Indeed, for more than fifty years a veritable battle raged over the reality or the meaning of the alleged phenomena of modern spiritualism. So far back as the fifties, Victor Hugo had upbraided scientists for their unscientific treatment of this subject. The unexpected ought always to be expected by science. Her duty is to stop it in its course and search it, rejecting the chimerical, accepting the real. She should verify and distinguish.
All human knowledge is but picking and culling.
The circumstance that the false is mingled with the true furnishes no excuse for rejecting the whole mass. Hoe out the weed error, but reap the fact, and place it beside others. Science is the sheaf of facts. The mission of science is to study and sound everything. All of us, according to our degree, are the creditors of investigation.