Psychic Force--a
term which I below define. Although I am as little inclined to
hero-worship, and care as little for large names as any man living, yet
it is quite impossible not to attach importance to the testimony of
these gentlemen; one so eminent in the scientific world, and privileged
to write himself F.R.S., the other trained to weigh evidence and decide
between balanced probabilities. But it would seem that while Psychic
Force might cover the ground of my earlier experiences, it singularly
fails to account for the materializations, and obliges us to relegate
them to the category of fraud, unless we accept them as being what they
profess to be. This I believe Serjeant Cox ruthlessly does. He claims as
we have seen to have "caught" Miss Showers, and was not, I believe,
convinced by Miss Cook. Mr. Crookes was: and, when we remember that Mr.
Wallace, the eminent naturalist, and Mr. Cromwell Varley, the
electrician, both accept the spiritual theory, it really looks as though
the scientific mind was more open to receive--perhaps driven to
receive--this which I frankly concede to be the only adequate cause for
the effects, while the legal mind still remains hair-splitting upon
conflicting evidence. Whereabouts the theological mind is I do not quite
know--perhaps still dangling between the opposite poles of Faith and
Reason, and dubiously debating with me "Am I a Spiritualist or not?"

In a recent pamphlet reprinted from the Quarterly Journal of Science,
Mr. Crookes thus compendiously sums up the various theories which have
been invented to account for spiritualistic phenomena, and, in so doing,
incidentally defines his now discarded theory of Psychic Force which
owns Mr. Serjeant Cox for its patron:--

_First Theory._--The phenomena are all the results of tricks, clever
mechanical arrangements, or legerdemain; the mediums are impostors, and
the rest of the company fools.

It is obvious that this theory can only account for a very small
proportion of the facts observed. I am willing to admit that some
so-called mediums of whom the public have heard much are arrant
impostors who have taken advantage of the public demand for
spiritualistic excitement to fill their purses with easily earned
guineas; whilst others who have no pecuniary motive for imposture are
tempted to cheat, it would seem, solely by a desire for notoriety.

_Second Theory._--The persons at a seance are the victims of a sort of
mania or delusion, and