TWO INQUIRERS INTO SPIRITUALISM 339 



me than you could to Darwin? And were your own rela- 

 tives impostors when you obtained answers to your mental 

 questions? Do not those experiments prove a non-human 

 intelligence now as they did when you wrote to Darwin? If 

 you cannot now explain these things, your change of opinion 

 has no logical justification. If you can explain them, I call 

 upon you to do so — if not to the scientific world, yet to me, 

 whom you have publicly accused of incompetence and absurdity 

 because I believe that phenomena of exactly the same character 

 as yours are realities and cannot be proved to be impostures. 

 As to your letters, copies of them were handed to me to read 

 by a person to whom (I was told) they had been given without 

 restrictions, and who was thus quite justified in showing them 

 to me. Of course I have treated them, and shall treat them, 

 as private letters ; but they interested me so much that I made 

 full notes immediately after carefully reading them, so that 

 I possess their substance and many of their very expressions. 

 After the way you have referred in print to my belief in such 

 phenomena most persons would think I was quite justified in 

 making known the fact of the existence of these letters and 

 their general tenor. I hope, however, you will not render any 

 such course necessary. / think your proper course would be 

 to publish the letters together with the full details of your 

 discovery of the imposture, a discovery so complete as to 

 induce you to change those convictions you so earnestly and 

 solemnly expressed to Darwin. 

 " Hoping you will do so, 



" I remain, yours faithfully, 



" Alfred R. Wallace." 



The next letter I will give the substance of. He stated that 

 soon after having written to Darwin he detected Williams 

 cheating. He then had a cage made of perforated zinc, and 

 when Williams sat in it nothing happened. This fact, he says, 

 logically justified his change of opinion. It could not be a 

 supernatural power, or why should the interposition of a per- 

 forated zinc cage have suspended the power? There was there- 

 fore nothing to publish. As to the answers to mental questions, 



