The rhetorically eloquent essay of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps on spiritualism has been read by the undersigned with that peculiar pleasure with which we witness an intellectual or psychic _tour de force_ which produces singular results. It is quite an able production, for the ability of an advocate is measured by his capacity to make that which is obviously absurd appear quite rational, and to give to that which is intrinsically small or mean an air of refined dignity. Divested of its dignified and delusive rhetoric, what does the lady say or mean in plain, homely English? She says that "cultivated thought" has a "slippery surface" on which spiritualism has made "a clutch," and that it has lately made an "encroachment upon scientific attention," so that psychical societies of distinguished men are "busying themselves;" also that spiritualism must be "made subject to the laws of common sense" and controlled by "common integrity," and if this truth "is at last materializing before the consciousness of the believers in spiritualistic phenomena some good may come of it." That a certain style of "cultivated thought" familiar in Boston has a "slippery surface" on which neither religion nor philosophy makes much impression, cannot be denied, and that it is only lately (as she says) that psychical societies of more or less distinguished men have allowed spiritual science to encroach on their attention, is very true. It has always been so. Societies of distinguished men have always been behind the progress of undistinguished men. Neither Harvey nor Galvani was honored by societies of distinguished men until the "slippery surface" of their "cultivated thought" was clutched and crushed by the power of a widely diffused truth. As a general rule, the last place in which to find the foremost thought of the age is in the societies of distinguished men, whether they be politicians, theologians, or scientists. Hence it is that phenomena as old as history itself and of late as thoroughly investigated as any branch of positive science have just begun to encroach upon the attention of the societies to which the lady desires us to surrender our judgment. No doubt they have resisted such encroachments as long as decency would permit, and some very able writers think a great deal longer. As to the insinuation that "believers in spiritualistic phenomena have only of late begun to appreciate common sense and common honesty," when these believers count by millions, and include many more eminent men than her infallible psychic societies, the lady has permission to withdraw the charge, for it is obviously only the _lapsus linguae_ of a too fluent tongue.