Belief in ghosts and apparitions is general, almost universal; possibly it is shared by the ghosts themselves. We are told that this wide distribution of the faith and its persistence through the ages, are powerful evidences of its truth. As to that, I do not remember to have heard the basis of that argument frankly stated; it can be nothing more than that whatever is generally and long believed is true; for of course there can be nothing in the particular belief under consideration making it peculiarly demonstrable by counting noses. The world has more Buddhists than Christians; is Buddhism therefore the truer religion? Before the day of Galileo there was a general, though not quite universal, conviction that the earth was a motionless body, the sun passing around it daily. That was a matter in which "the united testimony of mankind" ought to have counted for more than it should in the matter of ghosts, for all can see and study the earth and sun, but not many profess to see ghosts, and no one holds that the circumstances in which they are seen are favorable to the calm and critical observation. Ghosts are notoriously addicted to the habit of evasion; Heine says that is because they are afraid of us. "The united testimony of mankind" has a notable knack at establishing only one thing — the incredibility of the witnesses.

      If the ghosts care to prove their existence as objective phenomena they are unfortunate in always discovering themselves to inaccurate observers, to say nothing of the bad luck of first frightening them into fits. That the seers of ghosts are inaccurate observers, and therefore incredible witnesses, is clear from their own stories. Who ever heard of a naked ghost? The apparition always is said to present himself (as he certainly should) properly clothed, either "in his habit as he lived" or in the apparel of the grave. Herein the witness must be at fault: whatever power of apparition after dissolution may inhere in mortal flesh and blood, we can hardly be expected to believe that cotton, silk, wool and linen have the same mysterious gift. If textile fabrics had that "natural magic and dire property" they would sometimes manifest it independently, one would think — would "materialise" visibly without a ghost inside, a greatly simpler apparition than "the grin without the cat."

      Ask any proponent of ghosts if he thinks that the "products of the loom" can "revisit the glimpses of the moon" after they have duly decayed, or, while still with us, can show themselves in a place where they are not. If he has no suspicion, poor man, of the trap set for him he will pronounce the thing impossible and absurd, thereby condemning himself out of his own mouth; for assuredly such powers in these material things are necessary to the garmenting of spooks.

      Now, by the law falsus in uno falsus in omnibus we are compelled to reject all the ghost stories that have ever been seriously told. If the observer (let him be credited with the best intentions) has observed, so badly as to think he saw what he did not see, and could not have seen, in one particular to what credence is he entitled with regard to another? His error in the matter of the "long white robe or other garment where no long white robe or other garment could be puts him out of court altogether.

      It seems char that if the spook hope to get himself recognized in this logical and scientific age as a phenomenon having more than a subjective existence he must no longer come among us "in his habit as he lived," nor in any habit at all. Nay, it is to be feared that he must eschew his hair, as well his habiliments, and "swim into our ken" utterly bald; for the scientist tell us with becoming solemnity that the hair is a purely vegetable growth and no essential part of us.

      In brief, the conditions under which the twentieth century ghost must appear in order to command our faith are so onerous that he may prefer to remain away — to the unspeakable impoverishment of letters and art.