340 MY LIFE 



he only got them when his own hands were on the table. 

 1 fc therefore concluded and still believes that he himself gave 

 the initiatory impulse to move the table, which the other sitters 

 involuntarily intensified and carried out. 



I will give my reply because it points out some of the com- 

 mon fallacies of beginners in coming to hasty conclusions from 

 a few isolated facts. 



u Dear Mr. Romanes, 



"As I do not wish to continue this correspondence, I will 

 confine myself to pointing out why I consider your present 

 position to be logically untenable and unscientific. You admit 

 you cannot explain what took place in your own house, but 

 you say, ' not being able to explain ' is very far from admitting 

 it to have been done by supernatural means (I would say, 

 ' supernormal ' or ' preterhuman ' rather than supernatural ; but 

 that is a detail.) You then describe the ' cage' you had made, 

 with the result that nothing happened when the medium sat 

 w T ithin it; and you imply that if phenomena had occurred 

 when Williams was within it you would have admitted some- 

 thing ' supernatural/ But why ? Simply because, in your own 

 words, you could not explain ' how the trick was done.' To me, 

 and I think to most persons, what did occur — the ' luminous 

 hand,' lifting a bell at a distance, etc., etc. — was just as inex- 

 plicable, and just as much a proof of something beyond ' trick,' 

 as would have been some physical effect produced outside the 

 cage while Williams was in it. 



" Again, it is not ' scientific ' to treat your own limited experi- 

 ence as if it stood alone, and to refuse to admit all evidence 

 from other inquirers in corroboration. Although your cage- 

 test did not succeed, it did succeed with others. Mr. Adshead, 

 a gentleman of Belper, had a wire cage made, and Miss Wood 

 sat in it in his own house, many times, and under these con- 

 ditions many forms of men, women, and children, appeared in 

 the room. A similar cage was afterwards used by the New- 

 castle Spiritual Evidence Society, for a year or more, and 

 Miss Wood sat in it weekly. It was screwed up from the 

 outside, yet all the usual phenomena of materialization occurred 



