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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



penter's equal, to Moses & Son's kept poet ; while 

 with a pitiable inappropriateness he parodies the 

 fine though hackneyed saying, " See how these 

 Christians love one another," in order to apply it 

 satirically to the case of a rather severe, but not 

 unfair, review of Mr. Home's book in a spiritual 

 periodical. 



I will now proceed to show, not only that my 

 accusations in the Quarterly Journal of Science 

 for July last — which in Dr. Carpenter's opinion 

 amount to a charge of " willful and repeated sup- 

 pressio veri " — are proved, but that a blind reli- 

 ance on Mr. Home and on " excerpts from Ameri- 

 can newspapers " has led him to make deliberate 

 statements which are totally unfounded. 



I will first take a case which will illustrate 

 Dr. Carpenter's wonderful power of misstatement 

 as regards myself : 



1. In a letter to the Daily News, written im- 

 mediately after the delivery of Dr. Carpenter's 

 first " Lecture on Mesmerism " at the London In- 

 stitution a year ago, I adduced a case of mesmer- 

 ism at a distance, recorded by the late Prof. 

 Gregory. The lady mesmerized was a relation of 

 the professor, and was staying in his own house. 

 The mesmerizer was a Mr. Lewis. The sole au- 

 thority for the facts referred to by me was Prof. 

 Gregory himself. 



2. While criticising this Mr. Lewis in his 

 " Lectures" (p. 24), Dr. Carpenter says, referring 

 to my Daily News letter : " His (Mr. Lewis's) utter 

 failure to produce either result, however, under 

 the scrutiny of skeptical inquirers, obviously dis- 

 credits all his previous statements ; except to such 

 as (like Mr. A. R. Wallace, who has recently ex- 

 pressed his full faith in Mr. Lewises self-asserted 

 powers) are ready to accept without question the 

 slenderest evidence of the greatest marvels.*' 

 (The italics are my own.) 



3. In my " Review " of Dr. Carpenter's book 

 (Quarterly Journal of Science, July, 1877, p. 394) 

 I use strong (but, I submit, appropriate) language 

 as to this injurious and unfounded statement. 

 For Dr. Carpenter's readers must have understood, 

 and must have been intended to understand, that, 

 in sole reliance on this Mr. Lewis's own statements, 

 I placed full faith in them without any corrobora- 

 tion, and had also publicly announced this faith ; 

 in which case his readers would have been justi- 

 fied in thinking me a credulous fool not worth 

 listening to. 



4. Writing again on this subject (in last 

 month's issue of this Magazine, p. 545), Dr. Car- 

 penter does not apologize for the gross and inju- 

 rious misrepresentation of what I really said, 



neither does he justify it by reference to anything 

 else I may have written ; but he covers his re- 

 treat with a fresh svggestio falsi, and ridicules me 

 for using such strong language (which he quotes) 

 merely (he says) because he had reflected on my 

 " too ready acceptance of the slenderest evidence 

 of the greatest marvels" — a phrase of Dr. Car- 

 penter's which I never objected to at all because 

 it was a mere expression of opinion, while what 

 I did object to was a misstatement of a matter 

 of fact. This is Dr. Carpenter's idea of the way 

 to carry on that "calm discussion with other men 

 of science " to the absence of which he imputes 

 all my errors. (Note A, p. 705.) 



Dr. Carpenter is so prepossessed with the 

 dominant idea of putting down spiritualism, that 

 it seems impossible for him to state the simplest 

 fact in regard to it without introducing some 

 purely imaginary fact of his own to make it fit 

 his theory. Thus, in his article on " The Falla- 

 cies of Testimony" (Contemporary Review, 1876, 

 p. 286) he says: "A whole party of believers will 

 affirm that they saw Mr. Home float out of one 

 window and in at another, while a single honest 

 skeptic declares that Mr. Home was sitting in his 

 chair all the time." Now, there is only one case 

 on record of Mr. Home having "floated out of 

 one window and in at another." Two of the 

 persons present on the occasion — Lord Adare and 

 Lord Lindsay — have made public their account 

 of it, and the third has never declared that Mr. 

 Home was "sitting in his chair all the time," but 

 has privately confirmed, to the extent his position 

 enabled him to do so, the testimony of the other 

 two. Is this another case of Dr. Carpenter " cere- 

 brating " his facts to suit his theory, or will he say 

 it is a purely hypothetical case? Yet this can 

 hardly be, for he goes on to argue from it: "And 

 in this last case we have an example of a, fact, of 

 which," etc., etc. I ask Dr. Carpenter to name 

 the "honest skeptic" of this quotation, and to 

 give us his precise statement; or, failing this, to 

 acknowledge that he has imagined a piece of evi- 

 dence to suit his hypothesis. (Note B, p. 706.) 



It is only fair that he should do this because, 

 in another of his numerous raids upon the poor 

 deluded spiritualists, he has made a direct and, 

 as it seems to me, completely unsupported charge 

 against Lord Lindsay. In his article on " Spirit- 

 ualism and its Recent Converts " (Quarterly Re- 

 view, 1871, pp. 335, 336) Dr. Carpenter quotes 

 Lord Lindsay's account of an experiment with 

 Mr. Home, in which Lord Lindsay placed a power- 

 ful magnet in one corner of a totally dark room, 

 and then brought in the medium, who after a few 



