_Büchner._ “This propensity has given rise to the most curious errors of the human mind. Though it sometimes appears that the progress of science arrests its development in some place, it suddenly breaks forth with greater force at some other place where it was less expected. The events of the last few years afford a striking example. What the belief in sorcery, witchcraft, demoniac possession, vampirism, etc., was in former centuries, reappears now under the agreeable forms of table‐moving, spirit‐rapping, psychography, somnambulism, etc.” (p. 150). _Reader._ You are right. Spiritism is only a new form of old superstitions and diabolic manifestations. But you are mistaken, if you believe that science can show such manifestations to have been fables. Your scientific argument against spiritual manifestations is, you must own it, inconsistent with your scientific process. Your process requires a basis of facts; for it is from facts that science draws its generalizations. You should, therefore, first ascertain that sorcery, witchcraft, etc., never existed in the world, and that not one of the thousand facts narrated in profane, sacred, or ecclesiastical history has ever happened; and then you might conclude that all mankind have been very stupid to believe such absurdities. But you follow quite a different course. You argue _à priori_, and say: Spiritual manifestations are an impossibility; therefore all the pretended facts of spiritism are impositions. This manner of arguing is not scientific; for evidently it is not based on facts, and the assumption that spiritual manifestations are impossible cannot be granted; for it cannot be proved. Hence not only the ignorant classes, but also educated persons, as you complain, believe in spiritual manifestations, in spite of your pretended science; for, when they see the facts, they will only smile at your denial of their possibility. _Büchner._ But the facts themselves are incredible. “Magnetic sleep, induced either by continued passes on the body, or spontaneously without external means, as in idiosomnambulism, is stated to be frequently attended by an intellectual ecstasy, which in certain privileged persons, chiefly females, rises to what is called _clairvoyance_. In this state those persons are said to exhibit mental faculties not natural to them, to speak fluently foreign languages, and to discuss things perfectly unknown to them in the waking state.... The person perceives things beyond the sphere of his senses, he reads sealed letters, guesses the thoughts of other persons, reveals the past, etc. Finally, such individuals sometimes give us information about the arrangements in heaven and hell, our state after death, and so forth; but we cannot help mentioning that these revelations are ever in remarkable harmony with the religious views of the church, or of the priest under whose influence the patient may be for the time” (p. 151).