It is not for us to prove that the mediums are dishonest, it is for them to prove that they _are_ honest. They have made a statement, the most serious statement in recent times, for it affects the welfare, the mental attitude and means a complete revolution of age-old beliefs and customs of the world. If there is anything to Spiritualism then the world should know it. If there is nothing to it, if it is, as it appears, built on a flimsy framework of misdirection, then too the universe must be told. There is too much at stake for a flighty passing, for unsubstantiated truths. APPENDIX A _Statement of Margaret Fox_ “Do you know that there is something behind the shadowy mask of Spiritualism that the public can hardly guess at? I am stating now what I know, not because I actually participated in it, for I would never be a party to such promiscuous nastiness, but because I had plenty of opportunity, as you may imagine, of verifying it. Under the name of this dreadful, this horrible, hypocrisy--Spiritualism--everything that is improper, bad and immoral is practiced. They go even so far as to have what they call ‘Spiritual children.’ They pretend to something like the immaculate conception! Could anything be more blasphemous, more disgusting, more thinly deceptive than that? In London I went in disguise to a quiet seance at the house of a wealthy man, and I saw a so-called materialization. The effect was produced with the aid of luminous paper, the luster of which was reflected upon the operator. The figure thus displayed was that of a woman, virtually nude, being enveloped in transparent gauze, the face alone being concealed. This was one of those seances to which the privileged non-believing friends of believing Spiritualists could have access. But there are other seances where none but the most tried and trusted are admitted, and where there are shameless goings on that vie with the secret Saturnalia of the Romans. I could not describe these things to you, because I would not.” From “The Death Blow to Spiritualism,” by Ruben Briggs Davenport. Page 50. B _Irving’s Speech_ Speech of Henry Irving preceding his imitation of the Davenports February 25, 1865, at the Manchester Athenæum, Manchester, England.