Cock Lane and common sense
This book deals with topics which it seems difficult to discuss in a spirit of fairness and right reason. While engaged on the essays, the author has orleaned the remonstrances of a few philosophers and friends. One of these thinkers (a rural dean) points out that human evidence is very untrustworthy, that he himself has been described as wearing the kilt, whereas he wears the trews ; as editor of the Monk s Vade-Mecum, a paper which he never saw ; as constant in his devotion to a large green umbrella, his umbrella, in fact, being blue, and so forth. ^
The writer has answered that these objections apply to all human evidence, and that several of the statements in this volume are not the chatter of personal paragraph-makers, but are, in some cases, attested on oath, in others, have survived strict cross-examination.
Comtents:
Preface.--Introduction.--Savage spiritualism.--Ancient spiritualism.--Comparative psychical research.--Haunted houses.--Cock Lane and common-sense.--Apparitions, ghosts, and hallucinations.--Scrying or crystal-gazing.--The second sight.--Ghosts before the law.--A modern trial for witchcraft.--Presbyterian ghost hunters.--The the logic of table turning.--The ghost theory of the origin of religion
Cock Lane is a small street in Smithfield in the City of London, leading from Giltspur Street in the east to Snow Hill in the west. In the medieval period, it was known as Cock Lane and was the site of legal brothels.
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