In the very early stages of man’s history we find him in full belief of fairies, gnomes, and hobgoblins, which eventually ripened into a literature and folklore dealing with their doings, of quite ample dimensions. And after all, who would like to make away with those delightful stories that inspired his imagination in childhood’s days, filling his mind with awe and wonder, while yet it was all receptive, and when credulity was paramount? Then followed the belief in the wizards, witch, and magician, who were held to have gotten their supernatural powers from the arch-magician, Satan, himself: and every ill that nature sent humanity was ascribed to the infernal agency of witchcraft. In these days handsome incomes were occasionally realised by courtly magicians who unfolded the future to the high-born ladies that invoked their aid. Did not Anne Boleyn see her future husband in the magician’s mirror, when quite a girl, and as yet she knew nothing of him? The scene of a masked ball in which King Henry the Eighth was the central figure, and all the people paying him courtly homage, was found reflected in the magic mirror, and the monarch pointed out as her future husband. Still time went rolling onwards bringing its developments of man’s highest aspirations—the desire to fathom that mystery of which he caught but a glimmering. Then followed Mesmer’s discovery to which was attributed certain psychological developments; these the Charlatan utilised to his own advantage by claiming the power of second sight for some fair sleeper whom he always took care to be provided with. Side by side with mesmerism grew another new idea which went infinitely further than the mesmerised thought-reader. It was named Spiritualism, the votaries of which professed to call up at will the departed spirits of friends, enemies, and even of persons unknown to them in life. This new faith, for it developed into a religion seeing that once a person got thoroughly soaked with it he wanted no church to teach him the way to Heaven, he believing he had found a more direct passage than what all the parsons in Christendom could show him. Revelations from Spirit-land were sought not only by the lower, and partially educated classes, but also by the educated members of society; practical business men being found in considerable numbers attending spirit-rapping circles. Even the editor of the _Times_ newspaper in 1880 was claimed by the Spiritualists to be one of them. Eventually, Spiritualism becoming unpopular by reason of its adoption by the ignorant, together with the numerous exposures of fraud on the part of its leading exponents, a new belief was found necessary for the intellectual and cultured ones of the nineteenth century. This was borrowed from the East, the beliefs of Ancient India being pressed into service and made to appear under a new form and given the title of Theosophy.