54 THEOPHOBIA AND NEMESIS 



" The impression prevailed that civilised people 

 were in presence of a new order of phenomena, 

 and were acquiring a new outlook into the regions 

 of the Unknown ; whereas the truth was that 

 they were merely repeating, under new social 

 conditions and in a new environment, the same 

 experiences that had happened to their ancestors 

 during some thousands of years." Here I may 

 interject the remark that as far as my reading and 

 knowledge go, no spirit has ever had a good word 

 to say for the Catholic religion. What that 

 Church thinks about spiritualism has been made 

 quite clear, and that is enough for Catholics. 

 Before leaving the Plain Citizen, we must not 

 omit to notice one strange hypothesis of his, all 

 the stranger as coming from a professed spiritualist. 

 He maintains perhaps it would be fairer to say 

 that he lays down as a working hypothesis the 

 following thesis: Spiritualism involves the existence 

 of mediums, and mediums for the most part have 

 to make their living by their operations. They 

 will not be averse to making their incomes as 

 large as possible. For the purpose of acquiring 

 information as to the affairs of possible clients, 

 they have, so he asserts, an almost Freemasonic 

 Association by which all sorts of pieces of intel- 

 ligence concerning persons of importance are 

 collected and disseminated amongst the brother- 

 hood. It did not require much imagination to 

 suppose that the war would add to the number of 

 their clients, whether their claims had real founda- 

 tion or not ; what they wanted above all things 

 was some one of undoubted position who would 



