and as to which the wisest men and most advanced thinkers have held, and still hold, that no knowledge was attainable." This claim, this tremendous claim, on behalf of the phenomena of spiritualism to supply an answer to "the question of questions; the ascertainment of man's relation to the universe of things; whence our race has come; to what goal we are tending," rests on the assumption with which Mr. Wallace starts, "Spiritualism, _if true_." The essay from which the above passages are quoted is preceded by references in detail to a considerable number of cases of "the appearance of preterhuman or spiritual beings," the evidence of which "is as good and definite as it is possible for any evidence of any fact to be." These ghost-stories, contrasted with the full-flavoured eerie tales of old, are feebly monotonous. The apparatus of the medium is limited: the phenomena are largely of the "horse-play" order. Through the whole series we vainly seek for some ennobling and exalting conception of a life beyond, some glimpses "behind the veil," only to find that the shades are but diluted or vulgarized parodies of ourselves; or that "the filthy are filthy still," like the departed bargee whose "communicating intelligence" (we quote from a recent book on spiritualism entitled The Great Secret) was as coarse-mouthed as when in the flesh. In considering, if it be deemed worth while, the evidence of genuineness of the occurrences, we are thrown, not on the honesty, but on the competency of the witnesses. The most eminent among these show themselves persons of undisciplined emotions. The distinguished physicist, Professor Oliver Lodge, who has been described to the writer by an intimate friend of the Professor as "longing to believe something," argues that in dealing with psychical phenomena, a hazy, muzzy state of mind is better than a mind "keenly awake" and "on the spot" (see Address to the Society for Psychical Research, Proceedings, part xxvi, pp. 14, 15). With this may be compared a Mohammedan receipt for summoning spirits given in Klunzinger's Upper Egypt (p. 386): "Fast seven days in a lonely place, and take incense with you. Read a chapter 1001 times from the Koran. That is the secret, and you will see indescribable wonders; drums will be beaten beside you, and flags hoisted over your head, and you will see spirits." Thus have the dreamy Oriental Moslem and the self-hypnotized Western professor met together to elicit truth from trance.