Precisely; but as the work of de Gasparin called forth numberless _Answers_, _Defenses_, and _Memoirs_, it was then demonstrated by his own work that as he was a Protestant, in point of religious fanaticism, he was as little to be relied upon as des Mousseaux and de Mirville. The former is a profoundly pious Calvinist, while the two latter are fanatical Roman Catholics. Moreover, the very words of de Gasparin betray the spirit of partisanship:—“I feel I have a duty to perform.... I lift high the Protestant flag against the Ultramontane banner!” etc.[208] In such matters as the nature of the so-called spiritual phenomena, no evidence can be relied upon, except the disinterested testimony of cold _unprejudiced_ witnesses and science. Truth is one, and Legion is the name for religious sects; every one of which claims to have found the unadulterated truth; as “the Devil is the chief pillar of the (Catholic) Church,” so all supernaturalism and miracles ceased, in de Gasparin’s opinion, “with apostleship.” But Mr. Crookes mentioned another eminent scholar, Thury, of Geneva, professor of natural history, who was a brother-investigator with Gasparin in the phenomena of Valleyres. This professor contradicts point-blank the assertions of his colleague. “The first and most necessary condition,” says Gasparin, “is the _will_ of the experimenter; without the will, one would obtain nothing; you can form the chain (the circle) for twenty-four hours consecutively, without obtaining the least movement.”[209] The above proves only that de Gasparin makes no difference between phenomena purely magnetic, produced by the persevering will of the sitters among whom there may be not even a single medium, developed or undeveloped, and the so-called spiritual ones. While the first can be produced _consciously_ by nearly every person, who has a firm and determined will, the latter overpowers the sensitive very often against his own consent, and always acts independently of him. _The mesmerizer wills a thing, and if he is powerful enough, that thing is done. The medium_, even if he had an honest purpose to succeed, _may get no manifestations at all; the less he exercises his will, the better the phenomena: the more he feels anxious, the less he is likely to get anything_; to mesmerize requires a positive nature, to be a medium a perfectly passive one. This is the Alphabet of Spiritualism, and no medium is ignorant of it.