And thus, after having written, in 1870, his severe sentence against spiritualism and magic; after saying that even at that moment he believed “the whole affair a superstition, or, at least, an unexplained trick—a delusion of the senses;”[116] Mr. Crookes, in 1875, closes his letter with the following memorable words:—“To imagine, I say, the Katie King of the last three years to be the result of imposture does more violence to one’s reason and common sense than to believe her to be what she herself affirms.”[117] This last remark, moreover, {49} conclusively proves that: 1. Notwithstanding Mr. Crookes’s full convictions that the somebody calling herself Katie King was neither the medium nor some confederate, but on the contrary an unknown force in nature, which—like love—“laughs at locksmiths;” 2. That that hitherto unrecognized form of Force, albeit it had become with him “not a matter of opinion, but of absolute knowledge,“the eminent investigator still did not abandon to the last his skeptical attitude toward the question. In short, he firmly believes in the phenomenon, but cannot accept the idea of its being the human spirit of a departed _somebody_. It seems to us, that, as far as _public prejudice goes_, Mr. Crookes solves one mystery by creating a still deeper one: the _obscurum per obscurius_. In other words, rejecting “_the worthless residuum of spiritualism_,” the courageous scientist fearlessly plunges into his own “_unknown limbo of magic_ and _necromancy_!” The recognized laws of physical science account for but a few of the more objective of the so-called spiritual phenomena. While proving the reality of certain visible effects of an unknown force, they have not thus far enabled scientists to control at will even this portion of the phenomena. The truth is that the professors have not yet discovered the necessary conditions of their occurrence. They must go as deeply into the study of the triple nature of man—physiological, psychological, and _divine_—as did their predecessors, the magicians, theurgists, and thaumaturgists of old. Until the present moment, even those who have investigated the phenomena as thoroughly and impartially as Mr. Crookes, have set aside the cause as something not to be discovered now, if ever. They have troubled themselves no more about that than about the first cause of the cosmic phenomena of the correlation of forces, whose endless effects they are at such pains to observe and classify. Their course has been as unwise as that of a man who should attempt to discover the sources of a river by exploring toward its mouth. It has so narrowed their views of the possibilities of natural law that very simple forms of occult phenomena have necessitated their denial that they can occur unless miracles were possible; and this being a scientific absurdity the result has been that physical science has latterly been losing prestige. If scientists had studied