82 Scientific Intelligence. 



ness, I cannot think it right to pass a verdict, universal in its 

 application, where far less than the universe of Spiritualism has 

 been observed. My field of examination has been limited. There 

 is an outlying region claimed by Spiritualists which I have not 

 touched, and into which I would gladly enter, were there any 

 prospect that I should meet with more success. I am too deeply 

 imbued with the belief that we are such stuff as dreams are 

 made on, to be unwilling to accept a few more shadows in my 

 sleep. Unfortunately, in my experience, Dante's motto must 

 be inscribed over an investigation of Spiritualism, and all hope 

 must be abandoned by those who enter on it. 



"If the performances which I have witnessed are, after all, 

 in their essence Spiritual, their mode of manifestation certainly 

 places them only on the margin, the very outskirts of that realm 

 of mystery which Spiritualism claims as its own. Spiritualism, 

 pure and undefiled, if it mean anything at all, must be something 

 far better than Slate Writing and Raps. These grosser physical 

 manifestations can be but the mere ooze and scum cast up by 

 the waves on the idle pebble, the waters of a heaven-lit sea, if 

 it exist, must lie far out beyond." 



The second work above mentioned, dedicated to Sir Oliver 

 Lodge, is by a lady who has the fullest belief in the "Life 

 Beyond," and her point of view, as of those fully in accord 

 with her, can best be expressed in her own words. As to what 

 Spiritualism in her view has shown, she says in the Introduction : 

 "Life and death are not two enemies but two intelligences. 

 They should agree over the inevitable separation which is a 

 special distinction of each, not war against a perfectly natural 

 and unavoidable contingency. Life imprisons matter in that 

 house of illusion which is the flesh, but death opens the door of 

 spirit to liberty and freedom." 



She closes her work, which even the most skeptical must read 

 with interest, with the words: "The heavy curtain of doubt 

 that has so long hung between two worlds, parting the Here from 

 the Beyond, is slowly lifting, and slowly revealing what our own 

 fears have kept from us. Once we realise that we are receiving 

 help, and giving it, that the spirits beyond can and do visit us 

 and remember us, that life is a continuation, not a termination, 

 the meaning of death's great mystery will be made clear, and we 

 shall pursue fearlessly and high-mmdedly all that pertains to 

 the psychology of existence." 



Obituary. 



Mr. T. W. Backhouse, of West Hen don House Observatory, 

 long active as an astronomer and meteorologist, died on March 

 13 in his seventy-eighth year. 



Augustin P. DeCandolle, a botanist whose family name has 

 been distinguished since the time of his great-grandfather (1778- 

 1841), died at Vallon near Geneva on May 9 at the age of fifty- 

 one years. 



