TWO INQUIRERS INTO SPIRITUALISM 341 



just the same as when no cage was used. At other times Miss 

 Wood sat in the circle visible to all, yet other figures of various 

 apparent ages came out of the cabinet. Then again Mr. 

 Varley, the electrician, applied the electrical test to Miss Cook, 

 she forming part of the circuit, yet all the usual phenomena 

 occurred. Crookes again used the same test, with the same 

 result; and he also saw Miss Cook and the materialized form 

 'Katie ' at the same time, in his own house, and he photographed 

 the latter. All these facts and many others of like nature 

 have been published, and are known to all inquirers, and every 

 investigator knows that your failure to obtain phenomena 

 under the test, was no proof of any dishonesty in the medium, 

 or of impossibility of obtaining the phenomena under such 

 conditions. Such tests often require to be tried many times 

 before sucess is attained. To me, and I believe to most 

 inquirers, it will appear in the highest degree unscientific to 

 reject phenomena that could not possibly be due to imposture, 

 and to ignore the hundreds of corroborative tests by other 

 equally competent observers, and then, after this, to call all 

 such observers (by implication) fools or lunatics! 



" Yet, again, your attempted explanation of the ' mental 

 question' test does not apply to the Bellew case, where you 

 expressly state that some of the words while being spelled 

 out were challenged by all present as being wrong, and were 

 yet insisted on by the unknown intelligence, and resulted, 

 contrary to the expectation of all, in — ' I, John Bellew, fear 

 no being/ 



" Yours truly, 



" Alfred R. Wallace." 



In reply to this, I received another long and very argu- 

 mentative letter, admitting that from my point of view and 

 greater experience, my arguments were very strong, but that 

 from his point of view, with his " bias against the preter- 

 human," his refusal to accept any evidence, unless it could be 

 repeated under " several reasonable alterations of conditions, 

 designed to exclude merely human powers of trickery," his 

 objections and his incredulity were quite logical and scientific. 



