64 A. T. SCHOFIELD_, M.D.^ ON SCIENCE AND THE UNSEEN WOKLD. 



Children should not play with gunpowder, but to those who are 

 competent it is most useful. 



For the period of two years he had taken the greatest interest in 

 hypnotism, and had subjected it to a thorough investigation. He 

 was of the opinion that a proper use of hypnotism was most 

 advantageous in the practice of medicine. With this view he put 

 the matter before two sisters, patients of his, who both refused to 

 have anything to do with it. One of them, however, fell seriously 

 ill twelve months ago, and suffered great pain. Having previously 

 refused to be subjected to hypnotic suggestion, she was now in 

 sickness unable to respond to it, and died under the eflects of 

 morphia injections. The surviving si|ter, after this sad experience, 

 allowed herself to be subjected to hypnotism, and has since found 

 it of great benefit. 



Dr. George H. Martin, of San Francisco, said that as the 

 discussion had taken a direction along medical lines he should 

 therefore take up another line of thought. The medical facts are 

 so well known that they cannot well be controverted by anyone 

 who has given any real thought to the subject. But there is a 

 phase of the subject which has not yet been touched upon. 



Every year we are coming more and more to feel the facts of the 

 unseen world as real things, as real as any physical facts. Thoughts 

 and feelings are being studied scientifically. Science is simply the 

 classification of knowledge, and thoughts and their effects can be 

 just as accurately investigated as any other kind of knowledge.. 

 The greatest and most potent fact in human life is the belief in a 

 future existence. If we believe that there is a reason for everything; 

 and a cause for every effect we must believe in a hereafter, for 

 every race that ever existed on the earth has believed in some kind 

 of a future life. Christian and pagan, Jew and Gentile, educated 

 and uneducated, have all been born with that belief in them. It is 

 the most real thing on earth to-day. It must be true that there is 

 a hereafter, or that thought would not be so persistent through all 

 the ages of mankind. There must be a reason for this persistence,, 

 and that reason is that we are to develop ourselves here upon earth 

 to the greatest possible degree that each individual may take the 

 highest position possible to him in that future existence. We do- 

 not know the plan by which our experiences come to us, but we 

 know that we are here, and that there must be a reason for it. If 



