8 Psychic Force and Modern Spiritualism, 
“The wooden foot being 14 inches wide, and resting flat on the table, it is 
evident that no amount of pressure exerted within this space of 1} 
inches could produce any action on the balance.” 
But as this objection had been made by several persons, I devised certain 
experiments so as to entirely eliminate mechanical contact, and these experi- 
ments were fully described in my last paper. 
To show the singular inaccuracy of the reviewer’s statements and in- 
ferences, I give below in parallel columns, quotations from the Quarterly 
Review, to mark the contrast between its unfair statements and my own actual 
language as printed in the Quarterly Fournal of Science. 
(Quarterly Review, Oct., 1871). 
‘* He admitted that he had not em- 
ployed the tests which men of science 
had a right to demand before giving 
credence to the genuineness of those 
phenomena.” 
“He entered upon the inquiry, 
of which he now makes public the 
results, with an avowed foregone con- 
clusion of his own,” 
‘This obviously deprives his ‘ con- 
vicion of their objective reality’ of 
even that small measure of value to 
which his scientific character might 
have given it a claim if his testi- 
mony had been impartial ?” 
(Quarterly Fournal of Science, 
Fuly, 1870). 
‘““ My whole scientific education has 
been one long lesson in exactness of 
observation, and I wish it to be dis- 
tin@ly understood that this firm con- 
viction [of the genuineness of certain 
phenomena] is the result of most care- 
ful investigation.” 
‘‘In the present case I prefer to 
enter upon the inquiry with no pre- 
conceived notions whatever as to 
what Can or Cannot bes .1 eee 
first, I believed that the whole affair 
was a superstition, or at least an 
unexplained trick.” . . . ‘I should 
feel it to be a great satisfaction if I 
could bring out light in any direction, 
and I may safely say that I care not 
in what direction.” ‘““T cannot, 
at present, hazard even the most 
vague hypothesis as to the cause of 
the phenomena.” 
‘Views or opinions I cannot be said 
to possess on a subject which I do not 
pretend to understand.” . . .. .- 
‘* The increased employment of scien- 
tific methods will promote exact ob- 
servation and greater love of truth 
among enquirers, and will produce a 
race of observers who will drive the 
worthless residuum of spiritualism 
hence into the unknown limbo of 
magic and necromancy.” 
On page 351 the reviewer insinuates that the early scientific training of myself 
and fellow-workers has been deficient. 
scientific training could not well have commenced earlier than it did. 
Speaking for myself, I may say that my 
Some 
time before I was sixteen I had been occupied in experimental work in a 
private physical laboratory. Then I entered the Royal College of Chemistry, 
under Dr. Hofmann, where I stayed six years. My first original research, on 
a complicated and difficult subject, was published when I was nineteen ; and 
from that time to the present, my scientific education has been one continuous 
lesson in exactness of observation. 
