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NOTICES OF BOOKS. 
Mesmerism , Spiritualism, &c., Historically and Scientifically 
Considered. Being Two Lectures delivered at the London 
Institution, with Preface and Appendix. By William B. 
Carpenter, C.B., M.D., F.R.S., &c., &c. London: Long- 
mans, Green, and Co., 1877. 
The two lectures which Dr. Carpenter gave last year at the 
London Institution were generally reported by the press and led 
to some controversy. They were then published in Fraser’s 
Magazine ; and they are now re-published with what are con- 
sidered to be pieces justificatives in an appendix. We may there- 
fore fairly assume that the author has here said his best on the 
subject — that he has carefully considered his fadbs and his argu- 
ments— and that he can give, in his own opinion at least, good 
reasons for omitting to notice certain matters which seem 
essential to a fair and impartial review of the whole question. 
Dr. Carpenter enjoys the great advantage, which he well 
knows how to profit by, of being on the popular side, and of 
having been long before the public as an expounder of popular 
and educational science. Everything he writes is widely read ; 
and his reiterated assurances that nobody’s opinion and nobody’s 
evidence on this particular subject is of the least value unless 
they have had a certain special early training (of which, it is 
pretty generally understood, Dr. Carpenter is one of the few 
living representatives) have convinced many people that what 
he tells them must be true and should therefore settle the whole 
matter. He has another advantage in the immense extent and 
complexity of the subjedi and the widely scattered and contro- 
versial nature of its literature. By ranging over this wide field 
and picking here and there a fadt to support his views and a 
statement to damage his opponents, Dr. Carpenter has rendered 
it almost impossible to answer him on every point, without an 
amount of detail and research that would be repulsive to ordinary 
readers. It is necessary therefore to confine ourselves to the 
more important questions, where the fadts are tolerably accessible 
and the matter can be brought to a definite issue ; though, if 
space permitted, there is hardly a page of the book in which 
we should not find expressions calling for strong animadver- 
sion, as, for example, the unfounded and totally false general 
assertion at p. 6, that “ believers in spiritualism make it a 
reproach against men of science that they entertain a preposses- 
sion in favour of the ascertained and universally admitted laws 
of nature.” Vague general assertions of this kind, without a 
particle of proof offered or which can be offered, are alone suffi- 
