SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALISM. 241 



witness of an expert of quite a different school should 

 have been added. I mean such a man as Dobler, Houdin, 

 or the Wizard of the North. He might possibly have de- 

 tected something which escaped the scrutiny of the legiti- 

 mate scientific experimentalist. 



There is one serious defect in the accordion experiment. 

 The cage is represented in the engraving as placed under a 

 table; Mr. Home holds the instrument in his hand, which 

 is concealed by the table, and it does not appear that either 

 Mr. Crookes, Dr. Huggins, or Serjeant Cox placed them- 

 selves under the table during the concertina performance, 

 and thus neither of them saw Mr. Home's hand. Such, at 

 least, appears from the description and the engraving. A 

 story being commonly circulated respecting some of Mr. 

 Home's experiments in Eussia, according to which he failed 

 entirely \vhen a glass table was provided instead of a wooden 

 one, it would be well, if only in justice to Mr. Home, to 

 get rid of the table altogether. 



It is very desirable that these experiments should be con- 

 tinued, for two distinct reasons; first, as a matter of ordi- 

 nary investigation for philosophical purposes, and, secondly, 

 as a means of demolishing the most degrading superstition 

 of this generation. 



If Mr. Crookes succeeds in demonstrating the existence 

 of the psychic force and reducing it to law as it must be 

 reducible if it is a force then the ground will be cut from 

 under the feet of spiritualism, just as the old superstitions, 

 which attributed thunder and lightning to Divine anger, 

 were finally demolished by Franklin's kite. If, on the 

 other hand, the arch-medium, Mr. Home, is proved to be 

 a common conjuror, then surely the dupes of the smaller 

 " mediumistic" fry will have their eyes opened, provided 

 the cerebral disturbance which spiritualism so often in- 

 duces has not gone so far as to render them incurable luna- 

 tics. 



It is very likely that I shall be accused of gross unchari- 

 tablencss 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. 



