4.04 Relations between [July, 
and how it may be combatted when and where it is un- 
desirable. 
The second difficulty is what is inaccurately called the 
“ passage of matter through matter.” What is meant is the 
passage of one solid through another solid without the per- 
manent disintegration of either. Phenomena of this kind 
are described as happening from time to time at Spiritualist 
seances, the case of the iron ring round a man’s wrist being 
the latest and best known. We fear that many persons who 
repeat this incident scarcely realise all that it involves. 
The temporary disintegration, either of a human hand or of 
an iron ring, — in the former case without loss of blood, 
without pain, or even consciousness, — followed by the re- 
placement of every molecule as it was before, is a miracle 
probably surpassing anything recorded in ancient traditions. 
Had I seen it done I do not hesitate to say that I should 
have considered that I was suffering from madness, and 
that in this state I saw what had no objective existence. 
We next come to a much more difficult point. It has 
always been considered that the creation or destruction of 
energy is, if possible at all, the prerogative of one only 
Being. But, unless I fail to understand Spiritualist teach- 
ings, the “spirits” seem to have the creation of energy in 
their power. Suppose that a heavy weight is raised up by 
human instrumentality : if men push it up from below or 
lift it from above, with the aid of screw-jacks, pulleys, or 
the like, the motive power is derived from the consumption 
of certain forms of matter in the bodies of the men who 
work the machinery, and these forms of matter are again 
traceable to the heat and light of the sun. Or, if a steam- 
engine supplies the motive power, we find the source of such 
power stored up in the coal, and being again merely a result 
of the sun’s adtion. We have been accustomed to say that 
no energy can be exerted except at the cost of the trans- 
formation of some kind of matter. 
But what matter is transformed or converted, in order to 
yield the energy which is brought into play, when a “ spirit” 
. — i.e., an unextended being — raises a massive dining-table 
up to the ceiling or pulls away the chair from underneath a 
man ? By what agency is the conversion effected ? If the 
ordinary axiom still hold good, that aCtion and reaction are 
equal and opposite, where is the fulcrum or the point 
from which the force is exerted ? These are questions to 
which scientific men, “ students or teachers,” will naturally 
seek for precise answers before they can accept the Spiritu- 
alist theories. They will seek to know whether— and, if so, 
