Now, it is, as I said, quite wrong for Spiritualists to plant all this upon the authority of Sir Oliver Lodge. Does he not warn us in a footnote that he has "not yet traced the source of all this supposed information"? It would not take most of us long to do so, but the remark at least leaves open a way of retreat for Sir Oliver Lodge. On the other hand, we must not blame Spiritualists too severely. He assures them that this lady, Mrs. Leonard, is in undoubted communication with his dead son, and one may question whether he is entitled to take one part of the lady's message as genuine and leave other parts open. At all events, this puerile and bewildering nonsense was put before the world in an expensive book by Sir Oliver Lodge, with his personal assurance that Mrs. Leonard was a genuine medium. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle next gathered details from scores of revelations of this kind--they fell upon us like leaves in Vallombrosa after Sir Oliver Lodge's bold lead--and built them into a consistent picture of "Summerland." It is an ether world. Each of us has a duplicate of his body in ether. This is quite in harmony with science, he says, because some one has discovered that "bound" ether--that is to say, ether enclosed in a material body--is different from the free ether of space. From this slight difference Sir A. C. Doyle concludes that there is a portion of ether shaped exactly like my body; then, by a still more heroic leap of the imagination, he gathers that this special ether has not merely the contour of my body, but duplicates all its internal organs and minute parts; and lastly--this is a really prodigious leap--he supposes that this ether duplicate will remain when the body dissolves. On that theory, naturally, every flower and tree and rock that ever existed, every house or ship that was ever built, every oyster or chicken that was ever swallowed, has left an ether duplicate somewhere. Well, when you die, your ethereal body remains, and is animated by your soul just as the body of flesh was. A death-bed is, on the new view, a most remarkable scene. Men and women weep round the ghastly expiring frame, but all round them are invisible (ether) beings smiling and joyful. When the last breath leaves the prostrate body, you stand erect in your ethereal frame, and your ethereal friends gather round and wring your ethereal hand. Congratulations over, one radiant spirit takes you by the hand and leads you through the solid wall and out into the beyond. Presumably he is in a hurry to fit you with one of the "damaged worsted" suits. Sir Arthur stresses the fact that they have the same sense of modesty as we.