In the year 1869 the London Dialectical Society, an association of cultured liberals, embracing many well-known personages, appointed a committee to examine "the asserted phenomena of Spiritualism." The committee divided itself into six sub-committees, each of which submitted a report, and according to a general report, published in 1871, "these reports substantially corroborated each other." We may therefore quote the more interesting points from the report of one of the sub-committees: "All of these meetings were held at the private residences of members of the committee, purposely to preclude the possibility of prearranged mechanism or contrivance. The furniture of the room in which the experiments were conducted was on every occasion its accustomed furniture. The tables were in all cases heavy dining-tables, and required a strong effort to move them. The smallest of them was five feet nine inches long and four feet wide, and the largest nine feet three inches long and four and a half feet wide, and of proportionate weight. The rooms, tables, and furniture generally were repeatedly subjected to careful examination, before, during, and after the experiments, to ascertain that no concealed machinery, instrument, or other contrivance existed, by means of which the sounds or movements hereinafter mentioned could be caused. The experiments were conducted in the light of gas, except on the few occasions specially noted in the minutes. "Of the members of your sub-committee about four-fifths entered upon the investigation wholly sceptical as to the reality of the alleged phenomena, firmly believing them to be the result either of _imposture_, or of _delusion_, or of _involuntary muscular action_. It was only by irresistible evidence, under conditions that precluded the possibility of either of these solutions, and after trials and tests many times repeated, that the most sceptical of your sub-committee were slowly and reluctantly convinced that the phenomena exhibited in the course of their protracted inquiry were _veritable facts_. The result of their long-continued and carefully-conducted experiments, after trial by every delicate test they could devise, has been to establish _conclusively_,-- "First. That under certain _bodily_ and _mental_ conditions of one or more of the persons present a force is exhibited sufficient to set in motion heavy substances, without the employment of any muscular force, and without contact or material connection of any kind between such substances and the body of any person present. "Second. That this force can cause sounds to proceed, distinctly audible to all present, from solid substances not in contact with nor having any visible or material connection with the body of any person present, and which sounds are proved to proceed from such substances by the vibrations which are distinctly felt when they are touched. "Third. That this force is frequently directed by intelligence."