250 SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS. 



ance which spiritualism so often induces has not gone so far as to 

 render them incurable lunatics. 



It is very likely that I shall be accused of gross uncharitableness in 

 thus applying the term lunatic to "those who differ from me," and 

 therefore state that I have sad and sufficient reasons for doing so. 



The first spiritualist I ever knew, and with whom I had many con- 

 ferences on the subject many years ago, was a lady of most estimable 

 qualities, great intellectual attainments, and distinguished literary 

 reputation. I watched the beginning and the gradual progress of her 

 spiritual " investigations," as she called them, and witnessed the 

 melancholy end shocking delusions, intellectual shipwreck, and 

 confirmed, incurable insanity, directly and unmistakably produced 

 by the action of these hideous superstitions upon an active, excitable 

 imagination. 



I well remember the growing symptoms of this case, have seen their 

 characteristic features repeated in others, and have now before me 

 some melancholy cases where the same changes, the same decline of 

 intellect and growth of ravenous credulity, is progressing with most 

 painfully visible distinctness. 



The necessity for some strong remedy is the more urgent, inasmuch 

 as the diabolical machinery of the spiritual impostors has been so 

 much improved of late. The lady whose case I first referred to had 

 reached the highest stage of spiritualistic development viz. the 

 lunatic asylum before " dark seances" had been invented, or, at any 

 rate, before they were introduced into this country. When the con- 

 ditions of these seances are considered, it is not at all surprising that 

 persons of excitable temperament, especially women, should be mor- 

 bidly affected by them. 



We are endowed with certain faculties, and placed in a world 

 wherein we may exercise them healthfully upon their legitimate ob- 

 jects. Such exercise, properly limited, promotes the growth and 

 vigor of our faculties ; but if we pervert them by directing them to 

 illegitimate objects, we gradually become mad. God has created the 

 light, and fitted our eyes to receive it ; he has endowed us with the 

 sense of touch, by which we may confirm and verify the impressions 

 of sight. All physical phenomena are objects of sense, and the 

 senses of sight and touch are the masters of all the other senses. 



Can anything, then, be more atrociously perverse, more utterly 

 idiotic, and I may even say impious, than these dark seance investi- 

 gations? Is it possible to conceive a more melancholy spectacle of 

 intellectual degradation than that presented by a group of human 

 victims assembled for the purpose of "investigating physical mani- 

 festations," and submitting, as a primary condition, to be blinded 

 and handcuffed, the room in which they sit being made quite dark, 

 and both hands of each investigator being firmly held by those of his 

 neighbors. That is to say, the primary conditions of making these 

 physical investigations is that each investigator shall be deprived of 

 his natural faculties for doing so. 



When we couple this with the fact that these meetings are got up 

 publicly advertised by adventurers who make their livelihood by 

 the fees paid by their hoodwinked and handcuffed customers is it 

 at all surprising that those who submit to such conditions should 

 finish their researches in a lunatic asylum ? 



The gloom, the mystery, the unearthly objects of search, the mys' 



