"Perhaps it would not be out of place, in this connection, to state (what many are aware of) that the family to whom I have alluded as the ones in whose presence these manifestations occur--although by no means the only ones--have, in consequence of the circumstances, been subject of much misrepresentation, and, in some instances, of serious wrong. This might have been expected at the hands of those who are ever ready to cast opprobrium on individual character if it chance to be allied in any way to what _to them_ is unaccountable, or cannot be made to serve their peculiar views and purposes. During my acquaintance with them I have never discovered the least ground for the justice of such charges. I have known them intimately nearly a year and a half, and some of my friends have been acquainted with them for many years. No one has ever suggested to me the belief that any of the family had been guilty of any departure from moral rectitude. I have uniformly been treated by them with courtesy and kindness; and they have, on all proper occasions, extended to me such facilities as were requisite to enable me to prosecute my inquiries. They make no ultra pretensions to what the world calls piety, neither do they claim exemption from the venial faults which exist more or less in all their fellow-beings. Neither do they set up the false claim (which some exceedingly soft heads have imputed to them) that they, as individuals, are inspired, or have a mission from the Deity to this world. They are _merely_ the _passive media_ through whom these communications are made to us, from the world of Spirits. "Recognizing then, as I do--what to me is undeniable--that for some wise purpose, intelligences in another sphere of existence are permitted to communicate with us in this way, numberless questions have suggested themselves to my mind. "As nothing important ever takes place in the wide realm of the Universe, _unconnected with a purpose_, what is the aim of this? "I answer--as I did involuntarily, in the first stage of my experience--to teach mankind that what they have been harboring as a shadow, but never known, is in truth a reality; that the interior man, the sentient being 'That stirs within and animates the clay,'