# Quote — Colin Wilson, The Mammoth Encyclopedia of the Unsolved

> They certainly demonstrate that Seth, whether an aspect of Jane Robert's unconscious mind or a genuine "spirit," was of a high level of intelligence. Yet when Jane Roberts produced a book that purported to be the after-death journal of the philosopher William James, it was difficult to take it seriously. James's works are noted for their vigour and clarity of style; Jane Robert's "communicator" writes like an undergraduate . . . there is a clumsiness here that is quite unlike James's swift-moving, colloquial prose.

- Author: [Colin Wilson](https://www.leafyquotes.com/colin-wilson.md)
- Book: [The Mammoth Encyclopedia of the Unsolved](https://www.leafyquotes.com/colin-wilson/the-mammoth-encyclopedia-of-the-unsolved.md)
- Page: 390
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Colin_Wilson#The_Mammoth_Encyclopedia_of_the_Unsolved_(2000)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/colin-wilson/the-mammoth-encyclopedia-of-the-unsolved/they-certainly-demonstrate

## More from this book

> The progress of human knowledge depends on maintaining that touch of scepticism even about the most "unquestionable" truths. A century ago, Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection was regarded as scientifically unshakeable; today, most biologists have their reservations about it. Fifty years ago, Freud's sexual theory of neurosis was accepted by most psychiatrists; today, it is widely recognized that his methods were highly questionable. At the turn of this century, a scientist who questioned Newton's theory of gravity would have been regarded as insane; twenty years later, it had been supplanted by Einstein's theory, although, significantly, few people actually understood it. It seems perfectly conceivable that our descendants of the twenty-second century will wonder how any of us could have been stupid enough to have been taken in by Darwin, Freud or Einstein.

p. 4 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/colin-wilson/the-mammoth-encyclopedia-of-the-unsolved/the-progress-of-human.md)

> Now, obviously, the human race is on the point of an extremely interesting evolutionary development. The first step towards escape from this vicious circle is to recognize that the apparent "ordinariness" of the world is a delusion. If we could become deeply and permanently convinced that the world "out there" is endlessly exciting, we would never again allow ourselves to become trapped in the swamp of "taken-for-grantedness". And we would become practically unkillable. Shaw says of his "Ancients" in Back to Methuselah "Even in the moment of death, their life does not fail them". "Life failure" is that feeling that there is nothing new under the sun, and that we all have to accept defeat in the end. If we could learn the mental trick of causing the dynamo to accelerate, this illusion would never again be able to exert its power over us.

p. 14 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/colin-wilson/the-mammoth-encyclopedia-of-the-unsolved/now-obviously-the.md)