KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF. 313 



'which is always different from that of his fathers ; it 

 depends largely on the general condition of thought 

 in his day. The further we go back in the history of 

 civilization, the more clearly do we find this esteemed 

 " faith of our fathers " to be an indefensible super- 

 stition which is undergoing continual transformation. 

 One of the most remarkable forms of superstition, 

 which still takes a very active part in modern life, is 

 spiritism. It is a surprising and a lamentable fact 

 that millions of educated people are still dominated by 

 this dreary superstition ; even distinguished scientists 

 are entangled in it. A number of spiritualist journals 

 spread the faith far and wide, and our " superior 

 circles " do not scruple to hold seances in which 

 " spirits " appear, rapping, writing, giving messages 

 from " the beyond," and so on. It is a frequent boast 

 of spiritists that even eminent men of science defend 

 their superstition. In Germany A. Zollner and 

 Fechner are quoted as instances ; in England, Wallace 

 and Crookes. The regrettable circumstance that 

 physicists and biologists of such distinction have been 

 led astray by spiritism is accounted for, partly by 

 their excess of imagination and defect of critical 

 faculty, and partly by the powerful influence of dogmas 

 which a religious education imprinted on the brain in 

 early youth. Moreover, it was precisely through the 

 famous seances at Leipzig, in which the physicists 

 Zollner, Fechner, and Wilhelm Weber were imposed 

 on by the clever American conjurer, Slade, that the 

 fraud of the latter was afterwards fully exposed ; he 

 was discovered to be a common impostor. In other 

 cases, too, where the alleged marvels of spiritism have 

 been thoroughly investigated, they have been traced 

 to a more or less clever deception ; the mediums 



