Though concurring generally in the foregoing views (which may have been materially modified by their channel) I do not accept them as a finality. That a brooding spiritual power has to do with all development and progress I do not doubt. But this power is not _necessarily_ a monotonous and universal influence like gravitation or caloric. There is no reason to forbid special acts of the creative spiritual energy, for we observe to-day the production of plants and of beautiful fabrics by spiritual power where the necessary conditions exist. Moreover, the greatest potency of spiritual power is at the beginnings in the most plasmic conditions of matter. It is in the animal germ and the vegetable seed that the invisible world is most potential, and I am inclined to think that naturalists have attached too much importance to the exterior environment, and too little to the interior conditions in which the higher potencies of organization are to be found, and in which alone we may find the entrance of life from the true world of life. The hasty conclusions of naturalists as to _evolution_ do not explain the evolution and the vast variety of the vegetable kingdom. To attribute this to any power of modification by environment, when we see how little environment can do to make any _essential_ change in vegetation, would require more credulity than I would consider justifiable in the pursuit of scientific truths. So in the evolution of the animal kingdom, I believe the power of the physical environment has been greatly overrated. A TRUE POET--THE POETRY OF PEACE AND THE PRACTICE OF WAR. It is nearly thirty years since I met the English poet, Charles Mackay, at Louisville, on his travels in America. At that time he gave me the following poem suggested by our conversation. I do not think that he has ever published it: Why, this longing, clay-clad spirit? Why this fluttering of wings? Why this striving to discover Hidden and transcendent things? Thou wouldst fathom Life and Being, Thou wouldst see through Birth and Death. Thou wouldst solve the eternal Riddle, Thou, a speck, a ray, a breath! Be at peace, thou struggling spirit, Great Eternity denies The unfolding of its secrets In the circle of thine eyes. CHARLES MACKAY, Louisville, Kentucky, Jan. 31, 1858. It is the function of the poet to realize and revere the mystery, but it is the duty of philosophy to explore and dissipate it, as far as possible, for _mystery is the foe of human progress_. Mackay, though not the poet of psychic science, is profoundly the poet of practical, humanitarian progress, as was shown in his sublime poem, beginning, "The man is thought a knave or fool, Or bigot plotting crime, Who for the advancement of his kind Is wiser than his time." The psychometric impression from the manuscript of the foregoing poem was as follows: