I wish I could impress upon you who hear me, as well as upon the millions of men throughout Europe and in the New World who are studying the still mysterious problem of spiritualism, what a deep scientific interest and what a philosophic future there is in the study of these phenomena, to which, as you know, many of our most eminent living scholars have given their time and attention. I wish I could present to your imagination and theirs the new and vast horizons we shall see opening up before us in proportion as we broaden our scientific knowledge of the forces of nature at work around us; and I would that I could show both you and them that such conquests of the mind are the most efficacious antidote to the leprosy of atheism which seems to be particularly the malignant degenerative element in this our epoch of transition. What a salutary thing it would be could I but prove here, before this eloquent tomb, that the methodical examination of the phenomena erroneously called supernatural, far from calling back the spirit of superstition, and weakening the energy of the reason, serves, on the contrary, to banish the errors and illusions of ignorance, and assists the progress of truth much more than do the irrational negations of those who will not take the trouble to look at the facts. It is high time now that this complex subject of study should enter upon its scientific period. Enough stress has not been laid upon the physical side of the subject, which should be critically studied; for without rigid scientific experiment no proof is valid. This objective _a priori_ method of investigation, to which we owe the glory of modern progress and the marvels of electricity and steam, should take up the still unexplained and mysterious phenomena with which we are acquainted, to dissect them, measure them, and to define them. For, gentlemen, _spiritualism is not a religion, but a science_, a science of which we as yet scarcely know the _a, b, c_. The age of dogma is past. Nature includes the Universe; and God himself, who was in old times conceived of as a being of similar shape and form as man, cannot be considered by modern metaphysics as other than _Mind in Nature_. The supernatural does not exist. The manifestations obtained by the agency of mediums, such as those of magnetism and somnambulism, belong to the order of nature and ought to be inexorably submitted to the test of experiment. There are no more miracles. We are witnessing the dawning of a new science. Who is there so bold as to predict whither the scientific study of the new psychology will lead, and what the results will be?