THEO. If by “Spiritualism” you mean the explanation which Spiritualists give of some abnormal phenomena, then decidedly _we do not_. They maintain that these manifestations are all produced by the “spirits” of departed mortals, generally their relatives, who return to earth, they say, to communicate with those they have loved or to whom they are attached. We deny this point blank. We assert that the spirits of the dead cannot return to earth—save in rare and exceptional cases, of which I may speak later; nor do they communicate with men except by _entirely subjective means_. That which does appear objectively, is only the phantom of the ex-physical man. But in _psychic_, and so to say, “Spiritual” Spiritualism, we do believe, most decidedly. ENQ. Do you reject the phenomena also? THEO. Assuredly not—save cases of conscious fraud. ENQ. How do you account for them, then? THEO. In many ways. The causes of such manifestations are by no means so simple as the Spiritualists would like to believe. Foremost of all, the _deus ex machinâ_ of the so-called “materializations” is usually the astral body or “double” of the medium or of some one present. This _astral_ body is also the producer or operating force in the manifestations of slate-writing, “Davenport”-like manifestations, and so on. ENQ. You say “usually”; then _what_ is it that produces the rest? THEO. That depends on the nature of the manifestations. Sometimes the astral remains, the Kamalokic “shells” of the vanished _personalities_ that were; at other times, Elementals. “Spirit” is a word of manifold and wide significance. I really do not know what Spiritualists mean by the term; but what we understand them to claim is that the physical phenomena are produced by the reincarnating _Ego_, the _Spiritual_ and immortal “individuality.” And this hypothesis we entirely reject. The Conscious _Individuality_ of the disembodied _cannot materialize_, nor can it return from its own mental Devachanic sphere to the plane of terrestrial objectivity. ENQ. But many of the communications received from the “spirits” show not only intelligence, but a knowledge of facts not known to the medium, and sometimes even not consciously present to the mind of the investigator, or any of those who compose the audience.