50 GEOKGE JOHN EOMANES 1875- 



he told a characteristic story of Lewes. One after- 

 noon, when there were very few people at the Priory, 

 the conversation drifted on to the Bible, and George 

 Eliot and Mr. Romanes began a discussion on the 

 merits of the two translations of the Psalms best 

 known to English people — the Bible and the Prayer 

 Book version. They ' quoted ' at each other for a 

 short time, and then Lewes, who had not his Bible at 

 his finger ends to the extent the other two had, ex- 

 claimed impatiently, ' Gome, we've had enough of 

 this ; we might as well be in a Sunday school.' Both 

 George Eliot and Mr. Romanes, by the way, preferred 

 the Bible version. 



In one of the letters to Mr. Darwin, Mr. Romanes 

 alludes to the question of spiritualism, and his own 

 determination to investigate the question so far as in 

 him lay for himself. 



He worked a good deal at spiritualism for a year 

 or two, and he never could assure himself that there 

 was absolutely nothing in spiritualism, no unknown 

 phenomena underlying the mass of fraud, and trickery, 

 and vulgarity which has surrounded the so-called 

 manifestations. 



He was always willing to investigate such subjects 

 as hypnotism, thought reading, &c, and in 1880 he 

 wrote an article for the September number of the 

 i Nineteenth Century,' in which he pleads for a candid 

 and unprejudiced investigation of the facts. The 

 article was a review of Heidenhain's ' Der sogenannte 

 thierische Magnetismus.' 



The work on Pangenesis and on Medusae went on 

 through 1876, and some letters to and from Mr. 

 Darwin are here inserted. 



