TWO INQUIRERS INTO SPIRITUALISM Z-7 



show that in several cases a moral and religious, as well as a 

 physical, renovation has been effected. 



We nave here an explanation of these events which is, I 

 submit, much more complete than that which declares them 

 all to be of the same nature as cures occurring through 

 hypnotic suggestion, because in these cases there is no 

 hypnotizer, and often no suggestion or expectation. And 

 when we consider that the cures at the tomb of the Abb.e 

 Paris in the early part of the eighteenth century, some of 

 which were even more wonderful than any which have oc- 

 curred at Lourdes, were equally well attested, and compelled 

 even David Hume to say — referring to one of these — " Had 

 it been a cheat, it would certainly have been detected by such 

 sagacious and powerful antagonists," 1 we see that we have 

 to do with a phenomenon which is one of the myriad forms of 

 spirit agency. 



Romanes and Darwin 



I first made the acquaintance of Romanes in a rather 

 curious way. A letter appeared in Nature (February 5, 1880) 

 headed " A Speculation regarding the Senses," beginning 

 with this suggestive passage : " On examining the modes 

 of action of the senses, we find a series of advances in 

 refinement. Beginning with touch, we find it has primarily 

 to do with solids which come into direct contact with the 

 organ. In taste a liquid medium is necessary. In smell we 

 have minute particles carried by a gas. In hearing we have 

 vibrations (longitudinal) in a gas. In sight, finally, we find 

 transverse vibrations transmitted by a finer medium, the 

 ether." The writer then goes on to suggest that thought, or 

 brain-vibrations, may also be carried by the ether to other 

 brains, and thus produce thought-transference, which, he 

 suggests, might be termed a kind of " induction of thought," 

 and he thinks this is supported by the experiences of most 



1 A very full account of these cures is given in Howitt's " History of 

 the Supernatural," and an abstract in my " Miracles and Modern Spir- 

 itualism " (pp. 9-12). 



