242 SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS. 



many conferences on the subject many years ago, was a lady 

 of most estimable qualities, great intellectual attainments, 

 and distinguished literary reputation. I watched the be- 

 ginning and the gradual progress of her spiritual "investi- 

 gations," as she called them, and witnessed the melancholy 

 end -shocking delusions, intellectual shipwreck, and con- 

 firmed, incurable insanity, directly and unmistakably pro- 

 duced 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 visi- 

 ble distinctness. 



The necessity for some strong remedy is the more urgent, 

 inasmuch as the diabolical machinery of the spiritual im- 

 postors has been so much improved of late. The lady 

 whose case I first referred to had reached the highest ?rage 

 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 

 conditions of these seances are considered, it is not at all 

 surprising that persons of excitable temperament, espe- 

 cially women, should be morbidly affected by them. 



We are endowed with certain faculties, and placed in a 

 world wherein we may exercise them healthfully upon their 

 legitimate objects. Such exercise, properly limited, pro- 

 motes the growth and vigor of our faculties;' but if we per- 

 vert them by directing them to illegitimate objects, we 

 gradually become mad. God has created the light, and fit- 

 ted 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 investigations? Is it possible to conceive a 

 more melancholy spectacle of intellectual degradation than 



