A Reply to the Quarterly Review. 19 
ways, and, having found it, to proclaim it plainly and fearlessly, without regard 
to authority, fashion, or prejudice. If, however, such influential magazines as 
the Quarterly Review are to be converted into the vehicles of artful and elabo- 
rate efforts to undermine the scientific reputation of any man who thus does 
his scientific duty, the time for plain speaking and vigorous protest has 
arrived. My readers will be glad to learn that this is the general feeling of the 
leading scientific men of the metropolis ; whatever they may think of the par- 
ticular investigations of Mr. Crookes, they are unanimous in expressing their 
denunciations of this article in the Quarterly. 
“The attack upon Mr. Crookes is still more malignant than that upon 
Dr. Huggins. Speaking of Mr. Crookes’s Fellowship of the Royal Society, 
the reviewer says, ‘We speak advisedly when we say that this distinction was 
conferred on him with considerable hesitation ;’ and further, that ‘We are assured, 
on the highest authority, that he is regarded among chemists as a specialist of 
specialists, being totally destitute of any knowledge of chemical philosophy, and 
utterly untrustworthy as to any inquiry which requires more than technical 
knowledge for its successful conduct.’ The italics in these quotations are my 
own, placed there to mark certain statements to which no milder term than 
that of falsehood is applicable. 
x * * * 
“If space permitted, I could go on quoting a long series of mis-statements of 
matters of fact from this singularly unveracious essay. The writer seems con- 
scious of its general character, for, in the midst of one of his narratives, he 
breaks out into a foot-note, stating that ‘T/is is not an invention of our own, 
but a faé communicated to us by a highly intelligent witness, who was admitted 
to one of Mr. Crookes’s séances.’ I have taken the liberty to emphasise the 
proper word in this very explanatory note. 
“The full measure of the injustice of prominently thrusting forward Dr. 
Huggins and Mr. Crookes as ‘recent converts’ to Spiritualism will be seen 
by comparing the reviewer’s own definition of Spiritualism with Mr. Crookes’s 
remarks above quoted. The reviewer says that ‘ The fundamental tenet of 
the Spiritualist is the old doctrine of communication between the spirits of the 
departed and the souls of the living.’ This is the definition of the reviewer, 
and his logical conclusion is that Mr. Crookes is a Spiritualist because he ex- 
plicitly denies the fundamental tenet of Spiritualism, and Dr. Huggins is a 
Spiritualist because he says nothing whatever about it. 
“Tf examining the phenomenon upon which the Spiritualist builds his 
‘fundamental tenet,’ and explaining them in some other manner, constitutes 
conversion to Spiritualism, then the reviewer is a far more thorough-going 
convert than Mr. Crookes, who only attempts to explain the mild phenomena 
of his own experiments.” 
For six months past false and injurious reports concerning me and 
my recent investigations have been assiduously circulated in scientific 
circles. Although aware of their existence and their origin, I forbore to 
take public notice of them, thinking that their inherent falsehood would 
