True but neither did Seneca need a revelation to convey to him the precepts of the gospel. What religion affects is not the intellectual apprehension of moral truths, but the desire for their practical realization. The work that Spiritualism is doing is good. The question whether this work really proceeds from the spirits of the dead does not affect the title of Spiritualism to be called a religion. We are not yet agreed as to the validity of the claims put forward by other religions. This much is certain, that Spiritualism stands out as a most uncompromising fact, not to be scowled or laughed out of countenance. It has allied itself with certain advanced opinions and with a high conception of human life. Perchance it will succeed in establishing these on a popular basis, the perturbation of natural laws by those powers which it has fostered into abnormal activity being destined then to cease. Or perchance these powers, now that they have been so largely called into play, will not again be remitted, but become henceforward the heritage of our race. Perchance again the lamp is already lit which is to guide the feet of humanity through a dark era yet to come. What will be the issue of the triumph of this new movement and its triumph seems assured. we know not. Meanwhile we occupy no enviable position. The earnestness of our age is frittered away for want of a belief which, by being universal, may kindle enthusiasm. The old religion is dead; the new, not indeed unborn, but as yet only puling in the cradle, too fresh from the womb of mystery to endure the light with unblenched gaze.

THE BEARINGS OF SPIRITUALISM.

SOME

OME time ago a remark was made by The Spectator as to the philosophical importance of the phenomena of Spiritualism, whether the practice of necromancy were to be approved of or not. Let it serve as a text for the following discourse. Upon a subject so vast I must be brief even to baldness. It will be enough to indicate a few lines of thought. "Phenomena" means in plain English "facts;" for facts we have to deal with, whatever theory we may choose to account for them. And what are the facts of Spiritualism? There is no room here to answer this question in detail. But let the reader recall some of the stories of the supernatural that have sounded to his ears most grotesquely incredible, fit only to raise a passing smile, or tickle the fancy by the quaintness of their conception-these are the kind of facts that have to be admitted. This may sound uncompromising, a pill without gilding; but plain dealing prospers best in the long run. Spiritualists, as a rule, believe overmuch; they multiply the real marvels; but they cannot out-miracle them. The facts of Spiritualism are obstinately objective; they refuse to be quenched either by laughter or scorn; they force themselves with increasing persistency upon the attention of thoughtful minds. View them historically, scientifically, metaphysically, theologically, it is impossible in any aspect to overrate or overstate their importance. To make good this assertion, I shall set down a few bare heads of

thought, dry bones which I look to see vivified by some prophet's touch. And first

THE LOGICAL IMPORTANCE OF THE FACTS OF

SPIRITUALISM.

By this I mean their effect upon the theory of belief. They give a final triumph to the philosophy of experience, so loudly professed in theory, so deeply disdained in practice. Persons who have encountered the facts of Spiritualism have had a dose likely to purge them for ever of prejudice. They will never again reject assertions that admit of verification on the mere ground of intrinsic incredibility. Incredibility is a totally different thing from impossibility. Incredibility has relation only to the mind, impossibility to the course of Nature. To deny what violates, or seems to violate, analogy, where investigation is impracticable, is wise; where practicable, silly. We must remember that probability is a fit guide only in the enforced absence of experience. Our minds have no power to impose laws upon Nature; there is no archetype within to which the universe without must conform. It is true order reigns everywhere, but not of our making. Nature pays no heed to our notions of precision and consisteney. She will not make the earth the centre of things, nor cause the planets to move in perfect circles; neither will she limit their number to seven, nor make the course of the Nile exactly correspond to that of the Danube. Men have foregone their pet fancies in the past, and been rewarded with glimpses of a grander harmony. Are there no pet fancies to be renounced now? no limits which Nature is forbidden to transgress? We are children sitting at the great mother's knees, painfully spelling out the lessons of life; and when we are advanced into words of two syllables, we array our tiny experience to prove that no word had ever more than one. Our minds are a fair index of what

Nature has done within the compass of our observation, but no measure at all of what she can do. We depend on her teaching for all our knowledge, deriving our mental nourishment from the sights and sounds about us, and from experience of the feelings that pass within. Shall we then put out the eye of our soul, and, having reached a certain point of enlightenment, refuse further credit to the experience of ourselves or our neighbours ? Such is the course that we actually do pursue; such is the attitude of mind which is belauded and called scientific. Rest content within an allotted compass of inquiry, and suppress everything beyond it with the potent logic of a sneer; that is what constitutes you a scientific man, that is scientific method. The lesson which the facts of Spiritualism convey to us in this direction is an old one, but one which, unfortunately, still needs enforcement. It was well put long ago by Dr. Chalmers, when he said, "It is a very obvious principle, although often forgotten in the pride of prejudice and controversy, that what has been seen by one pair of human eyes is of force to countervail all that has been reasoned or guessed at by a thousand human understandings."

But if the Philosophy of Experience condemns incredulity, it condones it too, as the unavoidable result of the weakness of the human intellect, a weakness which it mistakes for strength. It is not that the world will not believe what runs counter to its experience, though vouched for by men of unimpeachable veracity and intelligence, but that it cannot believe it. Belief is a feeling generated in the mind by association; and it is not possible to divest ourselves of it by a mere act of the will without the aid of fresh experience of an opposite kind. It is the office of reason to teach us that since even the limits of our conceptive faculties are no measure of the possibilities of nature, much less should our beliefs be accepted as such. But it is rare indeed to find a mind that has learnt this lesson in its full application,

and to which "secondary evidence" is more than a grain of dust in the balance when weighed against a prior belief. Students of physical science exhibit in an eminent degree this incapacity of escaping from a groove of thought. They have grown so accustomed to one uniform flow of natural phenomena that they cannot comprehend any perturbation by unusual causes, and avenge the mental disquietude that testimony causes them by angry denunciations of the witness. It is a

curious and instructive sight to watch the sanguine condescension with which each new observer extends his patronage to the facts of Spiritualism-he knows that he is unprejudiced, and thinks he surely will be believed -only to find himself consigned by the world at large, and scientific men in particular, to the same limbo of folly as his predecessors. From the logical importance of the facts under consideration we must pass on next to

THE METAPHYSICAL IMPORTANCE OF THE FACTS OF

SPIRITUALISM.

It were idle to point out how deeply they must affect all subsequent speculations on the nature of matter and mind, and other fundamental problems of being. The doctrine current among Spiritualists as to the nature of man is precisely that of St. Paul-" There is a soul-body (ie., the body proper) and a spirit-body (i.e., the soul)." As the outer is to the inner in this present life, so is the inner to a yet more interior principle in the life beyond. Clairvoyants and mediums, as with one mouth, declare that, permeating every fibre of our physical body there is a spiritual substance, incognisable to sense, which at death issues from its corporeal integument, and re-forms in precisely similar shape, constituting the resurrection-body. Numberless disquisitions on this topic may be found by those who have a desire to pursue it. The language may be metaphorical, and express only superficial appearances. It is not plain whether we are born naked into the next