59 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sess numerous certificates of judges, whose credibility can certainly 

 not be unconditionally denied, according to which a witch sometimes 

 weighed only half an ounce, sometimes even nothing at all. You an- 

 swer that all this belongs to the realm of superstition, and that the 

 pretended facts were never investigated by trustworthy observers. 

 But upon what is this assumption of superstition founded ? Simply 

 upon the fact that we have hitherto held the things in question to be 

 impossible. Now you maintain not only the possibility but also the 

 actuality of phenomena equally astonishing, and, moreover, very simi- 

 lar. By all rules of scientific investigation, we are logically bound to 

 assume that those earlier phenomena also may, indeed, in many in- 

 stances have rested upon deception, but that they were -scarcely alto- 

 gether without foundation. There was of course a lack of exact ob- 

 servers in those days. But do you believe that the Galileian laws 

 of falling bodies were not in force before Galileo demonstrated them 

 by his experiments ? There opens up to us from your standpoint an 

 essentially new view of history. Phenomena hitherto regarded as 

 lamentable expressions of a corrupting superstition are transformed 

 into evidences of an especially gracious dissemination of supersensible 

 mysteries. 



But I proceed to your real conclusions themselves. The spiritualis- 

 tic phenomena, silly as they may be in detail, pass with you, by reason 

 of the certainty which they give of another world, as a new source of 

 moral and religious conviction. Our opinion hitherto has been that 

 Providence veiled the future from men with a wise purpose ; that its 

 will was to leave the religious nature to form for itself a moral ideal, 

 which should remain untouched by the imperfections of the world of 

 sense. This condition of things is by your view essentially changed. 

 Our future destiny is no longer a subject of moral demands and reli- 

 gious convictions, but, to a certain extent at least, belongs to our knowl- 

 edge and perception. You do indeed lay stress upon the fact that 

 precisely that phase of the other world which we perceive may be the 

 less perfect phase. That might pass, if at least the beginning of a 

 process of perfection were apparent to us. But I see only the shock- 

 ing contrary of this. What conception must we form of the condition 

 of our deceased fellow men, if your view is correct? I find myself 

 forced to the following conclusions, against which, so far as I can see, 

 you can urge no material objections : 



1. Physically the souls of our dead fall into the bondage of certain 

 living men, the so-called mediums. These mediums are, at present at 

 any rate, not very widely spread, and appear to belong almost exclu- 

 sively to the American nationality. At the command of the mediums, 

 the souls execute mechanical performances, which bear throughout the 

 character of purposelessness : they knock, lift tables and chairs, play 

 harmoniums, etc. 



2. Intellectually the souls fall into a condition which, so far as 



