I doubt, though, whether my voice will be heeded, where others, more influential than mine, have remained unheard. However, I do not regret having expressed my opinion about these facts. I am persuaded, that some day, _perhaps very soon_, they will come under scientific discipline, and this, in spite of all the obstacles which obstinacy and fear of ridicule accumulate in the way. One of these obstacles, and it is not the least, is due to the fashion in which many savants estimate mediums. Their judgment is summed up in such expressions as hysteric, cheat, physically or morally tainted, degenerates. Such a judgment is iniquitous, absurd and false in its generality, and baneful in its consequences. It is founded upon a deplorable error, for I know mediums who possess faculties superior to the average, and who present absolutely no stigma of degeneracy. I have said, and I cannot repeat it too often, my finest phenomena were obtained with subjects who were sound and healthy in mind and body. It is with hysterical subjects that we observe fraud, side by side with gleams of true phenomena; but with a medium who has no nervous taint, whose well-balanced intelligence knows how to offer resistance to self-suggestion, and _l’idée fixe_, we have real phenomena or none at all. The opinion of savants, who, ill acquainted with the facts, inform us that mediums are hysterics and victims of nervous disorders, is therefore erroneous; unfortunately the consequences of such an opinion are lamentable. I know many remarkable subjects who absolutely refuse to experiment outside a tested and restricted group, because they fear to be regarded as neurotics; they are afraid of being stigmatised as insane, they are afraid of compromising their commercial position or their professional interests. I will never succeed in convincing them that they are above the average; doubtless I will succeed still less in inducing others to believe it: though in many respects it be true. If the relative perfection of their nervous system renders these persons more sensitive than the average, it would be wrong to conclude thereupon, that they were degenerate specimens of humanity. This argument is lacking in common-sense; we might just as reasonably insist that Europeans are in degeneration, because they are more emotional and more sensitive to pain than certain savage tribes. How ignorant, tactless, and incautious we are! The attitude of certain learned centres—it is with intention that I do not say the most cultured—is, to me, similar to that of ecclesiastical authorities in the middle ages. The novelty of a thing frightens them. They treat independent scientific thought as the inquisitors treated free thought in days gone by. Like their prototypes of other times, they have the same intolerance, the same hate for schism and heresy. Their accumulated errors ought to make them cautious: but, no! If they no longer make a