136 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



not on the honesty, but on the competency of the 

 witnesses. The most eminent among these show 

 themselves persons of undisciplined emotions. The 

 distinguished physicist and quasi - theologian, Sir 

 Oliver Lodge, who has been described to the present 

 writer by an intimate friend of Sir Oliver as ' longing 

 to believe something/ argues that in dealing with 

 psychical phenomena, a hazy, muzzy state of mind is 

 better than a mind f keenly awake ' and ' on the spot ' 

 (see ' Address ' to the Society for Psychical Research, 

 Proceedings, part xxvi., pp. 14, 15). With this 

 may be compared a Mohammedan receipt for 

 summoning spirits given in Klunzinger's Upper Egypt 

 (p. 386): 'Fast seven days in a lonely place, and 

 take incense with you. Read a chapter 1001 times 

 from the Koran. That is the secret, and you will see 

 indescribable wonders ; drums will be beaten beside 

 you, and flags hoisted over your head, and you will 

 see spirits.' Thus have the dreamy Oriental Moslem 

 and the self-hypnotised Western professor met to- 

 gether to elicit truth from trance. 



Concerning the competence of Mr. Wallace him- 

 self to weigh, unbiassed, the evidence which comes 

 before him, it suffices to cite the case of Eusapia 

 Paladino, a Neapolitan ' medium,' who, in the words 

 of one of her most ardent dupes, became ' the un- 

 expected instrument of driving conviction as to the 

 reality of psychical manifestations by the invisible 

 into the minds of many scientists.' A number of 

 distinguished savants testified to the genuineness of the 

 woman's performances in Professor Richet's cottage 

 on the He Roubant in the autumn of 1893. It was 

 the serious and complete conviction of all of them 



