EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 35 



to interfere, I have seen things which, I feel perfectly certain, I could 

 have explained if I had only heen allowed to look under the table, for 

 instance, or to place my leg in contact with the leg of the medium. 

 And it has been publicly stated within the last month, that the very 

 medium whom I suspected strongly of cheating on an occasion of this 

 kind, was detected in the very acts which I suspected, but which I was 

 not allowed to examine. I cannot, then, go further into this inquiry at 

 the present time, but I can only ask you to receive my assurance as 

 that of a scientific man, who has for a long course of years been ac- 

 customed to investigate the curious class of actions to which I have 

 alluded, and which disguise themselves under different names. A 

 great number of the very things now clone, by persons professing to 

 call themselves Spiritualists, were done thirty years ago, or professed 

 to be done, by those who call themselves " Mesmerists ; " thus the lift- 

 ing of the whole body in the air was a thing that was asserted as pos- 

 sible by mesmerists, as is now done by Mr. Home and his followers. 

 These things, I say, crop up now and then, sometimes in one form, 

 sometimes in another; audit is the same general tendency to credu- 

 lity, to the abnegation of one's common-sense, that marks itself in 

 every one of these epidemics. 



Thus, then, we come back to the principle from which we started 

 that the great object of all education should be to give to the mind 

 that rational direction which shall enable it to form an intelligent and 

 definite judgment upon subjects of this kind, without having to go 

 into any question of formal reasoning upon them. Thus, for example, 

 is it more probable that Mr. Home floated out of one window and in 

 at another, or that Lord Lindsay should have allowed himself to be 

 deceived as to a matter which he admits only occurred by moonlight f 

 That is the question for common-sense. I believe, as I stated just now, 

 that the tendency to the higher culture of the present age will mani- 

 fest itself in the improvement of the next generation, as well as of our 

 own ; and it is in that hope that I have been ericouraged on this and 

 other occasions to do what I could for the promotion of that desire for 

 self-culture, of which I see so many hopeful manifestations at the 

 present day. When once a good basis is laid by primary education, I 

 do not see what limit there need be to I will not say the learning of 

 future generations but to their icisdom, for wisdom and learning are 

 two very different things. I have known some people of the greatest 

 learning, who had the least amount of wisdom of any persons who 

 have come in my way. Learning, and the use that is made of it, are 

 two very different things. It is the effort to acquire a distinct and 

 definite knowledge of any subject that is worth learning, which has 

 its ultimate effect, as I have said, upon the race, as well as upon the 

 individual. 



But there are great differences, as to their effects upon the mind, 

 among different subjects of study; and I have long been of opir 



