XXXVI] TWO INQUIRERS INTO SPIRITUALISM 309 



the moral effects of a cure, supposed to be by the Virgin 

 (or any other saint), be lost. The detailed narratives cer- 

 tainly show that in several cases a moral and religious, as 

 well as a physical, renovation has been effected. 



We have here an explanation of these events which is, I 

 submit, much more complete than that which declares them 

 all to be of the same nature as cures occurring through 

 hypnotic suggestion, because in these cases there is no 

 hypnotizer, and often no suggestion or expectation. And 

 when we consider that the cures at the tomb of the Ahh6 

 Paris in the early part of the eighteenth century, some of 

 which were even more wonderful than any which have 

 occurred at Lourdes, were equally well attested, and com- 

 pelled even David Hume to say — referring to one of these — 

 " Had it been a cheat, it would certainly have been detected 

 by such sagacious and powerful antagonists,"^ we see that 

 we have to do with a phenomenon which is one of the myriad 

 forms of spirit agency. 



Romanes and Darwin 



I first made the acquaintance of Romanes in a rather 

 curious way. A letter appeared in Nature (February 5, 1880) 

 headed "A Speculation regarding the Senses," beginning 

 with this suggestive passage : " On examining the modes 

 of action of the senses, we find a series of advances in 

 refinement. Beginning with touchy we find it has primarily 

 to do with solids which come into direct contact with the 

 organ. In taste a liquid medium is necessary. In smell we 

 have minute particles carried by a gas. In hearing we have 

 vibrations (longitudinal) in a gas. In sights finally, we find 

 transverse vibrations transmitted by a finer medium, the 

 ether." The writer then goes on to suggest that thought, or 

 brain-vibrations, may also be carried by the ether to other 



^ a very full account of these cures is given in Howitt's " History of 

 the Supernatural," and an abstract in my "Miracles and Modern Spiritualism" 

 (pp. 9-12). 



