'Twixt two worlds : a narrative of the life and work of William Eglinton

CHAPTER XIX.
CONCLUSION.
ORD BLACKBURN, one of the soundest lawyers who has ever sat on the
English bench, has laid it down as a principle of evidence that a fact can
be established by credible testimony as to the time, place, and circumstances
of its occurrence. Applying this dictum to the phenomena recorded in the
foregoing pages, there seems little to be desired in reference to the completeness
of the evidence. The witnesses are credible, sane, and otherwise
competent persons ; their testimony is given in a clear, straightforward manner ; and the
facts to which they testify do not moreover rest upon the isolated assertion of any one
man, or set of men.
On the other hand, when we come to deal with those who deny the occurrence of
phenomena such as those in question, we find that they are persons in whom experience
is either altogether absent, or meagre in the extreme. Moreover, the testimony I have
presented is affirmative ; negative evidence, no matter how abundant, is absolutely valueless
in face of it. Ten men only may observe, for example, a transit of Venus, but their
testimony to this fact would outweigh that of ten thousand, or indeed that of ten million
men who might assert that they had not seen such a phenomenon. The same
reasoning may be applied with equal force to spiritual phenomena, and, bearing in mind
the fact that experience shows human testimony is, as a rule, reliable, it seems legitimate
to conclude that the facts recorded in this volume are real and true.
I have just pointed out that the witnesses I have called fulfil the necessary conditions.
They are credible, reputable, and of acknowledged sanity as regards the general affairs of
every-day life. In many cases the bare mention of their names sufficiently establishes that
fact. All the learned, civil, and military professions are represented, and the list contains
the names of many who are, in other walks of life, honoured and respected ' of their
fellows. In short, this record of upwards of ten years' public work is specially remarkable
for the wealth and weight of the evidence it contains. So abundant, however, were the
materials at my command, that the chief difficulty I have encountered has been the condensation
of my narrative within reasonable limits. Otherwise I could have filled at least
three volumes similar to this one.
In addition to those who have been already referred to in these pages, the undermentioned
have had seances with Mr. Eglinton. Here again, however, these do not