With the physical series the case is very different. They form a connected body of evidence, from the simplest to the most complex and astounding, every single component fact of which can be and has been repeatedly demonstrated by itself; while each gives weight and confirmation to all the rest. They have all, or nearly all, been before the world for twenty years; the theories and explanations of reviewers and critics do not touch them, or in any way satisfy any sane man who has repeatedly witnessed them; they have been tested and examined by skeptics of every grade of incredulity, men in every way qualified to detect imposture or to discover natural causes—trained physicists, medical men, lawyers and men of business—but in every case the investigators have either retired baffled, or become converts. There have, it is true, been some impostors who have attempted to imitate the phenomena; but such cases are few in number, and have been discovered by tests far less severe than those to which the genuine phenomena have been submitted over and over again; and a large proportion of these phenomena have never been imitated, because they are beyond successful imitation. Now what do our leaders of public opinion say, when a scientific man of proved ability again observes a large portion of the more extraordinary phenomena, in his own house, under test conditions, and affirms their objective reality; and this not after a hasty examination, but after four years of research? Men “with heavy scientific appendages to their names” refuse to examine them when invited; the eminent society of which he is a fellow refuses to record them; and the press cries out that it wants better witnesses than Mr. Crookes, and that such facts want “confirmation” before they can be believed. But why more confirmation? And when again “confirmed,” who is to confirm the confirmer? After the whole range of the phenomena had been before the world ten years, and had convinced skeptics by tens of thousands—skeptics, be it remembered, of common sense and more than common acuteness, Americans of all classes—they were _confirmed_ by the first chemist in America, Professor Robert Hare. Two years later they were again confirmed by the elaborate and persevering inquiries of one of the first American lawyers, Judge Edmonds. Then by another good chemist, Professor Mapes. In France the truth of the simpler physical phenomena was _confirmed_ by Count A. de Gasparin, in 1854; and since then French astronomers, mathematicians and chemists of high rank have _confirmed_ them. Professor Thury of Geneva again _confirmed_ them, in 1855. In our own country such men as Professor de Morgan, Dr. Lockhart Robertson, T. Adolphus Trollope, Dr. Robert Chambers, Serjeant Cox, Mr. C. F. Yarley, as well as the skeptical Dialectical Committee, have independently _confirmed_ large portions of them; and lastly comes Mr. William Crookes, F.R.S., with