"It is true and readily admitted that this keen and exact observer was then dominated by _mesmeric_, which many assume to be widely different from _Spirit_, force. The belief is prevalent to-day that those two adjectives describe one and the same thing. Few persons who have sought to discover the relations between mesmerism and Spiritualism, hesitate to indorse the following statement, made by Cromwell F. Varley before a committee of the London Dialectical Society, which was substantially this, viz., 'I believe that the mesmeric force and the Spiritual force are the same--the only difference being that in one case the producing agent is in a material body, and in the other is out of such a body.' Mr. Varley's competency to give a valuable opinion may be inferred from the fact that the great Atlantic Telegraph Company elected him from among England's eminent electricians, to supervise and control the constructors and operators of their vast and delicate apparatus for flashing knowledge under the waters, from continent to continent, and he made their project a success. We add, that Spiritualism had, for years, been manifested in striking forms and much distinctness, both through himself and other members of his own family, and that he had been an extensive observer and scientific student of its phenomena, and a careful tester of its forces. He had reached the conclusion, not only that the chief force employed in producing both the mesmeric and the Spiritualistic entrancement was the same, but also that it was distinct from either electricity or magnetism. From Mr. Varley's views the conclusion may be fairly deduced that Agassiz, in middle life, experienced much that is undistinguishable from the sensations and perceptions of modern mediums, and that he was subdued by use of the same force by which they are controlled. As a general rule, though possibly subject to a few exceptions, persons who have once yielded to mesmeric, afterward are very liable to succumb to Spirit force. This rule will have important bearings when we come to view the deportment of Agassiz as a member of the Harvard investigating committee. What we have already adduced suggests the probability that, if unresisted by himself, Spirits could have controlled him with much facility, had he consented to be calm and unresisting while he was within the auras or spheres of persons whose emanations and constituent elements were helpful to the control of physical forms by Spirits."