XXXV] MESMERISM TO SPIRITUALISM 291 



through spiritualism was Mr. Cromwell F. Varley, the 

 electrician. Any one who will read his evidence, printed in 

 the Report of the Dialectical Society (1871), will see that he 

 was at first as sceptical as any other scientific man usually is, 

 and ought to be, but, having married a lady who was a 

 medium, phenomena of such a marvellous nature were pre- 

 sented to him in his own home, that he could not help 

 becoming an ardent believer. But he was always a critic 

 and an experimenter, and he assisted Sir William Crookes 

 in applying some of the electrical tests to Mrs. Fay, as 

 described by that gentleman in The Spiritualist newspaper 

 of March 12, 1875. 



I became acquainted with him in 1868 through a letter 

 from Professor Tyndall referring, I think, to the single test at 

 one stance as proposed by G. H. Lewes in the Pall Mall 

 Gazette shortly afterwards, and suggesting that Mr. Varley, 

 who had published some of his investigations, might be able 

 to supply such a test. To this letter I replied as follows : — 



"May 8, 1868. 



"Dear Mr. Tyndall, 



" I do not know Mr. Varley, but I will forward him 

 your note, and he can reply if he thinks proper. I rather 

 doubt if any single case would be conclusive to you. Hume's 

 argument is overwhelming against any single case, considered 

 alone, however well authenticated. He himself admits that 

 no facts could possibly be better authenticated than the 

 (so-called) miracles which occurred at the tomb of the 

 Abbe Paris. But when you look at a series of such cases, 

 amounting to thousands in our own day, and a corresponding 

 series extending back through all history, Hume's argument 

 entirely fails, because his major proposition — that such facts 

 are contrary to the universal experience of mankind — ceases to 

 be true. 



"During the last two years I have witnessed a great 

 variety of phenomena, under such varied conditions that 

 each objection as it arose was answered by other phenomena. 

 The further I inquire, and the more I see, the more impossible 



