xxxvi] TWO INQUIRERS INTO SPIRITUALISM 311 



" 18, Cornwall Terrace, Regent's Park, 

 "February 17, 1880. 



"Dear Sir, 



" I am very glad that you have been so kind as to 

 answer my letter In Nature, for the fact of your having done 

 so supplies me with an opportunity, which I have long desired 

 to bring about, of obtaining the benefit of your advice 

 upon the methods of conducting an inquiry into the facts 

 of ' spiritualism.' You will not wonder that I should have 

 desired this opportunity when I tell you that one or two facts, 

 which you might consider almost commonplace, have pro- 

 foundly staggered me, and led me to feel it a moral duty no 

 less than a matter of unequalled interest, to prove the subject 

 further. As a biologist I knew the quality of your scientific 

 work, and the general character of your mind, and knowing 

 also your intellectual attitude towards the subject in which 

 my interest was awakened, I greatly desired to meet you. 

 But by some fate you always seemed to be the only scientific 

 man of the day whom I never did meet, and I felt it would be 

 imprudent to force any questions upon you unsolicited, as I 

 knew Mr. Crookes to be very reticent, and feared you might 

 be the same. 



" Now for what you very truly say about the uselessness of 

 any one man, ' however eminent,' trying to prove the truth 

 of the phenomena to the world. This I think is only as it 

 ought to be. The phenomena are of an order so astounding 

 that proof of their reality must rest upon the authority of 

 more than one observer if the proof is to be commensurate 

 with its own requirements. What the precise number of 

 witnesses and what amount of accumulated authority ought 

 to be, or would be, held sufficient to justify a man of the 

 world in accepting the alleged facts as real facts, this is a 

 question I need not consider, for there can be no doubt that 

 some such number of witnesses and amount of competent 

 testimony would be sufficient for the purpose. But, looking 

 to the astounding nature of the alleged facts, I do not think 

 that this number and amount have yet been attained. An 

 exceedingly strong case, however, has been made out to 



