ASPR Journal, V14 - Iapsop.com

Survey and Comment. 531
her daughter Doris and discuss the group in its totality rather
than whittle around the edges, and tell us how the amazing
exhibit is to be accounted for by normal causes.
Psychical researchers who have reached conclusions that
supernormal factors enter into certain phenomena do not dread
opponents, but they do often wince and inwardly sigh, " Save
us from our friends." Particularly from foolish books in
advocacy of spirit communication, from vaporing, mawkish,
unevidential and credulous books, Good Lord deliver us. If
some Index Expurgatorius could only sweep into oblivion at
least three-fourths of the books on the subject, before publishers
have an opportunity to appraise them on the basis of their commercial
availability (for there is a paying public which seems to
gravitate to books in direct proportion to their foolishness, extravagance
and lack of authentication), thousands of thinking
men would be saved from the nausea which causes them to turn
away from a world of facts.
A Significant Fable.
The witty and brilliant humorist and book-reviewer of the
Metropolitan, Mr. Clarence Day, Jr., has written a fable which
has a sweet reasonableness in its application to the difficulties
which we should expect that spirits, if they endeavor to describe
their present sphere and to show its advantages, must inevitably
encounter. Mr. Day, it should be explained, is not arguing for
spiritism, but only maintaining a fair attitude. The extract
which follows was originally printed in April, 1917.
There are plenty of objections to spiritualism on quite other
grounds, but it's narrow of us to condemn it because it makes the
new life seem trivial. Of course, it seems trivial or vague and
insipid to us. You can't describe one kind of existence to those in
another.
Suppose, for example, we were describing dry land to a fish.
"We have steam heat and sunsets," I might tell him-just for
a beginning.
And the fish would think: " Heat? Phew! that's murderous!
And, oh, that sizzling old sun ! "
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