1884.] 
If True ? 
145 
^proved ? If all these questions can be answered in the 
affirmative have we not then the formation of an organic 
secretion elaborated without the secreting organ and whh- 
out the material from which it is elaborated ? If this work 
is performed by some invisible intelligence-and we can 
scarcely conceive it to be due to any unsuspected natural 
agency we have, again, evidence of a dreadful power. 
ut the most serious case of this class is the reputed change 
Of stature in a living man, effetted, as is intimated, not by 
any innate power in the person of whom this is recorded 7 
but by the intervention of the spirits. Whoever or whit 
ever could produce such effects must be, humanly speaking 
little less than almighty. Whence could come the materifl 
f°\ enlai S ln g the body of a living man ? Blood, muscle 
nerve-tissue, bone, &c are not to be found anywhere stored 
fmm eady i° r USe \. Their ^thesis from the elements, or 
from simp ei combinations, is something not yet dreamt of 
even at Munich. And were the materials ready to hand 
rliffir, Tf te t rC l atl °A n i W1° the ] , iving man must be a sti11 more 
sbmv tf ^ V he wor ! d ’ s ord mary experience would 
show that organised matter is elaborated only in organisms 
a ? d by S ° W y and g raduall y* We do not see that an^ 
these thiee cases involves the creation of matter • but if 
such instances are true the organic world, at least, seems a 
most painful sphere of disorder and lawlessness. It will not 
do to leply that all these phenomena may occur in virtue of 
othei natural laws of which we have no knowledge. It will 
tTeir rarit^ Thl WI ? or ^ying faCts because of 
them lari ty. The point is here that will (other than the 
One) and law are at variance. If there are finite wills which 
can interfere in the course of Nature without employing 
matenal agencies, Science is impossible. The hypothesis 
that God may carry out his plans by the agency of these 
spn its leads us back to the personifying epoch of human 
thought, to the special genii and gods of the mythologies 
to the elemental spirits of the Rosicrucians, and the Archeus 
of Helmont. Is this universe so poor an affair that it 
lever ? GS a ^ ^ & dem ° n at every wheel and valve and 
The only way in which Spiritualism— supposing all its 
claims well founded— can be reconciled with Science is hv 
showing the exa 61 nature and the limits of the power of 
these spirits, and ascertaining under what circumstances 
they can and do interfere. If such limits can be determined 
and such circumstances ascertained we shall then be able to 
nnd the value, so to speak, of the unknown quantities which 
