When we retire to the solitude of our cell to search
there in deep contemplation, or, as it were, in the inner-



84 PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS

most of our brains, for the right way we want to follow
the next morning, we must remember that our mental
effort can be successful only because of our previous, if
involuntary, experiences and adventures which we, by
help of our memory, have taken along into our cell.
That tells the whole story of philosophic speculation or
deduction. These philosophers imagine they have drawn
their theories, not from concrete material, but from the
innermost of their brains, while, as a matter of fact, they
have but performed an unamscious induction, a process
of thought, of argument not without material, but with
indefinite and therefore, confused material. Con-
versely, the inductive method is distinguished only by
.this that its deduction is done consciously. Scientific
flaws" are deductions drawn by human thinking from
: empiric material. The spiritist needs material just as the
'materialist needs spirit. This thesis, when brought out
with mathematical precision, is the result of philosophic
speculation.
