342 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



ciently borne in mind. It keeps down the weed of super- 

 stition, not by logic but by slowly rendering the mental 

 soil unfit for its cultivation. When science appeals to uni- 

 form experience, the spiritualist will retort, " How do you 

 know that a uniform experience will continue uniform? 

 You tell me that the sun has risen for six thousand years: 

 that is no proof that it will rise to-morrow; within the next 

 twelve hours it may be puffed out by the Almighty." 

 Taking this ground, a man may maintain the story of 

 " Jack and the Beanstalk" in the face of all the science 

 in the world. You urge, in vain, that science has given 

 us all the knowledge of the universe which we now possess, 

 while spiritualism has added nothing to that knowledge. 

 The drugged soul is beyond the reach of reason. It is in 

 vain that impostors are exposed, and the special demon 

 cast out. He has but slightly to change his shape, return 

 to his house, and find it " empty, swept, and garnished." 



Since the time when the foregoing remarks were written 

 I have been more than once among the spirits, at their 

 own invitation. They do not improve on acquaintance. 

 Surely no baser delusion ever obtained dominance over the 

 weak mind of man. 



In the bright sky they perceived an illuminator; in the all- 

 encircling firmament an embracer; in the roar of thunder and in 

 the violence of the storm they felt the presence of a shouter and of 

 furious strikers; and out of the rain they created an Indra, or giver of 

 rain. MAX MULLER. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 



REFLECTIONS ON PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW. 1861. 



AMID the apparent confusion and caprice of natural 

 phenomena, which roused emotions hostile to calm in- 

 vestigation, it must for ages have seemed hopeless to seek 

 for law or orderly relation; and before the thought of 

 law dawned upon the unfolding human mind these other- 

 wise inexplicable effects were referred to personal agency. 

 In the fall of a cataract the savage saw the leap of a spirit, 

 and the echoed thunder-peal was to him the hummer-clang 

 of an exasperated god. Propitiation of these terrible powers 



