can produce visions, voices or emotions they can set agoing
the machinery which makes all sorts of human events possible. If
they can influence motor action in the human organism they can
again effect results of all sorts in the physical world, and if they
predict them, it may be that they do so only because they are able
to bring them about.
It is not the impossibility of prediction or any doctrine of
determinism that is primarily against the fact. In no case would
determinism affect the question except in those remote physical
events which would require such a complex set of causes to fulfill
them that prediction would seem possible. But we have no such
cases real or alleged to face. We have only those proximate
events which are more intimately associated with human knowledge
and volition, and the history of such predictions makes
them usually events proximate to the time and conditions of their
realization. But the primary question is whether the things
predicted can be explained by normal guesses and inferences on
the part of the psychic. We have no right to give them scientific
seriousness for supernormal meaning until we have excluded
normal explanations.
It has been apparent from the outset of this war, at least to
all unbiased observers who know history; who know the forces
involved; and who understand the relative strength of the parties
engaged, that the disadvantage was on the side of Germany anrl
Austria. Besides, the sympathies of those who are on the side of
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