3 i2 MY LIFE 



first step has not been taken in the direction lure indicated. 

 Now, however, that a research fund is being formed there are 



r prospects. Much will depend, however, on choosing 

 investigators who will be content for some time to observe 

 the phenomena as they occur under those conditions which 

 have been found most successful by other inquirers. Above 



all things, it is essential to make friends of the mediums 

 iployed, to treat them with the greatest consideration, and 

 rictly to follow the advice of the intelligence that works 

 through them. It was in this way that Sir William Crookes 

 and other successful observers have obtained such striking 

 results, under the most stringent conditions and subject to 

 the most varied tests ; whereas those who begin by treating 

 the mediums as if they were on their trial, and insist upon 

 applying their own conditions at the very outset, usually obtain 

 nothing but the conviction that all spiritualists are fools and 

 all mediums impostors. 



In 1872 I reviewed Robert Dale Owen's work, " The 

 Debatable Land between this World and the Next," a sequel 

 to his " Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World," the 

 two forming the best-reasoned and the most logically arranged 

 body of evidence for psychical phenomena in existence. Every 

 example is quoted from the original authority wherever 

 possible, confirmatory testimony has been collected with the 

 greatest care, and the bearing of each upon the general 

 argument is discussed or clearly pointed out. This review 

 brought me a very interesting letter from the author, and 

 later on a communication from Dr. Eugene Crowell, M.D. 

 of New York, with a copy of his exceedingly valuable work, 

 'Primitive Christianity and Modern Spiritualism" (2 vols.), 

 in which almost every miraculous occurrence narrated in the 

 Old or New Testaments is paralleled by well-authenticated 

 phenomena from the records of modern spiritualism, many of 

 them having been witnessed and carefully examined by Dr. 

 Crowell himself. 



During the years 1870-80 I had many opportunities of 

 witnessing interesting phenomena in the houses of various 



