as the maker of a thermometer does the correctness of its graduation. Nothing would have been easier than to do this, in a manner to satisfy the most rigorous requirements of science. Lord Lindsay had only to employ an electro-magnet, instead of a permanent magnet; giving free control over the galvanic battery on which its magnetic force depends to an assistant outside, who should either make or unmake the magnet, or should vary its power, at his own pleasure, recording the time of each change. İf, then, Mr. Home's account of the appearance, disappearance, and varying intensity of the light emitted from the magnet should be found to be in uniform correspondence with such a record, and the experiment were to give the same constancy of results when several times repeated,-with such a variation of persons as would exclude all possibility either of intentional collusion or of accidental coincidence,—Mr. Home's possession of the power to see light issuing from a magnet would be entitled to rank as an ascertained scientific fact. But this, after all, would merely prove that magnetic force, acting through Mr. Home's nervous system, could produce the sensation of Light; which would not seem more unlikely to those who know the correlation of those forces than that certain persons should be apprised of a change of wind or the approach of a thunderstorm, by feelings of which ordinary people have no experience.

If, then, Lord Lindsay cannot be trusted as a 'faithful' witness in that which is least,' how can we feel assured that he is 'faithful also in much? And what measure of credit can we attach to the following narrative, doubtless implicitly believed in by himself, which follows immediately upon our previous quotation?

'I may mention that on another occasion I was sitting with Mr. Home and Lord Adare, and a cousin of his. During the sitting Mr. Home went into a trance, and in that state was carried out of the window in the room next to where we were, and was brought in at our window. The distance between the windows was about 7 feet 6 inches, and there was not the slightest foothold between them, nor was there more than a 12-inch projection to each window, which served as a ledge to put flowers on.

'We heard the window in the next room lifted up, and almost immediately after we saw Home floating in the air outside our window.

'The moon was shining full into the room; my back was to the light, and I saw the shadow on the wall of the window-sill, and Home's feet about six inches above it. He remained in this position for a few seconds, then raised the window and glided into the room, feet foremost, and sat down.

'Lord Adare then went into the next room to look at the window from

from which he had been carried. It was raised about eighteen inches, and he expressed his wonder how Mr. Home had been taken through so narrow an aperture.

Home said (still in trance), "I will show you ;" and then, with his back to the window, he leaned back, and was shot out of the aperture head first with the body rigid, and then returned quite quietly.

The window is about seventy feet from the ground. I very much doubt whether any skilful tight-rope dancer would like to attempt a feat of this description, where the only means of crossing would be by a perilous leap, or being borne across in such a manner as I have described, placing the question of the light aside.'

Now on this we shall only make three observations :—

1. Though it might have been expected that, in narrating a marvel so astounding, Lord Lindsay would have been careful to state every particular that could be reasonably asked for, and to support his account of it by the testimony of the other gentlemen by whom it was witnessed, he commences as if he were narrating the most ordinary occurrence, which ought to be received on his own testimony alone; thus showing that he had previously surrendered himself unreservedly to the belief in Mr. Home's'occult' powers, and that his testimony is therefore to be received with the gravest suspicion.

2. He commits the flagrant inconsistency of telling us that whilst he and two other persons were sitting with Mr. Home,'which, if words have any meaning, implies that Mr. Home was in the same room with him,-Mr. Home 'was carried out of the window in the room next to where we were, and was brought in at our window.'

3. This spiritual transportation took place, not in open day, but by moonlight.

If any wicked wag were to characterise Lord Lindsay's statement as 'all moonshine,' would not the common sense of our readers accept the description?

We have next to deal with Dr. Hare, who was an American physicist and chemist of some reputation, but was not, so far as we have been able to learn, remarkable for acuteness of discrimination as to any matters beyond the ordinary sphere of his inquiries; and we shall presently show how the want of such discrimination caused him to fail egregiously in apprehending the most essential conditions of the question to be put to experimental test. He set himself to contrive an apparatus, which, if spirits were actually present, would enable them to exercise their physical and intellectual powers independent of the control by any medium;' and this he thought he had realised in the following manner:-A

dial was fixed to the table on which the hands of the 'medium' were to be laid; and round the circumference of this dial the letters of the alphabet were disposed in irregular order. An index-hand was made to rotate on an axle passing through the centre of the dial; and this axle was made to revolve, through the traction of a cord wound round it, by any tilting movements given to the table. The dial being hidden by an interposing screen from the eyes of the 'medium,' it was assumed by Dr. Hare that 'no letter could be brought under the index at will;' nevertheless the hand spelled out any name that was called for, and, when directed to do so, pointed successively to the letters in their proper alphabetical order. Now, in the first place, no measure was taken by Dr. Hare to test the downward pressure of the hands of the 'medium' upon the table; and we therefore hold ourselves justified in assuming, in the absence of any proof to the contrary, that its tiltings were due to her muscular agency. But, secondly, as we are not told that the face of Dr. Hare and of every other person who was looking at the dial, was screened from observation of the medium,' it is evident that she had ample opportunity of deriving guidance in her manipulation of the table, from watching the indications they would afford her; just as Mrs. Hayden was guided in her 'raps,' and Mr. Foster in his varied modes of communicating spiritual answers, by the like observation of the signs involuntarily dictated by the 'expectant attention' of the questioners. And that this was really the case is evident from Dr. Hare's own account of what took place.

'Although,' he says, 'the requisite letters were ultimately found, there was evidently some difficulty, as if there was some groping for them with an imperfect light. This has been explained since by my father's spirit. He alleges that, preferably, the eyes of the medium would be employed; but that, although with difficulty, he used mine as a substitute.'

Even on the spirit's own showing, therefore, the use of somebody's eyes was necessary for the regulation of the movements of the index; clearly proving that the movement was dependent on human agency. Again, he says,

'Although, with a view to convince the sceptical, spirits will occasionally give manifestations, when the vision or muscular control of the medium is nullified, it is more difficult for the spirits to operate in this way; moreover it is more difficult for some spirits than for others. One who has assisted me with much zeal has communicated that he would work my apparatus when arranged for a test, but that, as it caused much more exertion, and of course retardation, he advised that the test arrangement should not be interposed when it could be avoided.'

...

Another

Another apparatus was so contrived by Dr. Hare, that the hand was turned by the horizontal movement of the table, which rolled on wheels about 5 inches in diameter. A 'medium' having seated herself at the table with her face screened from the alphabet-disk, 'no manifestation took place through the disk, though other indications of the presence of spirits were given. Hence, inducing the medium to sit at an ordinary table, I inquired if any change could be made which would enable them to communicate through my apparatus. The reply through the alphabet-card was, "Let the medium see the letters."-Even this does not seem to have opened Dr. Hare's eyes to the fundamental fallacy of his method of investigation. He caused the 'medium to place her hands upon a metallic plate having small brass balls interposed between it and the table; by which means, he considered, he could neutralise the power of the medium to move the table, so that she could not influence the selection of the letters, though permitted to see them.' Yet it never seems to have occurred to Dr. Hare to ascertain whether or not a pair of hands resting on his metallic plate could give a horizontal motion, through its mediation, to the table beneath, whose large wheels would very easily yield to any such impulse; and, as the contrary was not proved, we are justified in assuming that the table was so moved.

Having thus exposed the sources of error underlying two of the experiments which are regarded by this Professor of Chemistry 'as proving a spirit to have been present and to have actuated the apparatus, affording thus precise experimental proof of the immortality of the soul' (!), we should not think it needful to cross-examine him further, were it not that it is obviously on another of his experiments that Messrs. Crookes and Huggins have based their own method of inquiry. A board about 4 feet long was made to rest on a fulcrum at a foot from one of its extremities, and consequently at 3 feet from the other; and the longer end was attached to a weighing-machine that indicated any downward pressure which might be applied to any part of that arm of the lever. A glass vase was fixed, mouth upwards, on the board, having its centre at a distance of 6 inches from the fulcrum, on the same side as the weighingmachine; and, as the distance of the weighing-machine from the fulcrum was six times that of the centre of the vase, any pressure exerted on the latter must have been six times that indicated by the weighing-machine. The vase having been nearly filled with water, a wire-gauze cage was so arranged as to descend into it; a 'medium' was induced to plunge his hands, clasped together, to the bottom of the cage; and Dr. Hare then invoked 'the aid

of

of his spirit friends.' A downright force, he assures us, was repeatedly exerted upon the end at the board appended to the balance, equal to nearly three pounds weight; equivalent, therefore, to eighteen pounds at the centre of the vase. Yet it never seems to have occurred to Dr. Hare to test whether he or anyone else could not produce the same depression by the rhythmical action of repeated downward impulses given to the cage, which would be communicated to the vase through the friction of the waters in rising through the pores of the wire-gauze. Knowing what we do of the extraordinary results of the cumulative force of very small vibratory impulses rhythmically repeated, we have no difficulty in accounting for the result of Dr. Hare's experiment, without any aid from his 'spirit friends.' Had our own Faraday taken part in such an investigation, he would have considered it his first duty, as a scientific man, to test the performance of his instruments; but this seems to have been entirely beneath the consideration of a philosopher who was bent only upon obtaining a 'precise experimental proof of the immortality of the soul.' And yet this is the man whose 'spirit' seems to have been allowed by Messrs. Crookes and Huggins to direct their investigations.

As Mr. Crookes advances no less a claim than to have proved the existence of his New Force by the application of crucial tests, with carefully arranged apparatus, and in the presence of irreproachable witnesses,' we are forced to inquire not only how far the tests were really crucial, but how far the witnesses were competent. For, as we have already seen, a man may have acquired a high reputation as an investigator in one department of science, and yet be utterly untrustworthy in regard to another. This is what not merely the general public, but men who claim to guide its judgments, seem unable to understand. Any scientific man' is popularly supposed to be a competent authority upon obscure questions, for the elucidation of which are required the nice discrimination and the acute discernment of the sources of fallacy, which can only be gained by a long course of experience, based on special knowledge. And this is particularly the case when the inquiry is psychical rather than physical, and involves a knowledge of the modes in which the Mind of the observer is liable to be misled either by his own proclivities or by the arts of an intentional deceiver. If,' it is triumphantly asked, 'we accept Dr. Huggins's testimony to the facts he has discovered by Spectrum-analysis, why should we refuse credence to his testimony as to the manifestations of Psychic Force? And if we do not accept his evidence as to the latter class of phenomena, how can we consistently rely upon