PRELIMINARY REPORT OF THE COMMISSION APPOINTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA TO INVESTIGATE MODERN SPIRITUALISM IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE REQUEST OF THE LATE HENRY SEYBERT WITH A FOREWORD BY H.H. FURNESS, JR. 1887, 1920 FOREWORD Now, at the present time, when the attention of the public is turning towards questions of Psychology and Psychiatry, it is most appropriate that a volume such as the present _Report_ be again placed in the hands of the public. While it cannot be said that the conclusions reached by the Seybert Commission were final, yet material for future investigation was furnished and facts so clearly stated that the reader might form his own conclusions. The purpose and intended scope of the Commission are plainly set forth in the Preliminary sections, and therefore need not be entered upon here. Of the members composing that Commission but one is now surviving, Dr. Calvin B. Knerr, who contributed an interesting report on the slate-writing medium, Mrs. Patterson. The sections by the Acting-Chairman, Dr. Horace Howard Furness, on Mediumistic Development, Sealed Letters, and Materialization were the occasion of acrimonious and violent attack on the whole work of the Commission by those periodicals devoted to spiritualism and its propaganda. Age cannot wither the charm of the good humoured satire with which the Acting-Chairman treated these subjects; and it was largely the spirit in which they were thus approached that inspired the intense hostility on the part of the spiritual mediums and their many followers. It has been epigrammatically said that, Superstition is, in many cases, the cloak that keeps a man's religion from dying of cold; possibly the same may be said of Spiritualism and Psychology. H.H. FURNESS, JR. February, 1920. PRELIMINARY REPORT OF The Seybert Commission for Investigating Modern Spiritualism. _To the Trustees of The University of Pennsylvania:_ 'The Seybert Commission for Investigating Modern Spiritualism' respectfully present the following Preliminary Report, and request that the Commission be continued, on the following grounds: