128 Darwinism and Other Essays. 



clever juggler like Mr. Home than to exchange 

 real coals for false ones, or to protect his own 

 pockets and the heads of his dupes with asbestos 

 cloth, without attracting notice. Such a pro- 

 ceeding would require far less skill than those of 

 professional magicians, like Hermann or Houdin, 

 in comparison with whose truly wonderful achieve- 

 ments the best performances of spiritualists are 

 not for a moment worthy to be named. 



Still keeping to Mr. Home, his famous trick of 

 " levitation," or appearing to float through the air 

 out of one third-story window into another, seems 

 partly to illustrate the effects of intense expecta- 

 tion in producing hallucination, partly to show us 

 for the thousandth time how little unsifted human 

 testimony is worth ; for on one occasion, while 

 two "respectable witnesses" were sure that they 

 saw the great " medium " come sailing feet fore- 

 most through the window, their less gullible com- 

 panion was equally positive that the levitating gen- 

 tleman was sitting quietly in his arm-chair all the 

 while ! Nothing is more common than for us to be 

 told what people of undoubted veracity have seen. 

 For my own part, if I were to answer frankly 

 in such cases, I should take my cue from a cele- 

 brated naturalist whose friend was recounting to 

 him a miraculous shower of frogs from the sky. 



