8 



It takes the great expositor and thinker, 

 Lange, over 1000 closely printed pages of 

 matter, to unfold to us a mere abstract 

 of the history and meaning of the schools 

 of materialism and [idealism. Bastian, 

 with numerous carefully executed figures, 

 tries to convey to us in 700 pages of 

 descriptive matter a summary of his own 

 observations regarding the structure and 

 functions of the brain. Hitzig, Ferrier, 

 and other skilled specialists, had long and 

 profoundly studied the functions and 

 physiology of the sensorial apparatus of 

 the brain in all its bearings, and their 

 combined testimonies have been of the 

 greatest service to us in dissipating many 

 of the older and cruder conceptions of 

 phrenology and physiology, and in 

 explaining many of the more mysterious 

 problems of mind and body. 



One important lesson has been given to 

 us in regard to observation, which has an 

 important bearing upon the subject of 

 this argument, viZc, that not only as re- 

 gards eyesight and for astronomical ob- 

 servations merely do we require to pro- 

 vide ourselves with a carefully determined 

 "personal equation of error," but every 

 other sense should be similarily guarded 

 as they are all subject to varying degrees 

 of error under certain conditions. From 

 what has already been stated it is obvious 

 that should any untrained person think 

 he can properly understand the [mysteries 

 of new and complex phenomena, without 

 first studying carefully the laws which 

 make phenomena at all possible to him, 

 together with the ascertained conditions 

 of sensorial error, he will undoubtedly 

 and unconsciously land himself in the 

 Cimmerian darkness of illusions, kindred 

 to the ancient witchcraft or its twin sister, 

 spiritualism, now so often guised in 

 modern pseudo-science dress. 



To the cultured thinker all phenomena 

 are purely mental and subjective, and 

 as such are equally mysterious. 

 To the average spiritualist only a small 

 portion of phenomena, and that the most 

 disordered and unreliable part seems to 

 be regarded as possessing any wonder or 

 mystery. The most orderly, valuable, and 

 equally mysterious part of subjective 

 phenomena — orderly primary concepts — 

 is despised by the spiritualist for the 

 vulgar reason that such orderly mani- 

 festations are as common as the green 



grass ; and yet the profoundest thinkers 

 see in the lowliest organism so common 

 by the wayside a mystery greater than 

 that of human folly, whose epidemics 

 have so often puzzled the moralist and 

 psychologist. 



Whilst dissecting the living tissues of 

 the common triglochin and other weeds 

 of our ditches under the microscope, I 

 have often beea impressed by the 

 beauties of structure which are 

 shut off from the feebler powers of 

 the unaided eyesight. I have watched the 

 mysterious life of the cell in the humble 

 yeast plant and desmid, and I have seen 

 the living building processes grow into 

 form and beauty before my wondering 

 sense, and a feeling of awe has frequently 

 filled my mind, as form after form seemed 

 to come mysteriously into existence before 

 my eyes, and to frame themselves 

 upon a structure of wondrous design and 

 beauty. Each living " brick " in itself 

 being guided and determined in its 

 course as if by the immediate agency 

 of a hidden Almighty finger. 



Most naturalists have been similarly 

 impressed while contemplating the silent 

 building forces of organic nature, rhey 

 are thus frequently reminded of the 

 mystery underlying the more familiar and 

 perhaps uninteresting externals of common 

 objects. They are also so accustomed to 

 witness mysterious design and movements 

 for which they can give no explanation 

 that they are not so apt to be led into 

 illusion by the appearance of phenomena, 

 which, for the time being, may seem ex- 

 traordinary and unexplicable to the 

 crippled or unaided senses. Nor are they 

 so apt to be overwhelmed by mere 

 novelty or rarity because the momentary 

 wonder seems as inexplicable as the origin 

 of all mental phenomena to the cultured 

 thinker. The average form of spiritualism 

 would appear to be a corrupt or degraded 

 form of the poetry of Materialism, al- 

 though it affects to despise that system of 

 philosophy. It is far from my mind to 

 treat with levity the ordinary crudities so 

 commonly manifested at the many 

 spiritualistic seances which I have had 

 the opportunity of witnessing. 



One grave objection to the value of the 

 testimony of such seances is, that wher- 

 ever any phenomena have been observed 

 which appeared to be inexplicable, they 



