350 



MY LIFE 



[Chap. XXXVII] 



claimed to be that of some person who had lived on earth, 

 and who, in many cases, was able to prove his or her identity. 

 Thus, little by little, a place was made in my fabric of thought, 

 first for all such well-attested facts, and then, but more slowly, 

 for the spiritualistic interpretation of them. 



Unfortunately, at the present day most inquirers begin at 

 the wrong end. They want to see, and sometimes do see the 

 most wonderful phenomena first, and being utterly unable to 

 accept them as facts denounce them as impostures, as did 

 Tyndall and G. H. Lewes, or declare, as did Huxley, that 

 such phenomena do not interest them. Many people think 

 that when I and others publish accounts of such phenomena, 

 we wish or require our readers to believe them on our testi- 

 mony. But that is not the case. Neither I nor any other 

 well-instructed spiritualist expects anything of the kind. We 

 write not to convince, but to excite to inquiry. We ask 

 our readers not for beliefs but for doubt of their own infallibiHty 

 on this question ; we ask for inquiry and patient experiment 

 before hastily concluding that we are, all of us, mere dupes 

 and idiots as regards a subject to which we have devoted our 

 best mental faculties and powers of observation for many 

 years. 



