18 Psychic Force and Modern Spiritualism, 
Knowing nothing of Serjeant Cox, I am unable to say whether the reviewer’s 
very strong personal statements respecting him are true or false—whether he 
really is ‘‘ one of the most gullible of the gullible,” &c., though I must express 
my detestation of the abominable bad taste which is displayed in the attack 
which is made upon this gentleman. The head and front of his offending 
consists in having certified to the accuracy of Mr. Crookes’s account of certain 
experiments ; and for having simply done this, the reviewer proceeds, in ac- 
cordance with the lowest tacties of Old Bailey advocacy, to bully the witness, 
and to publish disparaging personal details of what he did twenty-five 
years ago. 
‘Dr. Huggins, whohas had nothing further to do with the subject than simply to 
state that he witnessed what Mr. Crookes described, and who has not ventured 
upon one word of explanation of the phenomena, is treated with similar 
insolence. 
“‘ The reviewer goes out of his way to inform the public that Dr. Huggins is, 
after all, only a brewer, by artfully stating that, ‘like Mr. Whitbread, Mr. 
Lassell, and other brewers we could name, Dr. Huggins attached himself, in 
the first place, to the study of Astronomy.’ He then proceeds to sneer at 
‘such scientific amateurs,’ by informing the public that they ‘labour, as a 
rule, under a grave disadvantage, in the want of that broad basis of scientific 
culture which alone can keep them from the narrowing and pervertive influence 
of a limited specialism.’ The reviewer proceeds to say that he has ‘no reason 
to believe that Dr. Huggins constitutes an exception’ to this rule, and further 
asserts that he is justified in concluding that Dr. Huggins is ignorant of 
‘every other department of science than the small subdivision of a branch to 
which he has so meritoriously devoted himself.’ Mark the words, ‘ small 
subdivision of a branch.’ Merely a twig of the tree of science is, according 
to this most unveracious writer, all that Dr. Huggins has ever studied. 
“If a personal vindication were the business of this letter, I could easily show 
that these statements respecting the present avocations, the scientific training, 
and actual attainments of Dr. Huggins are most gross and atrocious misrepre- 
sentations; but Dr. Huggins has no need of my championship,—his high 
scientific position and the breadth and depth of his general attainments are 
sufficiently known to all in the scientific world, with the exception of the 
Quarterly Reviewer. My object is not to discuss the personal question 
whether book-making and dredging afford better or worse training for experi- - 
mental inquiry than the marvellously exact and exquisitely delicate manipu- 
lations of the modern observatory and laboratory, but to protest against this 
attempt to stop the progress of investigation, to damage the true interests of 
science and the cause of truth, by thus throwing low libellous mud upon any 
and every body who steps at all aside from the beaten paths of ordinary inves- 
tigation. The true business of science is the discovery of truth, to seek it 
wherever it may be found, to follow the pursuit through bye-ways and high- 
opponent of the theory of the Spiritualists, and has just published a book detailing his 
experiments, entitled “Spiritualism Answered by Science.” The writer of the article in the 
Quarterly must have been quite aware of this fact, for he actually cites a passage from 
the letter to me in which letter Mr. Serjeant Cox expressly repudiates the theory of 
Spiritualism.—W. C. 
