SCIENCE AM) SPIRITUALISM. 243 



that presented by a group of human victims assembled for 

 the purpose of "investigating physical manifestations," 

 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 pri- 

 mary conditions of making these physical investigations is 

 that each investigator shall be deprived of his natural facul- 

 ties 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 re- 

 searches in a lunatic asylum? 



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

 the mysterious noises, and other phenomena so easily 

 manipulated in the presence of those who can see nothing 

 and feel only the sympathetic twitching of another pair of 

 trembling hands, naturally excites very powerfully the poor 

 creatures who pay their half-crowns and half-guineas with 

 any degree of faith; and this unnatural excitement, if fre- 

 quently repeated, goes on increasing till the brain becomes 

 incurably diseased. 



Present space will not permit me to enter upon another 

 branch of this subject, viz. : the moral degradation and the 

 perversion of natural, unsophisticated, and wholesome the- 

 ology, which these spiritual delusions are generating. 



I am no advocate for rectifying moral and intellectual 

 evils by police interference, or I should certainly recommend 

 the bracing air of Dartmoor for the mediums who publicly 

 proclaim that their familiar spirit " Katey " has lately trans- 

 lated a lady through a space of three miles, and through 

 the walls, doors, and ceiling of the house in which a dark 

 seance was being held, and placed her upon the table in 

 the midst of the circle so rapidly that the word "onions" 

 she had just written in her domestic inventory was not yet 

 dried when the lights were brought and she was found 

 there. 



This " lady," which her name is Guppy, is, of course, 



