In considering the psychic-force hypothesis, I have been anxious to do justice to every slightest indication of such abnormal power in the speculations and experiences of Catholic writers. For this reason, I have spoken of projection, although I am not aware that any attempt has been made by the advocates of psychic force so to explain it. Whilst reiterating my belief that the mind has many mysterious powers capable of being brought into active operation by various influences, and that these are, in all probability, operative in several of the phenomena of spiritualism; granting, moreover, that it is hardly possible to define precisely the extent of the soul's co-operation in the production of these phenomena, I contend, notwithstanding, that the psychic-force hypothesis is the result of a non-natural and inadequate analysis of the phenomena of spiritualism. For, 1st, in the form in which it has been presented, it is indubitably obnoxious to the charge of being an expedient to escape a recognition of spiritual influence, which recognition, in a XIXth-century man of science, would be so very unsportsmanlike, to say the least of it. 2d. It wholly ignores the sense of personal dualism in spiritual experience, to which the history of spiritualism in all ages bears consistent witness. As the idealist would convince us that there is no external world distinct from the phenomena of sensation, so the advocate of psychic force would persuade spiritualists that they have been merely conversing with their own shadows, as with real beings who could hear and answer their questions, and have attributed to these, as independent agents, feats which they were themselves performing. 3d. So far as we have any indication of a thaumaturgic element in the mind, it manifests itself in the supreme efforts of the imagination, kindled by emotion, and abstracted and concentrated by expectation; whereas, in the mass of spiritualistic experiences, imagination in those concerned seems distinctly to fall short of its highest stages. The third hypothesis remains for consideration; but, in order to do it justice, I shall have to enter at some length into the church notion of magic and direct diabolical interference; and this will form the subject of my second chapter. FOOTNOTES: [49] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by Rev. I. T. HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. [50] _Scientific Scraps._ [51] _Hist. of Rat._, chap. i. [52] Pref. to _From Matter to Spirit_. [53] Lib. iv. dist. 34, art. 2. [54] Dr. Tuke, _Influence of the Mind upon the Body_, p. 355. [55] _Biog. Brit., Baconthorp._ [56] Haureau, _La Philosophie Scholastique_, tome ii. cap. 29. [57] _The Immortality of the Soul_, op. p. 212. [58] _Biog. Brit._ [59] _Influence of the Mind upon the Body_, p. 260. [60] _Ibid._, p. 428. [61] _Influence of the Mind upon the Body_, p. 82. [62] S. Max. Taur., _Hom._ xvi.