"Your scientists are feeding millions of people stones," exclaimed Fowler. "They ask for bread, and you give them slices of granite." "Better granite than slime," said Miller. "I am with the biologists in this campaign. Let us have the truth, no matter how unpalatable it may be. If these phenomena exist, they are in the domain of natural law and can be weighed and measured. If they are imaginary, they should be swept away, like other dreams of superstition and ignorance." Fowler was not to be silenced. "I predict that you and your like will yet be forced, like Lombroso, to take your place with Aksakof, Lodge, Wallace, Du Prel, and Crookes, who have come to admit the intervention of discarnate intelligences. Lombroso says, 'We find, as I already foresaw some years ago, that these materialized bodies belong to the radiant state of matter, which has now a sure foothold in science. This is the only hypothesis that can reconcile the ancient and universal belief in the persistence of some manifestation of life after death with the results of science.' He adds: 'These beings, or remnants of beings, would not be able to obtain complete consistency to incarnate themselves, if they did not temporarily borrow a part of the medium. _But to borrow force from the medium is not the same thing as to be identical with the medium._'" "Well," said I, "of this I am certain: we cannot afford to ignore such experiments as those of Morselli and Bottazzi. I am aware that many investigators discountenance such experiments, but I believe with Venzano that the physical phenomena of mediumship cannot be, and ought not to be, considered trivial. It was the spasmodic movement of a decapitated frog that resulted in the discovery of the Voltaic Pile. Furthermore, I intend to try every other conceivable hypothesis before accepting that of the spiritists." "What is your reason for that?" asked Fowler. "Because I am a scientist in my sympathies. I believe in the methods of the chemist and the electrician. I prefer the experimenter to the theorist. I like the calm, clear, concise statements of these European savans, who approach the subject, not as bereaved persons, but as biologists. I am ready to go wherever science leads, and I should be very glad to _know_ that our life here is but a link in the chain of existence. Others may have more convincing knowledge than I, but at this present moment the weight of evidence seems to me to be on the side of the theory that mediumship is, after all, a question of unexplored human biology."