294 



MY LIFE 



[Chap. 



of harmonious mediums, to form of these several circles of 

 different characters, and to secure the assistance of several 

 clairvoyants. 



" Each circle should be under the management of a 

 clever man and each should carry on a continuous and 

 exhaustive examination of the groundwork of the subject. 

 Once establish a clue to the relations existing between the 

 physical forces known to us and those forces by which the 

 spirits are sometimes able to call into play the power by 

 which they produce physical phenomena — once, establish this 

 clue there will be no lack of investigators, and the whole 

 subject will assume a rational and intelligible shape to the 

 outside world.*' 



This was written thirty-five years ago, but, though the 

 Society for Psychical Research has done a good deal, the 

 first step has not been taken in the direction here indicated. 

 Now, however, that a research fund is being formed there are 

 better prospects. Much will depend, however, on choosing 

 investigators who will be content for some time to observe 

 the phenomena as they occur under those conditions which 

 have been found most successful by other inquirers. Above 

 all things, it is essential to make friends of the mediums 

 employed, to treat them with the greatest consideration, and 

 strictly to follow the advice of the intelligence that works 

 through them. It was in this way that Sir William Crookes 

 and other successful observers have obtained such striking 

 results, under the most stringent conditions and subject to 

 the most varied tests ; whereas those who begin by treating 

 the mediums as if they were on their trial, and insist upon 

 applying their own conditions at the very outset, usually 

 obtain nothing but the conviction that all spiritualists are 

 fools and all mediums impostors. 



In 1872 I reviewed Robert Dale Owen's work, "The 

 Debatable Land between this World and the Next," a sequel 

 to his " Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World," the 

 two forming the best-reasoned and the most logically arranged 

 body of evidence for psychical phenomena in existence. Every 



