rd to say. Only I _see_ that if this class of facts, however
grotesque, be recognised among thinkers, our reigning philosophy will
modify itself; scientific men will conceive differently from Humboldt
(for instance) of the mystery of life; the materialism which stifles the
higher instincts of men will be dislodged, and the rationalism which
divides Oxford with Romanism (_nothing between_, we hear!) will receive
a blow.

_No truth can be dangerous._ What if Jesus Christ be taken for a medium,
do you say? Well, what then? As perfect man, He possessed, I conclude,
the full complement of a man's faculties. But if He walked on the sea as
a medium, if the virtue went out of Him as a mesmeriser, He also spoke
the words which never man spoke, was born for us, and died for us, and
rose from the dead as the Lord God our Saviour. But the whole theory of
spiritualism, all the phenomena, are strikingly _confirmatory_ of
revelation; nothing strikes me more than that. Hume's argument against
miracles (a strong argument) disappears before it, and Strauss's
conclusions from _a priori_ assertion of impossibility fall in pieces at
once.

Now I have done with this subject. Upon the whole, it seems to me better
really that you should not mix yourself up with it any more. Also I wish
you joy of the dismissal of M. Pierart. There was no harm that he took
away your headache, if he did not presume on that. You tell me not to
bid you to beware of counting on us in Paris. And yet, dearest Fanny, I
must. The future in this shifting world, what is it? As for me, whom you
recognise as 'so much myself,' dear, I have a stout pen, and till its
last blot, it will write, perhaps, with its 'usual insolence' (as a
friend once said), but if you laid your hand on this heart, you would
feel how it stops, and staggers, and fails. I have not been out yet, and
am languid in spirits, I gather myself up by fits and starts, and then
fall back. Do you know, I think with positive terror sometimes, less of
the journey than of having to speak and look at people. If it were
possible to persuade Robert, I should send him with Pen; but he wouldn't
go alone, and he must go this year. Oh, I daresay I shall feel more up
to the friction of things when once I have been out; it's stupid to give
way. Also my sister Arabel talks of meeting me in France, though I might
have managed that difficulty, but that Robert should see his father is
absolutely necessary. Meanwhile we don't