So ends the "Loretto Chapel" script, with a series of precise and categorical statements, offering no means of escape from the final alternative of truth or falsehood, fact or fiction. This situation will be clear to the reader, as it is to the writer of this narrative, who, for the reasons now about to be given, entertains no misgivings as to the course he has taken in publishing it.
His motto here would be, "Prove all things, and hold fast that which is good." These writings, whose value is at present unproven, and in respect of the detailed statement of names, dates, and places, highly problematical, are put forward as an illustration of the working of his method.
They are not to be accepted with credulity, but are subjects for critical analysis, and must be weighed and examined, with all the rest, in the light of reason, assisted by every useful means of normal research and exploration.
If we are resolved to accept nothing which is not first fully endorsed by reason and common sense, and afterwards fortified by deductions fairly made from data, however slender, we stand but little risk of being deceived. Let us, therefore, apply to this case the same rule which the writer hasalready successfully applied in the case of the Edgar Chapel.
Intuition has played her part. From the depths of the subconscious mind her power has evoked these images. Now let Reason and Logic take the reins and drive the argument. Let us analyse the facts, such as they are, which bear upon the case, and in the light of the intuitive results see whether an argument may be built up which will be capable of supporting weight.
In this lies the true utility of the method we have chosen. It claims a double value—(1) in its ability to remember and to review subconsciously an infinitude of minor things, slightly or casually impressed upon the mind and unnoticed or unremembered by the working brain; and (2) the faculty of balancing, assessing, and combining these in such manner as the brain itself is rarely if ever able to do, and hence to evolve from slenderest data a scheme in which all probabilities which can lawfully be inferred from these minutiæ are welded into a complete whole.
For a moment, let us go farther and assume that some of the statements made in the script are not merely incapable of proof, but are found actually inconsistent with facts. Where then do we stand with our theory?
As I have said, until the statements are accepted, no one is deceived unless by his own rashness. All that has happened is that two people having a perfectly honest purpose have attempted to record by automatic process knowledge arrived at by thetrained exercise of the subconscious mind, and have obtained—let us say—fiction or romance instead of the fact they sought.
The logical inference from this failure will obviously be that the particular method employed, whilst it may have the value claimed for it of supplementing the ordinary reasoning powers, has proved unreliable where applied for the purpose of procuring statements whose truth does not (as in the case of the Edgar Chapel) depend upon the deductive or inductive probabilities, but upon isolated facts unrelated to others, such as the names of places and people unknown; and that therefore, as a general conclusion, the method is unsuited for the purpose of obtaining such information, and we have used it for an end for which it is not adapted.
Thus may the legitimate bounds of the automatic method be prescribed; Intuition must bring all her results to the bar of Reason for provisional acceptance, and when this test is passed then the matter becomes ripe for further research.
Above all, let us not be superstitious. There is no need to invoke the action of supernatural agencies of a malevolent sort to explain the outcome of our own fallibility. If a man or woman sits down and produces automatically a story which turns out to be fiction, why, I ask, should that fiction be regarded as anything inherently worse in origin than the mass of fiction, good, bad, and indifferent, which writers produce consciously?
Where is the essential difference? The onlyanswer I can find to this question is that the difference lies in the folly of the credulous, who are at all times willing to attach greater importance and credit to a statement made from an unknown source than to one which has a definite human and personal origin. "Omne ignotum pro magnifico."
For the imaginative function, whether working consciously or unconsciously, is the same in either case. Give it truth to feed upon and it will evolve truth. And through the door of truth may enter that which will guide us to a wider knowledge.