Great Falls daily tribune., 1920-05-30

Washington, D. c., May pa man
| Is accused of beating his wife 70 oea.n,
and is brought before a high tribunal 1or
trial. Judge and jurors and audience slt
and listen in respectful silence WnlIe tne
ghost of the dead woman testltles tnat
she herself procured the iron par WIN
which she was killed, that she mad Id,
tended to kill her husband with II, ana
that he had great provocation to kill her.
This sounds like story Of olden times.
1t might have happened In any OF tne
great ages of superstition when men
believed in the supernatural even more
than they did in the natural Back In the
seventeenth century, for example, our
ancestors used to throw an accused
witch into a pond to determine whether
she was innocent or guilty: Still carrier
there were trials by combat, in when
the accused fought for his life. In eth
er case, the appeal was to the snperna-
tural. 1t was believed that the super
natural would intervene to save the In,
nocent or destroy the guilty. 20 sun
further back to primitive times, ard you
find men stiu more in awe of the su-
pernatural. The flight of birds, the
clouds of the sky, the voice OF thunder
are all to him the mandates OF unseen
beings. He walks in constant terror or
innumerable ghosts. His life is a thing
of fear.
Old ears Stlii WIN US.
Civilization is supposed to have freed
man from these ancient fears, but IL mas
not done so. The fear Is still latent IN
US, waiting for a chance to express II,
self. For example, the incident related
above happened, not in the middle ages
or in fairy tale, but in the, supreme
court of the District of Columbia few
days ago. The dead woman's husband
testified that she had gone to seyerai
mediums, had conversed with the ghost
of her daughter and had so gotten the
daughters storyxf what happened Sun
more astonishing, she testified that an
assistant United States district attor-
ney had advised her to consult mediums.
When you take this in connection with
the fact that the supreme court eVl-
IDENTIFY listened to the ghost conversation
as part of the testimony, you cannot
blink at the conclusion that ghost has
been admitted to court of justice IN the
United States. The supernatural has
come again to play a formal and recog-
nized part in the affairs of men IN a
country which calls itself civilized
OF course, the whole question of spir-
itualism is here involved. There are
many intelligent and sincere people who
believe that the existence of ghosts who
can communicate with us has been
proved. Sir Oliver Lodge, scientist OF
reputation, is one OF them. lie proceeds
by a process of elimination. He says
there are certain phenomena which can
not be explained in any way except as
communications from the dead. Nearly
all other scientists disagree with him.
They say these things can easily be ex-
planned in other ways. At best Sir Oil
yer Lodge has advanced an interesting
hypothesis.
But, whether it be true that the dead
survive and communicate with the living
or not, the question is arising more in
sistently every day as to how much rel.
these ghosts Not only have thousands
of persons all over the world accepted
the belief in spirits. but they have added
to that belief a faith that spirits are al
ways wise and truthful and that they
are practically omniscient.
But is there any reason for this lat