were always manitasted undeir oonditioaa 

 where at least some of the oomplemeatavy 

 senses, if noc all, were at a disadvantage. 

 It has already been stated that the senses 

 are particularly liable to all forms of 

 illusions, at times, even where they are 

 free and unconditioned. It has also been 

 shown that the only difference between 

 the waking concepts, dreams, subjective 

 delusions, and suchlike is in the invariable 

 strength, and unmistakable order, con- 

 sistence, and harmony of the primary 

 concepts, as compared with the feebler, 

 inconsistent, shifting, kaleidoscopic 

 phenomena of fancy, ghost delusion 

 dream, and other illusions of the diseased 

 brain. The only way to distinguish any 

 form of illusion would be to dispel the 

 conditions unfavorable to the manifesta- 

 tions of healthy concepts. 



Oae sigaificaat eircumstanca which 

 may enable strong healthy minds to free 

 themselves from the degrading errors of 

 spiritualism is to discern that the con- 

 ditions favorable to illusion and fraud are 

 ever the conditions under which typical 

 spiritualistic phenomena are manifested. 

 Lord Lindsay and others — by moonlight 

 — fancied that they saw the law of gravita- 

 tion opposed by some new force, in the 

 devitalion of Mr Home. But that men, 

 in a sane state of mind, should accept the 

 idoa offoand that they had discovered a 

 new force when all the senses were so 

 absurdly handicapped (for ordinary pur- 

 poses of observation even), and that they 

 were trammelled by the disadvantage of 

 bestpositionfor verification, shows, for the 

 time being, they were noc aware of the 

 great liability to illusion under such 

 conditions. 



To have contemplated even the possi- 

 bility of discovering a new force under 

 such crippled conditions shows that their 

 minds, like those of ordinary madmen, 

 were for the time being constituted to 

 favor illusionary conceptions. 



It ought to be strongly impressed that 

 there is no well marked line between the 

 sane and the insane, and scarcely any 

 where illusion is concerned, apart from 

 its permanency. 



There are 'many remarkable points of 

 agreement between some of the concepts 

 of spiritualists and those of the hopelessly 

 insane. 



1. In both the concepts are frequently 



normal, in contradiction to common sense, 

 and withoun any apparent purpose or 

 reason. The intensity of the conviction, 

 nevertheless, in both seems to be greater 

 than the ordinary convictions of common 

 sense. 



2. They manifest themselves under 

 conditions where the common organs of 

 sense are partly or wholly crippled. 



3. In both classes they are manifested 

 frequently under physical excitement or 

 strong emotion. 



4. In both they are frequently mani- 

 fested by people who have, or who 

 appear to have, a well-known epileptic 

 tendency, frequently resulting in bodily 

 prostration. 



5. The moral sense of many such inter- 

 mittently affected epileptics— the trance 

 medium — seems to be very low, and their 

 testimony worthless, 



It is a significant circumstance observed 

 by Dr. Maudsley, and other experts, that 

 in the incipient stages of epilepsy, the 

 destruction of the moral sense seems to 

 precede the more violent physical accom- 

 paniments of this dread calamity. 



6. In both classes referred to extreme 

 excitability is frequently exhibited ; their 

 imagination and originality remarkable, 

 and often of a poetic order. But, unlike 

 the normal stages of sanity, they are ex- 

 tremely irritated when the reality of their 

 illusory concepts are called in question. 

 It would seem as if all the creative and 

 other powers of the mind were diverted 

 from critical and other proper uses, and 

 devoted to the creaiion of wonderful 

 theories, whose sole object is to buttress 

 or build up the loved illusion. 



The explanation of spiritualism is not 

 to be found in the typical phenomena, but 

 in the thorough study of the deeply rooted 

 causes, mental and physical, in men's 

 natures, of which the phenomena which 

 so impresses them are a fairly reliable 

 index. Tell me a person's wonder, and I 

 may fairly infer whether the intelligence 

 of the person is of the order of a madman, 

 a savage, a child, or a Newton. 



"Wonder is purely a relative state, and 

 varies with the stage of intelligence. 

 Higher intelligence is like a kingdom of a 

 higher order of useful vigorous plants, 

 whose advance into a wilderness absorbs 

 and takes the place of a less useful and a 

 more lowly order. 



