My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

356 MY LIFElittle, a place was made in my fabric of thought,first for all such well-attested facts, and then, butmore slowly, for the spiritualistic interpretation ofthem.Unfortunately, at the present day most inquirersbegin at the wrong end. They want to see, andsometimes do see the most wonderful phenomenafirst, and being utterly unable to accept them as factsdenounce them as impostures, as did Tyndall andG. H. Lewes, or declare, as did Huxley, that suchphenomena do not interest them. Many peoplethink that when I and others publish accounts of suchphenomena, we wish or require our readers to believethem on oiir testimony. But that is not the case.Neither I nor any other well-instructed spiritualistexpects anything of the kind. We write not toconvince, but to excite to inquiry. We ask ourreaders not for belief, but for doubt of their owninfallibility on this question ;we ask for inquiry andpatient experiment before hastily concluding that weare, all of us, mere dupes and idiots as regards asubject to which we have devoted our best mentalfaculties and powers of observation for many years.