A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. BY ALFRED R. WALLACE, F. R. S., AUTHOR OF “THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO,” “EXPLORATIONS ON THE AMAZON,” “THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION,” ETC., ETC. WITH A PREFACE BY EPES SARGENT. SECOND THOUSAND. BOSTON: COLBY AND RICH, 9 MONTGOMERY PLACE. 1874. PREFACE. * * * * * The signs are, that both the moral and the religious systems of the future will be greatly modified by the advance of science. They will be more and more conformed to the facts of nature; not only to the facts which a diligent Materialism, working in a single direction, has brought to light, but to the transcendent facts which Modern Spiritualism has restored and proved. The one order of facts is incomplete without the other; and Materialism is as surely doomed to be encircled and transfigured by the wider horizon of Spiritualism, as the Ptolemaic system of the universe was doomed to be superseded by the Copernican. Unpopular facts often encounter an opposition quite as persistent as that which follows unpopular theories; and so intelligent Spiritualists are not disturbed by the antagonism which their facts have met with from the Huxleys, Tyndalls, Carpenters, and Büchners of our day. All these men, working as they are for science in their different ways, though under the disadvantage of an ignorance of certain phenomena of vast significance, are welcomed as fellow-laborers in the cause of truth by Spiritualists; for the latter, relying on their facts, are confident that genuine Science includes them all, and that every new discovery must be in harmony with all that they hold as true. Opposition to the phenomena, proceeding as it does from lack of knowledge, simply indicates the magnitude and astonishing character of the facts themselves, which could excite such incredulity in the face of such overwhelming testimony.